“A capital plan.” Cecelia drained the last of her scotch, feeling immediately better now that she didn’t have to face her situation alone. “I can’t thank you two enough.”
“What ho, wife?” Piers Gedrick Atherton, the Duke of Redmayne, strode through the parlor door, his scarred features made less disconcerting by a close-cropped raven beard and the tender smile softening his hard mouth.
Alexandra beamed at her husband as though the three vicious slashes across the left side of his face didn’t exist.
Cecelia thought it a miracle that the duchess, who’d once been tortured by the mere touch of a man, now found herself happily married to the Terror of Torcliff. A duke as large, menacing, and dark as the devil.
It was likewise as strange to see such a primal beast as Redmayne treat his wife with a gentility bordering on worship.
“Forgive the early intrusion,” Redmayne said, addressing them all. “We are dowdy old men who are much too serious and yearn to be part of your jollity.” He moved with the loose-limbed grace of the exotic predators he famously hunted before his life-altering encounter with a jaguar had lent him a new respect for the wild.
“You are the opposite of a dowdy old man and well you know it.” Alexandra rolled her eyes at her husband. He was a man in his prime, barely past five and thirty. Strong and fit and much too feral for a duke.
Upon reaching the arm of Alexandra’s chaise, Redmayne bent his dark head to place a kiss on her temple. His lips lingered there longer than was strictly proper in mixed company, as if he couldn’t help himself from savoring the scent of her hair.
Cecelia watched them with a certain melancholy longing twisting inside of her, until Redmayne’s words registered with a spike of panic.
We.
He’d not intruded alone.
A tall shadow in the doorway drew her attention.
Lord Ramsay had followed his brother, and now blocked Cecelia’s only route of escape.
Blast and damn!
Unable to look at him, Cecelia’s panicked gaze collided with Alexandra’s, and her friend stood nervously, giving her one surreptitious shake of her head. A warning not to do or say anything to draw attention to herself.
Ramsay melted from the shadows of the door as Francesca and Cecelia stood to perform a curtsy.
“My lady,” he said, addressing Francesca. “Miss Teague.” Eyes the color of an Antarctic glacier found Cecelia and lingered, locking her feet in place as he bent at the waist in the stiff echo of a bow.
“How do you do?” As she executed a second curtsy, the pace of Cecelia’s breath doubled even as her corset seemed to shrink several inches, restricting her lungs to an impossible degree.
Was this why women fainted? Was it possible to be so cold as to shiver while standing so close to the fire?
The cold, she realized, emanated not from the air, but from Ramsay. From some hollow place behind his frigid eyes.
Eyes that had still not left her.
Did he recognize her? Would the next words from his lips condemn her?
Time seemed to bend around Cecelia as she looked over at him, or rather up at him. Of course, it couldn’t have been for longer than a fleeting moment. But that moment had all the impact and hues of the fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day.
Not because he was handsome. Nothing about the fierce and brutal planes of his face was meant to please the eye. His chin and jaw were much too square and thrust forward with unyielding menace. His tall forehead, crimped with an eternal scowl, shadowed his impossibly light, unforgiving eyes.
His nose was more patrician than barbaric, she noted. A great Caesarean nose from which to look down upon the rest of the people he considered beneath him.
But his lips.
Cecelia’s gaze snagged there with a desperate fascination. A man would have to be chiseled with ferocity to own such a luscious mouth without seeming feminine.
They were lips made for sin, for wickedness.
Hadn’t the devil once been an angel? Perhaps she’d been wrong to attach that moniker to Redmayne. It didn’t stretch the imagination to picture Ramsay as the Star of the Morning. A favored son of golden hair and skin.
God’s own heir.
Ramsay’s evening suit and white tie were impeccable. Expensive. His hair, cut to fashion, gleamed like precious metal in the light from the sconces.
But as always, his features betrayed his lack of nobility.
His Scots accent wasn’t that of an aristocrat. His brogue brought to mind a rather savage, sky-clad people with the same pagan brute strength and superfluous muscle he hid beneath his impeccably tailored jacket.
In fact, Cecelia could find nothing gentle about him. Not the shards of ice that passed for pupils. Even the way he stood projected unaffected arrogance. As though he’d learned well and early that life was naught but a contest for dominance, and he expected everyone in his vicinity to play by the rules. His rules. Because he wrote the laws and enforced them with an iron fist.
How terrible it must be to stand beneath his bench in shackles searching his face for traces of mercy.
This man quite obviously didn’t know the meaning of the word.
As Francesca would sometimes say … she was buggered.
Cecelia looked down at the cream carpets, praying for the first time in years.
Dear Lord, or … the other one. If either of you could simply open up a hole in the floor large enough to swallow me entirely, I’d be much obliged. I care not at this moment where it takes me. I’d rather burn in eternal hellfire than spend another minute pinned beneath the gaze of—
Francesca’s sharp elbow interrupted her prayer, such as it was, and she looked up to notice that all the eyes in the room, not just Ramsay’s, were directed at her.
Apparently, she’d been addressed. But by whom? And what did they say?
“P-pardon?” she asked, pushing her spectacles back onto the bridge of her nose where they belonged.
“Poor thing,” Alexandra crooned with a meaningful look. “She’s been complaining of an awful headache,” she explained to the room at large. “Perhaps you might go home and get some rest.”
Cecelia nodded woodenly. “Thank you. I believe I shall.”
Redmayne’s forehead crimped with a filial concern. “I’ll have Cheever call for the coach, Miss Teague.”
“No thank you, Your Grace, I’ll take a hansom back to—”
“Ye’ll take my carriage.” Ramsay’s words were less an offer than an order. “It’s waiting down a side street through the back garden. I’ll accompany ye to my footman.”
“I’m quite capable of finding my own way through a garden.” Cecelia glanced at him more sharply than she’d intended. “I’ll see myself out.”
Ramsay’s eyes dropped from her features with something that might have looked like indignation on a less brutal face. He knew she wanted nothing to do with his company.
“I’ll take her home.” Francesca stepped forward. “We can dine another evening.”
“But we’ve made your favorite, Lady Francesca,” Redmayne interjected. “And besides, it’s a rare night my brother offers his company, let alone his chivalry.” The duke turned to Cecelia with a disconcerting smile. “You’d be sorry to miss such an infrequent occurrence.”