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Since their quiet but not tense return to Grosvenor Square, she’d been unable to think of anything but him and the last utterances to leave his lips.

My father. It was my father ...

It had represented a deeply personal admission that, once coaxed into further details, would likely have been sufficient enough to garner her work with any newspaper office. But in the immediacy of that moment, and even now, it wasn’t her story or future employment she thought of.

She thought of him. Who Malcom had fleetingly been before he’d been forced to become someone else. The darkness he’d endured. And just as importantly, the point she’d never contemplated before now: What happiness had he known? The only son of an earl, he’d have been cherished for his role as heir.

And yet, he’d memories of Gunter’s ices. And tales of handshakes. Information that had been imparted to him, that echoed in his mind still, all these years later.

And you’d ask him to expose those most intimate parts of himself to slake the hunger of gossips who don’t truly care about the man Malcom North.

What alternative do you have, however?

Is his quest for privacy more precious than Livvie’s and Bertha’s survival?

Verity bit down hard on the end of her pencil, her teeth depressing the soft wood, leaving indentations upon it.

Footsteps sounded in the hall.

The pencil slipped from her mouth, and heart hammering, Verity jumped up. He was h—

Her sister slipped inside.

“Oh.” Of course it wasn’t Malcom. He’d mastered silence with a skill not even the dead of night could manage.

Livvie hovered at the entrance. “Is it all right if I join you?”

Forcing the cheerful smile she’d always donned for her only sister, even when Verity’s heart had been breaking and the world weighing down on her shoulders, Verity stooped to gather her pencil. “You can always join me.”

Leaving the door hanging ajar, with her hands tucked behind her back, Livvie walked hesitantly over. “What are you doing?” she asked as she climbed onto the leather button sofa alongside Verity.

Mindful of those recorded words about Malcom, Verity hurriedly closed her journal. “They’re notes.” She settled for vagueness.

“You’re ... working?” Her sister had the tones of one puzzling through a complex riddle.

“And why shouldn’t I?” she countered.

“Because ... you’re a countess. And married ...”

Leaning over, Verity gave a tug of her sister’s plait. “And who says that a woman who is married should not be able to work?”

Livvie’s brow pulled. “I ... suppose I’ve never considered it, either way. I just expected that ladies didn’t have to work.”

“Aye, but I’mchoosingto work. That is altogether different.”

Her sister drew her knees to her chest, and eyed Verity’s makeshift workstation. “Are you happy?”

Both that abrupt shift and the unexpectedness of that query from her innocent sister tied Verity’s tongue. “What?” Yes. The answer she’d been expected to deliver was yes.

“Happy,” Livvie repeated. “With the earl. With ... your marriage.”

No.“Yes,” she lied. It had always been easy to lie to her sister. In doing so, she’d protected Livvie from numerous hurts and pain she didn’t deserve.Only ... in lying to her, have you truly helped Livvie?

In her bid to care for her family, Verity had made herself beholden to so many. Just as her mother had been beholden to the earl.And what good has come from that?a voice needled at the back of her mind. Setting aside her notepad, Verity drew her knees up and faced her sister. “Why do you ask?” she gently urged.

Without hesitation, Livvie brought her hands out from behind her back, and Verity’s gaze went to the cover of that newspaper. “Oh,” she said dumbly.

“It’s written in here. Horrible things. Ones that suggest you’ve somehow trapped Lord Maxwell into marriage, and that he’s desperately miserable, and”—Livvie lowered her voice into a hushed whisper—“if I’m to be honest, Verity? The earl does not seem at all happy when he is with you. At all. He seems angry and ... not loving.”