Page 24 of The Earl She Once Saved

Verity went very still. “Must I?”

“People talk.”

It was a truth Verity knew well and needed no reminder of. “They have always talked.”

“It is different now.”

Of course it was. Rafe was home. A Thornlow had returned to Edgeworth. The county could once more arrange the household into something it understood.

Verity turned. “And what is it you imagine they wish to see?”

Aunt Cordelia faltered. “A united household.”

Verity laughed once. There was no amusement in it.

“A united household,” she echoed mockingly.

Her aunt’s brows furrowed. “Do not take that tone.”

“What tone ought I take?”

“Verity—”

“Shall I stand beside Rafe and allow half the county to wonder whether I mean to transfer my allegiance from one brother to the other?”

Aunt Cordelia flushed. “No one would think such a thing.”

“Everyone would think such a thing.”

Her voice remained quiet. That made it worse.

“They will look at me and see Roland’s abandoned wife living beneath his brother’s roof. They will whisper about whether he is dead, whether I am a widow, whether I am not. They will ask themselves what claim I have upon this house now that a man with the correct blood has returned to it.”

“Then you must show them you are not ashamed.”

“I am not ashamed,” Verity cried, both in an effort to convince her aunt as well as herself.

“Then come.”

“No.”

Cordelia exhaled sharply.

“You cannot hide here forever.”

Something in Verity broke. “I have not been hiding.”

Her aunt fell silent.

“I have spent years standing in every place Roland should have stood.”

Verity’s hands had begun to tremble. She clasped them.

“I have faced his creditors. I have answered his tenants. I have repaired the roofs he let rot and paid the wages he forgot. I have listened while respectable people offered sympathy for my situation and then asked, very delicately, whether I expected him to return.”

“Verity—”

“I will not dress myself in silk and smile while they watch to see whether the deserted wife has learned to behave beautifully in her disgrace.”