She moved around him to open the door. “What of the tub, won’t they come for that?”
“Tomorrow.” He maneuvered his form to block any view of her from the hallway, and his voice took on an authoritative tone. “Get back inside. Lock the door behind me.”
Whit and Alex often took that tone with her. It had ceased being effective years ago. She rolled her eyes at him.
McAlistair gave her a dark look as he stepped back into the hall. “This isn’t a game, Evie.”
“No, it’s a very bad farce,” she responded, and softly shut the door before he could argue.
Eleven
McAlistair had been gone for ages.
Well, half an hour, anyway.
Much too long, to Evie’s mind. She wandered to the window without any expectation of being able to see through the rain and dark. The yard was black, with only a few dim lights from the inn and the surrounding houses illuminating the perimeter.
If it hadn’t been for the flash of lightning, she would never have seen the solitary figure striding between the inn and the stable, and if that figure hadn’t been glancing at her window at just the right moment, she would never have recognized McAlistair.
Baffled, she leaned forward and peered into the darkness, hoping to catch another glimpse, but he had disappeared into the night.
What the devil was he doing?
They’d only just gotten dry, hadn’t they? Granted, his overcoat had done a better job of shedding the rain than her wool cloak, but he had still been soaked down to his waistcoat. And with his overcoat still damp, he was likely now to be soaked down to the bone.
He’d catch his death. If he wasn’t struck by lightning first or felled by a falling tree branch or hit with flying debris from the crumbling inn or—
She was more than a little tempted to push the window open and call out to him—or, to be more accurate, in the general direction of where she’d last seen him—but she could well imagine what his reaction to that might be.
Well, no, she realized, she hadn’t the faintest clue what his reaction might be. In fact, under other circumstances, she rather thought it might be worth drenching her head just to find out. But she intended to confront him over this nonsense when he returned, and it was only wise to begin that confrontation with her own behavior safely beyond reproach.
She resigned herself to scowling through the glass and waiting for his return. A return that seemed to take an inordinate amount of time. Frustrated, she looked for ways to occupy herself. She stoked the fire, brushed out her damp and dusty gown, and cleaned her teeth. She paced the space between the table and the window until her stiff muscles complained, then sat on the edge of the bed to glare at the door. And when fatigue made the soft mattress beneath her all too tempting, she rose and paced again. Was the man taking a bloody tour of the entire town?
She stopped to peer out the window for the dozenth time in the last ten minutes, and saw nothing in the flashes of lightning that punctuated the dark, nothing but an empty yard. McAlistair was nowhere to be seen.
She was nearly fuming, and even closer to throwing on her disgusting cape and heading out to search for him—she had a very nasty image of McAlistair trapped somewhere, neck deep in rising water—when he let himself into the room with a soft click of his key.
She opened her mouth, prepared to confront him, but snapped it shut when she saw the frighteningly intense expression on his face. With barely a glance at her, he closed and locked the door and strode straight past her to the window. He yanked the drapes shut.
“Don’t stand in front of the window,” he snapped.
“I…you’re annoyed with me?”
“I want you to stay away from the window. I saw you from the yard—”
“Yes, and I saw you,” she cut in, finding her footing again. “What the devil were you thinking, strolling about in a storm?”
The hard lines of anger drained from his face, and his mouth hooked up in a half smile. “I don’t stroll.”
She glared at him.
He shrugged out of his overcoat. “I was making a search of the grounds.”
“And did you find anything? Besides great oceans of mud?”
He tossed his coat in front of the fire. “No.”
“No,” she repeated. “And do you know why you found nothing?”
He stripped off his waistcoat, revealing a mostly dry shirt. “Either he doesn’t know where we are or he’s holed up in the weather.”
She didn’t bother asking who “he” was; instead she threw up her hands in disgust. “For pity’s sake, there is no conspiracy against my life. You found nothing, because there is nothing to find.”