Page 124 of The Earl She Once Saved

“Oh, precisely,” Aunt Cordelia agreed. “It is exactly what is wanted. Everyone beneath this roof, the earl restored and his wife beside him. The whispering would be over in a night.”

She was already looking toward the empty places around the table, filling them in her mind.

“The Livingstones must come,” she continued. “The Ashbournes and the Lennoxes. Lady Marchmont, of course, and Celestine.”

Verity’s gaze moved to Rafe. He was looking at his plate. The portrait returned with painful clarity. Her younger face, repeated through years, then shut in a chest while Celestine waited in the present.

“We shall not give a party,” Verity declared.

Roland turned toward her. “We shall.”

“I will not arrange it.”

“You will not need to. Your aunt appears delighted to assist.”

“I will not attend.”

His smile became almost tender. “My dear, you seem to have forgotten that you have no say in the matter. This is my house.”

Silence settled across the table. Verity looked around at the polished silver, the repaired plaster, and the candles that no longer had to be rationed. She remembered winters spent in one habitable wing, calculating whether wages or roof tiles mattered more.

“Where were you?” she asked.

Roland paused.

“For five years,” she continued. “What country? What name did you use while I buried your scandal and paid the debts you fled?”

Aunt Cordelia’s face paled. “Verity, perhaps this is not—”

“No. I should like to hear his reply.”

Roland lowered his glass. Pain entered his expression so beautifully that Verity might have admired it if she had not seen him practice such emotions before.

“I was deceived,” he announced. “Men I believed friends used my name and left me to answer for their crimes.”

Crote watched him without expression.

“I was forced abroad. Each attempt to return placed those I loved in greater danger.”

“What danger?”

“There are matters I cannot discuss before ladies.”

“How convenient. There are always matters a wife must suffer but may not be told.”

Roland’s voice softened. “I endured misfortunes no man could have withstood easily. Illness. Poverty. Betrayal. But through all of it, one thought carried me home.”

He reached for Verity’s hand. She moved it from the table. Roland let his own remain there, open and wounded.

“You,” he admitted. “I never stopped loving you.”

Aunt Cordelia brought a napkin to her lips. Tears shone in her eyes.

It was beautifully done.

Verity watched it from a great distance. Not one word had been spoken for her. The story was for Aunt Cordelia, for Crote, for the servants against the wall. Roland offered them the suffering exile, faithful through every injustice, sustained by love for the wife he had been forced to abandon.

He did not ask whether she had been cold, whether she had been afraid, whether she had eaten while his tenants went hungry.