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Her shoulders fell at the sound. Clarissa had thoroughly enjoyed Allie’s company the evening before, but she wanted to be alone. To think. To make sense of the impossible situation she found herself in this morn.

“When you did not answer at my knock, I worried something had happened. May I sit with you?”

When she walked around to the front of the bench, Clarissa nearly tumbled off her seat. Allie wore . . . “What are those?”

She hadn’t meant to be rude, but she’d never seen anything like it. On a woman, at least. They looked similar to a boy’s breeches, and her shirt . . . “You look—”

“Like a peasant boy?” Allie said with a smirk, sitting down beside her. “I’ve been told as much, but I rather like to think of this as my training outfit.”

Training? Ah, yes. Aidan had mentioned he used to train Allie with the longsword. He said she was quite good, in fact. The idea was utterly unimaginable, and when she tried to conjure an image of her father ever agreeing to such a thing, she could not do so.

“I was headed to the training yard but decided to find you instead. In the event . . .”

She didn’t finish her thought.

“In the event?”

Allie sighed, her slim shoulders heaving up and down, and blurted, “You are not coming back with us today . . . are you?”

“How did you know?”

“Please do not take offense, but your eyes are incredibly expressive.”

She looked down to hide those expressive eyes. “I’ve not yet spoken to Aidan.”

“I saw him on my way here.”

“You did?” Her head tipped back up on its own volition.

“Aye, leaving the chapel. Which is most unusual for him. But then, he has been acting most unusual since you’ve come into his life.” She paused. “Again.”

So she knew of their history. From the fond and familiar way Aidan spoke of Allie, Clarissa was not surprised.

They sat in silence, the garden becoming brighter and brighter. Though Highgate had no doubt come to life by now, this area was secluded and pleasant, and the only sound was a distant conversation between birds.

“When I first came to Highgate,” Allie finally said, “Aidan welcomed me as if I were already family. Much to my father’s umbrage, my intended had died by then, taking his coin with him.”

Clarissa knew the story. There were many similarities between the late Earl of Covington and Lord Stanley. Both men, advanced in years, had wished to beget a son with a new wife. Both had used the promise of coin, or land, to meet those ends.

“And your mother?” she asked. She’d often wondered how her own mother would have felt about her betrothal.

“Accedes to my father in all things.”

“Even a betrothal to the Earl of Covington?”

“Especially that. We needed the coin desperately. Without him, we would have lost Lyndwood.”

Aidan had not told her that. Such stakes would certainly weigh heavily on a lord.

Allie held her gaze for a long moment before speaking again. “I admire you,” she finally said.

“Admire me? Why?” she asked, embarrassed by her own vanity for asking.

“When Gillian married Graeme and my father offered my hand to Covington as a replacement, it was the very last thing I wished to do, but I agreed. I didn’t consider the ways I might avoid it.”

“Could you have come here, to live with your sister, instead?”

After all, running away to Scotland had seemed like a good plan to her. Could Allie have done the same, or was her father as tenacious and unwavering as Clarissa’s?