Page 132 of The Earl She Once Saved

Rafe looked across the room for Verity. Celestine followed his movement and saw the chain hanging from his hand.

“What is that?”

He opened his palm to ensure the clasp had not broken.

Celestine leaned nearer. “Oh, Rafe.”

Before he could stop her, she lifted the pendant from his hand. The blue stone swung between her fingers.

“How lovely. Is it a sapphire?”

“Give it back.”

She laughed as though he teased her and held it against her throat. “You must tell me whether it suits me.”

Rafe reached for it, then he saw Verity. She was standing across the ballroom. The dancers moved between them, with silk and candlelight breaking the distance into shifting pieces. Yet her gaze did not leave Celestine’s hand or the pendant suspended against her gown.

Rafe saw the moment she understood it wrongly. He saw the hurt enter her face. He saw every cruel word he had spoken in his room become truth in her eyes.

“Verity.”

She could not have heard him from across the ballroom, but she looked at him once, then she turned away.

Chapter 21

Verity turned away before Rafe could reach her.

The ballroom doors stood open. She passed through them without running, though every part of her body urged flight. Music followed her into the passage, bright and graceful, with the violins playing on as though nothing beneath the chandeliers had altered.

“Verity.”

She kept walking. At the foot of the stairs, she gathered her skirts. Laughter rose from the ballroom. Someone called for more wine. The whole house seemed swollen with light and noise.

“Verity.”

She did not turn. If she looked at him, he would explain. He would find some arrangement of words that made the sight less ugly than it had been. Verity might even believe him.

She would not give him the opportunity.

Celestine had stood with the pendant against her throat, smiling as though she already knew it suited her. The blue stone Rafe had carried through war, the jewel he had fastened around Verity’s neck with unsteady hands, was now in another woman’s possession.

He told Verity it was the least he could set against what his brother had taken from her. Apparently even that had only been lent.

Verity climbed faster. She heard Rafe speak again, but Celestine’s voice rose over his. The words were lost beneath the music and the sudden applause of the dancers.

That was fitting. All evening the whispers had followed Verity.

Rafe Thornlow and Celestine Marchmont.

Such old friends, such a suitable connection. Lady Marchmont had expected an understanding for years, an engagement any day now.

Verity endured every murmured confidence with her head high. She told herself she felt nothing. The portraits belonged to the past, while Celestine belonged to everything a man such as Rafe had to choose in the present.

Still, Verity let herself believe there was something in the way he watched her, something in the drawings he had carried across countries and years.

Fool.

She believed a Thornlow again.