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LONDON PROPERTIES OF THEEARL OFMAXWELL

“Nothing. Now—”

“And yet, you can read it,” Steele interrupted.

That gave Malcom pause.

The detective returned the sheet to his folder. “You not only speak proper King’s English but also are able to read. Who instructed you?”

“I ...” And for the first time since Steele had shown up and he’d sought to divest himself of the detective, Malcom faltered. For ... he didn’t know. Just as he’d never had an explanation of why his speech had come clipped when all the other boys and girls he’d foraged with had those guttural Cockneys.

“You don’t have an answer, do you?” Steele asked quietly, without inflection. “Or an explanation?”

He didn’t. He never had. When the other people he’d dealt with had all been illiterate and near impossible to understand with the thickness of their speech, Malcom had always been different. So different that when he’d been younger, smaller, he’d been beaten and mocked for it: the shite who thought himself royalty. That name, “King,” once had been used to taunt him, but with the passage of time and Malcom’s growth into a formidable street opponent, it had evolved into an acknowledgment of his strength in these parts.

“How about this?” Steele murmured, withdrawing another page, this one a sketched rendering of a fancy townhouse. The artist had captured the white stucco, the gleaming windows, and the gold knockers on the front of the double doors.

Malcom opened his mouth to deny any knowledge of the residence, but froze. Then, almost reflexively, he took the sheet.

His gaze locked on the minutest detail—the door knocker that didn’t know if it wished to be man or lion, and had somehow perfectly melded the two into a bewhiskered half beast.

... the doors scare me, Papa ... it looks like a man-lion ...

The page slipped from Malcom’s fingers.

The blood rushed to his ears, and he whipped his head up, the moment shattered. “I don’t recognize that door.”

“I didn’t ask if you recognized the door, Mr. North.” Steele gave him a long, slightly sad smile. “But rather ... the residence.”

A fancy Mayfair townhouse? He and his sort didn’t venture out to those parts of London. Not if they sought to preserve their necks as long as possible. Malcom scoffed. “And why would I know anything about a townhouse in West London?”

“I was hired to investigate the possible whereabouts of a series of children who were taken.”

“If you think I can help, you’re wasting your time,” he said tightly, clasping his hands behind his head. “I don’t deal with anyone.” As a rule, he kept people—all people—at arm’s length.

“Yes, well.” Steele cleared his throat. “The child who lived in this residence,” he went on as if Malcom’s insistence meant nothing, “fell ill alongside his parents. The parents perished. The child was turned over to a foundling hospital.”

“I haven’t been in a foundling hospital.”Not since ...He shoved back thoughts of that night. Those memories were, at best, murky. “Why don’t you say what it is that you’ve come to say?” He had a sewer to rob.

Absolute silence filled the room, quiet so heavy that Malcom could hear only the periodic drip of water clinging to his trousers.

The detective held his gaze with an uncomfortable directness. “Because, Mr. North, I have reason to believe, and proof along with it, that you lived there ... only”—Steele glanced around—“under different circumstances,” he murmured when he returned his focus to Malcom. “Back when you were a boy, and the son of the late Earl of Maxwell.”

Chapter 2

THE LONDONER

SCANDAL!

The Rightful Heir, the Earl of Maxwell, kidnapped as a boy by his grasping relatives and turned over to a foundling hospital. One can only wonder at the strife endured by that then young member of the peerage ...

M. Fairpoint

Over the years much had been taken from Verity Lovelace: the comfortable cottage she’d grown up in. Her collection of ribbons. All her frocks and satin slippers.

But this loss ... this was the keenest, unlike any Verity had suffered before. This was the first time she’d been robbed of her written words.

Motionless, unbreathing, incapable of moving, she stood in the middle of her room, the paper her sister held facing her.