“Freedom.” Ramsay’s satisfied nod seemed to baffle her. “How incredibly odd, Miss Teague, that our reasons for remaining unattached so closely resemble each other’s.” Stranger still, that he’d never felt freer to be himself than in her presence.
She blinked several times. “Very odd, indeed. I shouldn’t have thought we had anything in common.”
“I think if we looked deep enough within ourselves, we’d find glimpses of each other. I see a reflection in yer eyes, I think. A part of myself. One that might be kinder than the truth.” Christ. When had he become a bloody poet?
“Your reflection would only be in my spectacles, my lord.” She looked away, her hand toying restlessly in her hair.
What had gotten into him? Something about their conversation flirted with danger.
She assessed him as if he were composed of formulae she was intent upon unraveling. “It’s because of your mother, then, if I had to guess.”
Ramsay stiffened. “What in God’s name are ye referring to?”
Her words were measured, careful. “Alexandra shared with me what happened to the previous duke, Redmayne’s father, how he hung himself from the grand balustrade at Castle Redmayne when your mother abandoned him for a lover. That’s what you meant when you referred to your family’s disastrous marriages.”
He searched her features for pity, for judgment, and again only found her gentle curiosity. Something about it, about the way she picked him apart. Softly. Meticulously. With no apparent need for supremacy or seduction. No need to use information against him.
He found himself powerless against it, words spilling from lips famously locked. From a vault that hadn’t been opened since before he’d become a man. “The previous Lady Redmayne knew how to pick weak men. And she knew how to break them.” Or rather, they allowed themselves to be broken by her.
“Ah,” she murmured. “Did she do something similar to your real father?”
The wintry feeling bloomed into a frozen void, the one contained within him for so many years.
Decades. One opened by a length of time so dastardly, neither rage nor passion nor acquisition could heat it.
“My father died when I was a lad of nine or so.” The how of it didn’t matter. Neither did the why of it. He didn’t want Cecelia Teague to see the void. To find the vault. To know what he kept there.
“And so you were taken in by Redmayne’s father?” she asked.
“Aye. He sent me to Eaton at fifteen with Piers, then Oxford after that.”
She bit her lip in contemplation. “You say he was weak, but he also sounds like he was a kind man.”
He made a dismissive gesture, closing his heart to the pain. “Kindness can be its own form of weakness.”
“Not in my experience.”
“You are lucky then, if that is your experience.”
“Do you not have to be kind at times to perform your vocation?”
“Nay. Kindness … it’s not a virtue I’m afflicted with.”
“Afflicted?” For once, disappointment touched her expression. “And here I thought one must be kind in order to be good.”
“One must be fair and just.” How had they come to be speaking of this? He wanted to return to their repartee of before. He wanted to stop fortifying the wall he’d built years ago around his heart, his soul, his entire self, because she was somehow chipping away at it.
Not like a battering ram, but subtly. Like time, and water, and earth. If he wasn’t careful, she’d leave it in ruins, and then where would that leave him?
Exposed.
“My coach is just past this gate,” he said, resting his hand on the lock of an iron gate securing the back garden from the street.
“Wait.” Her hand landed on his arm and locked his feet to the ground like a shackled prisoner.
He felt her touch in every part of his body.
“I should like to see you again,” she said with earnest sincerity. “We’re practically family now. Don’t you think it’s very important we get on?”
“We arena related. Not by blood.” This felt particularly significant.
“No, but perhaps we could be friendlier. I’d like to know more about you,” she prodded. “And I’d like you to get to know me better. To understand certain things…”
Why? he wanted to ask. To what end if not matrimony? “Do ye have a confession to make, Miss Teague?”
“I might.”
Her answer mystified and exhilarated him. If he were to make a confession in this moment, it would be to desire. Would her confession be the same?
The atmosphere between them shifted from tentative challenge and merciless discovery to something softer and warmer.
Here she stood. Looking up at him with her eyes wide and open upon his face. Her lips relaxed, threatening to part.
Close enough to touch. To taste.
“As much as I hate to agree with Count Armediano upon anything, I must say, ye are an extraordinary woman,” he crooned.
Her lashes fluttered down over her cheeks, where he was glad to see her peachy blush return. “That is kind of you to say, my lord.”
A muscle released at the back of his neck, allowing his head to lower toward hers. “Ye doona have to call me that. Ye’re not in my court.”
Eyes as deep and blue as Loch Ness beneath the sun lifted to meet his. “What if I was in your court? Would you condemn me?”
“Never.”
“Never is a dangerous word.” Her breath smelled sweet, like chocolate and scotch.
“So is always.”
“If not my lord, what should I call you, then? Cassius?”
“Ramsay will do just fine.”
Her eyes darted away, but not before he caught a flash of something. Shyness? Or a secret? The night whispered a warning, but it was too late. The moon-drenched darkness had become his undoing, the gardens his prison. He couldn’t have escaped even if he’d wanted to.
“I like your names,” she whispered, swaying forward. “Ramsay. And Cassius.”
He hated his name. He hated it every day. “I like yers.”
She blinked. “Would you say it?”
“Miss Teague?”
“No, might you call me Cecelia?”
“Cecelia.” He drew out the syllables, letting his tongue linger over them. Learn them.
She closed her eyes, seeming to savor the word with the same vigor as the truffles. “Again?”
An invisible restraint shackled his bones, this one not of cold hard iron, but of velvet. It tugged him toward her. Drew her name out of his chest like a poem, and then a prayer.
“Cecelia.”
Her lips parted.
And he was lost.
Lost to the thundering of his heart. To the pull of her body, as powerful and unavoidable as the influence of the moon on the tides.
Their breath mingled. Her scent tangled with that of the lilacs, unbearably lovely.
His lips hovered. Met hers. Stilled.
For a heartbeat, or maybe an eternity, he stood like that. Paralyzed. Not from fear. Not exactly.
A hunger crawled through him like a beast with many claws. A beast locked away for a time longer than infinity. Raw, uncontained sexuality that had no place in such orderly, sedate gardens roared to life and threatened to rip his self-control to shreds.
As though she sensed the beast, Cecelia made a small, intimate sound.
One dangerously close to surrender.
Don’t, he silently begged. Don’t make me want you this much. Don’t give me something else to fight. To crush. To contain.
But contain it, he did. Just as he always had. As he always would.
He locked it away in a trunk of iron. Chained it. And threw it into the dark void where his heart should be.
She didn’t reach for him, nor did she do anything else wanton or wicked. She just accepted his mouth with a sweet sigh, tilting her head to receive more of him.
He lifted his hands to her face, intent upon gently
holding her still so he could extricate himself from a kiss that shouldn’t be.
His thumbs drew up the line of her jaw and over her cheek, finding no angles, no hard lines. Somehow, he was cupping her face. Tilting it back. Drawing her in rather than pushing her away.
The roaring of his blood in his ears became a growl and then a purr.
He satisfied his hunger by licking his tongue through the seam of her lips as though trying to get at the cream in a pastry.
She opened for him with a sigh. Never had he found something so sweet. So decadent.
Had he expected any different from her?
She was soft beneath his kiss, but not passive. Her lips melted against his, her face tilted into his palm, giving over to his strength. Giving over to the experience.
She was an innocent. She kissed like a woman unused to kissing. Her little motions instinctive rather than practiced. Her tongue ventured forward, then darted away. Her breaths hitched and trembled.
His restless tongue enjoyed her. Coaxed her. Stroked and slid inside her mouth in a velvety dance of desire.
He closed his eyes as he supped on her lower lip, then her upper before delving to taste her once more. He explored her features with his fingertips, employing the butterfly-light strokes of a blind man, memorizing her topography. Absorbing the details of her—the divot in her chin, the supple skin over her cheekbones, the distracting shell of her ear, and the silken trails of her brows—before returning to cup her face.
Warm. She was so warm. Her mouth, her skin, her soul. It chased the constant chill from his bones, replacing it with a distressing, delectable heat.
That heat built within him. Called the beast once again to the surface. It prowled beneath his skin, rippled along his nerves, lancing an intense lust through his loins.
She’s yours for the taking, it growled.
Ramsay tore his lips from hers, his hands unable to release her. Not just yet.
She stared at him, her eyes wide, glistening behind spectacles partially fogged with the moisture of their combined breath.
“Christ, ye’re lovely,” he said in a voice raspy and dark. One he didn’t recognize as his own.
“So are you,” she replied dreamily, evoking a chuckle.
“Lass, I’d best return ye home.” If he didn’t, he’d ruin not just her reputation, but her coiffure, her dress, her composure.
Her innocence.
His soul.
She nodded languidly, her eyes unfocused. Inebriated, but not with drink. With desire. Possibly with the inevitability of what came next for them both. Her gaze locked on his lips with an almost puzzled consternation. As if to ask if his mouth had stolen her ability for speech.
She’s yours, the beast whispered. Claim what you want.
Nay. He reluctantly let her go, turning from her while he still could, to open the gate and call to his coachman down the lane.
He’d promised never to have another woman in sin.
And Cecelia Teague was a woman with no desire to be claimed.
What would it take to change her mind?
Because without knowing it, or probably even meaning to, she’d begun to change his.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For the entire next morning, Cecelia had to bite her own tongue to keep from screaming the truth.
I kissed Ramsay.
She was adept at keeping secrets, wasn’t she? She’d helped to bury the body of Alexandra’s rapist in a poppy garden behind their school on Lake Geneva. She was one of the few people in the world who knew that Francesca, the Countess of Mont Claire’s real name was Pippa Hargrave. That she was an imposter bent on revenge against those who’d murdered her family and the real Francesca Cavendish.
She’d never revealed to anyone that Vicar Teague wasn’t her father. That she was a bastard and a fraud. Unwanted. Unloved.
Unclaimed.
She knew she’d made a mistake last night by being alone with Ramsay. She didn’t exactly want to hear the Rogues’ opinions on it, because certainly they’d be unfavorable considering she was lying to the man.
And because he was intent upon her utter obliteration.
So why did a confession regarding last night’s tipsy indiscretion burn her tongue, demanding to be spat out?
For the most part, she’d been able to contain herself. But during the rare moments her friends were silent, as they were now, standing in the foyer of a gambling hell that had recently become hers, the confession bubbled in her throat like expensive champagne. Threatening to burp forth, condemning her for an absolute fool.
I kissed Ramsay. I can still feel him on my lips. Taste him on my tongue. Sense the scrape of his callused fingertips across my cheek.
I kissed Ramsay, and I never wanted to stop.
“Oh my.” Alexandra’s breathy exclamation paralyzed her.
Cecelia swallowed. Twice, curling her lips between her teeth.
Had she spoken out loud?
Alexandra and Francesca drifted further onto the floor empty of people but full of every sort of gambling implement. Tables for dice were stacked next to a gilded roulette wheel. Next to that, card tables for baccarat, faro, and keno sheets were neatly stacked in rows of three, leaving plenty of room for men to make their way to the long oak bar behind which any drink could be served.
The place somehow endeavored to be elegant and garish at the same time, and Cecelia couldn’t wait to get her hands on some of the games. They were mostly about odds and numbers, after all.
Winston, the butler, gathered Francesca’s emerald gloves and parasol, Alexandra’s cream lace cape, and Jean-Yves’s hat, cane, and jacket from limbs gone rather slack with awe.
Thus loaded, he gestured for Cecelia’s own lavender parasol and matching lace gloves, but she didn’t want to add to the burden, so she declined.
“Thank you, Winston.”
His reply was stiff and diffident, though respectful.
“My, my.” Francesca craned her elegant neck, gawking at the lurid murals on the domed ceiling that would have made even Michelangelo blush. “Well, I never.”
Cecelia tilted her own head back, squinting through her lenses. She hadn’t noted the scandalous fresco during her prior visit. But then, she’d spent most of her time wanting to stare at the marble floor, not the ceiling.
Gasping, she clamped her hand over Phoebe’s wide blue eyes.
Jean-Yves gave the depictions of frolicking and fornicating nudes above him a scarce glance. His attention was arrested by the women of Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies as they glided down the grand staircase like proper Georgian butterflies.
Cecelia shared an astonished glance with the Rogues.
Did Jean-Yves frequent such places in his free time? He was so dapper, almost respectable in his afternoon suit, despite the craggy, sun-browned features of a man used to hard labor out of doors. His silver hair, now too thin for much pomade, stood out in little tufts without his hat. He smoothed at it self-consciously as a blush spread all the way to his scalp.
The Rogues each looked as though they might giggle … or gag.
The young ladies on the stairs were dressed both congruently and dissimilarly. Their gowns as varying in size and color as the women themselves.
A waifish nymph with straight, shining raven hair wore a pink gown with the front tied above the tops of her stockings and garters secured by two bows, allowing a peek of her smooth, bronze thighs. She could have been an Egyptian princess.
Behind her, a lady twice as large as Cecelia boasted a sleek, floor-length seafoam gown with a bodice that lifted her enormous breasts close to brushing her double chin. The tan crescents of her areolas rose above expensive lace, her nipples threatening to escape with every shiver of her abundant flesh. She gave a come-hither toss of her tumble of gold hair, and flashed a smile that promised boundless generosity.
Cecelia gawked at the women now in her employ.
One even boasted curls as coppery as hers, and … She adjus
ted her spectacles. Was that an Adam’s apple?
“Miss Cecelia,” Phoebe protested, her little fingers pulling at the hand over her eyes. “I’ve already seen the ceiling.”
Cecelia cringed. What else had the poor girl been exposed to so early? Lord, what kind of guardian was she to bring her back here? What sort of guardian had Henrietta been?
She thought of the missing girls. Girls not much older than Phoebe.
What if this place had something to do with them?
The Lord Chief Justice certainly seemed to think so.
I kissed Ramsay.
She shoved the thought violently aside.
“Bienvenue, honey!” Genny descended from the landing above, gliding down the stairs behind the carnal display, passing each brazen caricature of fantasy.
She rushed to embrace Cecelia and tweak a shy Phoebe under the chin.
Genny slid her dark eyes over Jean-Yves, rendering his pink blush a solid scarlet. “Well, hi there, handsome. I’m Genevieve Leveaux, but you can call me Genny.”
Jean-Yves sputtered for a moment, and Cecelia came to his rescue by making introductions.
Genny greeted them with a delighted kiss on each cheek. “The infamous Red Rogues. Henrietta used to read me your letters about these two.” She bowed to each of them before gesturing to the grand staircase. “Allow me to present the ladies behind the tables. You won’t meet sharper dealers, card sharps, dice throwers, or bookies in all of Blighty.”
A few chuckles echoed in the vast marble entry.
“I’m so eager to make each of your acquaintances.” Cecelia curtsied and petted Phoebe’s hair as she addressed Genny. “But first, I’m here to gather a few of Phoebe’s things. Do you mind if we take her to the residence and then have a look around and make proper introductions?”
Genny laughed long and loud. “Why you askin’ me, darlin’? The place is yours.”
Somehow it didn’t feel like hers. It might have belonged to Genny for all her knowledge and know-how. Her history.
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