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“It is for a year.” Verity took Bertha by the arms and lightly squeezed. “A year of us not worrying about where we’ll go or what we’ll eat or wear. Think of it, Bertha.” She spoke in cajoling tones.

“You made a deal with the Devil, gel,” Bertha said, unmoved.

Aye, that wasalsotrue. “At least we’ll not perish on the streets or end up in Newgate.” With that reminder, she let her arms fall.

“We wouldn’t have ended up in Newgate if you hadn’t concocted a plan to pass yourself off as some nobleman’s wife.”

Blast Bertha for always being correct. “Regardless of the decisions I should or should not have made, it’s done. He made the offer; I agreed.” Stalking over to the pine double-door armoire, she clasped the heart-shaped handle and whipped it open. The row of bows and bonnets hanging from hooks along the front panel shook. Verity grabbed the first bonnet her fingers touched, an intricately woven article with a distinct brim and a wreath of pale-pink primroses circling the crown.

“And what happens when you want to get out from under this life, Verity?” Bertha asked quietly, and Verity froze with the pronounced brim clenched in her fingers, the bonnet hovering just above her head.

Get out from under this life ...

The other woman spoke of Verity one day tiring of the arrangement, as though it was a certainty. “It is just a year.” And yet Verity had toiled for eighteen. She’d worked until her fingers had bled, and risen before the roosters. Now she’d be permitted to seek out employment as a reporter without the pressure of each story she penned being all that put food on her table and a roof over their heads. “This is the best I have to hope for,” she finally said, jamming her bonnet on.

“Here,” Bertha muttered, and coming over, she took the long peppermint-striped ribbons and set to tying them. When she’d finished, she adjusted the neat bow under Verity’s chin. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Like your mother.

It whispered in the air, not even needing to be spoken aloud.

“I’m not my mother.” In love at seventeen with a roguish earl, she’d given up all hope of respectability and a secure life. “I’m thirty years old.”

Bertha smiled sadly at her. “Age doesn’t make a woman immune from heartbreak, gel.”

Heartbreak? “Heartbreak. Heartbreak?” she repeated incredulously. “That is your worry, Bertha?” Verity had learned at her mother’s knee the folly in trusting one’s heart to the worst possible person. And there could be no doubting that as merciless, unbending, and dangerous as he was, the Earl of Maxwell was nothing if not the worst possible man a woman might entrust her heart to. “I assure you, I’ve no intention of having my heart broken over or by Malcom North.” Malcom North, who looked at her as if she were the grime in the sewers he traveled nightly. Even as he set her heart racing whenever he was near. Even as she still found herself dreaming of the two moments he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her senseless.

“Aye, and that is the look that tells me I’d be mad to not be afeard for you, Verity.”

At the old woman’s ominous warning, shivers traipsed along her spine. “I’m going to be fine. Better than fine.” She made her lips curve into a smile as she patted her former nursemaid’s hand. “More than a year with nothing to worry after? It is a gift, Bertha.Enjoy it.”

Only, as she gathered up her satchel and started from the room, she could not shake the feeling that those false assurances had been as much for her as for Bertha.

With the nursemaid’s warnings ringing in her head, Verity set out in search of her husband. Since she’d first met Malcom in the sewers, she’d faced his deserved suspicion and anger. Was such a man even capable of the pretense of a doting, madly-in-love spouse? Was she even capable of it?

A pair of maids were hurrying down the hall, and then stopped in their tracks the moment they spied her to dip matching curtsies. “My lady,” they said as one.

Verity glanced about for the “my lady” in question before registering that they spoke to her. It was a foreign state she’d never become accustomed to. And one, for the deal she’d struck with Malcom, she’d be required to. At that reminder of her husband, she cleared her throat. “Do either of you happen to know where I might find Ma ... my husband?” she amended. Nay, it would never feel right, referring to him in that light.

“’e’s in his office, my lady.” The youngest girl, Billy, tacked a curtsy on to her pronouncement. Girls younger than Livvie, who now had employment once more because Malcom had reflected on his decision to sack them. And one who spoke in street-roughened tones. Malcom had not only rehired back the staff he’d sacked but also given opportunities to a girl who’d been without.

“My lady?” Deborah ventured hesitantly. “Is there anything else you require?”

Verity started. “No. No. Nothing else.” With a word of thanks, Verity wound her way through the halls, down the intricately woven Axminster carpets, the grandeur of the mosaic design so glorious in its detail and beauty, Verity found herself tiptoeing over the pale-pink and yellow floral pattern.

She reached the hall leading to Malcom’s office ... and then stopped.

How was she going to go through with this? Unlike her mother, who’d managed to smile in front of the earl when her heart had been breaking at the life she’d never have, Verity hadn’t been one to dissemble. She’d been one to speak her mind and reveal precisely how she was feeling.

And then, to have to put on a show with Malcom.

Malcom, who now hated her.

If he’d ever even liked her.

Her heart pulled.

For there had been moments where he’d seemed to like her enough: when he’d scooped her up and dashed through London to keep them both safe. When he’d swindled her in a game of chess.