In Bed with the Earl (Lost Lords of London #1) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,66
voice was hushed.
“An amputation saw,” he said, taking delight in the way she stiffened. It was best she knew whom—what—she was dealing with. Malcom pushed away from the door, and wound his way over. He stopped at her shoulder. Lowering his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, “Have you ever seen one, Verity?”
She gave an unsteady shake of her head. “N-no.”
He stretched a hand past her, and she drew into herself; the defensive response of her body inadvertently brought her back resting against his chest. Malcom motioned to the rusted steel. “See those locking nuts?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That holds the blade in place. And here,” he went on in silken tones. “This ornate handle”—the mahogany had been carved into the shape of an eagle—“is what the surgeon would use to saw through muscle, skin, and bone.”
“Would?” She angled her head back slightly, revealing cheeks that sometime in his telling had gone pale.
Not taking his eyes from her, he retrieved the object in question.
Fear spilled from her gaze, and as he brought the saw lower, she recoiled.
Smirking, Malcom pressed the handle into her palm, and curled his hand around hers, forcing her to grip the saw. “The world oftentimes has a preference for the pretty”—he touched his gaze on her face—“things,” he finished. “So much so that they’d allow them where there’s no place for them.” He guided her hand in an up-and-down sawing motion. “See how awkward it is to grip,” he breathed against her ear. “Now imagine cutting through skin and muscle.” She quietly gagged but did not pull away.
“And do you have experience . . . with using a surgeon’s saw?” she whispered, her voice faint.
Always working. The woman was always working. With his own devotion to the work he did, he’d be otherwise impressed—if the subject of her assignment weren’t, in fact, him. Either way, he’d hand it to her, that as horrified as she was—as he’d intended her to be—she asked those uncomfortable questions anyway.
He placed his lips near her ear. “In search of more details for your story, love?”
“Actually”—she faced him; then, drawing in a breath, she notched her chin up an inch—“that is why I’ve come.”
Malcom opened his mouth but couldn’t get out a reply. None that was suitable. He tried again.
In the end, only a strangled, hoarse laugh burst free. “The insolence of you.”
“It’s not insolent to try and do my job.”
“It is if you go about it the way you do, Verity.” To keep from taking her by the shoulders and giving her a solid shake, he freed the saw from her grip and returned it to the wall. “I told you before I didn’t have anything to share. And yet what did you do?” An irritating muscle twitched along his eyelid. “You fed your fabricated story—”
“My story wasn’t fabricated.” She spoke with an earnestness etched in every delicate plain of the upturned diamond shape of her face. “Everything I wrote was true, Malcom . . .”
He scoffed. What rot. Either she sought to butter him up for information or she was a damned romantic without the sense the Lord gave a creeper. “My actions that day were—”
“Heroic.” Verity turned her palms up. “You saved me. That was the only story I had that day, and that was the story I wrote.”
His eyes went to the rough skin of her palms, the chipped nails, the ink staining the intersecting creases of her hands. It was the ink. The black mark of her treachery, reminding him that anything spilt from this one’s lips was only about the story she was intent on snagging to sell. “I didn’t give you anything. You took it, Verity.” And he’d give her nothing else. “Now, if you know what is wise, don’t darken my door or path again.”
The young woman sank her teeth into her full lower lip. “I can’t leave. I’ve no choice. I need this s-story.”
Malcom remained unmoved by the faint crack in those last two syllables.
“My sister—”
“Ah, yes, the sister with the slippers. The same one who convinced you to come to me.”
Fire flashed in her eyes. “Are you making light of me?”
“I would have to care enough to make light of you. I don’t.”
She flinched, and something completely foreign, so foreign it was almost indistinguishable but felt a good deal like . . . guilt . . . slapped at a conscience that proved not as dead as he’d expected—or hoped.