Pleasure. When was the last time he’d allowed himself any?
“I work.”
Ramsay’s hand fisted at his side so he wouldn’t slide it over the expensive aubergine chair beneath him. He still did that sometimes, tested a texture as if he couldn’t believe it was real.
Even after all these years.
As a boy, he’d never have imagined something so soft existed. The bed he’d slept on had been hard. His home cold and empty in every imaginable way, along with his belly, and eventually his heart.
All of this because his family was prone to indulging in selfish pleasures, and it had brought them nothing but shame, misery, and devastation.
His mother had preyed upon the weak and base natures of men until she ruined them. His father, once thusly ruined, had become a slave to every form of pleasure, and it had eventually killed him.
Redmayne’s father, their mother’s second husband, had made her a duchess. She’d repaid his affection and devotion by cuckolding him so often, he’d finally hanged himself in a fit of drunken despair.
Even Redmayne had indulged in adventure to the point of obsession, until the swipe of a jaguar’s claws had cost him his handsome features, and nearly his life.
And look at him now, equally under the thrall of his formerly impoverished bluestocking wife, who’d also nearly gotten him killed on more than one occasion. They seemed impervious to the fact that the ton whispered about them even as they gorged upon Redmayne’s wealth and influence. But how long would that last?
Nay. Nay, indulgence was a curse and pleasure a peril. Something that controlled a man until he was no longer himself. Until he’d surrendered power, dignity, or both.
He’d given over to temptation in his younger days, temptation that had very much looked like love.
And it had very nearly been his undoing.
His eyes rested on Miss Teague, once again, his notice snagged by the intriguing way her pale skin disappeared as she pulled her gloves back on. Rested. How long since he’d done that? Just sat quietly and allowed himself to enjoy a lovely view. Lord, but she was so pleasant to look at, and just as wondrous to listen to. She’d an air of softness he’d never before witnessed, and it boggled the mind how he could be both aroused and comforted by her all at once.
How could she so thoroughly inflame him by covering up more skin? There was nothing intrinsically seductive about the gesture, and yet he found it more provoking than a dozen dancehall girls undoing their corsets.
“Forgive me if I’m prying,” she said, forgetting, or merely giving up on, her previous question. “But I’m curious as to the reasons for your … abstinence.”
He studied her, searching for a double meaning in the word. For a lascivious undertone. Did she ken that he was without a woman? That he so acutely desired her now?
He found only genuine interest in her open expression, and so he gave her a genuine answer.
“It’s a tactic, more than anything.”
“A tactical war against chocolate and wine?” That half smile again, the one that put the Mona Lisa to shame. Both shy and impish without a hint of coyness or guile.
“In my line of work, one must be above reproach. Therefore, I avoid all excess that could lead to addictive partiality or a weakness in moral character. Such as alcohol, idle pursuits, rich food, gambling—”
“Women?” Count Adrian Armediano slithered into the conversation, an expression of charm and challenge carefully arranged upon his dusky, too-handsome features.
“That should go without saying,” Ramsay reproached. “Especially in front of one.”
“On the contrary. A woman is not a weakness, but a strength.” Armediano turned to Cecelia, his lips curling with a feline appreciation Ramsay instantly disliked. The Italian slid a white-gloved hand along the back of her settee in a gesture that managed to be both seductive and unthreatening. “A life without women is not one worth living.”
Cecelia’s cheeks flushed a fetching peach beneath the count’s frank, appreciative regard.
Ramsay scowled, his fingers curling into fists.
One could not appreciate a woman if one’s eyes were plucked out.
Armediano moved with a practiced elegance, flicking open a jacket button as he sank intolerably close to Miss Teague. He swiped two glasses of champagne from a footman and flashed a smile that never reached his calculating golden gaze.
She accepted the proffered wine with a gracious, appreciative noise, glancing wryly at Ramsay as she took a delicate sip.
The count had the eyes of a raptor, Ramsay noted. Sharp and hard. He missed nothing as he glided through the ton with unobtainable ease. No one felt much threatened by someone so foreign and far above.
Until he dove for his prey.
Poor Miss Teague was a soft rabbit about to be clutched in his talons.
Bristling with masculine heat, Ramsay crushed the predator rising within himself. He’d no reason to lock horns with this man. Cecelia Teague was nothing to him but a passing family acquaintance. What did he care if she fell prey to a rake?
“Can you think of anything better to end an evening with than champagne?” she asked dreamily.
“Just the one thing.” The count left his meaning unmistakable as he drew his knuckles over what little skin of her arm was visible above her gloves and below her sleeves. A rise of gooseflesh appeared where the man had trailed his touch.
Ramsay could have cheerfully broken Armediano’s fingers. One by one.
Her nipples would be hard. And another man made them so.
“Forgive my intrusion upon your conversation,” the count offered without one iota of sincerity. “But I couldn’t help but overhear the subject and it both intrigued and distressed me. Are you not miserable, my lord Chief Justice, denying yourself the pleasures life has to offer?”
He’d be less miserable if it were still a practice to display severed heads on the London Bridge. What an appropriate ornament Armediano would make.
“Not at all.” Ramsay uncrossed his legs, the new arrival to their conversation beginning to redirect the blood from his nethers. “I have constructed a comfortable and successful life through will, focus, labor, and discipline. One need not seek sin and scandal to find contentment.”
“No man is without sin,” Armediano chuckled, flicking his gaze toward Cecelia. “Nor woman.”
Cecelia made a soft noise in the back of her throat, examining Ramsay as if he were an equation she couldn’t solve. “One must wonder if contentment is enough. Are you not lonely, my lord Ramsay? Or bored?”
Ramsay wanted to explain to her that most people didn’t understand loneliness—not until they’d experienced true isolation. One could be lonely in a room full of people. Or in the arms of a lover. There were many forms of loneliness. He wondered if she’d experienced them at all.
Instead he hedged. “I’m a busy man. I havena time for boredom or loneliness.”
“How fortunate for you,” she murmured. Blinking away the wrinkle that had worked its way into her troubled expression, she drank deeply before announcing, “I confess I sometimes overindulge in chocolate and champagne, as there are few other pleasures afforded a spinster bluestocking.”
“Bravo.” The count lifted his glass.
She and Armediano tapped rims with a grating chime. Ramsay felt his very veins tightening around his blood as he struggled to maintain his composure.