Page 21

This earl would be no different. This earl, who’d identified as a commoner for more years than he’d ever lived his comfortable existence as a peer.

A faint rumble went up, ominous, cutting across her musings.

It froze Verity in her tracks.

Squeak. Squeak.

She cried out as a flurry of rats bolted toward her, and she raced out of their path, hugging the brick wall.

Just as several loose stones overhead gave way, toppling into a heap, the clatter of those rocks crushing the rats who’d found themselves in the place where she’d just been.

Breathless from relief and terror, those competing emotions twining in her chest, Verity struggled to get air into her lungs. Leaning against the wall, she took support from the dank bricks.

“Everything about this damned place is dank,” she whispered, needing to hear herself talk in this underground crypt. Fearing thedrip-drip, drip-drippattern of sewer water plinking would drive her mad. “The air, the walls, the ground ...” She froze. “The ground,” she echoed.No.With dread slipping through her, Verity lifted her left foot from the water.

She groaned.“Noooo.”Her heart plummeted to the sole of her now naked foot.

She’d lost one, which may as well have been a pair of shoes. And what was worse ... it wasn’t Verity’s, but Livvie’s.

Closing her eyes once more, she knocked her head lightly against the brick.

Damnallmen.

The one who’d loved her mother, but not enough, and for it, had left Verity a bastard with few supports in place when he’d died.

Lowery and his damned son with his ill opinion of women and their capabilities.

And Fairpoint. Hatred sizzled through her veins, crackling and lifelike.

She forced her eyes open.

And damn the gentleman busy playing at street rat for the perverse devil he was. Her fury compelled her away from the wall, and she found solace ... nay, strength in it. It enlivened her and gave her a focus that would keep her from surrendering to the panic of her circumstances.

Gathering up her wet skirts, she trudged through the water, scraping her toes along bricks slicked with grime.

She flinched. “What in God’s name is that?” she whispered. As soon as she gave the question life, she shook her head hard.No. Don’t think about it.“Think about the fact that you’re scurrying around the gutters like a rodent.” And all because a man who had a fortune and future awaiting him was more content to dwell here? “Lunacy.” She exhaled a hiss of anger. Sheer lunacy was all that accounted for it.

Verity toed the floor.

How far could the damned scrap have gone?

And then her foot caught a patch of grime, and she cried out as her leg came out from under her and she tumbled onto her buttocks, landing with a sharp splash.

Freezing water immediately soaked her skirts, the sting of cold as biting as the pain that throbbed up her spine from where she’d fallen. There, braced on her elbows, up to them in grime, she didn’t want to consider, until she was out of this hell, bathed, and the gowns she now wore properly laundered, just what she was drenched in. Every part of her, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes, was soaked.

Her toes.

My toes.

She froze, and with a sickening dread winding through her once more, Verity slowly lifted first one bare foot from the water—and then the other.

Two slippers, gone.

Something built in her chest; a half groan, half sob rumbled up and then exploded from her lips. Verity hugged her arms around her middle and laughed.

It could not possibly get worse than this.

With that empty assurance rolling around her mind, she struggled to her feet and set to searching fortwomissing slippers.