going on the offensive, boldly unapologetic.
And damnably accurate in the conclusions she’d reached.
Damn Bram.
Except as soon as that thought was given life, Malcom killed the blame.
Malcom was the one who was responsible for this. He had brought the chit here. He had let her into his rooms. He had only himself to blame.
For all the good that self-acknowledgment did.
Unnerved, Malcom called on every shred of control he’d mastered through the years to keep those sentiments concealed. To give himself something to do, he stepped around her, brushing her shoulder as he passed. Coming close enough to detect the steel that infused her spine.
She stood proudly erect, that imperceptible stiffening a mark of the expected terror. She did not, however, back away.
Malcom made a show of folding the damning page she’d availed herself of. Her eyes followed his every movement as he ran his thumb and forefinger along the crease.
All the while he silently cursed himself for falling lax. Good God, he’d sat down and played chess with her.
He’d been careless, an all-too-unfamiliar misstep on his part. One he hadn’t before made.
Until her.
Malcom made a bid to reclaim his footing. “Tsk, tsk. That was a mistake, Verity.” He didn’t want to notice the long graceful glide of her throat as she swallowed. The lone bead of water from her bath that clung to her still, lingering persistently there, a crystalline drop as stubborn as the woman herself. Malcom placed the note inside his desk, and then brought the lid closed with a quiet snap. “I do not take to having anyone go through my belongings, Miss Lovelace,” he whispered, starting a path around her.
Once again, she didn’t make apologies or excuses. She just lifted her chin another fraction. “You are the Earl of Maxwell.”
His neck went hot. God, she was tenacious, her spirit a confusing mix of breathtaking and infuriating, and blast if he didn’t know what in hell to do with her . . . or more, with his response to her. “I’ve already told you; I’m not the man you think I am.”
Which wasn’t a lie, but rather a deliberate stretch of the truth.
“Actually,” she said with a gentle smile, “you’ve not already told me that. Rather, you’ve called me out for—” Those rosebud lips immediately compressed into a silencing line.
“For?” he purred, stalking a circle around the minx. “Hmm? Going through my possessions?” She remained silent, her gaze suitably wary, following the path he walked about her.
“I wasn’t going through anything.” She scrunched her face up. “Not intentionally anyway. I was searching for a pencil.”
“A pencil,” he repeated flatly.
“Exactly,” she said with an enthusiastic nod that sent drops of water flinging from her wet hair. Dark tresses with a thousand shades of brown to them. “How else was I to write down the remedies for Mr. Bram?”
The remedies? . . . Mr. Bram?
As a boy avoiding street lords determined to make him part of their gang, and escaping the cold, he’d taken to hiding inside various Covent Garden theatres. A number of kindly actresses and actors had taken mercy on him and let him hide above the rafters, high above the stage and the audience, watching from afar. This moment, with Verity Lovelace, felt a good deal like one of the many farces that had played out before him.
Malcom jammed his fingertips hard against his temple. What in God’s name was happening here?
“I understand why you’re angry,” the young woman murmured in soothing tones better fit for a child. “You’re upset I was snooping, and I’d have you not take it out on Mr. Bram.”
Malcom’s self-control broke. “His name is not ‘Mr. Bram,’” he bellowed. The lady jumped several inches off the floor. “His name is Bram. Just ‘Bram.’”
She paled. Her body trembled. She did not, however, back down. “You needn’t be so angry about it, my lord,” she shot back, her breathless timbre ruining whatever courage she otherwise displayed.
My lord.
There it was again.
Malcom sneered. “You’ve made the mistake of confusing me with someone who is safe. And why is that, hmm?” He caught the ends of several dark strands that hung, twisted and tangled, down her back. Twining the curls about his fingers, he held her effectively trapped. “Because you take me for an earl?”
The blood slipped from her cheeks, leaving them an ashen hue. “Release me,” she whispered, resistant through and through.
He didn’t relent. “Because you, like all the world, believe those men are fine and good and no harm can befall you as long as