“Yes,” she nodded.
Ethan’s uncle pulled out his pocket watch, checking the time. “If we hurry, do you ken we could convince the local sheriff to marry you afore nightfall? I would hate for Kendall to change his mind.”
Allie looked at Ethan in astonishment and then burst into laughter.
“I don’t think that Kendall will change his mind, Mr. Leith,” Allie reassured him. “I won’t permit it. Though he might disown me if he is denied the chance to walk me down the aisle.”
Uncle Leith looked between them, head swiveling back and forth once more. Ethan nearly laughed at his uncle’s look of astonishment.
“And the . . . shipping contract?” Uncle Leith asked rather weakly.
Ethan shrugged. “We’ll have to put the matter to Kendall.”
“I will certainly encourage him to keep business in the family,” Allie said, smoothing a hand down Ethan’s chest.
“Family,” he laughed, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I adore the sound of that.”
“Me, too,amore mio,” she whispered in return.
Epilogue
Venice, Italy
One year later
Allie stretched her arms overhead, admiring how her gold wedding band caught the window’s light.
“Preening, Mrs. Penn-Leith?” Ethan asked lazily, rolling onto his elbow beside her in the bed.
The voice of a gondolier and the calls of seagulls drifted in through the open window of their bedchamber. The salt sea air of the Lagoon of Venice wafted in behind and ruffled the lace curtains.
“Always. I shall never tire of any reminder that I am your wife,” she said.
Just as she would never tire of this view of him poised above her—the muscles in his bare shoulders bunching and flexing, her own radiant happiness reflected in the pupils of his green eyes.
Ethan’s grin turned wicked.
Allie ran her right hand through the thatch of his hair, fingernails grazing his scalp. His gaze went hooded.
She adored The Swooner. But this smile? The one that spoke of nights curled around one another in their marital bed? The one he saved for her alone?
Thissmile was her favorite.
But then, everything about the past ten months of marriage to Ethan Penn-Leith had been blissful.
They had married in early September in a ridiculously grand wedding ceremony at St. George’s in Hanover Square. The church had been packed to the rafters with thehoi polloiof London.
Allie had worn a lavish white pearl-and-lace crusted dress that Tristan had ordered from Paris because he said, “You must put every other bride of the Season to shame.” Her brother’s arm had trembled under Allie’s fingertips as he walked her down the aisle to a waiting Ethan, devastatingly handsome in a great kilt woven in the red and gold Leith family tartan.
Allie’s twin had become more open with her after his injury. That wasn’t to say Tristan had reformed himself entirely. He still barked orders, grew insufferable when his aims were thwarted, and climbed the political ladder like a man obsessed.
But with her, his demeanor had decidedly softened. And true to his word, Tristan had granted Allie the entirety of the Salzi Mine as her dowry.
Uncle Leith had been ecstatic. The shipping contract had been easy for Allie herself to award to him. They had signed the documents over glasses of champagne.
Once Tristan had accepted the inevitability of Ethan as a brother-in-law, the duke had thrown his support behind the couple. After all, if the mighty Duke of Kendall saw no problem with his only sister marrying a low-born Scottish poet, then no one else could either. Her twin had even spoken of it in his last letter to her:
It appears that having Ethan Penn-Leith as my brother-in-law is not quite as deleterious as I had anticipated. Her Majesty, in particular, appears enamored of your match. She has asked me to dine next week. I hope to woo her into considering a cabinet position for myself. Though I fear she will spend the entire dinner speaking of Ethan and trying to decide if she will knight him when you finally return to England. Try not to gloat, will you?
