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“You’d protect yourself,” he said automatically.

“Protect myself, by ... remaining alone?”

He went silent.

Verity, however, was tenacious. She scooted around so that she faced him. “And is that what you’ve done, Malcom?”

His body went whipcord straight. “Yes. Of course it is.” Everyone in the rookeries knew as much about him.

“No.”

He cocked his head.

“No,” she repeated. “That is what youthinkyou’ve done. You refer to Bram and Fowler as ‘your people.’ You call Giles an ‘associate.’ All of these defenses that you put up, these choices of words that strip away closeness from your connections, they cannot truly conceal the truth.”

A sweat broke out on the back of his nape. Moisture trickled down his collar and streaked his back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Or was it that he didn’t know what he was talking about? Everything was twisted. Illogical and confused.

“I do, though. I know that you’re protecting yourself by pretending that they don’t matter. But, Malcom.” She rested a hand lightly on his sleeve.

He stared at those ink-stained fingers to keep from looking into her eyes and owning all the truths that spilled from her too-insightful lips. “What?”

“A man who doesn’t care about others doesn’t rescue men from the sewers. He doesn’t stay with them, looking after them when they are old men who can barely walk from the injuries they’ve sustained.” His hands formed balls at his sides. He wanted her to stop. He needed her to. But she was relentless. Verity moved closer so that barely a handbreadth separated them. “A man who doesn’t care doesn’t send those old toshers to the finest residence in London so that they might live in comfort and never have to pillage a sewer again.”

He glanced away, unable to meet her piercing gaze. That gaze that saw too much and knew even more. A million vises twisted his insides into knots. How had she known ... ?

Verity proved unfaltering, wreaking further havoc upon him. “You wouldn’t have made your right-hand man, one who is surviving on the streets with just one hand to defend and protect himself with, your associate.”Giles.Verity laid her palms against his chest, and his heart thumped hard under that tender touch. “And do you know what I also know?”

He managed to shake his head.

“A man who’ll do all that, who’ll take in the woman who’d wronged him, along with her family, giving them security, is an honorable one.”

Just like the romantic article she’d written about him inThe Londoner, Verity simply saw that which she wished. “I’m not.” A man who’d done the things he had could never be considered anything of the sort.

Verity smiled tremulously. She stroked her palms down the front of his chest, her touch soothing. “You continue to believe if you say one thing, that the words will, in fact, mean another.”

Chapter 22

THE LONDON GAZETTE

A MATCH MADE ... OF LOVE?

For all the original speculation about a nefarious union between the Earl of Maxwell and his mysterious wife, the couple is seen frequently about Polite Society, and thetonis left with but one question: Is it love?

E. Daubin

In the following weeks, Malcom and Verity settled into their world of pretend.

His days were spent courting his wife.

Their nights were spent conversing. Interviews that never truly felt like interviews.

And somewhere along the way, make-believe had come to feel ... all too real.

Lying upon a blanket in Hyde Park with Verity’s palms over his eyes, Malcom knew there’d be time later for proper horror at the vulnerable place he’d let himself fall into.

“You’re not paying attention,” Verity accused.

“Very well.”