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“I ...” His mind swam, and he tried to dredge up a reply. Only, Livvie Lovelace had confounded him. What she spoke of ... loving Verity ... was foreign to the world he’d built. One that the elder Miss Lovelace had single-handedly dismantled. And yet to open himself so wholly, so completely ... “Thank you for the talk,” he replied. For whatever he had to sort through couldn’t be done with this slip of a woman, or any observer, about.

“North,” she murmured. She made to go, and then paused once more. “Oh, and I should mention, in the event that youdocare, you should be aware that my sister was attacked earlier today.”

With that, Verity’s sister let herself out. Her words echoed in her wake.

Malcom didn’t move. He didn’t so much as blink.

Surely he’d heard Livvie wrong. Surely with the casualness of that deliverance, his mind had simply twisted whatever she’d said.

And then blood went roaring through his ears.

Malcom exploded to his feet and bolted from the library, cursing the endless, winding corridors. Slightly out of breath from fear and his exertions, he reached the stairs and took them two at a time. The moment his feet hit the landing, he took off running once more, skidding to a halt outside Verity’s room.

Breathing hard, he pressed the handle, and let himself in. And then he found her.

Or more specifically ...

Them. Malcom found them.

Based on the ominous pronouncement Livvie had dropped, during his endless streak to this very moment, Malcom had conjured all the worst imaginings.

Verity: Unconscious. Bleeding. Broken.

Of all the sights he’d expected after his talk with Livvie, this had not been it. Verity perched at the left side of the mattress with her back to him; she had Bram and Fowler before her. The old toshers sat in two delicate, scrolled armchairs like dutiful pups, albeit enormous pups that tested the constraints of that seating. “I told you, it’s an absolute cure-all,” Verity was saying, wholly engrossed in whatever latest apothecary sat next to her bed. Their hands outstretched and dunked in bowls of water, the trio remained focused on whatever it was they were doing. “You’ll want to do this several times a day. It will soften them.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with a callus.” Fowler grunted.

“There is when they break and then you get dirt in them, and well, it’s no different from getting dirt in an open wound.”

Malcom lingered at the entrance.

Mayhap it was relief so strong that managed to stir an even more unfamiliar sentiment—mirth.

And he didn’t know whether to be relieved or irate with the young woman who’d sent him—

Verity glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, hullo,” she greeted.

And the floor fell out from under him.

Since he’d taken his leave of her that morn, a round knot had formed at the right side of her forehead. A vicious knob, a product of a blow.

The air hissed between his teeth.

“Get out.”

Stiffening, Verity shoved to her feet. “I’ll not.”

“Not you, madam,” he ground out.

Those enormous eyes blinked. “Oh, uh ... well, because I was going to say I’ll not be ordered about.”

Fowler and Bram exchanged a look, and then simultaneously jumped up. The pair of toshers shuffled guiltily over to the door and made their exit.

Good. They should feel guilty, the blighters.

Malcom fixed on that outrage to keep from descending into panic. She was all right. She was ... sporting an enormous bruise, which according to her sister, was the product of an attack.

And where was I? Diving into sewers, fishing out treasure I don’t need.Wealth that other people in the dire circumstances he’d once found himself in desperately needed.