She’d turn him down, of course she would. She was no one’s obligation. Furthermore, her family belonged nowhere near the office of the Lord Chancellor. She’d be his ruination; they both knew it.
Cecelia made certain his broad back disappeared into the forest before she sank to the table over which they’d shared wine the previous night.
Burying her face in her arms, she finally succumbed to her tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
If idle hands were the devil’s workshop, then this precarious situation made Ramsay the devil.
Because his thoughts, urges, and desires were endlessly wicked, and it wasn’t only his hands Cecelia Teague need worry about.
Nay, it was better he remain outside and give in to other masculine urges.
Such as bashing things. And killing things.
Ramsay didn’t stray far from the cottage, not when his only directive was to protect those within. Rather, he took up a perch he’d erected years ago in a tall oak directly above a path where the deer meandered down to graze and drink at the river’s edge. From this vantage, he could see for miles. The cottage, the road, the river, and anyone who might be coming or going.
Deer were not his only prey.
It seemed he’d learned an affinity for perching above the world at a young age, from this very spot.
Deciding what lived or died.
If his peers could see him now. Trading the white wig and dark robes of his station for a sodden shirt and the trappings of a huntsman.
It’d prove them right. Everyone who’d whispered that a savage Scottish nobody with a grasping, devious legacy didn’t deserve the station to which he aspired.
Theirs were the voices that had haunted his dark hours, that drove his every decision for so long. He achieved not despite them, but to spite them. He studied harder, worked longer, and did better than them all so that when he entered a room, the naysayers dare not breathe in his direction. In fact, they all had to bow and address him as my lord.
And he knew the title tasted like ashes in their mouths.
He used to live for it. Dine on it. The power, the prestige, and the prescience awarded to those within the circles he’d forced his way into. Because it didn’t matter what title they were born with, or what privilege they enjoyed; they still couldn’t keep him beneath their boots.
No one would again. Because his word was law now. And his judgment final.
Except a new voice rose in the night. A soft, husky alto that sounded of smoke and sex.
Cecelia Teague.
He whispered the two words to the wind in reverent tones. It felt as though her name should always be spoken thus.
There were gods whose names were never allowed to be uttered, whose depictions were forbidden.
Ramsay had never understood such worship.
Until now.
A part of him had known the moment his lips had touched hers that the cosmos had shifted.
Nay, before then.
Perhaps in the gardens at Redmayne Place when they’d spoken of the numerous reasons a union would be disastrous for them both. Or even at Redmayne’s wedding almost a year ago, when he’d spied her across the ballroom in a peacock mask, lingering at the refreshment table.
He’d been mesmerized by her even then, so much so that he’d gone out of his way to not be introduced, because something fierce and ferocious he’d thought he’d buried decades ago stirred at the very sight of her.
He’d thanked God the moment he’d found out she was innocent of Henrietta’s crimes.
And cursed that same divinity the moment he’d discovered she was innocent in every sense of the word.
By taking that innocence from her.
A branch broke in the distance, and Ramsay froze at the sound of footsteps approaching.
He held his breath, and gripped his bow. He’d a rifle at his side, as well, but he avoided using it whenever possible. Gunshots tended to advertise one’s position.
A doe stepped from the brush, her long downy ears twitching this way and that, her nostrils testing the wind.
Ramsay nocked an arrow, pulling it taut as she stopped and looked behind her.
A little fawn, no larger than a hound, toddled out from the safety of the thicket. It glued its little speckled body to its mother’s haunches, scampering to keep up with her careful strides toward the river.
They hadn’t spotted him above them, but they sensed danger was nearby.
Ramsay dropped his arm, resting the arrow at his side.
No matter how hungry he’d been in his life, he’d never killed mothers. Didn’t even set snares at rabbit burrows. Once, a fox had stolen some smoking fish, and he’d hurled rocks at it, stopping only once he’d realized she was quite obviously nursing kits.
Mothers should live to protect their young.
He thought of Cecelia. He always thought of Cecelia. His every stream of consciousness seemed to lead back to her. In this memory, she was desperately fighting to save her little ward. She’d been struck down in the alley, threatened, and witness to bloodshed, and still her first thought had been for Phoebe.
When she’d found the girl unharmed, her relief and tender joy had humbled him.
Cecelia. The girl had called her Cecelia that night. Not Mother, or Mama.
He generally had such an eye for detail. He certainly should have suspected then. But murder had been flowing through him at the time. He’d grappled wrath and fury back into the darkness in order to safely conduct the ladies home.
Another reason the woman was extraordinary. She mothered a child that wasn’t even her own. According to her, she’d been fancy-free before the death of Henrietta Thistledown. She’d traveled and gallivanted as one third of a trio of redheaded Rogues, had enjoyed an education and a small but comfortable fortune. But when a bevy of students and dependents and a motherless child had landed in her lap, she’d taken the responsibility for their employ and well-being upon her shoulders without a second thought. She became their champion against the likes of him.
And worse.
Ramsay shut his eyes and listened to the deer saunter beneath him as he contemplated the tight fist curling around his heart.
Cecelia Teague made him question everything.
Everything.
His stance on women, family, morality, integrity, the past …
The future. Their future?
For so long he’d wanted nothing like a family. He’d striven only to attain the height of power that the common people were seizing every day from the old monarchy and hierarchical structures. Certainly, the aristocracy was giving way to men like him: men of industry, intellect, education, economy, and the means to shape an empire though the force of the rising democratic structures of government.
And now he was wrapping his fingers around Excalibur, as it were, poised and ready to pull the sword from stone and claim what was his due.
But at what cost? His soul?
His heart?
Are you happy? Her simple question bounced between his temples, taunting him like a ball thrown down a hill, forever rolling away.
Happiness had never been an expectation of his. His childhood had been a nightmare of drunken beatings, shouting matches between his parents, and an empty belly. When his mother left and his father died, survival had been his only goal. He worked day and night for heat, clean water, and food. Who had time to contemplate happiness when you had to fight the scourge of starvation, silence, and isolation? When every adult you came into contact with tried to either take advantage or take what was yours by right?