street urchin down an alley that had served as the boy’s home. Malcom had nicked the smaller, younger child’s sack of goods, the refuse from a bakery. He’d made off with it and ate heartily—a rarity in those darkest of days.
The next night, Malcom had come across that same lad, in that same alley, dead, his eyes sightless, pointed up toward the starless St. Giles sky. And not a wound upon him. Dead of hunger, and in the name of self-survival, Malcom had been the one to send the small stranger on to the hereafter.
Aye, as such, Malcom had known hell was the eternal fate one day awaiting him. He’d accepted it. At times, when the weight of life’s struggles became insurmountable, he’d even welcomed it.
This, however? This was a special hell.
Attired in fine garments, out before Polite Society.
The Devil had a rich sense of humor, indeed.
He’d rather be wading through shite with an army of hungry rats bearing down on him than be where he was.
At least those discomforts and dangers were familiar. Ones he’d faced countless times, and survived to thrive from.
This? Being on display before fancily clad gents in ridiculously high hats and the ladies on their arms was a special kind of hell.
“It could always be worse,” Verity whispered, unerringly following his thoughts. It was an uncanny ability she possessed, and proved continually unsettling.
“Oh, and just how do you figure that, dear heart?”
“Well, they could be seeking an audience with us,” she rightly pointed out.
Malcom shuddered. “You are correct on that score.”
She beamed, that luminescent smile wreathing her face, radiating her joy. His heart caught oddly in his chest. It was an all-too-foreign expression of unguarded emotion, and even as he should find himself only horrified by that candidness, he found himself . . . captivated against all his best judgment.
Her smile slipped. “What is it?”
“You smile like you mean it,” he said flatly. And he didn’t know what to do with or make of it . . .
Setting down her nearly empty cup of frozen ice, Verity dabbed at the corners of her lips. “And why shouldn’t I?” With that, she closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the sun. Those rays bathed her cheeks in a soft glow, illuminating the details he’d not noted until now: a dusting of freckles along the sides of her nose. A cream-white quality of skin so soft to the touch that his fingers twitched with the desire to explore it once more . . . as he’d done a fortnight ago.
Resisting her quixotic pull, Malcom nudged her foot with his. Her already-wide violet eyes went all the rounder. “You find nothing disconcerting in this.” He gave a discreet wave of his hand, gesturing out to the opposite end of the lake, where morning visitors to the park guided their curricles about.
“Oh, on the contrary.” Verity gathered up her parasol from the bench. “I find everything disconcerting in it.” Snapping open the frilly article, she angled it, putting up that slight barrier as though they were two lovers who sought to steal a moment of privacy from society’s prying eyes. “I no more wish to be here than you. And yet . . . for the first time in more years than I can remember, I have no worries about where I’ll live or whether there’s enough food. Even this . . .” She tipped her parasol back so the sun’s rays bathed their faces, and her eyes slid closed. “I’ve not had the freedom to so much as feel the sun on my face in the middle of a spring day.”
Neither had Malcom, and yet, his had been a decision bred of preference. Verity’s had been a product of the work she’d had to do. The same need for work that found her in a deal with his own devilish self. He forced his gaze away from her face, looking out, unwilling . . . and unable to meet her eyes. Because he didn’t want to think of how Verity Lovelace’s ruthless pursuit of him had been an act born of desperation. How there had been . . . was still, in fact, a younger sister with innocent eyes, a smaller, younger version of the woman who now sat before him. Because Malcom didn’t want it to matter.
He didn’t want her to matter, in any way. Unnerved, he settled his gaze on the crowded Berkeley Square streets.
“You should eat it.”
He blinked slowly.
Verity motioned to the crystal