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“Yes, I found him.” Avoiding their eyes, Verity made her way to the kitchens. She picked up the copper kettle and proceeded to make a cup of tea.

“That’s it?” Bertha asked flatly.

Verity gave thanks that her back was to the older woman. With her sharp gaze and nearly six decades of life on this earth, she was savvy enough to detect the details Verity sought to conceal.

“This fine gent brought you back to his household, bathed you, and gave you a fancy garment, and that’s all there is to the story?”

Verity made herself face her former nursemaid, damning the blush that scorched her cheeks. “He didn’t”—she glanced pointedly at her ingenuous sister—“bathe me.”

Confusion lit Livvie’s eyes. Of course, she was clever enough to know that she was missing out on the undercurrents of a conversation, but still innocent enough to not be able to identify what those undercurrents, in fact, were.

“Men don’t simply give fancy articles from the goodness of their hearts,” Bertha persisted. “And certainly not a filthy tosher.”

“He’s not—” Verity made herself go silent.

“Oh?” Bertha prodded.

“Dirty,” she settled for, the simplest and easiest truth about Malcom North, the Earl of Maxwell. Regal and chiseled, with a hint of sandalwood clinging to his frame, he was nothing like what Bertha expected him to be ... Nor, for that matter, what Verity had expected.

“Hmph,”Bertha muttered as Verity, in a show of calm, settled into one of the kitchen chairs and proceeded to sip her tea.

Livvie climbed into the opposite seat. Scrambling onto her knees the way she had as a young girl, eager for the mints Verity would sometimes bring home after work, she leaned across the oak slab. “Your work is saved, then?”

Guilt assailed her, an all-too-familiar emotion.

At the fact that Livvie carried the worries she did.

At herself for having fled instead of demanding answers from Malcom.

Though she’d wager her soul to Satan on a Sunday that Malcom North wasn’t one who’d have given over those answers to Verity ... or anyone.

“Verity?” her sister prodded, impatiently.

“I ...” She studied the tea leaves at the bottom of her glass. Which left Verity and her sister and Bertha where? The muscles of her stomach knotted.

Livvie fell back on her haunches. “You don’t have the information.”

God, how intuitive she was.

“I have enough. Some,” she allowed the lie. An address. An address was all she had.

And the taste of his mouth on yours still.Unbidden, she touched her fingertips to her lips.

“Why are you touching your mouth like that?” Livvie blurted. “Have you hurt it?” Then her golden eyebrows went shooting up. “Didhehurt you?”

“No!” Verity hurriedly dropped her hand to the table, and took another sip of her drink to avoid Bertha’s knowing eyes. “He didn’t hurt me.”

“And if he didn’t give you the story, then neither did he help you.”

Aye, there was truth there. And yet it was vastly more complicated than Bertha’s blunt assessment. For Malcom had helped her. Saved her, even. The moment danger had crept up, he’d swept her into his arms and then brought her into his home.

A little tug at her sleeve startled Verity from her reverie. She found her sister staring at her with wide, worried eyes. “What now?”

Verity mustered a smile for Livvie’s benefit. “Why, I offer Mr. Lowery the story I have, silly.”

And then she prayed that the information she gave him was enough to spare her work and assuage society’s fascination with the man known as the Lost Heir.

Chapter 12