Page 17 of The Earl She Once Saved

“I see I retain his approval.”

Verity looked at the mastiff. “He is becoming careless in his old age.”

“Cruel.”

“You appear to have survived it.”

There was no warmth in the exchange, but neither was there quite the hostility of yesterday. Rafe noticed that. He wished he had not.

They went out. The Hartley cottage stood at the edge of the village beyond the low meadow, small and whitewashed beneath a roof darkened by rain. Smoke lifted weakly from the chimney.

A woman opened the door before they knocked. Mrs. Hartley, Rafe assumed.

She was perhaps sixty, though grief had a way of confusing age. Her face had the drawn, stunned stillness of someone already living in the hours after a death that had not yet occurred.

Her eyes went first to Verity. Relief entered them.

“Lady Edgeworth.”

Verity took her hands. “How is he?”

“Waiting.”

Only then did Mrs. Hartley look at Rafe. She curtseyed awkwardly.

“My lord.”

Rafe inclined his head. No reassurance seemed sufficient, so he offered none.

The cottage smelled of beeswax, damp wool and something medicinal beneath it … lavender, perhaps. The room beyond was dim despite the hour. A small fire burned low upon the hearth, and beside it stood a narrow bed drawn close enough to take the warmth.

Tom Hartley lay beneath three blankets.

Dying was not dignified work. Rafe had seen enough of it to know that. The old man’s cheeks had fallen inward. His hands lay loose over the coverlet, all tendon and bone, hands that had once lifted hay bales and repaired walls and worked soil belonging to men named Thornlow. His breathing rasped faintly, but his eyes were clear.

Verity moved toward him first. “Tom.”

The old man’s gaze settled on her. His face softened. Then he saw Rafe. For a moment nothing happened.

Rafe stepped nearer. “Mr. Hartley.”

Hartley stared. Then, astonishingly, he smiled. “Well.”

The word came thinly.

Rafe bent closer to hear him.

“Well, I never,” the man added.

“Sir?”

The old man gave a sound which might once have been a laugh.

“Still got that look.”

Rafe glanced at Verity. She seemed no wiser than he.

“What look is that?” Rafe asked politely.