Page 144 of The Earl She Once Saved

“Mrs. Hale told us you were … quite overcome last night.”

“So I was.”

A small movement passed through Coombes’s face. Verity did not look toward Win, who stood just inside the open door.

Roland laid the ledger against the cart. “Perhaps you will explain this entry. Mr. Coombes appears to believe it cannot be altered without your permission.”

“It is an allowance for his family during his son’s illness. I entered the amount after looking through their accounts.”

“An estate cannot run upon sentiment.”

“The culvert work covers part of it. The remainder gives them time to recover without selling their seed.”

“I have read it.” He tapped the page. “It is waste.”

Coombes lowered his eyes. Harris set down his pen. Verity heard Mrs. Fenwick murmur something to Celestine, too softly to distinguish.

She remembered the Coombes kitchen in January: damp coats hanging beside the fire and a boy so hot with fever that he had not known her when she spoke. His mother had tried to apologize for the state of the room. Roland had not been there. He saw a figure in a ledger and expected it to obey him.

“The allowance stands,” Verity concluded.

Roland smiled, though his eyes had narrowed. “We will discuss it indoors.”

“The men need to take the timber while there is light.”

“Then Harris will give them their instructions when we have finished.”

No one moved. The horses waited in their traces. A crow called from the stable roof and received no answer.

Roland turned to the clerk. “Strike it out.”

Harris glanced at Verity. It was scarcely more than a movement of his eyes, but Roland saw it. Color climbed his neck.

“Is it any wonder the men are muddled?” he said, loud enough for the portico and half the yard. “A woman has been allowed to play at master so long that she has begun meddling in matters she has no head for. Now the tenants cannot tell whose orders to follow.”

Verity felt the laborers’ attention settle upon her. She could have answered him. She knew what the allowance cost, what the repaired culvert would save, what seed Coombes needed before the next quarter’s rent came due. She knew it all more thoroughly than Roland knew the names of the men standing before him.

Her mouth had gone dry. He had chosen his audience well. An answer now would give him the quarrel he wanted, but silence would leave his words standing in the yard.

Rafe came from the direction of the stables. Verity had not heard him approach. He stopped beside the cart, close enough to see the open ledger, and looked first at Coombes, then at her.

“Roland,” he voiced himself, “the men follow her orders because they know what those orders have done for them.”

Roland turned. “I am correcting an account.”

“You chose to correct her before the tenants and your guests.”

The quiet in Rafe’s voice made Verity uneasy. She heard it on the moor road when he spoke of his brother’s threats. Roland heard it, too. His smile disappeared.

“This is my estate,” he announced.

“It is standing because of her,” Rafe reminded him.

He spoke clearly enough for the men at the far end of the cart to hear. Verity wished for one moment that he would lower his voice. Then she saw Coombes’s cap crushed in his hands, and she wanted Rafe to go on.

“For years, while you were gone, she paid its debts and mended its farms. She sat up through its fevers. The loyalty you have seen in this yard was earned by her, tenant by tenant, through work none of them has forgotten.”

Roland’s face hardened. “Brother, take care.”