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“I’ve hurt many. But I’ve never hurt a woman, and never would. And I’d never let myself, for any reason, visit suffering upon you for what you’ve known.”

It is an act ... It is a show ...

It had to be.

Because what was the alternative? That the man he’d spent these past months secretly resenting and gleefully knocking down, was, in fact, a man who’d himself been dragged into this mire, much as Malcom himself had?

Just as Verity had said.

Husband and wife exchanged a look.

Aye, because something was expected of Malcom here.

During the medieval times, men would conceal weapons in their hands, and so shaking another person’s hand conveyed that no harm was intended, and that is what I would convey to ...

That was why she’d handed out that lesson, and in doing so invoked that reminder ... She’d known Malcom would need that gesture.

As Malcom stretched a hand out and placed his palm in the baron’s, he was not besieged by shame or any sense of weakness, but rather an inherent right.

It was done.

And it was because of her ... Verity.

Verity Lovelace ... a woman who’d come to mean more to him than anyone. A woman he wanted in his life ... forever.

He stiffened. A woman who’d come to harm at the hands of someone ... someone who’d not been Bolingbroke. Ice tripped along his spine. For if the baron was not responsible for the attack on Verity, that meant there was some unknown foe who sought to hurt her.

At six o’clock in the morning, Verity came awake to find Malcom leaving the townhouse. Even as she’d hurried through her ablutions in a bid to catch him, knowing what he intended, she’d proven too late.

And thirty minutes later ... her life fell apart.

Although, in fairness, it wasn’t really her life. This was all pretend. A game of make-believe.

So why, if it was pretend, was she coming apart inside? Why couldn’t she breathe?

Once more, it had all fallen apart because of a newspaper.

When Fairpoint had stolen her words, Verity had imagined there could be no greater affront she could suffer. The rage and indignation had been so staggering that surely nothing could have surpassed it.

How wrong she’d been ...

“Ahem. Is there anything else you need ... my lady?” The young maid who’d delivered the newspaper didn’t meet Verity’s eyes. Though in fairness, motionless in the middle of the gold parlor, Verity hadn’t managed to wrench her eyes away from the words inked across the center page in bold, damning letters.

THE LONDONER

SCANDAL ... AGAIN ... !

A great ruse has been perpetuated, and Polite Society made to look the fool. Should anyone expect anything else from one raised in the sewers, even if he was born an earl? The Earl of Maxwell, who would live life in the rookeries, would also lie so easily about having a wife ...

His pretend wife is none other than Verity Lovelace, the bastard-born daughter of the late Earl of Wakefield.

Verity tried to breathe. She desperately tried to suck air into her lungs.

In the end, she failed.

Verity’s legs gave out from under her, and she sank onto her knees in the middle of the parlor.

“Verity!” Livvie’s voice came muffled from the doorway.