enough, that same stranger did a sweep of the streets. To what end would he be searching for her? Because she’d knocked him cold, no doubt.
“Do you still wish to leave?” North taunted.
Reluctantly, she let the curtain fall back into place. Nay. Not when there was a ruthless stranger bent on revenge for her bringing him down. “I don’t know him,” she repeated, carefully selecting her words, sharing that which she knew.
North snorted.
“I don’t.” She lifted her palms. “I’m not lying when I told you I don’t know.” Based on the work she’d done, earning the ire of the ton through the years, there could have been any number of people who’d sent the stranger to speak to her.
North hooded his eyes.
He stalked past her, and unlocking the door, he turned the handle and let the panel hang open. “That’s not sufficient enough for you to stay, Miss Lovelace.”
“Please, don’t send me out there. I can’t leave. Not yet. Not until . . .” He’s gone.
Chapter 8
THE LONDONER
THE SEVEN DIALS
We’ve received reliable evidence confirming just where in London the Earl of Maxwell has called home . . . the Seven Dials.
V. Lovelace
Everything about Verity Lovelace, from her presence in the sewers to the man circling for her now, screamed danger.
As such, he’d be wise to turn her out on her generously rounded buttocks.
In fact, he’d be a damned fool to let her stay.
And yet, he couldn’t very well send her outside and on her way. Not without assigning her to a death sentence.
Bloody hell. Malcom shoved the panel closed. “Fine.”
Verity’s eyes lit, transforming her from someone quite ordinary to someone . . . who enthralled. “I can stay?”
Unnerved by his appreciation of Miss Lovelace, Malcom crossed to the mahogany drink trolley and poured two glasses of brandy. “Don’t get any ideas that you’re moving in.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t. I’ve a place, a family,” she prattled, garrulous in ways that gave him a damned megrim, and yet also intrigued. “So you needn’t—” The young woman caught the look he leveled on her. “You were being facetious.”
“Aye.”
She wrinkled her pert nose. “Oh.”
Who was this woman with her absolute lack of artifice?
He held a brandy out. “Here.”
Verity hesitated, and then tiptoed over. Eyeing him with that same wariness she had in the sewers, she accepted that offering, and took a sip. She grimaced. “Good God, that’s vile!”
“Aye.” He’d always detested the stuff himself, and yet, there’d been a familiarity to the sight and smell of brandy that had proved oddly comforting. Those peculiar details he’d never before shared with anyone, and he didn’t intend to begin with a minx who cloaked herself in more secrets than Malcom himself.
Cradling her glass, she wandered about the chambers uninvited.
He stiffened.
This feeling of being exposed was an unfamiliar one. Largely because he’d never let anyone inside his rooms, and now because of whatever damned spell this spitfire possessed, he couldn’t bring himself to bully her into stopping.
Though something told him that Verity Lovelace, who took down grown men in the street and didn’t so much as flinch at a bloodied nose, wasn’t ever one to be bullied.
Cradling her still-full snifter in her palms, she paused periodically to examine various pieces he’d fished from the tunnels. Ones he’d not brought himself to sell for reasons he didn’t understand and had never cared enough to examine.
Verity stopped, and with almost mechanical movements, she set her drink down.
And Malcom knew the very moment she’d forgotten his presence and become wholly engrossed in the crude painting in an ornate, gilded frame that juxtaposed with the unsophisticated rendering on the canvas.
Angling her head, Verity stepped closer, contemplating the small beggar girl crouched on a corner stoop. In that small child, the artist had perfectly captured the wariness, exhaustion, and absolute lack of hope that came from living here.
Verity raised her fingertips close to the basket of ribbons the tiny peddler hawked.
“You like it?” he asked gruffly, not knowing where the question came from. Only knowing he himself hadn’t ever been able to sort out why he’d kept this particular piece.
“I . . . There is a realness to it,” she said softly. “I was her.”
That admission came so faint he barely heard it. Or mayhap it was the first straightforward admission, voluntarily given, that took Malcom aback.
He moved closer, stopping just beyond her shoulder, and examined that piece with new eyes.
“I had a ribbon collection, until I didn’t. I placed each one in a basket and sold them at a corner until they