“Does that lie help you sleep at night?”
“No, Lady Allegra, it does not,” her brother snorted, soft and low, before pinning her with his dark eyes. “As I said at the beginning of this conversation, we could be allies, you and I. Bury our hatchets and embrace a more harmonious relationship.”
“Become your docile, obedient handmaiden, you mean? No, thank you,” Allie sneered. “Despite your faint protestations, you are a man like our father, forcing others to grovel and scrape before your egotistical whims. I repeat—find another sacrificial lamb!”
Did Kendall sigh at her words?
Her brother rapped on the carriage roof, signaling to the coachman to finally return them home.
Allie pinched her lips shut and turned to look out at the gaslit streets of Mayfair crawling past her window.
Fabrizio’s note sat heavily in her pocket.
Yet one more man making demands of her.
Yes.
It was past time to be gone from Kendall, to cut all ties with her twin. Sentimentality and a longing for the past had only ever caused her heartache.
4
Ethan passed a restless night.
The image of Lady Allegra’s bonnie face would not leave him be—her gray eyes reflecting the candlelight as she spoke, her nimble fingers easily picking Lord Aberdeen’s lock.
How angry had Kendall been with his sister? Was Ethan’s wee thief in danger? And even if she were, what could he do about it? Scale the walls of Gilbert House in Grosvenor Square and steal Lady Allegra from her bedchamber?
Mmmm. The idea appealed to both his sense of drama and romantic chivalry . . . but he couldn’t afford to make an enemy of Kendall.
His uncle would disown him, for one.
And secondly, Ethan might be the most famous man in London, but Kendall was one of the most powerful.
And Ethan well understood the difference between the minor power he held and the true economic and political authority that Kendall wielded.
Ethan had spent his life navigating that divide.
The knowledge didn’t prevent him from recalling Lady Allegra’s reaction to her brother’s arrival the evening before. How she had morphed into a cornered animal, metaphorically hissing and spitting.
While at Oxford, a friend of Ethan’s had kept a parrot in his rooms. Generally, the bird hopped from person to person and gamely attempted to mimic the words they taught him. But after a holiday break, they would often return to find the parrot plucking out its own feathers and butting its head against the wall.
Ethan had found the bird’s behavior baffling. Why hurt itself?
And yet . . . Lady Allegra reminded him of that parrot—a self-harming creature of exotic beauty. A trapped woman turning her impotent rage inward, injuring herself.
And like his friend’s parrot, Ethan felt helpless before Lady Allegra’s obvious distress.
All he could think to do was continue their conversation from the night before . . . without Kendall or Uncle Leith finding out.
To that aim, Ethan washed and dressed, donning his favorite kilt. Then he slipped down the stairs of his uncle’s Mayfair townhouse, intent on summoning a hansom cab and embarking on some reconnaissance.
Uncle Leith leased this townhouse for the London season. Though ostensibly in Mayfair, it sat on the fringes of fashionable society. The poet in Ethan saw the metaphorical similarity between the house’s location and his uncle’s standing in theton—within sight of greatness but lacking true grandeur of his own.
Ethan nodded to the butler and had just set his hat atop his head when his uncle’s voice reached him.
“I would think twice before leaving today, lad.”
Frowning, Ethan handed his hat back to the butler and walked into the dining room to the right of the wee entry hall.
