Page 155 of The Earl She Once Saved

Aunt Cordelia’s hand rose to her throat. Rain ran down the window glass, blurring the dark garden beyond it.

For the first time, Verity could see the shape of the danger beyond her own room. Roland had begun to draw others into it, one careful word at a time. She could tell Cordelia what he was doing. She could keep the note. Henshaw would come, and she would speak to him herself.

She drew out a chair for her aunt and sat beside her, leaving the torn portrait where it lay beneath the lamplight.

Chapter 26

Rafe found Verity in the garden the next morning, standing beneath the elm with Sergeant at her feet.

She had a stick in one hand. The dog watched it with solemn attention, though he had grown old enough to consider whether he would fetch it every single time. Verity drew back her arm and sent the stick across the grass. Sergeant set off after it, his heavy body gathering speed by degrees. She laughed when he reached it and stood looking about as though he had forgotten why he had come.

Rafe stopped at the end of the path. For once, Verity had not seen him arrive. Her shoulders were loose, and her face turned to the sun that had broken through the night’s rain. He had watched her cross fields in a storm and stand her ground before men who thought to overrule her. He had seldom seen her with nothing to do but wait for an old dog to make up his mind.

Sergeant picked up the stick and began the slow journey back. Verity turned then.

“Good morning,” she greeted him.

“Good morning.”

He came down the path. Sergeant, seeing that there were now two people to praise him, quickened his pace. He dropped the stick at Verity’s boots and leaned against her leg.

“That was admirably done,” she told him.

“He had time to consider his method.”

“He has learned not to hurry for anyone.”

She bent to take the stick but did not throw it again. Rafe thought she might turn toward the house. Instead, she looked at him, with an openness that made him forget what he had meant to say.

“I wanted to speak to you,” she suddenly said.

Verity ran her thumb along the smooth bark of the stick.

“I was wrong to judge you as quickly as I did,” she divulged. “When you arrived, I believed I knew what you would want from Edgeworth. I decided there was no use hearing anything you said that disagreed with me.”

“You had reason to be wary of a Thornlow.”

“I had reason to be wary of Roland … I made you answer for him.”

Rafe remembered their first morning together, how easily he wounded her by saying she had chosen his brother. He had known little then of the choice Cordelia urged upon a young woman with no father to protect her and a fortune she could not control. He learned more since and still found ways to hurt her himself.

“I gave you reasons to doubt me,” he admitted.

“Yes. Celestine. The pendant.” She glanced away. “The drawings. There is more than I can name without keeping us here all morning.”

He could have told her again why he lied about Celestine or described how he took the pendant from Crote. He had given those explanations already. Verity knew what he had done and stood before him now of her own choosing.

Sergeant pressed his head beneath her hand. She stroked the silver fur above his eyes.

“I trust you, Rafe.”

He heard men say as much before setting their lives in his hands. He knew the weight of it. Yet none of those words reached him quite like hers.

Verity did not offer trust readily. It cost her too much to be mistaken. He wanted to take her hand, but she had come here to give him something without being asked. He kept his own hands at his sides and let her see what her words had done to him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Her gaze softened. Then she studied the stick with sudden care.