“Ah! The kind tae sell you out for a farthing,” Ethan continued, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Oh, he already has.” She gave a mirthless snort, gray eyes snapping in the candlelight.
“Pardon?” Ethan’s neck prickled with alarm.
“Do you not know?” Her head canted to the right. “My beloved brother paid Fabrizio to have me drugged and delivered to his hired henchmen—thugs who promptly transported me back to England. I never even properly learned the men’s names. They trussed me up and stood guard day and night until finally passing me along like a postal parcel to Kendall at Hawthorn. All I lacked was a wrapping of brown paper and jute twine.” She narrated the events casually, as if recounting the weather.
Ethan’s brows drew down, his breath tight in his lungs.
“You look appalled,” she continued.
“Iamappalled. I didn’t know ye had been forced back tae England in such a barbaric fashion.”
“Yes, well, from Kendall’s point of view, it was necessary. If he wishes to become Prime Minister, he cannot have me rabble-rousing across the Continent. And if I am in England, then he can use me as a pawn in his ruthless quest to consolidate power.”
“Through marriage?”
“Sì.” She nearly spat the syllable, as if marriage were a bitter gooseberry on her tongue. “Such has always been the way of the Dukes of Kendall—marry off their womenfolk, willingly or not, for political gain.”
Ethan waited for her to expound upon the topic.
She said nothing more.
“Did your father attempt to arrange a marriage for ye?” he finally asked.
She sipped her port, looking into the fire. “What do you think?”
Ah.
So the old Duke of Kendallhadattempted to bend her to his will.
“I would hear the story, if you would tell it.” Ethan longed to know every last crumb of her history.
“No,” she shook her head decisively. The motion knocked loose a tendril of her dark hair, sending it tumbling over her ear. Ethan’s fingers ached to smooth it back. “I have merely agreed to a tentative friendship with yourself. Only true friends are privy to my history with the former Duke of Kendall. Better luck next time.”
Ethan’s lips quirked at her tone. “Do ye fear your brother will constrain ye tae marry?”
“Of course he will. He is a Duke of Kendall, after all. My groom has already been chosen, have you not heard?” Allie stifled a bitter laugh.
Ethan’s stomach somersaulted into a dive.
His lovelyladrawas already affianced and promised to another? Kendall was entirely the sort to arrange a marriage with or without her consent.
Ethan felt aneejitin every whit.
They often made light of Kendall’s control of her, but that did not remove the very real consequences of that control. The duke hadn’t gone to such machinations—kidnapping his sister from Italy and restricting her movements—to permit her to marry where she wished.
No. Kendall would use her marriage to bolster his own political aims.
“I had not heard. Who is tae be the lucky groom?” Ethan took a sip of his port, but it did nothing to quell the riot of his thoughts. They tumbled and shouted like unruly school children, rendering his rational thinking chaotic.
“Lord Charswood,” she replied, her expression feigning indifference, but the white knuckles of her fingers wrapped around her glass said otherwise. “I have yet to meet him.”
“Ye haven’t met him? So you are notofficiallybetrothed?”
“Not yet, thank heaven. Are you acquainted with Lord Charswood?”
“Charswood?” Ethan had met his lordship once or twice—a gray-haired, wiry man with sharp, blue eyes. But surely that couldn’t be the correct gentleman. “I know the elder Lord Charswood, but I haven’t heard anything of his passing. I assume Kendall wouldn’t expect ye tae marry someone quite so . . .” He trailed off.
