Page 19 of The Earl She Once Saved

“I know.”

“When I’m gone—”

Mrs. Hartley made a broken sound behind them.

Verity did not look away from him. “You need not worry about them.”

His fingers tightened weakly around hers. “See ’em right?”

Rafe stood not three feet from the bed.

The new master.

The man whose family name stood on the rent books.

Hartley did not look at him, not once.

“See they’ve the cottage,” he whispered. “Jenny’s not married yet. Mary can’t—”

“I will.” Verity’s voice was very quiet.

Hartley searched her face. “Promise?”

“I promise you.”

The old man eased. Rafe saw it happen. His shoulders settled into the mattress. His hand loosened inside hers. There was no question in him, no fear that she might have forgotten him, no need for papers or witnesses or assurances from the man who owned the soil beneath the cottage.

Verity had given her word. For Tom Hartley, that was enough.

Rafe looked down at the floorboards. Yesterday, she told him the estate did not require a Thornlow standing in the mud. He thought the remark pride. Now he understood that pride had very little to do with it.

The deed might carry his family’s name, but the trust in this room belonged entirely to her. She earned it in years he had not witnessed, through winters he had spent abroad, harvests he had not seen, debts he had not paid.

There was no resentment in the realization. That surprised him. Only something very near humility.

Then Verity moved her thumb gently across the back of Hartley’s hand. Rafe looked at her again. That was what remained with him, not the promise or the old man’s certainty, but her face.

She had forgotten him. She had forgotten Mrs. Hartley standing behind them and the cottage and every defense she normally wore like armor. She looked at the dying man with tenderness so open it felt almost indecent to witness.

And there she was, the woman from the field hospital. The thought came without permission: lamplight, blood, her hand holding his and her voice asking him to stay awake.

Then Verity looked up. Their eyes met. The softness vanished. Something turned over in his chest, slowly and irrevocably. It made him look away first.

They did not remain long. Outside, the air struck cool after the closeness of the cottage. The village road remained wet from yesterday’s rain. Water stood in the ruts, reflecting a pale strip of sky between the roofs.

Verity walked beside him. Everyone knew her. That became apparent within fifty yards.

“Morning, Lady Edgewood.”

A laborer removing a sack from a cart took off his cap. Verity stopped long enough to ask after his wife’s cough. A woman outside the baker’s dipped a curtsey. Verity asked whether the youngest boy had returned to school. Two children called to Sergeant, who endured their affection with the solemnity of a saint accepting martyrdom.

Rafe said very little. He watched. The village belonged to her in a way Edgeworth House did not, not by law, but by something stronger than law. That something was habit and memory.

Yet beneath the greetings there was another current. He saw that, too. A woman who came out of the shop smiled at Verity, then glanced past her toward Rafe. Her expression changed, revealing relief. An old man near the smithy touched his cap to Verity first. Then to Rafe. He nodded once, deeply satisfied by something.

Rafe disliked understanding it.

Verity had been mistress of Edgeworth without a master, wife without husband, lady without secure title. She was respected, certainly, but impossible to place.