She offered him a contrite little smile that went no further than her mouth, and handed him the laudanum with water at the ready.
Jean-Yves refused the medicine. “The pain is bearable this morning,” he said. “I do not want to develop a taste for oblivion.” He sucked at his teeth, lifting one bushy caterpillar brow up his creased forehead. “Besides, I think this Scot will finish breaking your heart while I am sleeping, no?”
“No,” Cecelia said glumly, slumping into the desk chair. “He’s being logical. In order for any sort of life together to work, I’d have to be other than I am.”
His mouth twisted. “What do you mean?”
“He’s the Lord Chief Justice. I’m a bastard and the owner of a notorious gambling hell.”
She sighed and dropped her chin into her palm, resting her elbow on the desk. “Ramsay would not take my heart if I offered it and so he cannot break it. I do not think it’s worth anything to him.” The thought tore at her raw emotions, stinging her eyes with unwanted tears. She’d been nothing but an open wound since the moment he left, and she hated her own weakness.
“Then he is a fool, an idiot, an incomparable ass.” Jean-Yves’s dudgeon caused his breath to speed, and he clutched at his ribs.
Cecelia leaned forward, her hands hovering over him, finding no place to land. “Please, do not worry about my heart. We’re safe for now, and if Lord Ramsay is anything, he’s a man of his word. He’ll take good care of us.”
“I always worry about your heart, bonbon, it is the softest heart in the whole world.” Jean-Yves leaned back, closing his eyes and breathing slowly. “I just don’t understand,” he murmured as though talking to himself. “A man does not hold a woman like he held you the night of the attack unless she is precious to him. I thought—perhaps—you’d finally found someone who would try to be worthy of you.”
Cecelia shook her head, unable to lend voice to the suspicion that she might never be deemed worthy in his eyes. “He thinks he is not broken,” she murmured, turning her face to the window. “But I know different. And he’ll have to admit it before he can be put back together.”
“I am glad you are intelligent enough to see that,” Jean-Yves praised her. “So many women try to fix a man that is broken, and he ruins her, instead.”
Cecelia dropped her head into both hands for a moment, fighting the tears back instead of giving in to them. She had work to do, a family to care for. She hadn’t time to nurse a broken—no, bruised—heart. “God, I’m such a child. Why do I cry so often?”
“Because you feel so much, it easily spills over.”
“I just…” A hot tear tracked down her cheek, and she dashed it away. “I just wish I were not so difficult to love.”
“Your love is a treasure, Cecelia,” Jean-Yves said. “I do not know this Lord Ramsay well, but I think perhaps he does not question your worth to him, but deep down he knows he is not worthy of you.”
She very much doubted that, but didn’t want to give Jean-Yves more ammunition against the man upon whom their survival relied at the moment.
“Why do affairs of the heart have to be about worthiness at all?” she lamented. “Why can’t people simply accept themselves and each other for the lovely, flawed beings we are? If one is doing one’s best, can that not be enough?”
He sent her a fond smile. “You are always enough, mon bijou. Just remember that.”
Cecelia took his hand and kissed it before turning to her work.
Or trying to, anyhow.
Yesterday, the waters of the River Esk could be heard through the open window, meandering somewhere out of sight of the main structure. But today all Cecelia could focus on was the tireless sounds of Ramsay’s ax splitting through wood.
Agitated and distracted, she had let the cool summer breeze ruffle the pages of her books and lift tendrils of her hair to tickle her cheek. She wished the surly Scot would cease to dominate her ponderings. That he wouldn’t pose yet another problem to solve.
They were searching for her would-be murderer. For evidence relating to the mysterious Crimson Council. Why couldn’t she focus on that rather than her would-be lover?
One may not have a lover if one is dead, and so one must concentrate, she admonished herself.
She gave it her most valiant effort, squirming in her chair for the time it took for Jean-Yves to fall back asleep. Eventually, his snores coincided with the sounds of cracking wood to completely drive her bonkers. The numerals and symbols, dots and dashes coalesced into nonsense, and it was all she could do not to go cross-eyed.
Heaving a sigh, she pushed herself away from the desk and swept out of the bedroom. She’d never been one to let a thing fester. She needed this fixed between them before she could work.
Opening the door, she blinked against the sun and let the sounds of summer filter over her.
Phoebe waved at her from over by the fence, where she constructed something like a woven hammock of blooming hollyhocks for Frances Bacon and Fanny de Beaufort. A newly woven butterfly net rested next to her, unused.
Had Ramsay made it for her?
Cecelia waved back, affixing a smile for the girl before turning toward an overgrown trail that led behind the house.
Branches and bushes snagged at her, and she had to pick a thistle out of the eyelet lace at the cuff of her sleeve. So apropos for a path leading her to Ramsay. To get through to the man, she’d have to reach past the overgrown brambles and thorny vines protecting his unused heart.
When she sighted him, she reached a hand out to catch herself against the wall of the house.
Naked to the waist, Ramsay lifted an ax over his head like Odin’s own woodsman. The early-morning sun glinted off the razor-sharp edge of the tool as he brought it down with a brutal swing, shearing through a thick stump of wood as though it were made of paper.
Cecelia lurked in the shadows of the west side of the house like a voyeur, doing her best to regain her composure.
His marble skin glistened with a light sheen of sweat as he sank the ax into the stump he used as a chopping block. He tossed both halves of split wood onto a growing mountain against a ramshackle shed that was little more than a lean-to.
He’d chopped enough firewood to heat a small village in the dead of winter.
Cecelia took the moment to appreciate the sheer height and breadth of him. He was built like a conqueror put on this earth to shame and dominate lesser men. He might have been a warlord in days past. A marauder or pillager, perhaps.
Come to think of it, that he’d become a good man was nothing short of miraculous. He could have quite easily used all that impressive strength for evil. Indeed, he might have used his tragic past as an excuse for cruelty.
It took a singular kind of man to commit such consummate drive, intellect, and sheer power to strive for excellence. To succeed. To become an unstoppable force for justice rather than tyranny.
Cecelia studied him as he split log after log with one mighty blow like an executioner. There was a rhythm to his work, so much so that she timed it out in seconds.
Split. Gather. Toss. Take up ax. Lift. Swing. Split. Repeat. It was mesmerizing, hypnotizing even. She might lose time here, and reason, watching the ridges of his ribs and abdomen gather strength and collapse with every swing. Tracing the unfamiliar angle of his arms as he lifted them over his head, showcasing the power of his arms.