Page 20 of The Earl She Once Saved

Now Rafe walked beside her, and the village seemed to breathe more easily, as though a line crooked for too many years had been made straight merely by the appearance of a man. There were assumptions, and he could not blame them for those.

He wondered whether she herself felt it. A glance at her face answered him. Of course she did. Verity missed very little.

The flooded lane lay ahead. Yesterday’s water had not entirely receded. It ran shallow across the road where the ditch had overflowed, brown and quick over the stones.

Verity stopped. “I can manage.”

Rafe looked at the water. “I have no doubt.”

She gave him a suspicious glance. He offered his arm. For a moment, he thought she might step directly into the flood rather than take it. Pride, apparently, possessed limits. Mud was one.

She put her hand upon his sleeve. Even through the layers of coat and glove he felt it.

Ridiculous.

They stepped into the water. The current rose only above their boots, but the stones beneath were slick. Halfway across, Verity’s foot slipped. Her grip tightened. Rafe’s other hand caught her elbow.

“I have you.”

“I had myself.”

“Of course.”

Her eyes narrowed. He almost smiled.

A cart approached from the opposite direction. The man walking beside it was a tinker by the look of the pans and kettles hung along the sides, not one of the tenants. He grinned when he saw them navigating the water together.

“Fine pair you make!”

Neither answered. The man tipped his hat.

“Fine couple!”

Rafe felt Verity stiffen against his arm, every muscle. For a single absurd instant, he stopped walking. She did not correct the man. Neither did he.

The tinker passed on, cheerfully ignorant of the small disaster he had left behind. Verity removed her hand from Rafe’s arm the moment they reached dry ground.

“Careful,” he urged.

“I am perfectly steady.”

“I gathered that.”

She looked at him. Something dangerous passed between them, but he was certain it was not anger. He wished it had been, because he could easily respond to that. Everything else was perilous.

Then she turned and walked on. Rafe followed. By the time Edgeworth appeared beyond the trees, the morning brightened. The house stood pale against the clearing sky, with its windows catching the first thin light.

A figure waited before the front steps. Rafe saw only the outline at first, a tall man in a traveling coat, with one hand resting upon a cane. Then, the man shifted his weight and Rafe stopped.

There were faces a man could forget after war, men he had eaten beside, marched beside, even fought beside, worn smooth by years until only fragments remained. There were others he could have known in darkness.

This was one of them.

Chapter 5

The man waiting before the steps smiled before Rafe reached him. The smile changed him.

That was the first thing Verity noticed. The second was that Rafe smiled back, and it was not the small, dry alteration of his mouth she had already learned to recognize. Neither was it politeness, nor amusement restrained because he considered too much of it undignified.