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“The pelicans,” Verity clarified.

“They’re peculiar.”

That was the only invitation to discussion Verity required. Gathering the forgotten parasol from the bench, she pointed the top of it toward the creatures in question. “Do you know how they came to be here?”

Malcom shook his head slowly.

Verity tossed aside the satin umbrella and scrambled closer. “Sometime in the early 1600s, James the First had this area drained and landscaped so that it might become a place for people to visit. He was responsible for the creation of a flower garden and a menagerie of wild animals.” She stared back with a brightness in her eyes, one that expected he should be as impressed by that revelation as she herself was to give it.

And by damn, if he wasn’t ... but because of the woman in charge of the telling. Her enthusiasm was infectious. “Wild animals, you say?”

Verity nodded so enthusiastically her bonnet fell over her brow, concealing those bright eyes, and he mourned that small loss. “He had camels brought in. Crocodiles. Even an elephant, and the exotic waterfowl, of course.”

His lips twitched, that natural movement so foreign to him it strained the muscles, and yet, with it came a ... peculiar lightness in his chest. “Of course,” he said, his expression deadpan.

Whether or not she heard the note of teasing infused in his words, she did not let it alter the rest of her telling.

“Charles the First continued to expand the pleasures at the park ... until he was executed. Made his way there.” Taking him by the hand, she forced him to either join her as she turned or pull her down. In the end, he could no sooner stop himself from doing as she bid than he could happily end his tenure as a tosher. “Do you see there?” Squinting, she pointed over a slight rise. “That is where Charles was marched in the dead of winter, all bundled up lest onlookers see him shake and mistake that response for fear. He and his dog, Rogue, were marched over that rise, and ...” Her expression became grim, and she shook her head. “I trust you know the rest.”

“Yes,” he said automatically. Something slipped in and then tumbled from his lips before he could call it back. “‘Sweetheart, now they will cut off thy father’s head. Mark, child, what I say: they will cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king. But mark what I say: you must not be a king, so long as your brothers Charles and James do live,’” he murmured.

Sensing Verity’s eyes on him, he felt his cheeks flush with heat and color. “Or ... I believe I recall he uttered something of that effect.”

“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.