Page 3 of The Earl She Once Saved

Nothing.

For six years men had searched for Roland Thornlow … her husband. They had searched English ports, Continental banks, shipping offices, prisons, hospitals, and graves. They had followed rumors into Spain, Portugal, France, and once as far as New York, where a gentleman answering Roland’s description proved to be a Welsh merchant with a fondness for expensive coats and other men’s wives, just like Roland himself.

Each trail had ended in the same place: nowhere.

Verity set down her pen. The law preferred certainty. It required a living husband or a dead one, a wife or a widow, a title properly occupied or properly inherited. It had little use for women abandoned between definitions.

Roland’s name remained fastened to hers, though the man himself had vanished. She could not mourn him, because he might be living. She could not be free of him even if he were dead, as she needed proof. She was permitted neither the dignity of grief nor the hope of beginning again.

She was Lady Edgeworth when creditors wanted payment, Roland’s deserted wife when society wanted entertainment, and nothing at all whenever the law was asked what future belonged to her.

“Then we remain as we were,” she sighed.

Mr. Henshaw’s expression softened. She disliked him for it, though the fault was not his.

“I am sorry.”

“So are many people. It has yet to prove useful.”

“Verity,” Aunt Cordelia murmured.

Mr. Henshaw looked down at his closed case. “There is another matter.”

She frowned.

“The war is concluded,” he continued. “Officers are returning. Estates long neglected by younger sons and distant relations are being taken up again.”

Verity waited.

“Colonel Rafe Thornlow is expected in England, if he has not landed already.”

The Thornlow name entered the room like cold air beneath a door. Aunt Cordelia’s embroidery fell into her lap.

“Roland’s brother?” Aunt Cordelia whispered.

“Yes.”

Verity knew very little of him. He was the younger son, an officer. His name was occasionally printed in dispatches and spoken with approval by men who considered war the noblest occupation available to someone else’s child. She had never met him, as he was unable to attend the wedding, due to his military obligations.

“He is the presumptive heir,” Mr. Henshaw reminded her carefully. “While Lord Edgeworth’s fate remains uncertain, Colonel Thornlow cannot inherit the title. But he may reasonably claim an interest in the management of the estate. Indeed, given the circumstances—”

“He may reasonably claim everything,” Verity finished.

“Not everything.”

“Only the land, the house, the income and the right to decide whether I remain in any of them.”

Mr. Henshaw did not answer.

Roland had also possessed an admirable name, an easy smile, and the ability to make selfishness appear adventurous. He had worn charm as another man wore a well-cut coat: habitually, becomingly, and to conceal what lay beneath.

He had taken her mother’s fortune and poured it into an overseas venture so fraudulent that even its prospectus had lied about the country in which it operated. When it collapsed, creditors had descended upon Edgeworth with writs, demands, and voices raised in rooms where servants could hear.

Roland had departed before dawn. Verity had remained.

She sold horses, jewels, plates, and timber. She dismissed men who had served Edgeworth longer than she had lived and gone without fires in half the house so that laborers might receive their wages. She learned rents, drainage, seed prices, wool contracts, leases, roofs, births, funerals, harvests, and precisely how much pride could be swallowed before it poisoned a person.

Now another Thornlow would return because the fighting had ceased and he would find Edgeworth still standing. He would see the repaired roofs, the cleared accounts, the full granaries and tenants who no longer hid when a carriage came up the drive.