Page 69 of The Earl She Once Saved

Her voice broke. She buried her face against him. Sergeant trembled in her arms, but he was alive. He was here. The solid weight of him pressed against her chest.

Safe.

Behind her, someone closed the door. Win called for towels. Ezra said something Verity did not hear. She ran her hands over Sergeant’s legs and ribs.

“Is he hurt?”

“No.” Rafe’s voice came from above her, rough with cold.

“I found him beneath a fallen tree beyond the lower wood. He was trapped by branches, but none had struck him.”

Verity shut her eyes. “Thank you.”

The words were too small for the relief she felt.

She rose. The movement brought her close to Rafe. Water ran from the edge of his coat and gathered upon the floor. His lips had lost their color. Without thinking, Verity put her hand upon his arm. The sleeve was heavy with rain. Beneath it, he was warm, but not warm enough.

“You are freezing.”

“I have been warmer.”

“You will make yourself ill, going out in such weather.”

The tenderness escaped before she could stop it. Rafe looked down at her hand. Verity should have taken it away. She did not. His gaze lifted slowly to her face.

“I begin to think you would mind if something happened to me after all.”

The words were light. His eyes were not.

Verity’s breath caught. He stood dripping upon the hall floor, exhausted and mud-streaked, and still there was something in the way he looked at her that made the room fall away.

Her fingers tightened slightly upon his arm. Warmth moved through the wet wool into her palm. Someone cleared her throat.

Win.

Across the hall, Ezra developed a profound interest in the pattern of the carpet.

The world returned. Verity withdrew her hand.

“You require dry clothes,” she told him. “And something hot.”

Rafe’s mouth moved. “Is that an order?”

“It is common sense.”

“Then I shall try not to resist it.”

He continued looking at her. Verity stepped away. The warmth of him remained in her palm. She curled her fingers against it, as though she might hide the sensation from everyone in the room.

Rafe glanced once toward her closed hand. From the look he gave her before he went upstairs, she knew she had hidden nothing.

***

Her warning proved truer than she wished.

Rafe did not come down the following morning. By noon, Ezra admitted that he had developed a cough. By afternoon, the physician had been sent for. Near dusk, Win found Verity in the estate room.

“The Earl is feverish.”