Page 96 of The Earl She Once Saved

“Not today.” Rafe folded the gloves together. His thumbs pressed hard into the leather. “He means to return, but I persuaded him to remain in Ripon for a few days.”

“Persuaded him how?”

“I told him Crote is still circling the estate. That his arrival would draw every creditor who has spent years waiting for proof that he lives.”

“And Roland believed you?”

“He believed it would be inconvenient.”

A bitter breath escaped her. “That, at least, he understands.”

The old anger stirred, familiar enough to steady her. Once, she would have demanded everything he and Roland had said. She would have distrusted each omission and searched his face for whatever Thornlow purpose lay beneath it. Now she saw only a tired man who had ridden before he was well because he meant to place himself between her and his brother.

She did not know what to do with that.

“You should eat,” she said.

Rafe’s brows rose slightly. “You are not going to question me further?”

The surprise in his voice made her look away.

“You have told me what you wished to tell me.”

“And that is enough?”

No.

It was not enough. Roland was alive. He meant to return. Every hard-won corner of her life had begun to shift beneath her. Yet Rafe looked as though he had spent the night holding a door shut with his own body.

“For now,” she said.

His fingers loosened around the gloves. “Thank you.”

Verity turned toward the house. “Do not thank me. Eat.”

He followed her inside. She felt him behind her all the way to the breakfast room. That awareness remained through the morning. It followed her from the estate books to the steward’s reports and from the steward’s reports to the letter she attempted to write and abandoned after three lines. By the time they rode out after midday to inspect the new pack-bridge, Verity succeeded only in becoming more conscious of him.

The road to the lower village was still damp from the storm. Sunlight flashed in the puddles, and the hedges smelled of wet leaves and wild mint crushed beneath the horses’ hooves.

Rafe rode beside her. He said little. At the bridge, the mason came up the bank to meet them. Half the old arch had been carried away by the flood, leaving broken stone scattered along the riverbed. Men worked upon the new foundations with ropes, levers, and barrows.

Rafe dismounted. Verity watched him remove his coat.

“You are here to observe.”

He draped the coat across the saddle. “Naturally.”

“You are not to lift anything.”

“I would not dream of it.”

He rolled his sleeves above his elbows. Verity looked at his forearms and immediately resented him for possessing them.

The mason unfolded his plans across a flat stone. Rafe crouched beside him. He listened. That was what Verity noticed first. He did not merely wait for the man to finish so that rank might speak.

He asked why the first arch had failed. When the mason explained the water had cut beneath the shallow foundations, Rafe followed the line upon the page with one dusty finger and asked how deep the new footings would run. The mason corrected one of his assumptions.

Rafe nodded. “Show me.”