Page 136 of The Earl She Once Saved

She crossed to the wardrobe. Her hands shook as she removed her riding habit. She stripped off the blue gown and left it upon the floor, then dressed quickly. Sergeant watched from the hearth.

“We are leaving.”

His ears lifted. Verity took a small traveling bag from the wardrobe. She packed one plain gown, linen, stockings, and a comb. From the locked drawer of her writing table, she removed the money she kept for household emergencies. She added her mother’s letters. Nothing else in the room felt truly hers.

The portraits rose in her mind and Rafe calling her name as she left the ballroom. Verity closed the bag. She would not think of him.

She sat at the writing desk and drew out a sheet of paper. There was only one person to whom she could write.

Win,

Forgive me, but I could not remain and wait for him to decide what is to become of me. Please do what you can for the tenants. The estate books are complete through yesterday, and Mr. Harris knows which rents may be delayed.

Thank you for every kindness, and for never failing me when everyone else did.

Do not come after me. I will not return.

Verity stopped. Her vision blurred. She pressed the pen too hard, and ink gathered beneath the nib. She wanted to add more. No letter could hold the years Win had stood beside her, turning starvation into economy and loneliness into something almost like a household.

Verity signed her name. She folded the paper and wrote Win upon it.

Sergeant had fallen asleep again. Verity knelt beside him and placed both hands upon his broad head.

“Come, old friend.”

He woke at once. She took her cloak and traveling bag. The music grew louder as she opened the door, then faded when she turned away from the main stairs.

The back passage was empty. Verity descended through the servants’ wing. Kitchen maids hurried past carrying trays. No one questioned her. The household had been turned inside out by the ball, and every servant had three tasks requiring immediate attention.

In the kitchen yard, lanterns burned through a thin mist. Carriages crowded the cobbles. Grooms moved between horses, drinking from flasks and calling jokes to one another while they waited for their masters.

Verity kept her hood low. She slipped into the stable. Her mare shifted at the sound of her step. Verity set down the bag and saddled the horse herself. Her fingers remembered buckles and straps from a childhood following the army. Sergeant waited beside the stall, silent for once.

She fastened the bag behind the saddle. Beyond the stable doors, the ball continued in a blaze of light. Through the high windows she could see figures turning beneath the chandeliers.

Roland would be waiting for her.

Rafe would still be there.

The thought almost stopped her.

Verity took the mare’s reins and led her into the yard. Sergeant kept close to her skirts as she passed through the open gates. Only when the house lay behind the trees did Verity mount. The road stretched pale beneath the moon. She looked back once.

Edgeworth shone against the darkness, every window bright for the husband who had returned to take it from her.

Then Verity turned her mare toward the moor, smiling.

Her husband’s own ball covered her escape.

Chapter 22

Rafe knew exactly what Verity had seen: the blue stone held against another woman’s throat.

In a single moment, every ugly thing Roland had whispered became true. Rafe was his brother’s blood after all, a Thornlow who gave Verity his mother’s jewel one day and reclaimed it for another woman the next. Worse, she would believe the drawings meant nothing, just old portraits shut away with dead memories while Celestine received the living man.

The thought of Verity believing it was unbearable.

“Verity.”