M. Fairpoint
Over the course of his life, Malcom had sought—and attained—revenge on more enemies than he could remember or count.
Never, however, going into battle had he felt this. Bloodlust pumped through him, primal and raw. It heated his veins and coursed through him, spreading a venomous poison where only one word took shape: destroy. This upcoming meeting didn’t have to do with territory or right of ownership or the simple primitive need to exert control and display dominance.
This was about her—Verity, and what had almost befallen her.
Not bothering with a knocker like any civilized guest would, Malcom pounded hard at the modest panel. The heavy oak rattled, and he pounded all the harder.
But he wasn’t going anywhere. This meeting had been ordained following the attack on Verity at Hatchards. Nay, if he were being honest with himself, it had been ordained long before that. Back when he’d been a boy smuggled from his family’s Kent estate in a burlap sack, taken for dead, and passed off like trash.
And now he was back, reclaiming his past life.
That brought him up short with his knock, and he froze, his fist halfway to the oak panel.
Could he?
Forget moving amongst the world in daylight. Could Malcom move amongst the peerage? Polite Society, which he still wanted no part of. He was a man trapped in an “in-between” in which he’d never truly belong. Neither the sewers nor the fanciest end of London.
But the possibility of a future he saw, it wasn’t a place.
It was with her . . .
It was with Verity.
He wanted to be wherever she was. It’s why for the first time ever, he’d wanted not to be scouring for treasure but instead at Hatchards with her.
Home was wherever Verity was.
I love her . . .
Malcom shot a hand out, catching the stair rail, managing to keep himself upright. Christ. It was a prayer from him, a man who’d never been religious, and yet that was all he was capable of. He loved her. He’d loved her since he’d stumbled upon her in his sewers, a tart-mouthed spitfire challenging him at every turn as if she’d forever dwelled in those tunnels and set herself up as queen.
With their every exchange, he’d lost more and more scraps of a heart he’d not known he possessed: Verity, as she’d doled out chess lessons. Verity, as she’d gone toe-to-toe with him to defend two old toshers. Just Verity. It would only ever be Verity.
And she was the reason he was here even now.
Steadied once more, Malcom let his fist fly with a thunderous boom that rose above the din of the early-morn Mayfair traffic.
And then the door was opened. Suddenly, by an ancient butler with white hair. “May I help you?”
But for his flawless English, the man might as well have been Fowler or Bram. A servant who, by his advanced years, should have retired some time ago but remained. For what reasons? A lack of pension? Loyalty? Surely it was not the latter. Not given Bolingbroke’s family history. That brought Malcom back to the task at hand, the whole reason for his visit. “Bolingbroke.”
The servant hesitated. “I’m afraid His Lordship is—”
Malcom shot an elbow up before the door could be closed in his face. “He’ll see me.” Or Malcom would tear down the bloody door with his damned hands, and then hunt the other man for the fiend he was.
“I said, he’s not receiving,” the butler said with an impressive resolve, and this time the old servant slid the door forward.
By God, he wouldn’t. He shot a hand up—
“Florence, is there a problem?”
In the end, it wasn’t a stone-cold Baron Bolingbroke who cut through the butler’s resolve but a slender young lady with a mass of black curls and an even greater amount of curiosity brimming in her eyes.
“Just someone who’s arrived without a meeting, my lady. And His Lordship is not taking visitors.”
The young lady stayed the butler with a hand, and then crooked her fingers, motioning Malcom to enter. “I am the Baroness Bolingbroke,” she said softly, confirming her identity. “My husband is otherwise engaged at this hour. Might I be of any assistance in the interim?”
As he’d been visited by Sanders, and given the permission and then directives to make Bolingbroke pay and then pay even more in interest, Malcom hadn’t thought of the wife. Or the sisters.
And yet even as there was a shred of humanity within him still that regretted in this moment that this woman found herself an unwitting player upon a chessboard designed long ago by different players, there was another woman who mattered far more than her. Another woman who mattered more than anyone else. And Malcom would sell his soul ten times over to protect her from harm. “My name is . . .” She stared patiently back. “I am the Earl of Maxwell.” And he didn’t break with that admission of his rightful title.
She went absolutely still . . . and then that earlier veneer of warmth was doused by a blanket of ice. “I see, my lord. My husband isn’t accepting—”
“I’m not leaving until I see him.”
The young woman hesitated, and he felt the desperate look the butler shot her way. And the battle she fought with herself.
“Very well,” she said stiffly. “If you’ll follow me?” And whipping about, she started down the hall.
As Malcom fell into step alongside her, the butler followed their strides. And then the moment they disappeared around the next corridor, loyal footmen followed in the shadows. Malcom felt them there, too. Lurking in loyal wait.
Aye, but wasn’t that the way . . .
No one saw themselves or their people as the monsters. It’s always the other who’s in the wrong.
“I’ve oft wondered if you’d call, my lord.” The lady kept her eyes trained forward as she walked at a brisk clip his longer legs easily kept stride with. “Or whether you were content to lurk in the wings, waiting like a bogeyman, delighting in the power you wielded.”
How ironic that she should speak of his influence. “How unfortunate . . .”
The young woman fought a futile battle with herself. “What is?” she snapped.
Malcom flashed a cool smile. “That six months of your husband’s past twenty years has proven so unpleasant. For him.” When the reverse had held true for Malcom’s own existence. When Malcom had been beaten and robbed, and stabbed and spit on.
The young lady missed a step, her gaze stricken.
Aye, so the young lady was clever enough to hear that unspoken gibe.
She didn’t say another word the remainder of their long march through the sparse townhouse. Where Malcom’s inherited properties dripped wealth and extravagance, Bolingbroke’s new homes reflected the sorry state of his affairs.
Lady Bolingbroke slowed her step, and planting her hands on her hips, she lifted her gaze to his. “You don’t know my husband. You only know”—what I endured—“what was done to you.” She entreated him with her eyes. “But those actions, they were never Tristan’s. He was a boy at the time those wrongs were committed. And you were both victims.” She grimaced. “Albeit in . . . very different ways,” she finished lamely, at least sounding properly sheepish with that ludicrous charge that Malcom and Bolingbroke had ever been alike in their sufferings. The baroness ventured forward.