Winston and his unfortunate neckless companion twitched with sudden agitation, fanning out in a wider arc. The larger man held a cleaver-style knife, and Winston a dagger. The Indian drew a pistol from behind his jacket.
“Shoot him!” Genny screeched.
“Think about what ye do,” Ramsay warned. “Ye might not know me, but I’m relentless, patient, and thoroughly unbothered by blood. I will kill ye as slowly as the plague, and discard yer remains on yer doorstep as a message to all who would avenge ye. Do you ken? Are ye ready for the hell I’ll unleash upon ye?”
“It’s true.” None other than the Count Armediano sauntered in with a pistol cocked in front of him aimed right between the Indian’s eyes. “I had a recent altercation with Ramsay, and if I’m a surgeon, he’s a butcher, and I can’t say for certain which one is more dangerous.”
Had Cecelia’s hands not been bound, she’d have lifted them to rub at her eyes, if only to make sure she’d seen what was happening correctly.
Count Armediano? His ebony hair was slicked to his head, but his gray suit was just as crinkled as Ramsay’s. He wore no jacket to speak of, and he’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The taut muscles of his forearms rippled as he toyed with the trigger of his pistol.
“I said kill these bastards.” Genny struggled to push herself off the floor, her eyes wild and her expression mutinous. “If you don’t, the Crimson Council will have your heads, so either way you’re in danger.”
Ramsay turned on Genny. “When I’m finished with this rubbish, ye’ll wish yerself invisible, madam,” he said with barely leashed control.
“You can do nothing to me,” Genny said with a laugh, unable to keep a note of hysteria from it. “The Lord Chancellor—”
“Is being arrested as we speak by Scotland Yard’s finest,” Ramsay said with apparent relish. “But mark me, if ye speak out of turn again, I’ll have yer tongue.”
A gunshot startled a scream from Cecelia’s chest. She ducked, and when the ringing in her ear subsided, it was replaced by an even more terrible sound.
The terrified shrieks of frightened young girls locked in their own cells with no idea of what was going on.
The Indian dropped to the ground in a heap, and Count Armediano dove for his gun, all the while keeping a bead on Winston.
“Chandler,” Ramsay seethed at the man now dual-wielding pistols. “Must ye shoot in such close quarters?”
Chandler? Cecelia gaped.
The so-called count’s lack of a Continental accent was impressed upon Cecelia as he shrugged well-built shoulders and replied, “I saw him twitch, my lord.”
“What … what is going on?” Cecelia asked rather dazedly, staring at the bloom of blood on the back of the Indian’s linen suitcoat.
“Count Armediano is as much a moniker as Hortense Thistledown,” Ramsay supplied shortly. “His real name is Chandler.”
Chandler. Why did that name sound familiar?
“I changed my mind about this place.” Genny inched to the desk upon which sat the fine crystal lanterns next to the inkwell and codex. “It can burn to the ground.” She seized the lamps and hurled them.
Cecelia dove, but she knew she wouldn’t get out of the radius of the flames in time. Not with such a powerful accelerant. She landed painfully on her shoulder, rolling out of the way as the lamp arced toward her.
Unable to get to her in time, Ramsay shoved Winston into the path of the lantern. It shattered against him, engulfing him in inescapable flames. They flared a spectacular light against the cracked walls of the classroom as he danced about in unimaginable pain.
Genny tossed the other at Chandler, though he was able to get a shot off before he was forced to dive out of the way or suffer Winston’s fate.
The lantern broke against the door, spilling fire over their only escape.
When Ramsay leapt toward Cecelia, scooping her out of Winston’s careening conflagration, Genny lifted her skirts and leapt across the threshold, but not before her the fabric caught.
She screeched and ran out of sight, trailing flames behind her train.
Chandler leapt after her, his own trousers barely avoiding the fire as he ran out of sight.
Ramsay ripped his shirt down his arms and began to beat at the flames in the doorway to very little effect.
“Behind you!” Cecelia jumped out of the way as the no-necked man advanced with his knife.
Ramsay whipped his shirt, now smoldering with flames, and caught the man around the wrist. He leapt closer, disarmed the fellow, caught the cleaver, and with a mighty swing of his arm sank the blade into the man’s neck from behind.
Cecelia would never again have to wonder why they called the blade a cleaver. Had she been in the vicinity, blood would have drenched her.
She knelt next to where Winston’s knife had been abandoned when he’d gone up in flames.
The man in question collapsed against the far wall, having given up the ghost.
She lowered herself, doing her best to grab the knife from the ground with bloodless fingers.
Right then, Cecelia was snatched up from behind, her hands freed, and her body clutched to a familiar wall of muscle that drove her relentlessly forward.
The now almost headless man had been tossed over the flames in the doorway, creating a temporary bridge.
“Jump!” Ramsay boomed from behind her.
She jumped, allowing herself to be swept up and over the corpse and the fire, only to be unceremoniously dumped into the dusty hallway.
Ramsay fell upon her legs the moment they were on the other side, smothering what few of her skirts had ignited. That done, he lunged up her body, his features now a mask of both fury and yearning, and he crushed his mouth to hers for a brief, life-altering kiss.
Tearing himself away he ordered, “Run, dammit. I’ll free the girls.”
He leapt off her and slammed the door to the classroom shut. It was too late to be much of a help; the flames had crawled into the hallway.
“Ramsay, here!” Cecelia turned to see that Chandler had grappled Genny to the ground. He tossed the ring of keys he’d ripped from the woman’s belt over Cecelia’s head.
Ramsay caught them and ran for the furthest door.
Cecelia struggled to her feet, lurching after him. She met him just as he was dragging the lock open.
The look he gave her was full of fury. “I told ye to run,” he snarled. “Get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you to do this alone!”
“I love ye, ye daft woman, and I canna do this if ye’re in danger!”
“If you love me, you know I will not leave these children down here, so hurry up, you stubborn Scot. We don’t have time for you to realize I’m right.”
His glare should have doused the flames with all its icy wrath, but he dragged open the door, seized the child behind it, and shoved her toward Cecelia before moving on.
Cecelia’s arms were full of clutching hands, braided hair, and tearful sobs. Her heart breaking, she pointed toward the stairs, instructing the girl to stay low beneath the billows of smoke gathering in the air.
They freed seven girls in all, the last two rooms proving empty.
As Cecelia opened every closet and searched all nooks and crannies, she was vaguely aware of someone bellowing her name. She ignored it until she was lifted like a flour sack and hauled toward the stairs. “We have to go,” Ramsay coughed out. “The fire is reaching the next story.”
Cecelia’s throat and eyes burned, her lungs threatened to seize, but she couldn’t leave. “Phoebe!” she sobbed, kicking her legs out. “We haven’t found Phoebe!”
Ramsay subdued her with his strong hold, speaking into her ear. “I pulled Phoebe from the loft in Scotland. She’s safe at my brother’s with Jean-Yves.”
Cecelia could have collapsed in relief. Genny had lied to her. Thank God. As it was, she allowed Ramsay to pull her up the stairs and propel her through the smoke-clogged foyer for the second time in as many we
eks.
This time, though, Cecelia cared little that the palatial estate might burn to the ground.
Because everyone was alive. Safe.
And Ramsay had said he loved her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ramsay stood on the vast lawn of Henrietta’s estate and watched the chaos of the conflagration unfold.
He didn’t just hold Cecelia against him, he enfolded her, curling his shoulders over her and pressing his cheek to the crown of her precious head. The flames engulfing the manor tossed incredible colors into her wild hair, and he let the vibrant hues mesmerize him as he did his utmost to compose himself.
His fury at the thought of what might have happened to her tonight had razed his control completely to ashes. That any man could have followed Genny’s order before he’d gotten to her set his very soul on fire.
He’d used that fire to kill for her.
How could he have allowed this? How could he have become so attached to her in such a short time that her presence was necessary for his very breath? Her smiles were the meat he fed on and her voice was the sustenance to his soul.
He tugged her closer, feeling every inch of her along his frame. Her head tucked between the mounds of his chest. Her belly round and soft against his hip. Her thighs pressed to his.
She belonged in his arms, now and always.
He only had to convince her to stay.
Their chaotic heartbeats had synchronized and were now finally beginning to slow. They’d helped the fire brigade contain the blaze, but in the end, there was nothing to be done but to let the manor burn until it was reduced to rubble.
The captive girls they freed had been carted to the hospital where their families would be contacted, and Ramsay knew he and Cecelia would make certain they would be not only compensated, but made entirely comfortable for life.
Chandler had dragged a humbled Genny away with a cheeky salute, and Ramsay was certain he’d not seen the last of the swarthy, stealthy bastard.
But none of that mattered at the moment. There was this woman in his arms, the one who’d stolen his heart, and he had to make her understand somehow that it was a heart worth keeping.
That he would be careful with hers if she would only give it to him.
Should he wait until she’d rested and eaten and had time to process the loss of her property?
Something told him it was the right thing to do.
But letting her go without making certain she understood his intentions also seemed untenable.
Christ, he really was terrible at this.
“What are you thinking?” Cecelia asked, pulling back to look up at him with eyes that were as deep as eternity. “You’re very serious.” She paused, feathering her audacious, elegant fingers down the muscles of his bare back. “More so than usual, I mean.”
Ramsay closed his eyes for a breath, basking in her touch. “I’m feeling an affinity to yer manse,” he stated honestly.
Her nose wrinkled adorably. “Aflame?”
“Destroyed.” He lifted a hand to rub at a smudge on her cheek, only serving to make it worse.
Instead of pulling away, she turned her cheek into his palm until her lashes fanned against his fingers in little arcs of barely there sensation. “What destroyed you?” she asked.
“Ye did,” he murmured. “Ye’ve ruined me, Cecelia. Ye’ve dismantled everything I thought I was, everything I’ve wanted to be. Ye ripped the bits of me that were festering and rotten away from myself, and now I doona ken what I am. Who I am.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her lashes gathering with little reserves of tears.
“Nay, I doona mind. Not anymore. I just … need ye to help put me back together.”
Her chest depressed with a hard breath as her eyes glittered up at him with emotion. But she said nothing, and the silence called forth an unprecedented tumble of truth from his lips.
“This world of ours has always been a hollow gray place for me. Empty and meaningless, like my name. But then I met ye, and ye were naught but vivacious color. Ye overwhelmed every sense I possess.” He filled his other hand with her cheek, framing her face, holding it like a precious, fragile thing. “Ye fill me to the brink, Cecelia. When we are together, I doona remember what loneliness is. And without you, I doona ken the point of anything.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead. Her eyelids. Her nose. The prominent bones of her cheek and the corners of her mouth, all the while pouring his heart out between tiny tastes of her. “I fought it, at first, thinking ye were a weakness. A vulnerability. But nay. Ye make me strong, Cecelia. Ye give me life. Ye provide me a purpose that is greater than my own ambition. Ye taught me what the word family might mean. I would have that family with ye.”
He caught a wayward tear as it leaked from her eye, smudging it away from her cheek. She gave a delicate sniff, her expression pinched with an anxiety that sent his heart plummeting to his stomach.
“I want that,” she said in an earnest, tortured whisper. “More than anything I want that. But, Ramsay, nothing has changed.”
A worried frown pinched his brow. “What do ye mean?”
“I know Miss Henrietta’s is currently burning to the ground, but I fully intend to rebuild.”
“I doona care,” he said. “I’ll help lay the fucking stones.”
She drew back, her eyes wide “But you said—”
“I ken what I said. And I’m telling ye I was wrong. I’ve spent too many years honoring the wrong ideals. Respecting the wrong men. It all means nothing, Cecelia. Not anymore.”
“But your position,” she argued.
“I’ll be a nameless pauper before I live without ye. I meant what I said at Elphinstone Croft. I was surrounded by the loneliest, most miserable place I’d ever known, and I was happier there than I’d ever been. And I’ve realized, it was because ye were with me. Cecelia, ye are my happiness. If I have ye and Phoebe, I need nothing else. If ye think well of me, then I’ve achieved the perfection I’ve striven for for so long.”
Cecelia’s smile was more brilliant than the flames. Than the sun on the summer solstice. It pressed her cheeks against his hands as she drew her fingers up his arms to his shoulders. “It appears, my lord Chief Justice, that you’ve changed your mind about love. Or did I hear you incorrectly?”
He shook his head. “Nay, ye heard the right of it. I meant it when I said it. I love ye Cecelia Teague. I love ye and I’m sorry. I’ll never stop being sorry for the hurtful things I’ve said to ye. Ye’ll never hear another cruel word from my lips. And I’ll rip anyone’s tongue out who dares disparage ye.”
Cecelia surged to her toes and pressed her lips to his in a tumultuous, ecstatic kiss. It was messy and wet and tasted of salt and ash and desperate happiness.
His body responded immediately, and he had to drag her shoulders away from him lest he debauch her here in front of London’s fire brigade and half of Scotland Yard.
“And here I thought your brother was the savage one,” she panted, flashing him a mischievous grin.
“He is,” Ramsay insisted, clutching at her. Unable to let her out of his grasp, lest she slip away again. “I’m not … usually like this. I’ve never…” He forced his fingers to unclench from her, only to thrust them through his hair. “I’ve never lost such control, Cecelia. I’ve never felt the kind of fear and rage I did when I returned to the house to find ye’d been taken. Chandler was right, I became a butcher last night, and I’d do it again for ye and Phoebe. I’d burn this entire city to the ground if ye asked me.”
Cecelia reached for him, smoothing a hand over his chest. “That doesn’t sound much like the Vicar of Vice to me,” she teased gently.
He shook his head, nostrils flaring, his fists clenched at his side. “I am not him,” he insisted. “I mean it, I doona even ken who I am anymore, but…” He gathered her hands into his, imprisoning them over his heart. The one that beat only for her. “Will ye not answer me, lass?”
She quirked a
n eyebrow up at him. “Answer you? I’ve not heard a question.”
His lips compressed into a thin line. He was bungling this again. “Will ye just be mine, Cecelia? Will ye share yer life with me, in any capacity ye deem fit? Will ye love me? Can ye love me, after all that’s happened?”
“Of course I can, you silly Scot.” She stepped closer, nuzzling into him. “I already do. I think I have for quite some time.”
“Why didna ye tell me?”
“Because I’m so far from perfect,” she murmured. “I didn’t ever want you to hate me for asking you to accept me despite your principles.”
“Nay,” he said. “I should have accepted ye always.”
He gathered her to him once again, linking his arms about her shoulders and burrowing his face into her hair.
“I love you,” she whispered against his heart.
A carriage with his seal pulled up and a man jumped down to open the door. “My lord Chief Justice,” the driver said diffidently.
“Let us go home,” Ramsay suggested.
“Where’s that?”
He nudged her nose with his. “Wherever ye are.”
* * *
Home, as it turned out, was a vast West End estate called Rutherleigh Point.
Cecelia couldn’t see the entirety of it from the carriage window, but the red stone gables and charming floor-to-ceiling windows thrilled her to no end.
Ramsay had told her that Phoebe and Jean-Yves were inside waiting for her, and so she lifted her soiled skirts and dashed up the front steps as quickly as she could.
The door slammed open and she called for the girl.
Phoebe appeared at the top of the grand staircase, clutching at the rather splendid white marble rails.
“Cecelia!” she called, nearly tripping down the steps in her exuberance. She flew off the third from the last step straight into her arms. “I was so frightened for you. So frightened, but I knew that you wouldn’t leave. That you’d come back.”
Her throat stopped by waves of emotion, Cecelia merely clung to the girl, petting her bouncing curls and doing her best not to cry.
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