Page 5 of The Earl She Once Saved

It came to a halt before the house. Verity stood very still. A servant descended and the carriage door opened. A man stepped down into the wind, tall and broad-shouldered in a dark military coat, with one gloved hand braced against the frame.

Sergeant gave a sound Verity had not heard from him in years. It was a cry of recognition. Before she could catch his collar, the mastiff tore across the lawn.

“Sergeant!”

The man turned. The dog reached him and rose clumsily against his chest. Instead of recoiling, the stranger caught the great animal by the shoulders and laughed in a low, astonished sound carried thinly by the wind.

Then he lifted his head and Verity saw his face. The lawn, the house, the carriage and the dark advancing sky disappeared. Lamplight returned instead, and inside her mind’s eyes, she could see blood upon her hands and a young officer burning with fever while guns spoke in the distance. His fingers were closing around hers each time pain dragged him toward consciousness. His eyes were opening in the hours before dawn and fixing upon her as though she were the last certain thing in a collapsing world.

She had never known his name, but she had carried his face for half her life. Now he stood upon the drive at Edgeworth, with one hand buried in Sergeant’s coat, beneath the crest of the family she had sworn never to trust.

Of all the men England might have sent to take her home from her, it had sent this one.

Chapter 2

The first creature at Edgeworth to welcome Rafe Thornlow home was a dog.

The mastiff came across the lawn with the speed and determination of an artillery charge, his great brindled body scattering wet leaves in every direction. Rafe had scarcely set one boot upon the drive before the animal rose against him, broad paws striking his chest.

“Sergeant.” The name escaped with his breath.

The dog had been little more than an ill-tempered bundle of feet when Rafe left England. He was gray about the muzzle now, scarred at one ear and heavy enough to overturn a lesser man, but he remembered. His tail struck the side of the carriage. A low, shameless sound of pleasure came from the dog’s throat.

Rafe caught the animal by the shoulders and laughed. The sound surprised him. There had been little occasion for it during the journey north and less during the years preceding it.

“You grew into those paws, then.”

Sergeant thrust his massive head beneath Rafe’s hand as though the intervening years had been no more than an inconvenient afternoon.

Then a woman called sharply from across the lawn. “Sergeant!”

The dog turned. So did Rafe.

She was walking toward him from the eastern path, wearing a dark shawl drawn close about her shoulders. The wind pressed her skirts against her legs and pulled several strands of brown hair loose from beneath her cap. She moved quickly, with the long, certain stride of someone accustomed to crossing ground rather than being conveyed over it.

Rafe saw first the steadiness of her bearing. Then her face.

The world altered. It did not darken or brighten. The house remained before him, its pale stone damp from rain, its windows reflecting a low Yorkshire sky. The carriage stood behind him. Sergeant leaned warmly against his leg.

Yet the earth seemed to shift beneath his boots.

He knew that face … not as it was now, composed into handsome severity, but white with exhaustion beneath the yellow light of an army lantern. He knew those eyes above bloodstained hands. He knew the curve of that mouth drawn tight with concentration while cannon fire rolled through the night.

He had seen her with her sleeves turned back, her hair falling from its pins, and another man’s blood drying upon her cheek. He had watched her fight death over his body as though she had taken his survival as a personal challenge.

The woman crossing the lawn was the surgeon’s daughter.

Verity.

Her own step faltered, only for the space between one heartbeat and the next. Something broke open in her face. Recognition came first, so naked and complete that it struck him with almost physical force. Behind it came disbelief, then old, unguarded pain so quickly mastered that another man might have doubted seeing it.

Rafe did not. He had spent too many years remembering every alteration of that face.

Then the moment closed. Her shoulders settled. Her chin lifted. By the time she reached them, the woman from the field hospital vanished behind a coldness so perfect that he might have invented her.

Sergeant returned reluctantly to all four paws.

“Come here,” she ordered.