wandered out from behind him. Making for the front of his offices and the doorway, and more importantly, her long-overdue exit.
She stopped on the threadbare circular wool rug in the middle of the room, making herself an unwitting bull’s-eye in a target. “I’m employed by The Londoner.”
Of course he shouldn’t have anticipated she’d leave. “You said as much at our last meeting.”
“My employment rested on my providing my editor with this story.”
“My story.” One that he’d few details on himself. Distant whisperings of moments that dwelled in murkiness, that he couldn’t pull from the shadows and had no intention of wading through for this woman—or anyone. His past didn’t matter. All that did was his future. “And I’m supposed to care about your circumstances more than my own?” he snapped.
She ran saddened eyes over him. “No,” she said quietly. “I suppose not. But I thought it might matter to you that my family’s well-being hinges upon my successfully attaining this . . . your story, Malcom.”
“It doesn’t,” he said with his usual bluntness. Only . . . why did it feel as though he lied to himself?
Verity sucked in a juddering breath. Moving her gaze just over his shoulder, as though she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, she then spoke again. “Do you not have people you care about? People whose well-being matter to you?”
“No,” he said with an ease born out of truth. There’d never been anybody. And there never would be. No good came from one’s dependence on another.
She briefly shifted her focus to him. “Your Mr. Fowler and Mr. Bram. The black-haired man who was here earlier?”
He flicked a glance over her. “No one matters to me outside of the business dealings I have with them.”
“Treating those close to you as though they are somehow less.” A pitying glimmer reflected back in her expressive eyes. “That is a sad way to go through life, Mr. North.”
“Ah, yes, but then, I’m not the pitiable one humbling myself before a stranger, abandoning honor and good sense because of a sibling, am I?”
Instead of the rise he’d intended to get out of her, she flashed a sad smile. “I’d still take a life . . . how did you phrase it? Humbled and pitiable? With people I love in it to this cold, empty, emotionless existence you’ve set up for yourself.”
He’d not set anything up for himself.
He’d simply lived the life he’d been dealt. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her as much. It was a physical effort to keep back that admission she’d no right to.
As if she sensed that weakness, she drifted over to him. “What is it that makes you so determined to hold on to your secrets, Malcom? Is it guilt? Fear of acknowledging to the world what you lost?”
He was upon her in two long strides, catching her lightly by the arms. “I’ve not lost anything, Miss Lovelace,” he hissed. One would have to have memories of something in order for it to be truly gone. “There is nothing more, nothing less. This is my life.”
“But it’s not,” she cried, pounding a small fist against his chest. “You are an earl.”
A sound of impatience escaped him. “I don’t want it.” His fingers curled reflexively into the satiny-smooth skin of her arms, and he forced himself to relinquish her. His hands flexed, much like when he’d burnt his hand as a lad, making a fire in a home he’d found for himself one winter. “I don’t want any of it.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” she cried. He made to step around her, but she darted into his path. “You’re content in this miserable end of London any one of us would sell our souls to climb out of. And all the while you sulk.”
He sputtered, “I do not—”
“Because of what?” she continued over his indignant interruption. “Because you had the misfortune of being born an earl? Well, forgive me if I don’t feel badly for you, Mal—”
He covered her mouth with his. It was nothing more than an attempt at quieting the seemingly never-ending tirade prattling past her lips. And yet the same explosive hunger when she was near, in his arms, blazed to life.
She moaned and caught herself against him, clinging like tenacious ivy.
Malcom swept his tongue inside, and she met that invasion with a bold lash of her own flesh against his. He groaned as lust pumped through him.
Working his hands over her generous hips, the