Page 18 of The Earl She Once Saved

“As though somebody’s told you no and you’re deciding whether they meant it.”

Rafe felt something shift in his memory. He remembered sunlight, hay piled gold in a field, and a boy with mud on his boots who had been repeatedly ordered away from the men because the work was dangerous.

Hartley’s smile deepened. “You used to follow us.”

Rafe went still.

“The haymakers,” Hartley whispered. “Up from the low field. Couldn’t have been more than ten.”

Rafe had forgotten … or he believed he had. His father hated finding him there. Workmen were not companions for a Thornlow boy. He had been told so often enough.

Hartley’s gaze wandered briefly toward the ceiling, then returned.

“Always asking questions: What’s that for, why d’you cut there, why not there?”

The effort of speech caught at him. Verity reached for the water beside the bed. She lifted the cup carefully to his mouth. Hartley drank a little.

When he settled back, his eyes remained upon Rafe. “You remember that dog?”

Rafe did, suddenly. It was the image of a brown sheepdog lying beneath a hedge, with one forepaw swollen grotesquely after being caught in a trap.

“You carried him,” Hartley spoke.

Rafe said nothing.

“Two miles, near enough. Wouldn’t leave him.”

“He was hurt,” Rafe explained.

“Aye.”

The old man looked amused by the answer. “Your father was furious.”

That Rafe remembered, too. He had ruined a coat. He had been late to dinner. And he smelled strongly of wet dog.

Hartley looked toward Verity.

“The younger Thornlow,” he murmured. “The kind one.”

Silence followed. Rafe felt Verity go still beside him. Her expression did not alter, but he had already become too aware of her silences. This one possessed a shape. He could almost feel the movement of thought behind it, something being taken up, turned and examined again.

Rafe looked at her. She was watching Hartley, but the set of her mouth had changed.

He ought not to have cared. He did.

Hartley’s attention wandered from him a moment later with the complete absence of ceremony permitted only to the very old and the very ill.

He looked to Verity. “Lady Edgeworth.”

She moved closer immediately. “Yes.”

His hand shifted over the blanket. Verity understood before he spoke. She took it. The change in her was so immediate that Rafe forgot everything else. Her fingers closed carefully around Hartley’s. All the sharpness went out of her face, and in its place was gentleness without defense.

Hartley swallowed. “My Mary.”

Verity leaned nearer. “Yes.”

“And Jenny.”