All Scot and Bothered

by Kerrigan Byrne

  His nose was more patrician than barbaric, she noted. A great Caesarean nose from which to look down upon the rest of the people he considered beneath him.

  But his lips.

  Cecelia’s gaze snagged there with a desperate fascination. A man would have to be chiseled with ferocity to own such a luscious mouth without seeming feminine.

  They were lips made for sin, for wickedness.

  Hadn’t the devil once been an angel? Perhaps she’d been wrong to attach that moniker to Redmayne. It didn’t stretch the imagination to picture Ramsay as the Star of the Morning. A favored son of golden hair and skin.

  God’s own heir.

  Ramsay’s evening suit and white tie were impeccable. Expensive. His hair, cut to fashion, gleamed like precious metal in the light from the sconces.

  But as always, his features betrayed his lack of nobility.

  His Scots accent wasn’t that of an aristocrat. His brogue brought to mind a rather savage, sky-clad people with the same pagan brute strength and superfluous muscle he hid beneath his impeccably tailored jacket.

  In fact, Cecelia could find nothing gentle about him. Not the shards of ice that passed for pupils. Even the way he stood projected unaffected arrogance. As though he’d learned well and early that life was naught but a contest for dominance, and he expected everyone in his vicinity to play by the rules. His rules. Because he wrote the laws and enforced them with an iron fist.

  How terrible it must be to stand beneath his bench in shackles searching his face for traces of mercy.

  This man quite obviously didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  As Francesca would sometimes say … she was buggered.

  Cecelia looked down at the cream carpets, praying for the first time in years.

  Dear Lord, or … the other one. If either of you could simply open up a hole in the floor large enough to swallow me entirely, I’d be much obliged. I care not at this moment where it takes me. I’d rather burn in eternal hellfire than spend another minute pinned beneath the gaze of—

  Francesca’s sharp elbow interrupted her prayer, such as it was, and she looked up to notice that all the eyes in the room, not just Ramsay’s, were directed at her.

  Apparently, she’d been addressed. But by whom? And what did they say?

  “P-pardon?” she asked, pushing her spectacles back onto the bridge of her nose where they belonged.

  “Poor thing,” Alexandra crooned with a meaningful look. “She’s been complaining of an awful headache,” she explained to the room at large. “Perhaps you might go home and get some rest.”

  Cecelia nodded woodenly. “Thank you. I believe I shall.”

  Redmayne’s forehead crimped with a filial concern. “I’ll have Cheever call for the coach, Miss Teague.”

  “No thank you, Your Grace, I’ll take a hansom back to—”

  “Ye’ll take my carriage.” Ramsay’s words were less an offer than an order. “It’s waiting down a side street through the back garden. I’ll accompany ye to my footman.”

  “I’m quite capable of finding my own way through a garden.” Cecelia glanced at him more sharply than she’d intended. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Ramsay’s eyes dropped from her features with something that might have looked like indignation on a less brutal face. He knew she wanted nothing to do with his company.

  “I’ll take her home.” Francesca stepped forward. “We can dine another evening.”

  “But we’ve made your favorite, Lady Francesca,” Redmayne interjected. “And besides, it’s a rare night my brother offers his company, let alone his chivalry.” The duke turned to Cecelia with a disconcerting smile. “You’d be sorry to miss such an infrequent occurrence.”

  Cecelia felt the blood drain from her face as her gaze collided with Ramsay’s. Her limbs went cold, numb, then flushed with tingling heat. The room spun slightly, bending as if she were on a ship rather than in one of the grandest homes in the West End.

  “Ye are pale, lass, and a bit unsteady.” His low Scots brogue rumbled like distant thunder over the Hebrides. “The least I can do is make certain ye’re conducted safely.”

  Conducted where? Prison?

  She put a hand out, whether to steady herself or to stop him from coming closer, she hadn’t decided yet. “Really, I’m—”

  He enfolded the hand in his and nudged her closer, tucking her arm against his biceps. “Besides, I’d have a private word with ye. It willna take long.”

  A private word, with the Vicar of Vice …

  Could she do this? Could she possibly avoid his scrutiny long enough to make it through the back gardens unexposed? If he should look too closely, might he see that she was the woman behind the mask, the makeup, the wig, the accent, and the cloak?

  Surely her disguise hadn’t been that impenetrable.

  Somehow, her feet were moving. She cast a desperate glance to her friends in time to see Alexandra and Redmayne holding some silent conversation with their eyes. Francesca looked about to say something when Cecelia shook her head.

  If he’d already guessed her identity, it was too late. And if he hadn’t guessed now, he was unlikely to in the dark.

  But to refuse would be suspiciously rude.

  Ramsay held open the door for her. She barely heard her friend’s worried well wishes, for all she noted was his gaze like a branding iron as he followed her into the night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ramsay awaited a verbal assault as he led the apprehensive Miss Teague into the ducal gardens of Redmayne Place. To his surprise, he was met with none.

  She walked beside him, her arm tense within his, her back straight as a mooring post as she stared at the flowers with undue resolution.

  She didn’t want him to look at her, which was deucedly irritating, because he yearned to do exactly that, survey every inch of her in the moonlight.

  He should have used the quiet to contemplate just what exactly he’d done by inviting her out here.

  And why the devil he’d done it.

  Instead, he couldn’t help but appreciate that he didn’t have to work so hard to adjust his stride to fit hers. She was uncommonly, almost indecently, tall for a woman.

  Her legs must go on for eternity.

  He firmly squelched the thought, doing his best to appreciate the lobelia, hollyhocks, and calendulas as they passed.

  London’s relentless lights reflected off lazy, intermittent clouds. The gold of gas lamps competed with the silver of the full moon, and the uncommonly warm evening had coaxed the blossoms to bare themselves with shameless abandon.

  In Scotland, a night such as this one, laden with heady perfume and spiced with enchanting expectancy, would belong to the Fae.

  Ramsay told himself he didn’t miss home, that this hollow longing was for something else. For justice. For redemption.

  For serenity.

  A serenity that hovered over the evening, threatening to spill over them if they’d only let it.

  A silent breeze toyed with one of Miss Teague’s copper ringlets, tossing it against her cheek. His hand itched to brush it away as she lifted her head toward the kiss of air, her face a mask of appreciation.

  The world was so cold, and that chill had become a part of his own body’s fabric. Like eternal winter. Or a lonely Highland moor in January.

  Except where their arms linked, her warmth lingered and threatened to spread.

  Her scent, a mixture like spun sugar and summer berries mingled with the fragrance of the gardens, inundated his olfactory senses with a gluttony of delicious aromas. The rhythmic clip and crunch of their steps on the stones hypnotized him, draining some of his tension with a percussive sort of magic.

  “You’re rather silent.” Her gentle remark conveyed no censure, only uncertainty. “For a man who wanted a private word.”

  Silence, Ramsay had discovered, could be as loud as a brass section in a symphony. He’d learned to conduct silence like a maestro. It made people uncomfortable, of
ten driving them to reveal too much about themselves to fill the void.

  But not Cecelia Teague. She’d remarked upon the quietude, drawing both their focuses to his weapon of choice.

  A weapon he hadn’t meant to deploy against her.

  It was merely that her nearness effectively emptied his mind of the weight of his responsibilities and the frustrations of the day. And the lift of that burden was rather miraculous.

  “Forgive me,” he started.

  “Not at all,” she said carefully, still not looking away from the flowers at her side. “There’s no need for conversation between us.”

  “Nay.” He paused, turning to face her, their arms sliding away from each other’s. He missed the warmth immediately. “Nay, Miss Teague, I’m addressing my behavior toward ye and the Count Armediano during our last interaction at Castle Redmayne. I’m not usually so…” He groped for a word.

  “Domineering?” she supplied, her dimple deepening as she threw him a cheeky glance before it darted away. “Overbearing, impolite, officious—”

  “Aye.” He held up his hand in a gesture of surrender. “Aye, take yer pick. I was all of that and more.”

  His admission seemed to startle her. “No harm done,” she finally said. After lifting a shoulder, she turned back toward the path, drifting away in a graceful glide, her skirts flowing as though her feet never touched the ground.

  He fell into step with her easily, wondering if she’d truly forgiven him.

  If now was a good time to offer his arm again.

  If she’d take it.

  He locked his hands behind him to stop himself from reaching for her. “In my defense, combat was my initial civil service. I learned to be a warrior and then a commander before I was a lawyer. Domineering is in the job description, ye ken. No matter how much discipline I cultivate as a gentleman, it’s not always easy for a man to temper edges sharpened by violence.”

  “That I believe,” she said with a wryness he couldn’t decipher. “Tell me, did I stumble into the middle of a war with the count I was unaware of?”

  Only over her attentions.

  “Sometimes it feels as though I’m at war with the entire world.” The unintended admission was met by her hesitant pause. “A regrettable by-product of my profession, I’m afraid. I’m forever at odds. Harmony is a luxury I’m rarely afforded.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, her gaze less reproachful than curious. “I imagine you’d find more harmony if you practiced a bit more leniency.”

  A strange word, leniency. One he was certain had never been used in a sentence containing himself. In fact, his ruthlessness had made his career. His life. It’d often been his only weapon. When one had nothing to one’s name but sheer determination, one tended to rely on it with astounding frequency.

  And yet the fact that Miss Teague found him so unyielding rankled.

  Perhaps because he could not find one unattractive quality about her, but she so obviously considered his ruthlessness a flaw.

  “I suspected the count’s intentions toward ye were reprehensible, and I’ll admit that my first instinct was that of a soldier, not a gentleman.” Never in his life had Ramsay explained himself as he did now. He’d never so yearned to be understood. The longing unsettled and distressed him, and yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself from admitting, “I’m rather famously unpossessed of the skill and charm so easily wielded by men such as Count Armediano and my brother.”

  That produced another of her mysterious smiles. “An inconvenient character trait for a man in your position.”

  “Character flaw, ye mean.”

  “Not necessarily.” She regarded him like he was a problem she’d eventually have to solve, neither agreeing with his estimation, nor rushing to assure him of the severity of his self-assessment.

  With no forthcoming placations or condemnations, Ramsay couldn’t be certain what she thought of him. As a man who’d made his fortune examining people under a microscope, tearing apart their lies, and meting out their sentences, he found her peculiar inscrutability disconcerting.

  Why did he even care if she held him in her esteem?

  The answer was simple. Because he wanted her. He … liked her.

  “Are ye ill, Miss Teague?” Her ghostly pallor concerned him, and her fingers trembled slightly on his arm.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Yer headache.”

  “Oh.” Her mouth thinned into a frown as if she’d forgotten her headache existed. “I’ve had a trying day, my lord,” was all she gave by way of explanation. “I’m sure some rest will put me to rights.”

  She walked for a moment in silence, turning his own weapon upon himself.

  Which could be the only fathomable reason why he blurted, “Why are ye not married, Miss Teague?”

  She hesitated. “A woman may not marry if she is not asked.”

  “Ye’ve never been asked?”

  “What about you, my lord?” she quickly volleyed. “I can imagine only few women in this city who wouldn’t leap at the chance to be your wife.”

  “I’ve spent too much of my life dodging the shrapnel of my family’s rather famously disastrous marriages to have any desire to embark on my own.”

  She nodded, though his statement seemed to trouble her. “But don’t you believe there’s someone for everyone?”

  “Quite the contrary,” he scoffed. “I believe there’s no one for anyone. I’m not one to believe in soul mates and kismet, Miss Teague. Marriage is just like anything else of its nature. A legal binding contract between two people.”

  She paused beneath a bower of lilacs, replacing the sky with blooming violet flowers that complemented her gown. “What about love?” she asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you not believe in love?”

  “I suppose I do,” he replied, though he interrupted her relieved sigh by continuing, “I believe love is a construct of people to explain away their biological urges and unreasonable attachments to each other. It’s a word that can explain away otherwise unexplainable behavior.”

  She regarded him ruefully. “Unreasonable attachments? Surely you don’t feel that way about the duke and Alexandra? They’re undeniably in love.”

  “They’re besotted, I won’t deny that, but their attachment is young. Life hasn’t yet had a chance to rip them away from themselves. From each other.”

  She shook her head slowly as though she couldn’t believe him. “I just—don’t understand how you can be so … so … cynical.”

  Ramsay shrugged. “Years of practice, I suppose.”

  To his utter surprise, she laughed.

  And even in the dark, her laughter felt like sunlight on his skin.

  He was disconcerted enough by the sensation not to commit to the threatening smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

  “I’ve found it’s better to be cynical than to be naive,” he asserted. “Safer.”

  Her regard turned wary. “Are you implying I’m naive simply for believing in love? Because I’ll have you know, I’ve seen some of the worst humanity has to offer.”

  “Is that so?” He highly doubted she’d suffered more trials than a broken bootlace. Her smile was much too genuine. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity and mirth, unhaunted and dauntless. Her clothes were expensive, and she ate well enough to keep her body delectably round. He searched her gaze for grief. For shadows. For the pain that makes one cold. Or hard.

  Or in his case, both.

  All he found were sapphires sparkling in moonlight refracted by glass and silver wire. Suddenly, his fingers itched to take off her spectacles. To see if her eyes were truly so deep an azure, and her lashes a fan of such a distracting hue.

  “I’ve seen the worst,” she repeated with absolute conviction. “And I wouldn’t at all consider myself credulous. I’m merely…”

  “Romantic?”

  “Optimistic,” she offered.

  “Idealistic, you mean.”

 
She shook her head. “More … hopeful.”

  He grunted. “Hope. The currency of dreamers.”

  A little frown pinched her brow. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  He fought to maintain his mask of impassivity as a familiar hollow, wintry feeling rose within him. “Dreams die.”

  “Everything dies.” She shrugged her insouciance over that fact, threading her fingers around some lilac blossoms. “But dreams are full of hope, and without hope, my lord, you might as well hang us all on your gallows, for we’ve no reason to be human anymore.”

  It took him longer than he liked to absorb her meaning, and he didn’t have time to process the effect her words had upon him. So he deflected.

  “What is it ye hope for?” he wondered. “A husband?”

  “Lord, no!” This time she laughed long enough to be slightly insulting.

  “But ye believe in love? Someone for everyone and so on, but doona wish it for yerself?”

  “Love and marriage have little to do with each other, I’ve noticed,” she replied. “And I don’t think I shall ever be shackled with a husband, thank Jove. But I fully intend to fall in love.”

  When he didn’t reply, she examined him intently, as though she attempted to read the answers in his bones. “I’m interested to learn the reason you inquired about my marital status at all, my lord,” she challenged. “It’s either a cruel inquiry or a meaningful one.”

  He both admired and was irritated at her direct assertion because … it was both cruel and meaningful.

  “It’s a question ye still havena answered,” he prompted.

  She crossed defensive arms over her breasts, deepening the cleft between them. “My answer might offend.”

  “I promise to remain unoffended,” he vowed, valiantly keeping his gaze from drifting beneath her chin.

  She made a sound of disbelief in the back of her throat before conceding. “For a woman of my means, marriage is inexorably less beneficial in all ways than my life as a spinster.”

  “How so?”

  “My property and my money remain my own. My will and reputation, as well. I am not a part of the aristocracy and so I am able to move more freely about the world. I ask permission from no one, and take nobody’s opinions, emotions, or”—she lifted meaningful eyebrows at him—“judgments into account when I make decisions. I am free, my lord, and have not yet met a man to whom I am inclined to give up that freedom.”