Page 9 of The Earl She Once Saved

She turned away. Rafe watched her go. Standing in his own inheritance, he felt like a trespasser.

***

The following morning found the three of them in the drawing room.

Mrs. Prewitt spoke continuously of the weather, the county roads and several neighbors Rafe remembered from his youth. Her conversation possessed the brittle industriousness of thin ice supporting too much weight.

Verity sat opposite him, an account book open upon her lap. She had scarcely looked at him since entering.

Rafe had looked at her too often. He searched for the woman he remembered in the controlled movements of her hands and the severity of her mouth. He found her only in fragments: the directness of her gaze, the small line between her brows when she read and the absent way she pressed one thumb against the side of her forefinger.

The same hands … he remembered them covered in his blood.

“Colonel Thornlow assures us he means to remain at Edgeworth,” Mrs. Prewitt announced, although everyone knew that Verity must have been paying attention to the conversation.

“For the present,” Rafe replied.

Verity turned a page. “And afterward?”

“That depends upon what I find.”

Her hand stilled. “What you find?”

“The accounts. The leases. My brother’s obligations.”

She closed the ledger. “The accounts are in order.”

“I don’t doubt your belief that they are.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “My belief?”

Mrs. Prewitt reached hastily for the teapot. “More tea?”

Neither answered. Verity set the ledger aside.

“You will forgive me, Colonel, if I do not surrender Edgeworth’s affairs upon the strength of a Thornlow’s assurances. Experience has taught me what value to place upon them.”

The insult entered the room and sat down between them.

Mrs. Prewitt’s spoon struck the rim of a cup. “Verity—”

“No, Aunt. Colonel Thornlow ought to understand the position plainly. I will not place what I rebuilt into the hands of a man who might not even know what to do with it.”

Rafe felt the words more sharply because he spent half his life believing that she had once known him better than anyone. He ought to have let it pass. He did not.

“How curious.”

Her expression cooled further. “What is?”

“To be lectured upon the untrustworthiness of Thornlows by a woman who married one.”

The color rose at once beneath her skin. Rafe continued, though some instinct warned him that he had found a wound and was pressing where honor ought to have stopped him.

“Whatever my faults may prove to be, Lady Edgeworth, I have taken nothing from you. Roland, however, was a man you chose with your eyes open.”

Silence followed. Mrs. Prewitt went very still. Verity stared at him. For the first time since the lawn, she had no answer. Fury flared across her face, but beneath it lay something struck, exposed, almost stricken.

Rafe’s satisfaction died before it fully formed. He had wounded her. The knowledge should have moved him to apologies. Instead, another thought rose, dark and bitter.