Page 141 of The Earl She Once Saved

Rafe also thought of Win, Ezra, and every tenant who had learned to look toward Verity before anyone else.

“He may.”

“He would undo the hardship allowance first. Then the grazing leases. Anything bearing my hand.”

“Yes.”

Verity glanced back along the road. Edgeworth lay hidden beyond the rise, but she looked toward it as though she could see every repaired roof and planted field.

The decision came quietly. “I will not let him drive me from my own ground.”

She turned her mare toward Edgeworth without another word. Rafe swung onto his horse and rode beside her. They spoke little as the sky paled behind them. Their horses moved close enough that his knee brushed the hem of her habit. Sergeant trotted between them, satisfied that his scattered household had been restored.

Edgeworth rose from the mist, its windows dark now that the ball had ended, and there, a figure waited upon the front step.

Chapter 23

Aunt Cordelia stood upon the front step in the pale light before sunrise. She had thrown a shawl over her evening gown, and its fringe stirred in the wind. Verity saw her before she reached the last bend of the drive and felt the brief steadiness she had found upon the road begin to fail.

Rafe dismounted first. Verity refused his hand and got down on the other side of her mare, though her legs were stiff from the cold. The stone steps were wet beneath her boots. Aunt Cordelia looked at the traveling bag still fastened behind the saddle, then at Rafe, and finally at Verity’s face.

“Where have you been?”

“Good morning, Aunt.”

“Do you know what hour it is?” her aunt demanded to know. “Who saw you leave? Who saw you come back?”

A groom emerged from the stable yard. Verity moved aside to let him take the horses and her travel bag, but Aunt Cordelia followed her through the open door.

“Verity, has it occurred to you what people will say of a woman who rides out alone in the middle of the night and comes creeping home at dawn?”

The hall smelled of extinguished candles and flowers left too long in warm rooms. Petals had fallen from the great arrangement beside the stairs. Only hours ago, Verity had crossed this floor in a blue silk gown, believing she might never cross it again.

“I was not alone on the return journey,” she said.

Aunt Cordelia’s gaze went at once to Rafe. “That hardly improves matters.”

He stood behind them, his coat damp with mist. Verity wished her aunt would look at her. She wished, with equal force, that she would not.

“The servants will have noticed,” Cordelia went on. “Guests were still leaving when you disappeared. Did anyone see Colonel Thornlow ride after you? What are we to tell them if they ask?”

Each question was addressed to Verity. Aunt Cordelia watched Rafe as she asked it, as though his face might supply the answers neither woman could safely give.

“No one has asked,” Verity pointed out.

“Not yet. You are the Countess of Edgeworth. Roland has returned, and the county expects to find you at his side. Surely you understand that much. Whatever difficulties there have been between you, they must be settled within this house. You cannot give people fresh reason to talk.”

Verity looked down at her hands. One glove had split along the seam where she had gripped the reins. Beneath it, her fingers were cramped and sore. She had come back for the farms, for Win, for the people who had trusted her with their living. Cordelia spoke as though the only ground she occupied was the small space beside Roland’s chair.

“I know you are tired,” her aunt sighed, softening her voice. “I say these things for your own good.”

She always had. She had spoken for Verity’s own good when she urged her to accept Roland’s proposal, and when his debts came due, and when creditors filled the hall and she advised patience because a wife must not seem to turn against her husband.

In the years since, Verity had learned to face men demanding money and tenants who feared losing their land. Yet a few words from Aunt Cordelia could still make her feel like the frightened girl who had come home after her father’s death with nowhere else to go.

“You need not fear what I may have told Roland,” Cordelia continued. “But if he hears you were out riding with his brother—”

“Enough.”