Page 110 of The Earl She Once Saved

She flinched. Irritation held him for one more heartbeat. After all they had done together, surely she knew him well enough not to mistake him for Roland. Yet, the hurt in her face overpowered it. Rafe wished at once that he could take back the harshness, if not the truth, for he had spoken as though she owed him belief when his own silence had given her cause to doubt him.

His voice lowered. “I am not asking you to trust the name. Only what I have done since I came here.”

“That is what I was beginning to do.”

The admission struck deeper than anger would have done. Verity looked away, but not before he saw the hurt beneath her composure.

“I was beginning to trust you,” she repeated. “That was my mistake.”

He stepped toward her. She stepped back. The small movement stopped him more completely than a locked door.

“I thought shielding you would make the wrong thing right,” he said. “It did not. I should have told you the moment I received his letter … I am sorry.”

Her eyes shone, but she did not weep. “So am I.”

She walked past him. Rafe turned, but he did not reach for her. He had forfeited that right somewhere between Ripon and home, in every mile during which he had mistaken silence for shelter.

Chapter 17

Verity wanted to believe him. That was the trouble.

She stood before the window in her bedchamber, looking out upon grounds she could no longer be certain were hers. Night had settled over Edgeworth. The lawns lay silver beneath the moon, and the trees beyond them had become a single dark shape.

Her fingers closed around the pendant at her throat. The blue stone was warm from her skin. Rafe had carried it through battlefields. It had rested near his heart while men died around him, and he had placed it in her hands as though giving it away cost him nothing.

Then he told her the truth … too late.

Verity turned from the window and crossed the room. At the hearth she stopped, then turned and crossed it again. He wished to protect her. She could still hear the strain in his voice when he said it. She could see the instant he understood why the words wounded rather than comforted her.

Part of her believed him. That was the part she could not forgive.

She had believed a Thornlow once before. Roland had spoken softly, too. He promised safety, a home, and a life in which she would never again be moved from one temporary lodging to another. He had taken her hand before an altar and looked into her eyes with such apparent tenderness that everyone wept.

Then he poured her mother’s fortune into schemes that vanished like ships beneath black water. When there was nothing left to take, he had abandoned her to answer the creditors.

Rafe is not Roland.

The distinction returned each time she tried to harden herself against him. Rafe had stood beside laborers in the river, soaked to the knee, hauling stone until his injured body shook with fatigue. He listened when tenants spoke. He remembered their names. He had sat beside a frightened child at the harvest feast and repaired a wooden horse with his own knife. He looked at Verity as though her laughter were something rare.

Then he had gone to Ripon and met Roland behind her back.

Verity pressed her fingers against her temples. Roland had returned now … now, when the last of his debts had been cleared from the estate books, now, when the roofs no longer admitted rain and the tenants had seed enough for spring.

He had left her to drown and returned when there was something worth taking. And Rafe had stood between them, guarding his brother’s secret.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

Verity lowered her hands. “Come in.”

Win entered carrying a tray. Steam rose from a cup, bringing the scent of mint and honey into the room. Sergeant followed her as far as the hearth, turned twice and settled with a sigh.

“You have to eat,” Win urged.

“I am not particularly hungry.”

“You said that at luncheon.”

“I was not hungry then either.”