Page 164 of The Earl She Once Saved

“All those years,” she whispered.

Rafe came nearer. “I am sorry.”

“He told me I belonged to him. Yesterday he said he could put me somewhere no one would come looking.” She put one hand on the edge of the table. “I believed he might.”

“You had reason to believe it. We did not have this proof.”

Her eyes lifted to his. He saw her trying to take in both truths: what she had survived, and what had never been lawful. Her face changed so slowly that he could not have named the moment it happened. Some part of the effort with which she had held herself upright seemed to leave her.

“I was never his wife,” she echoed.

“No.”

She drew a breath that shook on its way out. Rafe covered the distance between them. He stopped close enough for her to reach him and waited. Verity put her hand in his.

For a while neither spoke. The air from the open door carried a sound from the passage: Sergeant settling heavily on the carpet, his watch apparently concluded. Beyond that came the ordinary movements of the house. Somewhere below, Win was giving instructions. A door opened and closed.

Verity looked at their joined hands. “Arabella signed herself Vane.”

“She has used that name for years.”

“I am glad she kept it.”

Rafe thought of the woman in York placing the marriage line in his care. She had little money left, and no reason to trust a second Thornlow who arrived at her door asking about the first. Yet she listened, and when she heard of Verity, she chose to help.

“Arabella asked me to tell you that she would speak to anyone who required her account,” he said.

“I should like to thank her myself.”

“You can.”

Verity glanced toward the open door. “When I am permitted to leave this room?”

“You may leave it now.”

She gave him a look, sharp enough to be almost the one he knew. “Roland is still master of this house.”

“He is still the earl.”

“And Tunstall is still dismissed. Win and Aunt Cordelia are frightened. Roland went out this morning expecting to come back and find me here.” Her grip tightened briefly on his hand. “The marriage line does not settle what he will do when he sees it.”

“No. It does not.”

Rafe would have liked to tell her that Roland could do nothing more. He knew his brother too well. Roland had the title, the estate and men willing to stand outside a locked door for him. He did not yet know that Verity had a witness in York and a record of a marriage he had concealed.

The discovery would take from him the power he had claimed over her, not to mention the legal repercussions. It would also make him dangerous when he learned of it.

“Ezra is sending for Henshaw,” Rafe continued. “We will have the documents in his hands. The guard cannot keep you here, and I will stay until Roland returns.”

Verity studied him. “You have scarcely slept.”

“I have slept enough.”

“On horseback, perhaps.”

He could not deny how the road had worn on Ezra, nor could he pretend his own hands were steady from rest. He had come home afraid he might be too late to stop whatever Roland had begun.

“Ezra rode the whole way with me,” he added. “I should see that he sits down.”