Page 4 of The Earl She Once Saved

He would call it his.

“I shall write when I know more,” Mr. Henshaw said.

“Do.”

He rose and bowed. Verity did not stand.

The door had scarcely closed behind him when Aunt Cordelia spoke. “What shall become of us?”

Verity looked at the rain trembling upon the windows. “Nothing has happened yet.”

“But if Colonel Thornlow comes, if he insists upon taking possession, where are we to go? What are we to live upon? You have put everything into this place.”

Verity rose. “Which is why I have no intention of surrendering it.”

“But the law—”

“Has done remarkably little for me thus far. I see no reason to begin fearing its industry now.”

She left before Cordelia could answer. Win waited in the passage. She did not ask what the solicitor had said. She did not offer comfort, inquire after the future, or insist that matters might prove better than Verity expected.

She looked once at Verity’s face and turned toward the cloakroom.

“There is a wind up,” she told her.

It was the only thing worth saying. She returned with Verity’s dark wool shawl and settled it around her shoulders, drawing the ends together with firm, capable hands. For one brief moment those hands remained there.

Win’s eyes met hers. As always, there was no pity in them and no reassurance, only understanding. Something in Verity’s chest loosened sufficiently to permit breath.

“Thank you.”

“Sergeant is by the side door.”

“Of course he is.”

“He has been waiting since Mr. Henshaw arrived.”

Verity smiled. “He possesses a low opinion of solicitors.”

“He possesses a low opinion of mankind,” Win corrected amusedly.

“A sound judge of character.”

Outside, the wind caught Verity at once. It moved cold over the lawns, smelling of damp bark, rainwater, and the dark soil newly opened in the kitchen gardens. Clouds traveled low above Edgeworth, their shadows passing over fields she knew as intimately as the lines of her own hands.

Sergeant walked beside her. The old mastiff’s brindled head came nearly to her hip. His muzzle had silvered, and one ear bore the torn edge of an ancient disagreement, but his step remained deliberate and his distrust of strangers undiminished.

Verity rested her hand upon his broad head.

“Another Thornlow,” she informed him.

Sergeant sighed.

“I agree.”

They reached the turn in the path where the east lawn met the drive when carriage wheels sounded beyond the beeches. Sergeant’s head lifted. A dark traveling carriage emerged between the trees, with mud upon its wheels and a weathered crest upon the door.

The Thornlow crest.