A carnal memory glistened in her eyes and stained her pale cheeks a dark, guilty shade.
Suddenly he knew exactly why she hadn’t slept.
Because she’d been up contemplating their kiss.
As had he.
“Ramsay.”
His name on her lips stopped his heart and corded his muscles. He became like a statue, his every marble molecule waiting for the chisel of her next words.
“I need you to believe that I’m neither criminal nor bawd. I need to you trust that I’m embroiled within this catastrophic mystery against my will and better judgment, and that I am as committed to doing what is right as you are. Even if we might disagree as to what that is. I need an ally, not an enemy. I have enough of those, and I promise you, I’ve done nothing to deserve them.”
The earnest intensity glowing on her heart-shaped face threatened to melt the steely cold center of him within a feminine forge.
He fought the rising molten wave of warmth. He could not afford to let her shape and mold him to her will. He could not—would not—be one of the men who undoubtedly fell to their knees before her, waiting to be anointed her knight in shining armor.
“Tell me you believe me,” she pleaded, her eyes going soft, gathering little jewels of moisture at her lashes. “That you believe I’m innocent.”
Remembering himself, Ramsay pulled his hand from hers. He believed she didn’t procure those missing girls.
Beyond that, he believed that she could quite easily make him a fool. Or a fiend. One of those empty-eyed addicts haunting the opium dens begging for their poison. He believed they were embroiled in the same dangerous conspiracy and that he needed the information in Henrietta’s book every bit as much as she did.
“I believe I need to get ye to safety,” he finally said, thrusting the book back into her grasp. “I will take ye somewhere they are not likely to find ye. I’ll buy ye the time ye need. Now get dressed and pack.”
All hope collapsed away from her features. “But my employees. The school. I have to make arrangements—”
“We will make them on our way out of the city.” Her silk-clad body blocked his way toward the door, so he backed away from her and took the route around the chair he’d napped in to avoid any dangerous physical contact.
He’d made it to the door latch before she stopped him with the simple weight of her hand on his wrist. Something about her touch shackled him, reminded him that not all restraints were iron.
Some of them could be velvet.
“What about Jean-Yves and Phoebe?” she fretted.
“We’ll take them, of course.” He flexed his hand on the latch.
“Take them? Take them where?”
Ramsay could stand it no longer. Not her scent, nor the outline of her body in that damned wrapper. He had arrangements to make and fortifications to construct if this was going to work.
He shook off her hand and wrenched to door open, managing to slide past her without allowing their bodies to touch.
“To Scotland,” he threw over his retreating shoulder. “Where else?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cecelia winced as her fidgeting produced a loud protestation from the stool she occupied next to the bed where Jean-Yves snored softly.
To her utter relief, he remained asleep.
The poor man had been grim but enduring for the entire train journey from London to Dalkeith, a lovely Midlothian town south of Edinburgh. The bumpy carriage ride across the moors to the cottage had been a decidedly different story, and she’d had to double his dose of the opiate in order make the entire ordeal tolerable for everyone involved.
When Cecelia had quizzed Ramsay about their destination, he’d been disturbingly obtuse in his answer. “I’m taking ye to Elphinstone Croft.”
“What’s Elphinstone Croft?” she’d asked.
“A place no one will think to look for ye.” An odd note in his voice twisted something bleak inside of her, and Cecelia hadn’t pressed further.
And when they’d crested the gentle hill, she’d gasped with elation.
Elphinstone Croft had reminded her of a lost paradise. Or perhaps just a neglected one. The white cottage hid in a cluster of trees entirely too narrow to claim the title of forest along the bank of the River Esk. Overgrown ivy and a riot of thorny roses, berries, and wildflowers clung to the decrepit fence and crept up the walls, as though the garden had been trying to devour the edifice at its middle and was halfway finished with the meal.
Ramsay had to rip vines and such from the entry and pit his considerable weight against the oak door before it gave way.
At her questioning look, he explained. “I’ve not had the occasion to visit for a handful of years.”
Jean-Yves had gratefully landed in the first bed Ramsay had been able to provide. Subsequently, it was decided Cecelia could both sit sentinel at the tiny desk by Jean-Yves’s bedside and work on the codex in the remaining daylight.
Ramsay offered to keep Phoebe busy with him as they unloaded the food and supplies from the carriage they’d rented in Dalkeith. They would then set about airing the few rooms and uncovering the Spartan furniture.
The deep rumble of Ramsay’s voice contrasted with the high exuberance of Phoebe’s and became a pleasant distant cacophony by which she worked.
Cecelia was glad the girl hadn’t seemed to mind the damp dereliction of the simple croft. Phoebe had taken to the expedition like Francesca would an adventure, or Alexandra had to any less-than-luxurious archeological locales. She had her dolls, Frances Bacon and Fanny de Beaufort, and couldn’t be happier to venture beyond the tiny corner of the city that had been her entire world thus far.
As much as Cecelia was charmed by the fairy-tale allure of the croft, she had to admit it wasn’t at all what she’d pictured when Ramsay had informed them that their destination was his childhood home in the Scottish Lowlands.
She felt a certain sense of shame to have assumed the elder brother of a powerful duke had loftier origins than herself. It couldn’t be more to the contrary.
Even the Reverend Teague’s humble vicarage boasted two bedrooms in addition to the cellar, and they’d enjoyed the patronage of wealthy parishioners to keep them fed and clothed.
As far as she could tell, she and Jean-Yves currently occupied the lone bedroom of Elphinstone Croft, above which was a tiny loft Phoebe had immediately claimed as her own.
Cecelia had spread out her volumes of ciphers and references beneath the open window, and had quickly succumbed to her curiosity, dragged into the world of Grecian and Etruscan cryptology.
Before she knew it, her pen dropped from fingers suddenly stiff with abiding cold. She applied the icy hand to the back of her aching neck, kneading at the knotted muscles there as she blinked around the bedroom.
When had night fallen? Had Ramsay left that candle on her desk?
Oh dear, she’d done it again. Alexandra had teased her endlessly about her predilection at university. Mesmerism by maths, she’d called it.
The entire world would drop away, cease to exist, for hours upon hours until she was able to solve a particularly perplexing problem.
Except … this time, she’d solved nothing. Her only notable progress was the alarmingly long list of codes and ciphers she knew were not applicable to the codex.