Page 104 of The Earl She Once Saved

Mr. Ellison’s expression softened. “I am sorry.”

She turned her face away from his sympathy. Rafe closed his hand around the chair back before he could reach for hers. Roland had abandoned her to creditors, whispers, and ruin. Now the law meant to return him to her as though he were misplaced property.

“Does he intend to come here?” Verity asked.

“I cannot say.”

“But he may.”

“Yes.”

A faint tremor passed through her fingers. It was gone almost before Rafe saw it.

Mr. Ellison began to speak of affidavits, notices, and declarations that could no longer proceed. His voice was calm, made for offices and orderly papers. The words passed through the room like cold rain.

Rafe heard scarcely any of them. He watched Verity hold herself straight while the man who had poured her mother’s fortune into the sea was restored to life by legal phrases. He watched her take in each consequence without protest. The title was Roland’s. The house was Roland’s. By every law that mattered to men like Mr. Ellison, Verity was Roland’s, too.

Everything she had saved could be placed back into the hands that had destroyed it.

Rafe remembered his brother at the inn, raising a glass as though ruin were a misunderstanding between gentlemen.

I mean to make amends by returning to her.

The recollection made his stomach turn. Roland claimed to love her. Perhaps, in some crooked chamber of his heart, he believed it. What man could look upon Verity and fail to love her fierce intelligence, the courage she wore so severely, and the tenderness she attempted to hide even from herself?

But Roland never understood that love ought to ask something of the man who felt it. He believed it entitled him to ask everything of the woman.

Mr. Ellison closed the fastening of his case.

“I shall make further inquiries. Until we know his intentions, I advise caution.”

Verity’s mouth moved without becoming a smile. “I have practiced caution for five years, Mr. Ellison.”

“Yes.” He looked at her a moment. “I believe you have.”

He rose. Rafe followed him into the hall, but before the front door had fully closed, Verity’s aunt appeared upon the stairs. She wore a shawl though the house was warm. One hand gathered it tightly at her throat. Her gaze passed from Verity’s face to Rafe.

“I heard a carriage,” she inquired. “Was that Mr. Ellison?”

Verity did not answer at once.

Cordelia descended the final steps. “It is true, then.”

“Yes,” Verity acquiesced. “Roland is alive.”

Her aunt’s face changed. Her brows lifted and the corners of her mouth followed, arranging themselves into a semblance of relief. Yet the color had drained from her cheeks and her gaze had gone strangely still. It was the expression old habit required of her. She reached for Verity’s hand, stopped, and instead drew the shawl more closely around herself.

“I should like to speak with my niece alone.”

Rafe looked at Verity. She had risen, though he had not heard her do so. For one moment, she looked back at him. He wanted to cross the space between them. He wanted to take her into his arms and feel the rigidity leave her body. He wanted to tell her Roland would never come near enough to wound her again, that she need not hold the whole of Edgeworth upright with her own hands. He wanted to promise that he would see to everything.

The impulse was so strong it frightened him. That was precisely why he had said nothing.

He meant to deal with Roland before his shadow ever reached her. He wanted, for once, to spare her the knowledge of danger rather than stand uselessly beside her after it struck.

Verity’s gaze remained upon him. The silence between them filled with the question she had not asked. Then, she turned away.

“Come,” Cordelia said, more gently than Rafe had ever heard her speak.