How was it that men could hurt women, and they forever went unpunished?
How was it that a man could stand in the middle of the chaos that had become her life and rake her with his claws of ice as though he had the right?
Was it justice? Did this man, this arrogant, dastardly, giant of a man really consider himself the epitome of the word?
Something formed in the pit of her chest. Something dark and heavy. Bleak and hollow. She’d call it fear, but not so cold. Anger but not so hot. Hurt, but not so weak. Perhaps an amalgamation of all these things.
Brewing like a storm of her own.
He made a noise full of hostility. “Ye kiss like a virgin, I’ll give ye that.”
“And you kiss like a man who would know the difference,” she volleyed back. “A man who would turn a virgin into his whore and then blame her for the deed.”
“Never.” His eyes glinted with lightning. “Do not presume to know me. I’m not like the weak-willed men who slink like shadows through this door to pay for hollow fantasies and pretty fallacies whilst ye fleece them for money. Ye doona think I already ken that Henrietta harbored lethal secrets? That someone would want her dead? More and more often I follow the evidence of rank misdeeds right to this doorstep.” He stalked closer now. Loomed impossibly larger. “Ye know more than ye’re letting on, woman. Do ye expect me to believe ye have no idea who would want ye dead?”
“Besides you?”
“I’ve never heard anything so absurd!” He threw his hand up in frustration, and it was everything she could do not to flinch before she realized it was merely a gesture. “Doona test me.”
“Or what?” she challenged, tossing his soiled handkerchief at his feet. “How am I to know you had nothing to do with this? You certainly are single-minded in your hatred of this place. You showed up here rather instantaneously after the blast. Don’t tell me you were just in the neighborhood.”
“I was, in fact.” His expression darkened from surly to downright malevolent. Haunted by a rage too dark to be spoken. “One of the missing girls was found in a garden of an estate not far from here. Katerina Milovic, and I’ll tell ye, the bodies taken from this place would haunt ye less than what was left of her.”
Cecelia’s hand flew to her mouth in a vague attempt to keep a threatening sob from escaping.
The poor child.
She had thought of the girls often since learning of them the day before, fearing that they’d been kept belowground somewhere. Alone. Frightened. Innocent despite what was being done to them.
“Garden?” she whispered. “What—in whose garden was she found?”
“Lord Luther Kenway, the Earl of Devlin.” He watched her expression with alert eyes, no doubt to gauge her reaction. “Does that name mean anything to ye? Is he one of yer customers?”
Cecelia shook her head, more in horror than denial. “I’m telling you once more, I have no idea. It is as much a mystery to me as it is to you where Henrietta’s client ledgers are. All I know is that Genny made new ones for today. There wouldn’t be more than a page, but it’s yours if you want it.”
“Ye doona find it odd, that Katerina was found so close to yer establishment?”
“I don’t know.” She was starting to sound like a parrot. A desperate one. “But I had nothing to do with it.”
“How do ye expect me to believe ye?” he asked. “Henrietta’s fortune had to be built with more than just the revenue from this place. I still think she procured young girls for wealthy men, and I’m not convinced I can take your word regarding your ignorance. Especially since ye’ve proven to have such an aptitude for performance.”
“I would never—”
“I doona want to hear it.” He turned toward the rubble and gazed at it intently. “I’ll comb through every stone, every passage. I’ll continue to dismantle this house until I find what it has to do with those missing girls.”
“I’m telling you, there is nothing to be found here!” She’d reached her limit of baseless accusations, and could take no more. “I’m sorry for these missing girls, more than you know. I will do what I can to help you find them. But on an unrelated note, I have a bevy of women and girls who are also in danger, do you understand? People died today, and so many more were injured. Not only the women who work in my gambling hell, but seamstresses and orphans and cable workers and widows. Every woman in this house is entitled to protection and justice. Every. Woman. Despite your hypocritical personal prejudices on the matter.”
He made a derisive gesture. “Better a hypocrite than a liar.”
“Are they not one and the same?”
He glared down at her, pulling his contemptible superiority about him like a mantle. “Principles are not prejudices, madam, and though I’m not perfect, I endeavor to be. I stand for something.” He thumped his chest with one beat of his fist. “I fight on the side of justice. I am a man of integrity and purpose with an empire to look after. What are ye but the warden in a gilded prison of slags and reprobates? I hope to see the rest of this place reduced to rubble; the very existence of it offends me!”
That’s it. The dam of Cecelia’s long temper broke. “What am I?” This time she advanced upon him. “What am I? I’m a woman of both intellect and compassion. Of morals and mercy, despite what you may think. You want to see something truly offensive? Go back to your lofty manse, Lord Chief Justice, put on your robes and your wig, and then take a good, long look in a mirror. If you’re even capable of doing so from where you’ve taken permanent residence up your own arse.”
His golden skin had previously flushed red with emotion and was now tinged with a bit of purple. Cecelia was grateful that she no longer stood near him, as she might have been immolated in the blast of fury and malice that emanated from him in waves.
To his credit, he said nothing. He did nothing but seethe.
Cecelia opened the door wider, too incensed to be afraid. “In case you were confused, that was an invitation to leave.”
He strode with the contained movements of a man carrying a device that might detonate at any moment. Smooth and slow until he reached her and paused beneath the arched threshold of the garden door.
He leaned into her, and his scent pervaded her senses with an intoxicating effect.
“Listen well, woman.” His voice was both jagged and smooth, like hot wax dripping over shards of glass. “Ye and yer ilk are a cancer on this country, and I’m the surgeon preparing to cut it out. Ye’re such a clever lass? Then ye’re smart enough to fear me. To watch for me. Because I’ve had it with the vice and violence. If ye’re even considering a misstep, know that from now on I’ll be the hot breath down yer neck and the chill from the shadows. The moment I find the whisper of guilt about ye, I’ll lock ye up and throw away the key.”
Cecelia stood still beneath his onslaught, her fists clenched upon the latch of the doorway flushing alternately with fury and fear and … fascination.
He leaned even closer, his breath indeed hot on her ear. “Ye’ll find, Miss Teague, that I’m a man without mercy.”
At that, he strode away, taking his atmosphere of frost with him.
“I knew that already,” Cecelia whispered, trembling as she listened to his measured footsteps fading as the rest of the chaos of the place engulfed her.
“It’s nothing to be proud of.”
CHAPTER NINE
Ramsay dripped with sweat. With blood. And still the insatiable animal rippling through his veins wouldn’t be appeased.
He’d fought anyone in his exclusive fraternal club who would dare stand against him, making the most ridiculous concessions just to entice a man to try. He allowed contenders almost twenty years his junior to take their bare fists to his face while he still wore his gloves. He gave them canes and sticks while he fought barehanded. What did he care? Court was out of session for several weeks more, and he had no reason to heed vanity.
He ached to hit something. Someone. Yearned to feel flesh give way beneath his fists. H
e needed someone to knock some sense into him. To summon the extreme focus that accompanied pain.
All too soon, there was no one left to fight. He’d defeated them all.
Until someone had called upon his brother.
He should thank whoever’d had that idea. Or take him out in the alley to be shot.
The jury was still out.
Redmayne was as close to his physical equal as he could possibly get in this city. Ramsay outweighed his brother by almost a stone, but the duke had built his impressive stature by climbing the tallest mountains in the world, fording the longest rivers, and hacking his way through environs not fit for human inhabitation.
Pound for pound Redmayne was the strongest man he knew, besides himself, and that strength was compounded by the agility of a jaguar.
So, Ramsay decided, he wouldn’t feel guilty for hammering him into the dirt.
He threw a right hook that might have broken a tooth—or a jaw—but Redmayne ducked, following through with an uppercut to the solar plexus that stole his breath.
Ramsay punched the light of victory right out of his brother’s eyes with a lightning-fast left jab.
Redmayne spit a bit of blood onto the ground beneath them and circled to his left, wiping at his lip with the back of his knuckle. His muscles bunched and rebounded as he hopped from foot to foot.
Come to think of it. They should do this more often.
“Marriage is making ye soft, brother,” Ramsay taunted, shaking his arms in front of him to keep them loose, feeling strong and raw and male.
“And age is making you slow,” Redmayne charged. His first blow glanced off Ramsay’s chin and the second one missed altogether as he weaved out of his way and danced to the duke’s side, landing a punishing shot to his ribs.
“Ye were saying?”
Redmayne coughed a bit but recovered admirably. “Who are you fighting, Case? A certain redheaded Rogue? Or are you simply at war with yourself?”
“Donna call me Case in public.” Ramsay lunged, landing a devastating blow to the body and paying for it by taking a hit to his jaw that left a ringing in his ears.
“What public?” Redmayne gestured as he spun away, opening his arms for a brief moment to encircle the empty room.
The hour was late, and the club would likely be closed had he and Redmayne not lingered. The elderly had gone home to bed, and young dandies would have supped and moved on to chase vices and late-night delights.
They’d have to find somewhere other than Henrietta’s now.
“I have no desire to discuss the Scarlet Lady,” Ramsay snarled.
“I never mentioned her name,” Redmayne said, smugness tugging at the corners of his mouth. The expression emphasized the scar on his upper lip, barely concealed by his close-cropped beard.
“Doona condescend to me.” Ramsay lashed out. Missed. Regrouped.
“I’m not condescending, I’m condemning.” Redmayne’s eyes glinted the same wintry blue Ramsay saw in the mirror every day.
The one reminder of the heartless mother they shared.
“What possible reason could a hedonistic git like ye have to condemn me?” Ramsay was so astonished by the ludicrous notion, he dropped his hands and took a well-placed jab to the mouth.
His teeth cut into his lip, and the metallic tang of blood offended him. He spat it onto the ground as Redmayne delivered another scathing blow, this time with words.
“Cecelia Teague was the victim today, and you treated her like the villain.”
There it was. The reason he’d punished himself in this manner. The truth that he’d wanted to pummel out of himself until he could bandage it with righteous wrath.
She haunted him. Nay, she possessed him like a demon that refused to be exorcised. The tracks her tears had made through the grime on her face lanced him every time he closed his eyes. Her words tangled inside his head, creating tornadoes of doubt that threatened to rip through everything he believed to be true.
Why?
Because he wanted her? He wanted her like he’d wanted nothing before. Like a blind man desires to see color, or a starving man craves a meal.
She was a flame dancing in the distance across the cold tundra into which he’d been born, tempting him closer. Calling him to bask in her warmth.
But he knew that if he relented, her flames could prove to be hellfire, consuming everything good about the life he’d built from nothing.
Nay. He was a man of focus and commitment, of sheer will and uncompromising discipline.
Or he was until he caught a whiff of her intoxicating aroma. Until her bright-azure eyes unstitched him and her body beckoned for him to fill his hands with control-melting allure.
He couldn’t afford that. Not now. Not when the bodies of young girls were being shredded and left like so much compost in a path that led straight to her door.
Not when bombs were going off in the middle of his city.
“Ye ken as well as I do that a villain may play the victim.” He circled his brother, looking for a weakness in his guard. “One devious mind can be more dangerous than an advancing brigade. It’s why the Home Office employs spies.”
“She’s not our mother,” Redmayne reminded him drolly.
“She could be a thousand times worse.”
“I can’t believe that. Alexandra says Cecelia Teague is less dangerous than a kitten.”
“She certainly has claws,” Ramsay muttered, throwing a few halfhearted test punches that glanced off his brother’s blocking forearms. “Think about what could have befallen yer beloved lady wife today,” he reminded.
Redmayne’s swarthy visage darkened. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
“The blame for that may be thrown at Miss Teague’s feet.”
“Not so,” Redmayne argued. “The fault lies with whomever detonated that explosive. Do you have any suspects, by the by?”
“Only half of the London elite,” Ramsay groused. “I’m not certain she didna have a hand in it, herself.”
Redmayne glanced around his fists and lowered them carefully, wordlessly suggesting a break by gesturing toward the water pitcher. “Are you really so blinded by your hatred of her that you would suspect her of sabotaging her own livelihood and putting those she cared about in such danger?”
“Ye insult me to assume it’s hatred that drives my suspicion, and not logic.”
“Logic has little to do with lust.”
“Fuck off.” Ramsay gave his brother his back, snatching a cloth from where it hung and mopping at his brow. Was he truly so transparent? Was his lust for the Scarlet Lady so readily predicted?
“I mean no insult, brother, but these remarkable women are not easily ignored.” Redmayne set two glasses on the sideboard and filled each one from the water pitcher with the same measured calm in which he answered. “They are fiercely loyal to one another, and share a bond built of a past not many can claim. Perhaps you, as a soldier, could possibly understand it someday.”
Ramsay turned to study his brother’s enigmatic features. The duke’s words concealed more than they revealed, and the thought made him murderous. Was everyone fucking hiding something from him?
“What are ye insinuating?” he demanded. “Speak plainly.”
“Only that I don’t believe a woman who would do for my wife what Cecelia Teague has done would risk Alexandra’s life by putting her in the vicinity of an explosive device.” Redmayne shrugged as Ramsay narrowed his eyes.
“What do ye mean? What did she do for yer wife?”
Redmayne cast him a mysterious glance over the rim of his glass. “That isn’t for me to say.”
Ramsay had to try extremely hard not to crush the delicate glass in his fist. “More secrets. More shadows. Christ, this woman is full of them. Is it any wonder I doona trust her?”
Redmayne carefully examined him before making a decision. “Did it ever occur to you that you don’t trust women because our mother—”
“Our mother destroye
d two weak husbands and a handful of lovers,” Ramsay snarled, feeling the well of black hatred that rose at the very mention of her. “Cecelia Teague—nay, the Scarlet Lady—might alone have the power to bring our entire empire to its knees through scandal and debt. That, dear brother, is why I doona trust her.”
Even at this uncharacteristic burst of temper, Redmayne kept his calm. “Perhaps that is the fault of those who perpetrate the scandals, and not the one who catalogs them.”
Ramsay grimaced in disgust. “Ye sound just like her.”
“Is that so bad? She’s a kind soul, Case. She didn’t ask for any of this.”
“She lied, Piers,” Ramsay exploded, wishing these outbursts would cease. That he could control them as he controlled everything else. “She had every opportunity to tell me who she was. There’s a reason she didna, and that reason canna be a safe one.”
His brother’s dark brows lifted with deliberate skepticism, and Ramsay took a swig of water to escape it.
“Which opportunity should she have taken? Before or after you kissed her?”
Ramsay choked on his water.
“Women talk to each other,” the duke offered by way of explanation. “And my wife talks to me.”
“Then ye should be eternally terrified.”
Redmayne’s self-satisfied sneer made him wish they were still in the ring so he could wipe it away with his fist. “On the contrary, I know my wife is more than gratified.”
One. Good. Hit … and he could knock Redmayne flat on his arse. “Ye bloody, bourgeois bastard,” he muttered drolly.
“Call me what you want.” Redmayne poked him in a bruise forming on his ribs, just as he’d done when they were tussling boys. “But I’m not the one who kissed the same woman I’m trying to indict. I imagine that won’t go over well in court.”
When Ramsay didn’t reply, Piers ventured, “Forgive her, Case. I’d stake my life on the fact that she’s done nothing wrong.”
Ramsay could still bring himself to say nothing. Despite everything, he respected his brother too much to verbally accuse him of being blinded by his affection for his wife. One of them had to keep a level head. One of them had to keep their eyes open, because if Cecelia was a criminal, her entire band of Rogues could be implicated.
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