“Why are you so dirty?” the girl asked.
“There was a fire,” Cecelia explained. “Miss Henrietta’s burned to the ground.”
Phoebe sobered. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yes, they’d all moved out after the explosion, remember?”
“Oh.” Her little forehead wrinkled. “They could move in here, probably, could they not? There’s ever so many empty rooms.”
Cecelia glanced back at Ramsay, who’d donned a coat over his bare chest. He ran a hand across his soiled face and spoke a few words in Gaelic that needed no interpretation.
“We’ll figure something out,” Cecelia placated the girl.
After a while, Phoebe squirmed to be let down, and Cecelia was forced allow the girl her freedom. “Cecelia, Lord Ramsay told me on the train that he’s my papa! That’s what you were trying to figure out all along? The riddle in Henrietta’s book?”
“Yes,” Cecelia said. “Yes, darling, it was. Wasn’t it a fantastic riddle? A wonderful find?”
“I always wanted a papa,” Phoebe whispered. “But I never thought he’d be so big and handsome and rich.” She extended her hands to encompass the vast grand hall. It was bigger than Henrietta’s by far. Grander, even, than Castle Redmayne, the duke’s estate.
“It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it?” Phoebe asked.
Cecelia had to admit, it was, indeed.
Ramsay called for a bath and then allowed Phoebe to take Cecelia on an unofficial tour of the place. They weaved through room after room, some gilded in French paper and others in expensive paint.
Almost all of them empty.
He’d turned the library into a comfortable study, she noted, and a few bedrooms were well appointed, but beyond that the space was utterly wasted.
“It’s a house,” Ramsay said a little bashfully. “A status symbol, really, but I never had much need to make it a home.”
“You do now,” Phoebe said, clutching at his hand and pulling him toward the kitchen.
“I do now.” Ramsay looked back at Cecelia, reaching out to tug her along. His eyes glimmered with a powerful emotion, but beyond that, Cecelia could make out no traces of the arctic coldness she’d found before. All she could see was a blue as deep and clear as the summer sky.
After they’d eaten and settled Phoebe, Ramsay pulled Cecelia into his bedroom and locked the door. It was a simple room, she noted, masculine and spare. Like the man.
The man who was becoming someone else. Someone who smiled. Someone who prowled toward her with every intention of perpetrating both vice and villainy upon her person.
Cecelia allowed herself to be caught. Hoping he’d carry her to the tub in the corner.
“I’m glad you’ve overcome your mistrust of women,” she teased. “Seeing as how you’re now outnumbered by them.”
“Only by one,” he noted before dipping down to root in the hollow of her neck. “Perhaps I can persuade ye to allow me to plant a son inside ye.”
Her womb shivered in a very hasty response.
“What if you sired another daughter?” she asked. “I can’t really pick, now can I?”
“I’ll happily raise a bevy of daughters, if ye consent to mother them on my behalf.” His lips caught at her earlobe, nibbling gently.
Her body bloomed, undulating against him.
“You’ll have Redmayne, I suppose, and Jean-Yves to help even the odds,” she said a bit breathlessly. “But then there’ll be Alexander and Frank.”
He made a soft noise, exploring her jawline with his full lips. “I’ll need to hire a staff now that I’ve taken on a wife and child,” he proposed before kissing the tip of her nose tenderly. “I could leave that to ye when ye’re Mrs. Cassius Gerard Ramsay.”
“Cassius,” She tested his name, remembering what it stood for. Pulling back, she looked up into his dear, handsome features. “Do you still feel you are empty?”
Suddenly, his arms closed around her waist and he pulled her down over him on the bed, rolling until she straddled him. Filling his arms with the weight of her.
“Not anymore,” he said seriously, and as he stroked her cheek, she felt a tremor in his powerful hands. “Not ever again.”
She sighed happily and he pulled her down to possess her mouth in a kiss that left them both breathless and writhing.
He hastily peeled off her clothing, levering up to peel off his own.
When he had her bared above him, he filled his palms with her buttocks and lowered her against his shaft, letting her rub and writhe against the impressive sex like a kitten begging for attention.
She gave a broken sigh as his fingers toyed and teased her. She arched and danced over him, anchoring her hands on the springy hairs of his unyielding chest.
He was a golden god. A paragon that hardly belonged to this world.
But he belonged to her.
She dragged her palms down the delineations of muscle on his stomach, counting them, until she found the little trail that led her to the velvet silken skin covering the hardness that throbbed for her.
He expelled a guttural moan. “I love ye.”
Lost in the enchantment of the moment, she almost forgot to reply as sensation and need robbed her of speech.
But as she lifted her body and sank down slowly in a slide of silk and fire, she whispered the words they’d say every night for the rest of their lives. “I love you.”
This time, their passion wasn’t a storm. It contained no thunder or urgency. It was a whisper, one the very night stilled to hear. It was warm rather than hot and unhurried rather than frenzied.
This was a moment of discovery between them. Of intent and trust and utter fulfillment. Ramsay’s touch contained awe, and his gaze was full of promises.
This time, when they arched together in a glorious spasm of bliss, Cecelia knew that, though she’d not been his first lover, this was the first time Cassius Gerard Ramsay had ever made love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always I couldn’t produce these books without a truckload of help.
I’m especially thankful to the team at St. Martin’s Press. Monique, Marissa, Mara, and the bevy of others who guided this book from inception to distribution.
I’m eternally grateful to Christine Witthohn, who is always looking out for my best interests, even when I’m not.
I have to thank Cynthia St. Aubin, Staci Hart, Tanya Crosby, and Kim Loraine, who all touched this book in a unique way and, with their friendship, helped to inspire such fierce female characters.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next scintillating novel in the Devil You Know series
by Kerrigan Byrne
The Devil in Her Bed
Coming in 2021
from
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Before Francesca could close in on her prey, a familiar feeling lifted the fine hairs on her body. A strange dichotomy of warmth and chill. Something like the gaze of a god, or the presence of a ghost. It struck a chord of awe in her, and a bit of fear, if she were honest.
Turning, she used a sip from her champagne glass as an excuse to scan the teeming, glittering, whirling mass of revelers.
There. Across the ballroom. A man stood out by standing still.
He stared at her from the shadows of deep-set eyes.
And just like that, in an overheated room overfilled with people, they were utterly alone. She and the ghost.
Francesca blinked a few times, just to be certain he wasn’t, indeed, some figment of her imagination or truly a specter of the dead.
No, he was still there. Staring.
Strangely discomfited, Francesca affected an air of nonchalance. When others would have retreated, she lifted her glass in a slight toast.
I see you. I see you watching.
Her next thought was to wonder how on earth she’d missed him before?
He had harsh-hewn features that contrasted with his immaculate, elegant attire and a commanding brow. His nose was bold rather th
an broad, and his mouth defied description. It shouldn’t have tempted her. Not as hard as it was. Hard like his gaze.
He was a hard man all over, it appeared, and extraordinarily fit. Not as monstrously big as Ramsay, or as tall and rangy as Redmayne, but a man of medium height, bred to stand in a crowd, not above it.
The pallor of his skin, the perfection of his slick auburn hair, and the sartorial grace of his stance seemed incongruous with the rest of him, somehow. Like he’d once been a wild thing and only recently, if impeccably, tamed. A sportsman, maybe?
The man was, in a word, striking.
In response to her gesture, his lip quirked, and his angular chin dipped in a nod. He drifted forward with such poise, exuding an overabundance of authority and such inadvertent menace that people melted aside before he took a step. Both repelled and entranced, the crowd moved away from the force of his dynamic presence, and then they looked to see what had prompted them to instinctually do so.
Some of them seemed to know him, and he murmured a returned greeting to a few as he passed.
But he didn’t stop until he’d reached Francesca.
No, he didn’t tower like Ramsay, but he hadn’t the need. Everything about him bespoke domination. Power. Unequivocal strength.
Something deep, deep within Francesca trembled. Not with fear, per se. It was more feminine than that. Abruptly, ridiculously, she wanted to purr at him. To do all the things she’d done before to attract a man.
To see if she could cast a spell as powerful as his.
Francesca abandoned her glass of champagne so he wouldn’t see it quiver.
Here was a man who would smell her weakness, and at the moment that weakness began in her knees and worked its way into all sorts of alarming places.
“Dance with me.”
Francesca rarely responded to commands, and this one was no different. The issuer didn’t have to know, however, that her lack of response was an involuntary mutism caused by his astoundingly seductive Scottish brogue. His voice was smooth and dangerous and beautiful, like molten ore hardening into lethal steel.
“Dance with me,” he said with an air of someone unused to repeating himself.
Francesca adopted a demeanor of disinterest to cover his effect on her. “You’re not on my card, sir.” She turned toward Murphy, but the ghost stayed with her as if he’d anticipated her move.
“Do ye care about any of those men on yer card?” He reached out and flicked his thumb over the ribbon tied at the wrist of her glove on which the filigreed card dangled.
“Not particularly.” Dear lord, had her voice ever sounded that breathy before?
“Then forget them, and dance with me.”
He stood so close, too close. Awareness of his proximity threatened to overwhelm her. Instead of retreating, as her instinct bade her to, she stepped in.
“And just who are you, that you’re so impertinent?” she demanded. “Surely you’re aware it is against protocol to dance with a man to whom I’ve never been formally introduced. You do us both a dishonor.”
The dark and wicked shadows in his eyes jangled her nerves, but an impish charm almost concealed those shadows enough to convince her they hadn’t really existed at all. “Since when have ye cared about protocol, Lady Francesca?”
He had her there. Since never, that was when. She did what she liked when she liked, and the devil may care about the consequences.
She was at a disadvantage here. He knew such things about her when she didn’t even know his name. In fact, she couldn’t decide what unsettled her most, that she had been waylaid from her private mission. That he was asking her to dance in this impolite way …
Or that she was tempted to say yes.
More than almost anything she’d been tempted to do in years.
She looked up at him, not too far, but just enough, and found an adventure she hadn’t yet enjoyed. A flirtation she’d never allowed herself to have. When one chased a singular goal, all other idle pursuits sort of just disappeared. Her every interaction had been calculated, save for Alexander and Cecil. Her every desire stashed on a shelf deep within herself, deep enough to have gathered dust and been forgotten.
“My lady?” The man held out his hand, and Francesca was suddenly aware of everyone looking.
Cripes. These Scots. They certainly did breed a specific sort of man. Sensual and arrogant. Bold. And this one wielded a smile that would disarm the most protected of hearts.
She’d doubled the guard on hers, throwing in a few ramparts and spikes … maybe a moat for good measure.
Tossing the last dash of her champagne, she took his hand and led him to the dance floor.
Also by
Kerrigan Byrne
The Highwayman
The Hunter
The Highlander
The Duke
The Scot Beds His Wife
The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days
Praise for the first novel in the Devil You Know series
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days
“Tantalizes readers with the couple’s teasing and building passion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An un-put-down-able story that combines sensuality, tenderness … and memorable characters.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“In this brilliantly conceived start to her captivating new series, Byrne once again delivers the beautifully nuanced characters and seductive storytelling her readers have come to expect, while at the same time deftly conjuring up the spirit of Victoria Holt’s classic gothic romances.”
—Booklist
“An amazing story of how two broken people find a way to heal each other … A beautifully written historical romance that was impossible to put down.”
—Affaire de Coeur
… and Kerrigan Byrne’s other captivating novels
“Byrne’s writing comes to vivid life on the page.”
—Entertainment Weekly on The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo
“Another winner in a stellar series.”
—Library Journal (starred review) on The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo
“The dark, violent side of the Victorian era blazes to life … in this exceptional and compelling vengeance-driven romantic adventure.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
on The Highwayman
“The romance is raw, edgy, and explosive … The path they take through adversity makes the triumph of love deeply satisfying.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Highwayman
“A truly mesmerizing series that highlights dangerous heroes who flout the law and the women who love them.”
—Library Journal (starred review) on The Hunter
“Dramatic, romantic, and utterly lovely.”
—BookPage
“Byrne is a force in the genre.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)
on The Highwayman
“Romantic, lush, and suspenseful.”
—Suzanne Enoch,
New York Times bestselling author
“A passionate, lyrical romance that takes your breath away.”
—Elizabeth Boyle,
New York Times bestselling author
“Beautifully written, intensely suspenseful, and deliciously sensual.”
—Amelia Grey,
New York Times bestselling author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kerrigan Byrne lives with her husband on the coast of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula in a Victorian-era town almost frozen in time. When she’s not writing, you might find her on the beach with her dogs, lounging at a local vineyard or brewery, or buying things she doesn’t need at antique stores. She loves to hear from her readers, you can contact her at www.kerriganbyrne.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new
releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
Excerpt: The Devil in Her Bed
Also by Kerrigan Byrne
Praise for the first novel in the Devil You Know series
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Paperbacks, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
ALL SCOT AND BOTHERED
Copyright © 2020 by Kerrigan Byrne.
Excerpt from The Devil in Her Bed copyright © 2021 by Kerrigan Byrne.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
eISBN: 9781250318879
Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by email at [email protected].
All Scot and Bothered Page 34