If the storm wasn’t about to be unleashed upon her, she’d have taken all the time she could to admire and absorb it.
To bask in the ferocious beauty of it, as she’d always been fond of storms.
Lud, she thought wryly. The blast must have blown the wits right out of her head.
He took a threatening step forward, his shoulders seeming to grow along with his wrath such that Cecelia was ashamed to notice she’d retreated a step into the safety of the Rogues.
He didn’t yell. Indeed, his voice lowered several impossible octaves. But something in the depth and precise enunciation of his orders lent them more gravitas than a thunderous roar.
“Someone kindly tell me just what in the veriest fuck is going on here, and who the bloody hell ye really are.” He stabbed a condemning finger in Cecelia’s direction, and she put her hands up as though said finger were the end of a pistol.
“I would be happy to explain, my lord.” She fought to keep her voice even. “Although … I’d request that you mind your language in front of—”
“This house is so entirely sullied, my language willna make one jot of a difference, madam,” he sneered, raking her with a glare so sharp and loathing it might have had claws.
His disgust, while expected, still stung. No, it burned. Igniting a fire of indignation within her breast.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Cecelia said with just as much control as she could muster. “You obviously have a personal vendetta to discharge here. However, you are in the presence of a countess and a duchess of the realm, and as such, it is beholden upon you as a gentleman to show them, your betters, the deference due their station.”
“Betters?” he snorted with derision. “Ye no more believe someone can be born yer better than I do, regardless of the company ye keep.” He thrust his jaw toward the noble ladies. “But vendetta or no, I’m here because an explosion just endangered my city, and I do intend to ken how and why.”
My city, Cecelia thought mulishly. As if he owned London. The sheer arrogance of the man. The abject pomposity. If she’d had the courage to engage her wit in confrontations, she’d tell him exactly what she thought of him. But it seemed her courage had begun to fail her.
“What’s going on here,” Francesca answered from behind her, “is that someone tried to murder our Cecelia in her own establishment. Now, just what do you plan to do about it?”
Ramsay ignored Francesca like an oak would a gnat.
“Which introduction of ours was a lie?” A severe note underscored his question, and Cecelia wondered if he, too, thought about their enchanted evening.
About their kiss.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Cecelia said.
“Ye told me yer name was Hortense Thistledown,” he accused.
“I said you may call me Hortense Thistledown,” she corrected. “Think of it as a … business moniker. A nom de plume, if you will.”
“And the French accent?”
“I’ll admit that was a bit of … improvisation on my part,” she hedged.
“Call it what it bloody was. A falsehood.” Though his voice remained even, Cecelia sensed she’d reached the edge of a very long rope. The edge that might have a noose attached to it.
If he wanted the truth, Cecelia decided, then the truth he would get. “Yesterday morning I found out that I had an aunt named Henrietta Thistledown in the same sentence that I was told she’d expired and willed to me her business. You rudely interrupted my initial assessment of the place by threatening to kick my door in, and I was forced to defend my inheritance by whatever means I deemed fit.”
He’d begun shaking his head in the middle of her statement. “I’ll pretend for a moment that doesna sound like utter horsewallop, and ask why ye would feel the need to defend yerself from the police if ye’re not breaking the law?”
“Because Henrietta told me in a letter that her enemies had become my enemies, and those enemies were lawbreakers as well as lawmakers. If you’re familiar with her, then you must be aware of her clientele, half of which sit in the House of Lords and on the justice benches beneath you.” Cecelia gauged his reaction, treading carefully here. How much should she reveal? How much did she trust Cassius Ramsay? She took a deep breath.
In for a penny … “Henrietta told me she was possessed of debts and secrets that could get her killed. That put me and the school in danger. And … just look what’s happened.” She swept her hand to encompass the disaster.
His eyes narrowed to thin shards of ice. “Ye want me to believe that Henrietta left ye one of the largest of the ill-begotten fortunes in the land and ye’d never even met her?”
That’s what he focused on?
“We might have done,” Cecelia corrected. “Genny said she remembered meeting me as a very small girl—”
“I’m to believe that ye, the daughter of a widowed country vicar, were planning on taking up the mantle of the Scarlet Lady with no training, knowledge, or know-how of such an endeavor?” Condescension edged out suspicion as he spoke.
“I took plenty of classes in economics at university, I’m fairly confident in my abilities to run a successful gambling venture—”
“Ye simply sat down at a solicitor’s office yesterday, learned of the death of an infamous family member, and thought to yerself, why not contribute to the depravity of an already rotting and decrepit city?”
“That’s not at all what I—”
“Ye think I’m naive enough to believe that ye stumbled into this profession yesterday?” He advanced as he spoke, until he was almost nose-to-nose with Cecelia. For the first time maybe ever, she was grateful for her height and her heft, and drew upon every inch she could claim.
And still he loomed over her.
How did one do that? she wondered. Turn standing into looming. She’d never wished so intensely as in that moment for the knowledge of a proper loom.
As it was, she simply threw her shoulders back and lifted her chin, wishing that any kind of conflict didn’t make her stomach roil and a cold sweat to bloom. “You don’t have to believe a word I say, my lord. I suppose your only task would be to find out who has done this to my establishment and why.”
At this, his eyes went flat. All the electricity leaching out of them as if disappointment deflated his anger.
“Ye are right, of course,” he stated coldly. “Tell me, Miss Teague—or is it Miss Thistledown?—did yer aunt give ye any indication as to the nature of these dangerous secrets?”
“Well, not exactly.” Cecelia swallowed, doing her best not to be cowed by the cords in his neck and the vein pulsing at his temple. “Not … in so many words.”
“Speak plainly,” he clipped. “Aye or nay?”
“Nay—er—no. She categorically did not reveal them to me … as of yet.”
He eyed her with great suspicion, and Cecelia knew she was being obtuse in trying to avoid a lie, but also not wanting to reveal anything that might put her in more danger. She was not so foolish as to reveal the existence of the codex before it could be deciphered.
“Ye’re telling me ye have no idea who would want to do something like this?” he asked.