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Giving his hands another squeeze, Verity drew them close to her chest and held them against the place her heart beat. “Yes, you would have, Malcom,” she said softly. “You would have found your way to this place whether or not I’d been part of your life.” Her eyes twinkled. “It would have just taken you far longer.”

“Minx,” he growled, and took her in his arms, guiding her against the wall and making love to her mouth. In her arms, all was right. There were no fears. There was no anger. There was just an absolute rightness.

An exaggerated cough brought them quickly apart, and they faced a tardy Baron and Baroness Bolingbroke. The young woman looked between Malcom and Verity. “Hello!” she greeted them with a smile.

Her husband, on the other hand, with his red-splotched cheeks, made a show of studying the ceiling.

“Hello, Lady Poppy,” Verity returned, dipping a flawless curtsy.

“None of that, now,” the baroness chided. “We agreed to dispense with formalities. It is so very lovely to see you both again. Isn’t that right, Tristan?”

The baron kept his gaze skyward. “Indeed. It—oomph.” That at last managed to bring the other man’s head down.

The baroness flashed a blindingly bright smile. “If you’ll excuse us a moment?” Without awaiting permission, she took her husband and steered him onward several paces.

“What wasthatfor?” Bolingbroke demanded in tones that would have been hushed and entirely lost to any person who’d not been raised in the streets. Alas, heightened senses and hearing would never afford the lords and ladies of London privacy.

“You were a rogue, Tristan. You shouldn’t be discomfited by displays of affection.”

The couple spoke on a flurry of whispers, and Verity shifted closer. “They are ... something. Are they not?”

Malcom stole another glance at that wildly gesticulating pair: One, a man he’d secretly hated, who also happened to share his blood. A cousin. And the gentleman’s spitfire wife. “They are not what I expected,” he conceded. They were ... real. Real and flawed and human in ways he’d erroneously believed a nobleman and noblewoman couldn’t be.

How narrow his view had been of the world. How much Verity had opened his eyes to it.

The Baron and Baroness of Bolingbroke, their arms linked, rejoined Malcom and Verity. “Forgive us for arriving late. I’d not been ... feeling well.” The baroness slid a palm over her slightly rounded belly, and her husband’s throat moved, the emotion in his gaze raw. “And my husband was insisting that I rest—” She peeled her lips up in a grimace as if she’d uttered a heinous epithet. “That he’d come without me.”

“And my wife insisted on being here with us.”

Us.

The word paired them: Malcom and Bolingbroke. They and their wives.

“I’m so glad you are here,” Verity said softly, moving to take the baroness’s palm. “Both of you.”

“As am I. We should be seated and leave our husbands to their business.” The baroness held out her arm.

Verity’s gaze drifted to the back of the hall, where the reporters swarmed for the best view of the front of the auditorium. Her frame tensed. “If you’ll excuse me for but a moment? There is just something I’d see to before our husbands begin.”

“Of course.” The baroness rushed off to rejoin her husband.

Malcom, however, reserved his focus on just one.Mitchell Fairpoint.Rage coursed through his veins. Bully as he’d been to Verity, the man now towered over a young woman, berating her.

“The cur,” Malcom clipped out.

Verity looked to Malcom. “Would you be opposed to waiting several moments more while I see to him?”

He smiled. “Of course not. Would you have me join you?”

“No.” She narrowed her eyes in a way that almost made him pity Fairpoint. Almost. “I have it.”

“Go then, love.” This was a moment long overdue. One he’d allow Verity to own in every way.

Her eyes softened, and leaning up, she took his lips in a brief kiss. “I love you.”

“And I love you, wife.”

And as she slipped out of the corridor and marched through the throng of observers who’d come that morn, Malcom followed her with his gaze; she moved like a warrior in battle, purposeful and single-minded in her intent. If possible, as she wove through the onlookers, making for those other reporters, Malcom fell more and more in love with her.