Unless they perpetrated the crimes.
Redmayne took his silence for acceptance. “Don’t be hard on yourself, either. You didn’t know who she was when you wanted her.”
Wanted. The word implied past tense.
If only he knew.
The truth hadn’t extinguished his hunger.
Ramsay slammed the glass down harder than was necessary, wishing that he could punch more things. That he could incite Redmayne to beat the memory of her lips, her flavor out of his mind.
“I’m not angry because I kissed her,” he confessed. “I’m not even that angry at her for being who she is.”
“Then what—”
Ramsay swiped at the entire table, sending glass shattering to the floor. “I left yer house that night with the word wife on my lips, for Christ’s sake!” he roared. “A handful of minutes in the garden with her and I was ready to hand over my—” He couldn’t say heart. He couldn’t give what he didn’t have. “My name. Even in the wake of her telling me why she didna want it. I should have guessed. I’d met her that morning and then allowed her to seduce me that very night and I never connected the two women. What kind of miserable imbecile does something like that?”
“Jesus.” Redmayne scrubbed a hand over his already tousled ebony hair. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“I forgot myself for a moment.” Ramsay’s voice dropped so low, he could barely hear it as his shoulders sagged with shame. “I forgot what people are. I wanted to believe…” He let the sentence die, because it made him feel weak.
Redmayne reached for his shoulder and Ramsay shrugged him off, not knowing what to do with the affectionate gesture. “Never ye mind. My point is that any man who would take such a crafty woman at her word is a fool.”
Redmayne sobered, speaking with the conviction due his station. “Then you must uncover the truth, for everyone’s sake.”
Ramsay stalked toward the exit, stretching the skin of his knuckles over tight fists.
“That, my brother, is exactly what I intend to do.”
* * *
In the two days since the explosion at Henrietta’s, Cecelia had taken every precaution to hide her identity. To her employees, the workmen she’d hired to clear the disaster area, and the students at the school, she was Hortense Thistledown, Henrietta’s niece.
Only a select few people knew Cecelia Teague.
She arrived and left by way of a secret tunnel entrance and had spent most of her time at hospital with Jean-Yves. From there, she’d retrieve Phoebe at Frank’s in Mayfair or Alexander’s in Belgravia and never took the same route home.
Redmayne, bless him, had twice escorted her in a hackney rather than his ducal carriage, keeping one ever-vigilant eye on their back. He’d assured her they’d never been followed.
I’ll be the hot breath down yer neck and the chill from the shadows.
The threat reverberated through Cecelia as she hurried through the darkness. The clack of her shoes on the cobbles echoed her loneliness back at her. The streetlamps seemed too dim and pallid, even in her posh part of town.
She clutched Phoebe’s hand and drew the girl closer to her skirts, doing her best to pretend she wasn’t afraid.
When they’d visited the chemist around teatime to pick up an opiate pain tonic for Jean-Yves, the man had been furious that his shipment of supplies was late. He’d begged them to return in the evening, and Cecelia felt sorry for his missing an entire day’s revenue. She even bought a digestive aid she hadn’t needed to assuage her guilt, and his pocketbook, with a promise to return after hours.
It seemed ludicrous to take a hackney a mere five blocks from her tidy row house in Chelsea to the market street. But now, as a bank of summer fog drifted over from the Thames and washed the cobbles with an eerie glow, the fine hairs on her body sang with electric awareness.
Her usual habit was to send Jean-Yves or an errand boy for a carriage if one didn’t loiter nearby. But she hadn’t the time in the two days since the incident to hire another man-of-all-work. Besides, she’d been afraid doing so would hurt his feelings. Unlike Alex and Frank, she’d not previously possessed the kind of fortune for footmen, and traveled too much to make them necessary.
Since her cookmaid had been out of town visiting an ill sister, and Jean-Yves had been stoically sweating from pain without his medicine, Cecelia could stand his suffering no longer, and had no choice but to take Phoebe along for the errand.
She scurried past a particularly dark alleyway in between two cozy buildings, peering into the gloom that seethed with malice.
If Ramsay was out there in the shadows, wouldn’t his watching her make her feel safer? She certainly wasn’t breaking any laws. So why did fingers of dread dance along her spine?
Because the last time they’d spoken, she’d truly feared him. That brutal visage would intimidate anyone, and combined with the cruel threats on his lips, he’d been downright terrifying.
Cecelia picked up the pace, earning her a protest from Phoebe, who had to trot just to keep up with her long stride. The child would much rather give her attentions to the candy the chemist had offered her than navigating the dark cobbles.
“I’m sorry, darling,” Cecelia murmured, measuring her stride to make the girl more comfortable.
Something in the air, in the mist, whispered to instincts she’d never honed. A primal, perhaps untapped maternal intuition that told her to snatch up her young and flee.
But she was being ridiculous, surely.
It was at times like these one might wish for a man. Someone to perhaps rely upon to look after one’s safety. A strong set of shoulders and heavy, scarred hands with a masculine penchant to protect his family.
She tried not to give this fantasy man thick, orderly strands of fair hair or an uncommonly square jaw. Nor did she paint his lips full or his eyes quicksilver blue. Of course she didn’t, because any semblance of just such a man in her life was impossible now.
Because he detested her.
A strange sound from across the street startled her. A can or a bottle grinding against the cobbles as it rolled. Something, someone, had to have disturbed it.
Cecelia’s breath burned in her lungs. She reached into her pocket, palming the knife Frank had given her. Both the Countess of Mont Claire and the Duchess of Redmayne had taken to carrying pistols in their purses at a young age, but Cecelia was too skeptical of the contraptions to be comfortable having one upon her person. She knew how to shoot one, because the ladies had taught her, but to carry one around at all times unsettled her in the extreme.
She was simply too clumsy for all of that. She’d be certain to shoot her own boot off or, worse, kill someone accidentally. Besides, her poor eyesight did not a good markswoman make.
Though at this very moment, she reconsidered her position most heartily.
If she’d been alone, she’d have run the two blocks home, but with Phoebe at her side she couldn’t go very much faster.
She opened her mouth to suggest she carry the girl home when another sound broke through the mist from up one of the stairways leading to the landing of row houses behind her.
This one metallic. Like the click of a key in a heavy latch, or maybe the hammer of a pistol? She’d have to hear it again to be sure.