He was surrounded by corrupt and debased men, and these smugglers often mentioned one word out of fear: rubricata. One of the many Latin words for “red.”
Troubled and absorbed by these affairs of state, Ramsay had little to offer a soiree, but couldn’t send his condolences with such illustrious guests so near to election. And so, after making his obligatory compliments to the guests at dinner, he’d found a quiet corner near the fireplace unoccupied by those who needed to see and be seen at one of the Duke of Redmayne’s marvelously celebrated fetes. He’d ruminated for a moment, working his way toward a perfectly splendid brood before Miss Teague had plopped down in a pile of skirts to pick at a dish of chocolates and stir him into a pique.
She scooted forward in her seat, making as though to stand. “If you do not wish to speak, I’ll leave you to your contemplations, my lord,” she said, seeming not only unoffended, but unaffected.
“Nay,” he snapped without thought.
Her eyes widened at his visceral objection, but it shocked none more than himself. Perplexed, Ramsay watched her intently. What was it about this woman that evoked such a powerful response? No one ever caught him so thoroughly off his guard.
As much as he wanted to be free of her, he apparently desired her close, and the force of that desire discomfited him.
Which meant he should encourage her to flee his vicinity immediately.
“Doona abandon yer chocolates on my account,” he found himself saying before he ground his teeth even harder, lest he do something untenably ridiculous, such as ask her to sit in his lap. Hadn’t he just been hoping she’d leave?
Her eyes glimmered with pleasure, and then softened with understanding. “May I fetch you a drink to help soften the woes of the day?”
He shook his head, acutely aware of how important it was to keep his wits about him in her presence. “I generally abstain from drink. I’ve consumed the one glass of wine I allow myself at dinner.”
“A life without chocolate and wine.” She cocked her head, pity once again dimming the sparkle in her eyes. “How dreary. What do you do for pleasure, my lord?”
Pleasure. When was the last time he’d allowed himself any?
“I work.”
Ramsay’s hand fisted at his side so he wouldn’t slide it over the expensive aubergine chair beneath him. He still did that sometimes, tested a texture as if he couldn’t believe it was real.
Even after all these years.
As a boy, he’d never have imagined something so soft existed. The bed he’d slept on had been hard. His home cold and empty in every imaginable way, along with his belly, and eventually his heart.
All of this because his family was prone to indulging in selfish pleasures, and it had brought them nothing but shame, misery, and devastation.
His mother had preyed upon the weak and base natures of men until she ruined them. His father, once thusly ruined, had become a slave to every form of pleasure, and it had eventually killed him.
Redmayne’s father, their mother’s second husband, had made her a duchess. She’d repaid his affection and devotion by cuckolding him so often, he’d finally hanged himself in a fit of drunken despair.
Even Redmayne had indulged in adventure to the point of obsession, until the swipe of a jaguar’s claws had cost him his handsome features, and nearly his life.
And look at him now, equally under the thrall of his formerly impoverished bluestocking wife, who’d also nearly gotten him killed on more than one occasion. They seemed impervious to the fact that the ton whispered about them even as they gorged upon Redmayne’s wealth and influence. But how long would that last?
Nay. Nay, indulgence was a curse and pleasure a peril. Something that controlled a man until he was no longer himself. Until he’d surrendered power, dignity, or both.
He’d given over to temptation in his younger days, temptation that had very much looked like love.
And it had very nearly been his undoing.
His eyes rested on Miss Teague, once again, his notice snagged by the intriguing way her pale skin disappeared as she pulled her gloves back on. Rested. How long since he’d done that? Just sat quietly and allowed himself to enjoy a lovely view. Lord, but she was so pleasant to look at, and just as wondrous to listen to. She’d an air of softness he’d never before witnessed, and it boggled the mind how he could be both aroused and comforted by her all at once.
How could she so thoroughly inflame him by covering up more skin? There was nothing intrinsically seductive about the gesture, and yet he found it more provoking than a dozen dancehall girls undoing their corsets.
“Forgive me if I’m prying,” she said, forgetting, or merely giving up on, her previous question. “But I’m curious as to the reasons for your … abstinence.”
He studied her, searching for a double meaning in the word. For a lascivious undertone. Did she ken that he was without a woman? That he so acutely desired her now?
He found only genuine interest in her open expression, and so he gave her a genuine answer.
“It’s a tactic, more than anything.”
“A tactical war against chocolate and wine?” That half smile again, the one that put the Mona Lisa to shame. Both shy and impish without a hint of coyness or guile.
“In my line of work, one must be above reproach. Therefore, I avoid all excess that could lead to addictive partiality or a weakness in moral character. Such as alcohol, idle pursuits, rich food, gambling—”
“Women?” Count Adrian Armediano slithered into the conversation, an expression of charm and challenge carefully arranged upon his dusky, too-handsome features.
“That should go without saying,” Ramsay reproached. “Especially in front of one.”
“On the contrary. A woman is not a weakness, but a strength.” Armediano turned to Cecelia, his lips curling with a feline appreciation Ramsay instantly disliked. The Italian slid a white-gloved hand along the back of her settee in a gesture that managed to be both seductive and unthreatening. “A life without women is not one worth living.”
Cecelia’s cheeks flushed a fetching peach beneath the count’s frank, appreciative regard.
Ramsay scowled, his fingers curling into fists.
One could not appreciate a woman if one’s eyes were plucked out.
Armediano moved with a practiced elegance, flicking open a jacket button as he sank intolerably close to Miss Teague. He swiped two glasses of champagne from a footman and flashed a smile that never reached his calculating golden gaze.
She accepted the proffered wine with a gracious, appreciative noise, glancing wryly at Ramsay as she took a delicate sip.
The count had the eyes of a raptor, Ramsay noted. Sharp and hard. He missed nothing as he glided through the ton with unobtainable ease. No one felt much threatened by someone so foreign and far above.
Until he dove for his prey.
Poor Miss Teague was a soft rabbit about to be clutched in his talons.
Bristling with masculine heat, Ramsay crushed the predator rising within himself. He’d no reason to lock horns with this man. Cecelia Teague was nothing to him but a passing family acquaintance. What did he care if she fell prey to a rake?
“Can you think of anything better to end an evening with than champagne?” she asked dreamily.
“Just the one thing.” The count left his meaning unmistakable as he drew his knuckles over what little skin of her arm was visible above her gloves and below her sleeves. A rise of gooseflesh appeared where the man had trailed his touch.
Ramsay could have cheerfully broken Armediano’s fingers. One by one.
Her nipples would be hard. And another man made them so.
“Forgive my intrusion upon your conversation,” the count offered without one iota of sincerity. “But I couldn’t help but overhear the subject and it both intrigued and distressed me. Are you not miserable, my lord Chief Justice, denying yourself the pleasures life has to offer?”
He’d be less miserable if it were still a practic
e to display severed heads on the London Bridge. What an appropriate ornament Armediano would make.
“Not at all.” Ramsay uncrossed his legs, the new arrival to their conversation beginning to redirect the blood from his nethers. “I have constructed a comfortable and successful life through will, focus, labor, and discipline. One need not seek sin and scandal to find contentment.”
“No man is without sin,” Armediano chuckled, flicking his gaze toward Cecelia. “Nor woman.”
Cecelia made a soft noise in the back of her throat, examining Ramsay as if he were an equation she couldn’t solve. “One must wonder if contentment is enough. Are you not lonely, my lord Ramsay? Or bored?”
Ramsay wanted to explain to her that most people didn’t understand loneliness—not until they’d experienced true isolation. One could be lonely in a room full of people. Or in the arms of a lover. There were many forms of loneliness. He wondered if she’d experienced them at all.
Instead he hedged. “I’m a busy man. I havena time for boredom or loneliness.”
“How fortunate for you,” she murmured. Blinking away the wrinkle that had worked its way into her troubled expression, she drank deeply before announcing, “I confess I sometimes overindulge in chocolate and champagne, as there are few other pleasures afforded a spinster bluestocking.”
“Bravo.” The count lifted his glass.
She and Armediano tapped rims with a grating chime. Ramsay felt his very veins tightening around his blood as he struggled to maintain his composure.
“I am told you studied at the Sorbonne, Miss Teague.” The count’s eyes gleamed from beneath his dark brows.
“You are well informed,” she replied.
“With your charming friends, the Countess of Mont Claire and the Duchess of Redmayne?”
Ramsay noted that the Italian’s expression was entirely too keen for such a casual question, and his eyes narrowed. A man unused to criminals and liars might not have noticed.
“Alex was not a duchess at the time, but yes, we attended the Sorbonne together, and the Ecole de Chardonne institute for girls on Lake Geneva before that.”
“Where you formed a society, I understand, Rastrello Rosso.”
“Not rakes, dear Count,” she corrected with a pleased smile that rivaled that of the flames. “Rogues, we were the Red Rogues.”
“She speaks Italian!” the count marveled.
“Only terribly,” she demurred. “And where did you learn of the Red Rogues, sir? We were a trio of little renown.”
“On the contrary.” The count slid closer, until his knee touched hers. “University-educated women are still a rarity, even in France. And a trio of such belle donne as you do not go unnoticed, especially ones with a penchant for pastimes only allowed to men.”
To her credit, Miss Teague gracefully tugged her knee away and tucked a forelock of hair back from her brow in a self-conscious gesture. “We are determined to live extraordinary lives, my lord.”
Ramsay couldn’t help himself. “And make extraordinary marriages?” He nodded toward the duchess.
Her expression dimmed, a crease appearing between her brows. “We actually vowed never to marry, though Alexandra’s circumstances changed.”
“You’re saying your friend the Countess of Mont Claire does not plan to wed?” the count inquired. “Does she not need an heir to her fortune and title?”
“That is not her primary concern at the moment,” she answered vaguely.
“And what about you?”
Cecelia adjusted her spectacles, nearly squirming with discomfort. “What about me?”
“Forgive my crass foreign manners, are you not in need of an advantageous marriage? It is not common for a mathematician to make a fortune.”
Cecelia shook her head, her skin whitening from cream to a ghostly shade. “I—I don’t…”
Ramsay found a man of his size rarely needed to raise his voice. When he offered a rebuke, he spoke low and even, but he leaned forward to emphasize the breadth of his shoulders. “If ye ken it isna appropriate to discuss finances in our society, Count, then it is not an ignorance of manners that prompts ye to ask, but a breach of them.”
To his credit, the count didn’t retreat, but he certainly changed tactics. “You must forgive me, of course. No offense was meant.”
What an arse. Not to beg for forgiveness, but demand it.
“None was taken,” Cecelia said with a solicitous hand on his cuff, though she did cast a grateful look in Ramsay’s direction.
His own arm twitched with absurd jealousy.
“So chivalrous, Lord Ramsay.” An undercurrent of malice lurked beneath the pleasant, silken tones of the count’s Continental accent as he turned his gaze to Ramsay. “Tell me, Miss Teague, as you are so fond of numbers. What are the odds that the Lord Chief Justice here is as morally unimpeachable as he claims?”
Cecelia let out a nervous laugh, her color deepening slightly as she slid her gloved finger against her cheek in an oddly shy gesture. “That is an easy equation. Odds are divisible by the number of outcomes, and in this problem, there are only two outcomes possible. That a man is good, or that he is wicked. Thereby there is a fifty percent probability that any man is one or the other.”
“And what would be your assessment?” the count pressed. “What are people but a collection of choices? Would you say Lord Ramsay is good? Or wicked?”
Ramsay shook his head, grappling with his temper. “She’s known me all of five minutes—”
“Forgive me, but you are mistaken, Count Armediano.” Cecelia surprised both of them by interrupting. By daring to correct a member of the aristocracy. By talking over a man.
“I’ve always believed people are more than just a collection of choices. It is why their worth—their worthiness—cannot be calculated mathematically. A person is a complicated amalgamation of their experiences, education, environs, illnesses, and desires. And one cannot ignore more physical variables such as nutrition, traditions, ethnicities, nationalities … and, yes, actions. But that is why we may not quantify them so easily.” She cast Ramsay a meaningful look he couldn’t begin to define, one brimming with a haunted sadness that tugged at a primitive protective instinct.
“It is also why I would find your position so daunting, Lord Ramsay. I could not condemn another human being, even as a High Court justice. I feel as though I would never truly know what punishment or mercy a person would deserve.”
The Count Armediano took a contemplative sip. “Is it your experience, Miss Teague, that people get what they deserve, one way or another? Do not good people suffer, and evil people achieve success?”
“That is unfortunately so.”
Ramsay watched her throat work around a dainty swallow as she slid a sidelong look toward Lady Francesca and Lady Alexandra.
She continued, “I still try to believe that good ultimately triumphs in the end. Especially when there are those who work so diligently to keep evil at bay, such as Lord Ramsay, the duke and duchess, and Lady Mont Claire.”
“Not you?” the count drawled.
This elicited a laugh from her. “Of course I desire to be good, to do good works, but Alexandra is a doctor of archeology, and so she preserves the lessons of history and the legacies of those who have gone before us. The duke has his tenants and employees, and he sees to the livelihoods of many. Francesca—”
Miss Teague cut off sharply, and Ramsay watched the count’s spine straighten as if he’d been skewered.
“Well, Francesca has her life’s mission, and it’s a worthy cause,” she finished vaguely. “But I’m afraid I have not found what it is I’m going to give to this world to make it better.”
“Miss Teague, you are an unpredictable, exquisite creature.” Armediano spoke to her, but also affixed his eyes upon the collection of nobles in the middle of which Francesca Cavendish sparkled like a rare ruby, her crimson hair shining brilliant in the light of the chandeliers.
“Thank you, my lord.”
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br /> “And you, Lord Ramsay, disabuse me of the notion that the Scots are nothing but hedonistic barbarians.”
Ramsay’s blood froze and his muscles iced over, hardening into shards of tension.
Barbarians?
The count had no idea what barbaric was. For certainly this pampered princeling would have been crushed by the conditions in which Ramsay had been whelped and forged. He had the swarthy complexion of a man raised beneath a forgiving sun. Had he ever known cold? Or hunger? Abandonment? Cruelty?
Had he ever killed to eat, or to live?
Ramsay would have staked his fortune against it. Aye, his bleak upbringing, or lack thereof, would have crushed the elegant man.
But as he opened his mouth to flay his skin with his cutting tongue, Cecelia beat him to it.
“I think such a notion was disproved centuries past by any number of Scottish people such as John Galt, Robert Burns, and Joanna Baillie, and the tradition continues with Robert Louis Stevenson,” she stated. “That is, if the notion ever held merit at all.”
Ramsay wished he knew what to say. Never in his life had anyone come to his defense.
He’d fought his own battles.
“I must beg your pardon a third time, Miss Teague.” The count put a hand over his heart and bowed his head in contrition. “Might I entice you to walk with me in the gardens?”
“Surely ye’re aware that for her to do so is not appropriate in our society, Count Armediano,” Ramsay explained. “To ask her is crude and unseemly.”
The count’s dark eyes flashed, but his manner remained pleasant as he blithely answered, “I was not aware.”
What horseshit. Ramsay’s eyes narrowed. “She is unchaperoned and therefore not allowed to share the private company of one man.”
Especially that of a handsome, unmarried Continental aristocrat with a gaze only meant for the boudoir.
Cecelia stood, obliging them to do the same. Her eyes flashed with the whisper of a distant sapphire storm that never truly surfaced. “As a sovereign entity, I am allowed to do what I wish,” she said stiffly.
Count Armediano sent him a glance of masculine victory. “Does that mean your wish is to walk with me in the garden? I vow to keep your reputation intact.”
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