Page 42 of The Earl She Once Saved

“I have never seen anything like what you did in there.”

Verity’s anger faltered. She reached for it, but it refused to come back to her.

“Don’t.” She shook her head.

“I mean it.”

“I don’t want your praise.”

“That is unfortunate.” His voice was quiet. “Because you have it.”

Something in her chest hurt. “Rafe.”

“You were … remarkable.”

She looked away. “No. You heard a difficult birth.”

“I heard a woman terrified she would die, and every time she lost hold of herself, you gave it back to her.”

Verity’s throat tightened. He took another step.

“You were always remarkable.”

Everything inside her stopped, even then. He did not need to say it. She heard it anyway. The field hospital stood suddenly between them, and his hand closing around hers.

Verity’s fingers began to tremble harder. She curled them into her palm. Rafe saw and he reached for her. She ought to have stepped away, but she did not. His hand closed around hers. Bare skin against bare skin. The trembling did not stop. It moved somewhere else, up her arm and into her chest.

Rafe’s thumb rested against the side of her hand. He was not gripping her. She could have pulled free. That was the worst of it. She could not.

For years she had known how to defend herself against men. A command could be refused. An insult could be returned. Charm could be mistrusted. Desire could be named for what it wanted.

But this … a man standing before her in the gray before dawn, looking at her as though nothing she had done had made her less worth seeing … she had no defense for that.

Her eyes lifted. He was already looking at her. The world narrowed. The cottage disappeared. Edgeworth disappeared. Roland disappeared. There was no deed, no title, no Thornlow name, only Rafe and his hand around hers.

Her breath caught. For one impossible moment she was twenty again and he was dying beneath lamplight, except neither of them was dying now. That somehow made it more dangerous.

His gaze dropped, not quite to her mouth, but near enough. Verity pulled her hand away. The cold rushed instantly into the place he had held.

“Keep your admiration.”

Her voice was uneven. She hated that, too.

She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I know what a Thornlow’s regard is worth.”

She had put on her armor once again, except the blade had gone dull.

She turned toward her mare.

“Verity.”

“No.”

She mounted. Her hands fumbled once upon the reins. She gathered them sharply. The mare shifted beneath her, sensing the tension. Verity looked straight ahead. She needed distance, cold air and movement, anything that would put Rafe Thornlow somewhere other than directly beneath her skin.

She touched her heel to the mare. They had gone perhaps twenty yards when the hedge exploded. A pale shape burst from the branches, in the form of a violent beating of wings. The mare screamed. She reared.

“Easy!”