Page 163 of The Earl She Once Saved

“I did. I should have told you.”

“I thought—” She stopped.

“I know.” He crossed the room, leaving the door open behind him. “Verity, it is over.”

Her gaze searched his face. “What has happened?”

“We found Arabella Vane in York.”

The name brought no recollection. Rafe did not expect it would. He had told no one of the letter, not even Verity. He took the folded papers from inside his coat but did not yet hand them to her. He wanted her to hear what they held before she tried to make sense of the names and dates.

“Roland married her in Edinburgh,” he revealed. “A full year before he met you.”

Verity looked at the papers. “Married?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “I … do not understand.”

“She was a woman of some fortune. He married her for it, then gambled it away. When little remained, he left her. She found work and began to put money by. He came back to her after another venture failed, spent what she had saved, and left again.” Rafe felt his anger rise as he spoke and kept his voice level. “He already followed that road with her before he came south to you.”

Verity shook her head once, as though she needed a moment in which to set the years in order. “You spoke with her?”

“For most of the day. Ezra was there.”

“And she is telling the truth?”

“She is. She gave me her marriage line from Edinburgh and swore a statement before a magistrate. She wanted you to have them.”

He held out the papers. Verity took them, turning first to the marriage record. Rafe watched her find Roland’s name, then Arabella’s, and trace the date with her eyes. The sheet trembled. She steadied it against her palm.

“Did she know about me?” Verity asked.

“She knew he had gone away again. She heard of his return to Yorkshire and wrote to him. She did not know what he had told you when he married you.”

Verity lowered the marriage line. “Why would she help a woman she has never met?”

“Because she knows what he did to you.”

Arabella made Rafe sit while she fetched the record, though he had been ready to ride straight back to Edgeworth. He remembered her worn cuffs and the careful way she placed the document on the table, smoothing it flat with both hands. She asked whether Verity was safe in Roland’s house. When Rafe said he feared she was not, Arabella sent for the magistrate herself.

“She said he had taken enough from both of you,” Rafe told Verity.

Verity looked down at the marriage line again. “What does this mean?”

“If Arabella was his wife when he took you to the altar, he could not marry you. Henshaw must put the proof before the proper people, but your marriage to Roland was void from the first day.”

For a breath, she did not move. He had gone to York hoping to find a way to free her. Now that he had brought it back, he heard how little one sentence could contain. Verity answered to Roland’s name for years. She had been made to pay his debts and bear the county’s judgment as his wife. Only that morning she had been locked in her own room because he claimed a husband’s right to decide what was best for her.

“He cannot send you away as his wife,” Rafe assured her. “He has no such claim over you. He never did.”

Verity’s fingers closed around the papers. Her eyes remained on the date.

“Never,” she repeated.

Rafe waited. He wanted to take the marriage line from her before she crushed it, to put his arms around her, to ask what she needed. He learned enough of her to know that he should give her a moment to find it herself.

She crossed to the writing table and set down the papers. Beside them lay the portrait Roland had torn, its pieces fitted together beneath a clean sheet of paper. She had been working on it. A narrow tear still ran through the drawn face.