Page 72 of The Earl She Once Saved

For several confused seconds, he could not understand what he saw. A woman’s face was bent over his, her dark hair catching gold at the edges. Her hand was inside his.

Verity.

Not twenty years old beneath a canvas roof, not a dream.

Here.

Rafe tried to speak. His throat felt scraped raw.

“Where—”

“Edgeworth.” Her voice was soft and tender.

The room returned in fragments of bed curtains, firelight, rain against the windows, and the bitter smell of some medicine left upon the table.

“You have a fever,” she told him. “I have sent for the physician again.”

He looked at her. She wore no jewels. Her hair had been loosely gathered, though several strands had escaped and lay against her cheek. Weariness shadowed her eyes.

She stayed by his side.

The knowledge seemed too large for his fevered mind to hold.

“You should not be here.”

Something sharpened in her expression. “I see illness has not improved your manners.”

He almost smiled. The walls became canvas again. Rain struck another roof in another country. He smelled blood, smoke, and wet wool. That first night rose whole inside him.

He had been scarcely conscious when they carried him in. His head had been split at the temple. Every breath hurt. Men moved around him, shouting, but he had seen only one face.

A girl bent over him. Her sleeves rolled past her elbows. Blood marked one cheek, though it was not hers. She placed her fingers against his throat, seeking a pulse, and when his eyes opened she spoke to him as though nothing in the world mattered except keeping them open.

Stay with me.

He held her hand because pain stripped him of every dignity. She let him. Each time darkness came, it was her voice that followed him into it.

“Rafe?”

His eyes burned. He shut them, but she remained before him, younger and frightened and determined not to let him see it.

“I thought I had imagined you.”

Her fingers shifted in his. He tightened his hold.

“Afterward,” he said, “when I was able to stand … I went back.”

Verity did not move.

“The hospital had gone. They moved the wounded east.”

“Your regiment was ordered south,” she reminded him.

“You remember.” The words came out rougher than he intended.

Her voice had gotten softer. “I remember some things.”

He wanted to ask which things. He wanted to know whether she remembered his hand around hers, whether she remembered him waking in terror and finding her still beside him, whether she had ever thought of him afterward with even a fraction of the persistence with which he thought of her.