Page 71 of The Earl She Once Saved

His face tightened with pain. Then the fevered voice changed. The command left it. Something quieter took its place, something meant for no one else to hear.

“I looked for you,” he whispered.

Verity went still. His fingers closed around hers.

“I swear I did.”

Chapter 12

Rafe was in the trench again.

Mud dragged at his boots. Rain filled the bottom in dark, shining pools, and the smoke hung so low that every breath tasted of powder and blood.

Someone was screaming. He could not see who. He moved toward the sound, but the ground would not release him. Each step sank deeper. Bodies lay where men had fallen, their red coats turned black beneath the rain. Some had faces he remembered. Others had none.

“Hold the line!”

The order came from somewhere beyond the smoke. Rafe reached for the wall of the trench. His fingers closed upon wet earth. It broke beneath his hand.

A cannon sounded. The world became fire. For one instant, everything shone with terrible clarity: splintered timber, torn cloth, a young soldier staring at the place where his arm had been. Then, darkness returned.

“Get them out,” Rafe tried to say.

Smoke entered his mouth. He could not breathe. Men called to him from beneath the mud. Hands caught at his coat, his wrists, his boots.

Captain … help me … don’t leave me …

Rafe pulled at them. There were too many. He knew what came next. He had lived it every night for years. The trench would collapse. The fire would find the powder. He would wake with the dead still calling after him.

But this time, there was a light inside the smoke. It was small at first.

Gold.

It moved toward him. A woman stepped through the wreckage. Her dress was pale beneath the soot. Her dark hair had come loose, and the light moved behind her until he could not see where it ended and she began.

Verity.

She walked through the mud without sinking.

“No,” he tried to tell her. “You can’t be here.”

She came closer. The dead did not touch her. Smoke divided around her body. She stepped over the shattered timber and reached for him. Her hand was bare. Rafe stared at it.

“Come,” she whispered.

Her voice came from far above him, clear through the guns and screaming. He could not move.

“You must come back.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Her fingers closed around his. Warmth moved through his hand. The mud released him. Verity drew him upward. The trench walls fell away, the smoke thinned, and somewhere beyond it, there was clean air.

Rafe held on. The light became too bright to bear.

He opened his eyes. Candlelight trembled above him.