“That is precisely what he was quoted as saying to his son,” Verity marveled, inching closer. “You’ve . . . heard that, then, at some point. And remembered it.”
Sitting up, Malcom tugged at the loose cravat he’d donned. He did know the history of Charles’s execution . . . but when . . . and where that knowledge had come from, he’d no recollection. Boys in the street weren’t schooled in fine studies, and yet at some point, his education had come . . . from somewhere. Whether it had been from his father or a tutor . . . “I . . . don’t recall anything more than that,” he conceded gruffly.
“After Charles’s execution”—Cromwell—“Cromwell took over. He sought to quash all hint of joy and outlawed anything that might bring pleasure.” Verity settled back onto her seat, eyeing the pelicans nosing around their blanket.
With her silence, she made clear . . . she’d said all she intended to say, and if he wished to know more, then she expected him to give some indication.
Mama . . . where do the pelicans come from?
That child’s voice he knew inherently was his own rang around the walls of his mind. Taunting him with echoes and shadows he couldn’t make sense of. Just as he knew he’d asked that question, he also intrinsically knew the woman he’d called “Mama” hadn’t had an answer.
Malcom’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. And yet . . . this . . . engaging with another on matters that had nothing to do with plundering the sewers of London, was as foreign as the languages one picked up in passing at the London wharves. “Why pelicans?” he made himself ask, his voice emerging harsh.
It was all Verity required. “Well, Charles the Second had an inordinate fascination with fowl himself.” Her bonnet slipped once again, and she pushed the frilly article back. “Knowing that about the monarch, an ambassador to Russia presented the king with two grey pelicans.” As she spoke, bright color suffused her cheeks, and she gestured animatedly. Malcom stared on, riveted. It was an impossibility to not be further entranced by the young woman . . . and her telling. “The original pelicans, however, were never successfully bred, and still today, they periodically replenish the population.” She stared at him expectantly.
Another smile twitched at his lips. “That is an impressive breadth of information on the pelicans in Hyde Park, my lady.”
“I conducted a story on it,” she explained. The pelicans, having long tired of the lack of food and attention paid them, waddled off and set up in a new place upon an empty boulder. And she waited.
She never compelled him to speak.
She shared stories of herself so that he might see the reasons he denied his past. She let him understand just why he clung to the darkness.
And mayhap, after all these years, that was what gave him the strength to talk—to her.
“My parents brought me here. My father would ride.” Cupping a hand over his eyes, he scanned the grounds, ignoring the lords and ladies strolling past. A tall, bespectacled gentleman at some point had stopped and stared blatantly upon Malcom and Verity. This time, none of those gossips mattered. “There,” he murmured, pointing to a graveled path. “It was narrower. There was more brush and growth. My mother and I would sit on a blanket, feeding the pelicans.” The remembrances slipped forth. “And chasing them.” Just then, one of those enormous fowl waddled past, and then launched himself into the water. “I’d chase them about. My mother would pretend to scold me and come running after me, but then we were both chasing them together.” It was so real, so vivid in his mind.
Her face.
Their laughing faces together.
A small hand slipped into Malcom’s. Verity wound her fingers through his.
He didn’t move for a moment, and then slowly Malcom curved his hand around hers.
Chapter 23
THE LONDONER
REVENGE
All society is well aware of the Rightful Heir’s attempt to make a beggar of the previous Lord Maxwell, who’d stolen that respected title. All society is also left with one shared question: When will he have his final revenge on the man responsible for his miseries . . . ?
M. Fairpoint
Everything had changed.
Some seismic shift had occurred at Hyde Park, and nothing for Verity could ever be the same again.
But then—Verity studied her reflection in her vanity mirror—perhaps the shift hadn’t been so quick, after all. Perhaps it had been with each and every exchange, a gradual breakdown that had occurred of those impressive barriers Malcom had put up.
And she should be thinking of her story and the interview she sought.
But could only think of him. Of being with him . . .
The following morning, Verity didn’t know how to be with Malcom.
“Get that silly look off your face, gel.”
She tensed.
Bertha stomped out of the dressing room.
“I don’t have a silly look.” Except . . . she stole a peek at herself in the cheval mirror, and blushed. Aye, there was a definite faraway wistfulness to her gaze, and glowing skin and—
“I knew ya were going to make a mistake with that one,” Bertha snapped.
She bristled. “I haven’t made a mistake.”
“Do you think I don’t see how you’re moonstruck over the earl? All that sighing and long gazes.”
She frowned. “I’m not some naive girl, Bertha. I’m a grown woman capable of protecting myself.” Except, was she? Was she truly safe from the power of Malcom’s charm?
“Your mother thought the same.” There was a malice in that retort, the like of which Verity had never before heard from the other woman.
“Either way, it’s not your place,” she said crisply.
“Isn’t it? I was taking care of you when you were a babe. And then when Livvie was born all those years later, I cared for her while you—”
“While I saw that we all survived,” she interrupted.
“You’re becoming your mother.”
Indignation swelled in her breast. “I am nothing like my mother,” she bit out. “My mother never put anyone before her love of my father. And—”
“And you’re incapable of thinking about anything except your earl.”
Her protestations faded away on the wings of fear and horror. Verity’s skin went clammy. Nay. It wasn’t possible. Her nursemaid was simply worried about the possibility of the past repeating itself. But Verity couldn’t. She wouldn’t . . . love a man who’d never belong to her. Want a future that would never be. Her heart hammered away. “You’re wrong.” She had to be.
“Am I?” Bertha asked with a sad smile. “And this one a ruthless sewer dweller too selfish to share those tunnels with other toshers.”
“He is nothing like that,” Verity snapped. “And you don’t know him at all.”
Tension blanketed the room.
Bertha dropped a small, mocking curtsy. “You should get on, my lady. I trust you have another meeting with the earl.”
Refusing to allow the cynical nursemaid to ruin her outing for the morning, Verity grabbed her bonnet and quit the rooms.
When she reached Malcom’s offices, she hovered outside.
Surely Bertha was wrong.