Page 18 of A Scandal at Stonecliffe

“I suppose I never thought about being angry.”

“You don’t think about being angry. It’s something you feel. Like a ball of fire in your chest.” She gestured at her own body with their clutched hands, almost touching Nathan’s skin against the bodice of her dress. Suddenly she was very aware of how warm his hand was in hers. She let go of it, busying herself with an invisible wrinkle in her skirts. “I could see suspecting someone like me,” Verity explained. “Or perhaps Sloane. It would be foolhardy not to consider most people. The human race is a deceptive and sometimes violent group. But not you.”

“Because I am too staid and boring?” Nathan teased.

Verity did not return the light tone but instead said with frank honesty, “No. Because it’s simply not in your nature.”

He smiled faintly. “I believe that was precisely the argument I used for your innocence.”

Verity laughed. “Then either you and I are upstanding citizens...or we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.”

Though she made the statement in jest, the more time Verity spent with Nathan, the more she worried she was doing just that: setting herself up for a devastating fall.

CHAPTER SEVEN

VERITY’S COMMENTS ABOUT trust had stirred such feelings in Nathan that even after he was home for the evening and enjoying a brandy, he couldn’t seem to fully pull his mind away from their conversation. He had thought he’d put that whole issue with Carlisle to rest. But had he really? Ignored it, perhaps, but he’d never acknowledged what had happened. Talking to Verity about it made Nathan wonder—had he done his relationship with Carlisle a disservice by not speaking with him about it? It had felt like the polite thing to do at the time; the easy thing, the gentlemanly thing. Verity may have had issues with gentlemen that Nathan still didn’t fully understand, but he was beginning to think there was some validity to the way she saw things. Perhaps polite and easy wasn’t always best.

What am I thinking? He pulled himself up short. There was nothing to be gained from telling Carlisle how he had felt. It was over and done with, and bringing it up again would just be uncomfortable for both of them. It was a little frightening the way Verity crept into Nathan’s mind and made his thoughts branch off in directions they had never gone before. Her effect on him was confounding—and who she was as a person was even more so.

Nathan had no understanding of Verity; she fit into no neat category. She was always verbally poking at him, and he was usually clueless about whether she was teasing or serious. She had an unerring ability to get under his skin, and yet he enjoyed her company. She was bold and outspoken, but somehow wrapped in secrecy.

Worse, Nathan had no understanding of himself when he was with her. He would have said he was a fairly sophisticated man, someone who talked smoothly; there were women who even said he was charming. Yet with Verity he immediately became a bumbling, incoherent fool—blushing like a schoolboy and falling into every verbal trap she laid.

He wasn’t the sort of man to run about stealing jewels. He had told himself he had joined her in order to keep her out of trouble. But that would be an impossible task, and anyway, Verity could protect herself—probably better than he could. Nathan knew, deep down, that he had wanted to be part of her adventure, that as uneasy as he’d been during the whole process, he had also found it exciting.

Formerly Nathan would have said that Verity was the last person he would turn to for help, yet he had run back to London to involve her in his problem. He could have hired a Bow Street Runner, but instead he had chosen this unorthodox woman who thought he was naive and foolish.

Of course, she would think that of him. Verity was a woman accustomed to men who were privateers and spies, daring men who risked their lives on a daily basis, not caring whether they operated within or outside the law. She would scarcely be impressed with a man whose skills were dancing, good manners, and affability. Even Nathan’s love for Annabeth had been a slow and patient thing.

Verity was no more the sort of woman for him than he was her sort of man. But somehow he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Those golden-brown eyes. That thick auburn hair. He kept remembering those moments in the Ardens’ corridor when he had been so tantalizingly close to her and wondering what it would have been like if his lips had actually touched her skin, if he’d kissed her neck and worked his way up to her mouth. Would she have kissed him back? And if she had, would she have been Verity, or some character that suited her purpose?

Verity could play dozens of roles—how did one know the real her? Was there a real her? Perhaps there was no essential Verity, just a compilation of pretenses. Nathan didn’t know if it was wishful thinking, but he thought that he had seen the real her several times. When they were alone together there was an ease, a calm, a comfortableness. It had not felt as if she was trying to do or be anything but what she was. It had felt as if they were old friends...but also somehow more. Like they had met in many lifetimes in the past. Drawn together again and again. A silly, impossible thought that never would have entered Nathan’s mind if he hadn’t been spending so much time with Verity.

It would be wise not to go with her on the search tomorrow. Give himself a chance to recover from this momentary madness, to return to his usual equilibrium. But once again he could not force himself to be wise.

THE FOLLOWING DAY he was on her doorstep at ten o’clock. And just as it had the day before, his pulse sped up at the sight of Verity. And thundered even more when they sat down together in the close confines of her town carriage.

“I still don’t understand why your father and Margaret Douglas married in London,” Verity said as the carriage made its way through the traffic of London. “Couples usually elope from England to Scotland, not the other way around.” Verity paused. “But that is assuming that Malcolm’s story is true and there is a record of their marriage at Saint Agatha’s. If he is lying, then why did he choose that church?”

“You’re right. Father could have brought Margaret home and had the wedding at the manor. Or chosen any church in the country—one in Newcastle or York or some obscure village. A place where it would be more trouble for us to check the records.” Nathan was intrigued by the puzzle for a moment before his spirits fell. “But that makes it more likely his story is true, doesn’t it? Knowing how easy it would be for us to check.”

“Perhaps.” Verity shrugged. “I still don’t trust him.”

“What if he isn’t lying? I don’t know if I could face Mother.”

“In that case I suppose I’ll simply have to make him disappear,” Verity responded lightly.

“Verity!” Nathan gaped at her.

“Well, I can’t let him turn you out of your home, can I?”

“What is wrong with you? You can’t go about killing people willy-nilly.”

“It wouldn’t be willy-nilly. It would be quite specific. But I wouldn’t have to kill the man. I can ‘persuade’ him to go away.” Her mouth curved up in a wicked smile, and her hand slipped under her long sleeve, showing the hilt of the knife in a sheath strapped to her arm.

“Verity!” Nathan’s voice rose in alarm. “No. No persuading, either.”

“Very well.” She heaved a sigh. “You take all the fun out of things.” Her eyes twinkled merrily.