She paused for a moment, chewing on a troubling thought. “Do you think … you’ll kiss her?”
“I already did once,” he confided with a waggle of his brows.
She giggled and relieved her little foot of her second boot.
“But…” Her face was serious as she stood, brushing the sand from her skirts. “You won’t make babies, will you?”
Ramsay’s heart stopped, and he wanted to squirm out of his skin. “What do ye ken about the making of babies?” he hedged. She was raised in a gambling hell, after all, and he wouldn’t think of even approaching such a grown-up subject with a girl of seven.
She blushed and he wanted to gag. “I know that a man and a woman make babies when they’re sleeping.”
“Sleeping?” he cringed, wishing he’d left her at home.
She nodded sagely. “That’s what Henrietta said. A man and woman must sleep together to make babies.”
“Sleeping,” he echoed carefully. “That’s all Henrietta told ye? Nothing else?” He was afraid to be relieved.
She pressed a hand to her little belly. “I shouldn’t like to wake up with a baby,” she decided, and then pierced his heart with the fear in her eyes. “Moreover, I shouldn’t want one to take Cecelia like I did my mother. Perhaps you shouldn’t sleep with her until after I’m a doctor.”
A fond tenderness wriggled in between Ramsay’s ribs at the little girl’s distress.
He could neither lie to her nor tell her the truth.
What he would do with Cecelia had little to do with sleeping.
Instead, he held out his hand. “Let’s see if I can get her to marry me first, and then we’ll chat more about babies, aye?”
Tiny fingers wrapped around his palm and simultaneously he felt them clutch at his heart, as well. “All right.” They walked to the water’s edge and watched it sparkle in the late-afternoon sun for a moment. Tentatively, she touched her toe to the water and then pulled her foot back as though a viper had bit her. “Oh no!” she squealed dancing from foot to foot. “It’s too cold, I don’t think I can.”
Ramsay smiled a smile that reached all the way down to his chest. “Ye canna just dip in yer toe, ye have to plunge in with everything ye have.”
She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with trust as she prepared herself for the deed.
Once Cecelia deciphered the code and provided him with evidence, he’d have to decide what to do.
To set them both free.
Or to jump in with everything he had.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A breakthrough dumped Cecelia out of her spell, and she leapt from her desk chair with a victorious sound of glee.
Out the window, forest shadows crept toward the house threatening evening, and she idly wondered why no candle had magically appeared on desk as it was wont to do.
Noise filtered through the door, a great deal of noise, in fact. Masculine voices, rich and animated. Phoebe’s contralto breaking through the rumble like sunshine through thunderclouds.
Drawn by the jolly din, Cecelia burst out of the bedroom, impatient to share her discovery.
“Excellent news!” she announced to the room at large.
“Did you solve your riddle book?” Phoebe’s head turned owlishly over her shoulder from where she stood by the roaring fire holding a large towel open like a highwayman’s cloak to catch its warmth. Her hair was plastered to her head and hung in wet gathers down her back.
Cecelia’s mouth twisted wryly. “Well, I haven’t solved it, no—”
“Did ye at least identify the code?” Ramsay queried from where hunched at the table, rubbing at his thick glossy hair with another towel.
“Not precisely,” Cecelia stalled, blinking back and forth from the handsome Scot to her ward. Why were they soaked through? Had it rained today? Surely, she’d have noticed.
Her eyes lingered upon Ramsay for inordinately longer than they ought. His cream shirt, only half dry, clung to the generous swells of his chest and shoulders, his nipples beaded against the chill of damp clothing. He appeared alert but relaxed, his skin rosy from the sun and his eyes gleaming in a way she’d never seen them before. A pleasant, loamy scent drifted about the room, like sun-warmed rocks and wildflowers, and Cecelia had to blink a few times, wondering if she’d fallen asleep at the desk and walked out into a dream.
When she’d last encountered Ramsay, he’d refused to look at her and spoken in monosyllabic grunts. He’d left as if he couldn’t escape her presence fast enough.
And now his gaze swallowed her whole as he intently scanned her from head to toe in a manner she considered most unsuitable with a child present. He caressed the curves of her with his eyes, as if she stood before him naked, rather than in a rich summer gown.
Her brain threatened to melt out of her ear into a puddle of simpering, preening female absurdity.
What had been his question?
Frazzled, Cecelia looked to Jean-Yves for help, and he set down the knife on the counter where he arranged sandwiches on a plate. The old man took pity on her, though he didn’t spare her from his look of droll disappointment. “If you did not decipher the codex, nor identify the code, what possible news could be excellent, mon bijou?”
Determined not to allow herself to be distracted by the previously petulant Lowlander, she brandished the book like an American preacher on the Sabbath.
“I’ve been looking at this all wrong.” She hurried to the table and flipped open the book to where the bevy of numbers made an odd-looking list. “I’d assumed Henrietta had used a Pollux code, which is usually dots and dashes, but I thought she might have replaced them with numbers. It was the only explanation for these repetitions.” She pointed to the numbers she referenced. “But no matter what I tried, the code remained indecipherable. So then I simplified it to a Caesarean code, which helped not at all, but somehow also seemed to make sense. Which could mean only one thing…”
She looked up expectantly, and met three identical blank looks.
Jean-Yves now stood over her, his arm slung to his body in an odd parody of a maître d’ as he held his tray aloft, waiting impatiently for her to finish.
“Don’t you see?” she prompted excitedly. “It’s bacon.”
“Bacon?” Ramsay looked at her as if he feared she’d lost her mind.
“Like Frances Bacon!” Phoebe held up her doll triumphantly, doing her level best to make some sort of connection.
Cecelia smiled fondly at the girl. “Just like,” she praised. “Baconian ciphers are tedious but ingenious because the meaning isn’t in the numbers or letters themselves, but how they are assembled, most often in clusters of five representing one letter.”
Jean-Yves motioned for her to pick up the book, which she did, and he replaced it on the table with his plate of sandwiches. “I suddenly regret not putting bacon on these,” he muttered.
“Me too,” Phoebe emphatically agreed. “Bacon is delicious.”
“So—” Ramsay reached for the book, and Cecelia handed it over the platter. He opened it, his brows bunching together as he scanned the formulae as if he might now understand. “If ye employ this Baconian cipher, ye’ll decode the message?”
“I’ve done it already.” She beamed.
“Aye?” Ramsay straightened and then turned his head sideways as if he could see the code more clearly. “But ye said ye didna solve the riddle,” he reminded her slowly.
“My problem was that I assumed Henrietta only used one code. However, upon employing the Baconian cipher, I uncovered a second set of coded information, but this one is much shorter. So all I have to do is figure out this code.” She tapped her finger to her chin. “That is, unless there is a third layer, but that isn’t very likely.”
“Have you gotten to the good news part yet?” Jean-Yves asked impatiently, taking the seat next to her. “I’d like to eat my supper.”
“I’m that much closer, likely halfway. Tomorrow I get to work on turning numbers into letters!” Sh
e shook her fists in front of her in a gesture of celebratory victory as the room at large blinked at her for another moment before collectively deflating.
“Halfway?” Ramsay repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before, frowning his obvious discontent. “What do ye have to do in order to finish?”
Jean-Yves held up a staying hand. “You’ll regret that question, my lord. I suggest we eat before another lengthy cryptography lesson puts us early to sleep.” He winked over at Cecelia, who falsified a smile.
She didn’t mind the teasing, really she didn’t. However, she suddenly wanted to slump back into the room and hide from them all. From him.
Was Ramsay’s desire to be free of her so consuming that the thought of another three days in her presence caused him such obvious chagrin?
Reaching for a sandwich, she put one on Jean-Yves’s plate, and called Phoebe over while dishing her meal in silence.
It would forever be impossible to get a room excited about maths. Such was her life. If she’d been in the room with another mathematician, he’d have realized that she’d concluded what might have taken most ingenious code breakers the better part of several days in only three.
She mentally congratulated herself and bit into a delectable ham and olive sandwich. “If this is supper, what’s in the cauldron over the fire?” she asked.
“Water for yer bath.”
A silken undertone in Ramsay’s voice caused Cecelia to swallow prematurely, and a chunk of sandwich made a slow and painful descent of her chest.
She reached for a drink of Jean-Yves’s ale to wash it down, ignoring the Frenchman’s protestations.
When she glanced back up at Ramsay, a glimmer in his eye made her certain he was picturing her taking said bath. How she knew, she couldn’t say, but the wicked gleam remained, brushing her in places she’d rather not consider in a crowded room.
Confused and increasingly distraught, she searched his features for answers. Did he want to be free of her because of temptation, or in spite of it? Why insinuate his displeasure with her one moment, and then scorch her clothing from her body with his gaze the next?
Phoebe approached the table, hiding something behind her back.
“I see you and Lord Ramsay already had your baths,” Cecelia noted, smiling across at the dear girl.
“Lord Ramsay had to wash the blood of his deer from him in the loch,” Phoebe explained, affixing a rapturous look up as she took her place beside him. “Then he taught me how to swim.”
“Did he, indeed?” Cecelia also cast a level gaze toward the Scot in question. “I imagine that’s why your lips are blue.”
“I’m almost warm.” Phoebe rushed to cut off any objection by complimenting her. “And I think it’s wonderful that you found the bacon code. You’re ever so clever, Cecelia.”
“Thank you, darling.” She was glad someone thought so. “Aren’t you hungry after swimming?”
“Don’t you think she’s clever, Lord Ramsay?” Phoebe gave him a meaningful look, nudging him with her elbow.
Ramsay paused with a sandwich halfway to his mouth before looking down at the girl rather than across at her. “Aye, she’s both clever and wise, little one. Now eat yer supper.”
“And beautiful,” Phoebe added. “You can’t forget beautiful, because you mentioned how lovely she was by the loch.”
Jean-Yves’s ill-muffled chortle drowned out Cecelia’s drastic intake of breath.
Phoebe slid a bouquet of heather with little sprigs of gypsophila from behind her back as two cheeky dimples appeared next to her mouth.
“Are those for me?” Cecelia asked, flushing with maternal pleasure.
Phoebe didn’t answer. Instead, she nudged the Highlander in his biceps, her finger giving before his muscle did. “Here. Lord Ramsay, here.”
“What’s going on?” Jean-Yves asked. “You picked flowers for Lord Ramsay, petite?”
“No,” Phoebe said from the side of her mouth toward Jean-Yves. “He’s supposed to give it to her.” She thrust the bouquet beneath Ramsay’s nose, forcing him to drop his sandwich. “Go on,” she urged. “Don’t be shy.”
Ramsay curled every finger slowly around the base of the bouquet as if it might be the little girl’s neck. “Impeccable timing, lass,” he muttered.
Phoebe beamed, oblivious—or perhaps immune—to the sarcasm oozing from Ramsay’s comment. He thrust the flowers at her over the table, and Cecelia had to wipe her fingers on a linen before she reached for them.
“No,” Phoebe crowed. “Not like that. You must stand and present it to her properly.”
“Gallantly, I daresay,” Jean-Yves chimed in, earning him a soft elbow jab from Cecelia.
“Gallant, exactly,” Phoebe agreed with an emphatic nod as she sat and gathered her sandwich into both hands. “A moment like this demands gallantry. A hero cannot simply hand his lady a flower.”
“I’m no hero,” Ramsay said at the same moment Cecelia thought it prudent to point out, “I’m not his lady.”
Phoebe ignored all of this. “There must be a gesture of some sort, wouldn’t you agree?”
“A grand gesture,” Jean-Yves agreed.
Cecelia had a few choice gestures for her butler, but she couldn’t bring herself to make them in front of a child.
She watched half in hope and half in agony as Ramsay set his jaw and stood.
Following his lead, she faced him, her heart pounding out of her chest. She very studiously avoided looking in the direction of the rocking chair, keeping her eyes focused on the flowers.
Ramsay reached in and plucked the largest, most vibrant blossom from the bouquet and extended it toward her. He stepped closer in order to tuck the flower into her hair.
Rough-skinned fingers skimmed the shell of her ear, causing shivers of delight to erupt over her entire body.
Along with pulses of need in a few secret places.
Overwhelmed, Cecelia closed her eyes and breathed him in. His scent was a masculine undercurrent to the fragrant flowers, soap and earth and water and sky. A scent as delicious to her as a room full of books and leather furniture. Or the most sumptuous truffles.
“Scottish heather,” he murmured. “For an English rose.”
His voice vibrated through her, a now-familiar sensation. It lifted the fine hairs on her body and brought forward an awareness she found both exhilarating and alarming.
When she opened her eyes, he had thrust the bouquet to her, watching her with veiled expectation.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
He nodded, then moved away from the table.
“Where are you going?” Phoebe asked.
“To prepare the bath,” Ramsay said. “Jean-Yves and I will take the chairs onto the porch and share a port whilst ye ladies bathe.”
“Leave some port for me, if you please,” Cecelia called, claiming her seat at the dinner table.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Phoebe pressed of Ramsay, holding up her own sandwich interrupted by one perfect crescent indentation of her teeth.
Ramsay may have hesitated, but then he continued toward the fire to retrieve the full cauldron of boiling water. “I’ll eat outside.”
Cecelia did her best not to stare as Ramsay hauled, heated, and prepared her bath with volumes of water no mortal man should have been able to carry at one time.
Jean-Yves caught her distraction at once and leaned over. “You’ve been chewing the same bite for ten minutes,” he whispered.
Cecelia swallowed, her denials all dying on her lips as she met the older man’s knowing gaze and blushed at the smile that told her he was vastly entertained.
Finally gathering the thoughts Ramsay had scattered like marbles, she said, “I’d regard anyone in the exact same manner were he to perform such an impossible feat.”
Jean-Yves grunted, but in French, the sound landing somewhere between disgust and amusement. “You’ve never in your life looked at anyone the way you look at him.”
To save hers
elf from having to reply, she bit into her sandwich with a little too much gusto and avoided further conversation with Jean-Yves until he shuffled out with Ramsay to leave her to her bath.
She’d never been able to lie to him. And she was increasingly less able to lie to herself.
She didn’t just look at Ramsay, she saw him. She noticed him with her entire being. Her senses were so attuned to his presence, she wondered if he hadn’t some strange electrical current other creatures just simply didn’t possess. Some magnetism charged only to her, drawing her forward until she was unable to resist pressing against him.
Cecelia didn’t linger in the bath for long, as she couldn’t stand the idea of Jean-Yves’s discomfort out of doors. He’d been quite mobile today, but broken ribs did tend to wear on one. She shivered into her nightgown and wrapper and traded favors of brushing and braiding hair with Phoebe while Ramsay hauled away the bathwater.
She resolutely faced the fire, unwilling to be caught watching him a second time.
Jean-Yves settled into the couch next to her as she sat plaiting Phoebe’s hair, who in turn braided that of Frances Bacon and Fanny de Beaufort.
“Are you going to arrange my hair next, bonbon?” Jean-Yves teased Phoebe, rubbing at the fine gray fluff he usually kept beneath a hat.
Phoebe giggled. “Will you tuck me in tonight, Jean-Yves?”
The man tapped her on the tip of her button nose fondly. “If you think I’m climbing that ladder to the loft, you’re about to be sorely disappointed, mon petite coeur.”
“You can read to me here,” she offered. “Join us, Lord Ramsay?”
The Scotsman had finished hauling away the bath and had occupied himself by stomping about in the kitchen, setting it to rights. At her question, he hesitated, his gaze colliding with Cecelia’s.
He said nothing as three sets of eyes speared him, each with different sorts of expectations.
What was he thinking, Cecelia wondered, to cause his harsh, rawboned features to appear so cautious? Tentative, even. He blinked at those hunkered on his spare furniture as one might regard an unfinished puzzle if one held the wrong piece. She might have identified the look in his eyes as longing, were it less hollow and bleak. Or perhaps she read his expression completely wrong. Maybe his diffidence had nothing to do with longing, but aversion instead.
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