Page 11 of The Earl She Once Saved

Those were things which ought never to have mattered. Nevertheless, those were things she carried with her.

There was no time for names. By morning, her father was summoned elsewhere, within weeks he was dead, and Verity was sent back to England with a trunk, a little money, and no place in the world which wanted a surgeon’s daughter who had seen too much blood to be properly delicate.

Rafe knew her name, yet he never wrote. He never sent a word. For years, she told herself there was no reason he should. It was only one night. A dying man’s gratitude was not a promise. And yet sometimes, in the first months after her return, she thought of him.

Foolishly.

She wondered whether the scar healed cleanly. She wondered whether he had gone back to his regiment. She wondered whether he remembered the woman who held his hand while he wandered in and out of fever. Eventually she stopped wondering.

Then Roland Thornlow entered her life and taught her precisely what became of women foolish enough to attach meaning to a gentleman’s attention.

And now … Now the nameless officer had a name.

Rafe Thornlow.

The knowledge still felt like something struck against bone.

Of all men, of all families, it had to be him …

She heard his horse behind her and tightened her hands upon the reins. She had been a fool to remember him kindly. This man was not the one she remembered. This man was here to usurp her place, and she would be damned if she would allow that to happen.

The meadow came into view below them. Verity forgot Rafe at once.

“Oh, damn.”

The stream had broken its boundary entirely. Brown water poured through the damaged weir and spread across the lower field in a shining sheet. The first rows of young wheat had already disappeared beneath it, their green heads just visible through the muddy current. Several laborers stood knee-deep near the breach. One waved when he saw her.

“Lady Edgeworth!”

Verity was off her horse before the groom’s boy could come forward.

“How long?”

“Near an hour, my lady. Maybe more. Lower brace went first.”

She lifted her skirts enough to cross the churned bank.

“Has anyone opened the west ditch?”

“No, my lady.”

“Then do it. Not the old cut, the one beyond Mercer’s hedge. If you open the old one, you will flood his pasture instead.”

The man nodded immediately.

“You heard her,” another called.

There was movement at once. Hurdles were dragged from the cart. Men went for spades. Someone brought turf already cut from the upper bank.

Rafe dismounted behind her. The nearest laborer looked at him, then at Verity. His expression altered. He seemed slightly uncomfortable for a moment, but then old knowledge set in. They all saw when it did. Rafe seemed to see it, too, but he said nothing.

Good.

Verity stepped into the water. Cold soaked through her boots almost at once.

“My lady—”

“If you tell me to stand on the bank, Henshaw, I shall put you in the stream myself.”