to her chest, and eyed Verity’s makeshift workstation. “Are you happy?”
Both that abrupt shift and the unexpectedness of that query from her innocent sister tied Verity’s tongue. “What?” Yes. The answer she’d been expected to deliver was yes.
“Happy,” Livvie repeated. “With the earl. With . . . your marriage.”
No. “Yes,” she lied. It had always been easy to lie to her sister. In doing so, she’d protected Livvie from numerous hurts and pain she didn’t deserve. Only . . . in lying to her, have you truly helped Livvie?
In her bid to care for her family, Verity had made herself beholden to so many. Just as her mother had been beholden to the earl. And what good has come from that? a voice needled at the back of her mind. Setting aside her notepad, Verity drew her knees up and faced her sister. “Why do you ask?” she gently urged.
Without hesitation, Livvie brought her hands out from behind her back, and Verity’s gaze went to the cover of that newspaper. “Oh,” she said dumbly.
“It’s written in here. Horrible things. Ones that suggest you’ve somehow trapped Lord Maxwell into marriage, and that he’s desperately miserable, and”—Livvie lowered her voice into a hushed whisper—“if I’m to be honest, Verity? The earl does not seem at all happy when he is with you. At all. He seems angry and . . . not loving.”
Well, given Malcom was angry, Livvie’s observation couldn’t have been more astute.
Sighing, Verity slipped the heavily creased newspaper from her sister’s fingers, and unfolded it. She paused. “The Londoner?”
“I know, I know,” her sister mumbled. “I simply wanted to see how they fared without your articles, and they’re not. In fact, the only reason they’re still surviving is because of the stories they’re writing about you.”
“They’re just that, Livvie. Stories meant to sell newspapers,” she said with a finality meant to end the discussion. And not long ago, that would have been sufficient to stymie the flow of questions and have Livvie continue on to bed. Livvie, however, was no longer the accepting child she’d been.
“But if it is untrue, then how come you and His Lordship are never together?”
Proud as Verity was of her sister’s tenacity and insight, how much easier it would have been had she still been the small babe she’d raised like her own child. “We are, Livvie. Why, we were just at Gunter’s this morn.”
Again, that mention of the sweet shop was intended as a child’s distraction, which her sister didn’t take. “You’ve not taken any meals together. You’re always in one room, working, and he’s in another, doing whatever he does.”
Verity’s mind raced with some response that would satisfy Livvie’s fervent questioning. In the end, she was saved from formulating a response by the unlikeliest of saviors.
She felt him before she heard him, his presence a palpable, thrumming energy in the quiet of the library.
Livvie forgotten, she glanced to the doorway, and every thought faded into nothingness.
Malcom.
Attired in black as he was wont to do, with his long blond strands drawn into a neat queue, he was a breathtaking blend of sophisticated lord and strikingly masculine self-made man who answered to none. He was breathtakingly beautiful in a way no person had a right to be.
When no greeting was forthcoming, he stepped forward. “Good evening. Forgive me for interrupting.” One would never know he was a man who’d spent nearly the whole of his life on the streets, or that he despised one of the occupants of the room.
In the end, Livvie proved the greater hostess of their pair. She hopped up, and sank into an impressively competent curtsy. “My lord. We were just discussing you.”
Oh, bloody hell.
Unleashing a string of black curses in her head, Verity shot a foot out, catching the back of her sister’s knee.
Livvie jumped. “Ow.” She shot a glare over her shoulder. “You kicked me.”
Oh, double bloody hell. Verity gave her head the tiniest of shakes, praying her sister noted that unspoken plea for silence, and that she also honored it. Alas, God continued to prove himself an elusive figure in her life.
“We were talking about him.”
Oh, Lord. Heat blazed across Verity’s cheeks. “We weren’t,” she said tightly in her best, no-nonsense, bigger-sister tones.
“Uh, yes, we were. I was mentioning that you and Lord Maxwell are rarely together, and you said—oomph. Now, that is really quite enough,” Livvie huffed and, drawing her leg back, hopped up and down as she awkwardly reached behind to rub the offended area.
His face