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“I’ve news for you.”
Her smile was so infectious, he found himself smiling back. This was not about his daily rides then, but Allie was undoubtedly up to something.
“You’ve a look about you, lass—”
“A look? Of which sort?”
He folded his arms. “Allie . . . ,” he warned.
The stress of the last days had weighed on him. Aidan was not his playful self, and Allie must have sensed as much.
“I could not chance being overheard in the hall.”
“What is this—”
“The annulment. It is done.”
The look she gave him penetrated before her words did. Assured, confident and thoroughly pleased, Allie waited for his reaction. She could not mean—
“Did you hear me?”
“It would be difficult not to do so with you shouting at me.”
He teased her often about her enthusiastic way of communicating, which was much more ardent than Gillian’s method of delivery. In truth, he was still attempting to decipher her words.
“The annulment? Clarissa’s annulment?”
“Nay, Aidan. The other one that promises to alter the course of your life.”
He simply stared.
“Aye, Lady Clarissa’s annulment! Who do you believe I—”
“How could you know about such a thing?”
He’d seen Clarissa just the day before, and she had not told him anything of the sort.
“Donnon, the sheepherder. You know, the one whose wife was killed by—”
“Aye, I know Donnon well.” Aidan did not even attempt to hide his impatience.
“I was speaking with him earlier, and he heard from Ferguson MacDuff, who had just come from The Wild Boar, that Lord Stanley is already betrothed for the third time, now that his annulment to Lady Clarissa has been finalized. In fact, talk of it is rampant according to—”
“No.”
It could not be. If what Allie said was true and Stanley’s betrothal was already a well-known fact, it meant Clarissa’s father had to know by now. “No . . . not already.”
His stomach felt as hard as a rock, the sensation not nearly as unwelcome as Allie’s news.
“I paid a visit to . . . Aidan, are you ill?”
He had to leave at once. “Do you know what this means?”
Allie smiled. “It means that you can go to her. Of course, you’ve been going to her each day, but now—”
“What did you say?”
No maid had ever looked more innocent.
