“Such intimacies are now at an end,” Kendall said, steel in his voice. “You will cease all association with Lady Allegra. She is none of your affair.”
The duke dismissed Ethan with a jerk of his chin.
Kendall must have said something similar to his sister, because Allie closeted herself with Lady Whipple all afternoon, scarcely meeting Ethan’s eyes as they passed in the inn’s hallway.
For his part, Ethan retired to the public dining room to lighten both his misery and his purse with some honest Scottish whisky.
Of course, he willingly adjusted that plan once the locals recognized who was in their midst. After all, why pay for his own whisky when admirers would happily supply it?
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. Enthusiastic sailors and workmen alike plied Ethan with pints of ale and glasses of amber whisky. The alcohol soothed the jagged edge of Ethan’s heartache and blanketed his senses in a numbing fuzziness.
The night was far gone by the time he staggered up the narrow staircase to his room, the walls appearing just as wobbly as his feet and thinking.
Had it only been half a day since he had last seen Allie? Had he ever missed anyone so deeply? Leah and wee Jack? Malcolm and his growing brood?
Ethan rather thought not.
How was he to endure a lifetime of missing Allie?
As if attending to his thoughts, his unsteady feet paused outside her door. On a sigh, he leaned his forehead against it.
This would likely be as close as he would get to hisladra, going forward. She truly was a thief. He feared she had stolen his heart and wrapped it in her wee palm.
Or . . . was it currently in her bedchamber? Wheredidthieves hide hearts?
Frowning, he tried to coax his alcohol-sogged brain into providing an answer.
He may also have hit his head against her door a time or three in order to help matters along.
The door abruptly opened, pitching Ethan forward. Panicking, he arched his spine, arms windmilling in an attempt to find his balance. He stumbled backward, only stopping when his shoulder blades bumped against the corridor wall opposite her door.
Lifting his head, he stared as Allie stepped out of her room, wrapped in a dressing gown, hair hanging in a thick dark plait over her shoulder. The soft light from the oil lamps in the hallway burnished her skin to gold and turned her lips into plump, kissable pillows.
The sight obliterated what remained of his brain’s ability to operate.
Ethan merely gaped at her, unblinking.
“Careful, Poet,” she said on a whisper, head swiveling to look up and down the corridor. “You might wake an acolyte or two with your racket. Or worse, my angry ducal brother. And given your current condition, I don’t think you could fend any of them off.”
“No,” he said, voice low and thick with Scotland. “I dinnae think I could either.” He leaned forward, causing his feet to stumble. “I fear I am a wee bittyfou.”
“Is that so?” she asked dryly.
She folded her arms across her bosom, forcing Ethan to note yet again what a magnificent bosom it was. Unfortunately, he was rather slow to lift his gaze.
“Allie,” he said, dragging his eyes back to hers, “ye render meglaikit.”
“Glaikit?”
“Idiotic.Stupido.”
“Ah.” A faint grin played at her lips. “I thought it was the alcohol that did that.”
“Aye.” Ethan attempted to nod and ended up resting his too-heavy head against the corridor wall with a thud. “That, too.”
He looked at her, memorizing the pearl texture of the skin just above her collarbone and the hitch in her breath at their closeness in the tight hallway.
Again, he was too slow to raise his gaze back to hers.
