“I don’t want to keep secrets anymore. I don’t want to know anything else about anyone’s sins. And do you know what’s the most ridiculous thing about it all, Lord high-and-mighty Chief Justice? I fear that you’ll hate me even more than you do now, once I find something in that codex to condemn those you venerate. I fear that worse than I fear the information that might cost me my life. Because I like you, Cassius Gerard Ramsay, Lord even knows why. You’re critical, grumpy, terrifying, and all sorts of wrong for me, but damned if I don’t think you’re the most beautiful human to walk the face of this earth—”
Ramsay surged forward and shackled his hands around her arms. Her arms, which were thick and soft and not even a bit dainty. And yet he might be the only man alive who could span their circumference.
And damned if she didn’t love that, too.
“Doona ye ken ye’re the only thing that matters to me?” he snarled, his eyes glinting with wrath that might have driven her to flee if her knees hadn’t melted on the spot.
Cecelia blinked up at him, her jaw unhinging.
She hadn’t kenned that. She hadn’t kenned that in the least. He’d never given her the foggiest notion.
“I could never hate ye, Cecelia, but ye’re changing every truth I’ve ever believed in. Ye’re making me wonder if I can actually trust a woman for the first time in my life.” He held her fast, his fingers tightening and yielding on her arms, as if he couldn’t decide whether to pull her close or set her away from him. “Before I met ye in Redmayne’s parlor I had no room for a wife or a child, but damned if it’s not what I want, now.”
Cecelia’s heart stopped. Had he said … wife?
“Ye’re soft where I am hard,” Ramsay continued with a vehemence that belonged to the same fury simmering in her own blood. “Ye’re kind when I am cruel. Ye remind me that there’s mercy along with justice and that the world is not just black and white but shades of gray.
“Elphinstone Croft has been my personal hell for years. But ye.” He shook her a little, then turned her away from him to face the dilapidated cottage glowing white and in the moonlight. “I could stay here with ye, with Phoebe, with that fucking Frenchman who doesna like me, and I’d be content. Here. The one place I thought I’d forever detest. For the first time in my entire hopeless life I’m … I’m at peace, Cecelia. I am content. I doona care about anything that awaits us back in London. And the fault is yers.”
He didn’t at all seem like a man at peace. He was a wall of muscle and wrath behind her. His body hard and unyielding and endlessly warm. “But—” she said, puzzling. “But you’ve been so … distant. So callous. How can I believe—?”
“Doona ye think I’m plagued by the same fear?” he thundered. “Someone out there wants to take this from me. To take ye from me. It is more important than ever that I not be distracted by temptation, do ye ken? I canna allow myself a moment’s peace, because though no one yet knows about this place, someone might find out. And there’s a chance they’ll come for us. I have to be on my guard. I have to keep ye alive.”
He turned her back around to face him, and she could feel the restraint quelling his strength. Stretching his muscles to the breaking point.
That fact sparked an answering heat within her.
Yes, this was what she yearned to hear, what she wanted to know. A reason for his cruelty.
Kindness.
At least, the fear of it.
Ramsay devoured her with his gaze, but he finally mustered the strength to set her firmly away. “So help me, woman, it matters not to me what is in that fucking book. Not anymore. Not when it comes to ye. All I want to do is throw ye over my shoulder, take ye to the village, and make ye my wife. I’d not let ye leave my bedchamber for an entire week until I’ve worshiped every brilliant beautiful inch of ye.” This was hissed out between teeth that refused to separate. “But because of where we are and who we’re with, I’ve vowed not to touch ye again, and I swear to Christ it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. So pardon me if I’ve been a bit distant, but it’s taken every drop of willpower I possessed not to finish what we started on that fucking chair. And once I begin, the world might burn to the ground before I’m through and I’d not even notice.”
He threw his hands up and whirled away, stalking over to his pallet, obviously intent upon putting distance between them.
“So if ye’d hie yerself inside and stop tormenting me, I’d consider it a kindness.”
Suddenly Cecelia couldn’t stop smiling. In fact, the smile spread all the way through her, thrilling her to her very toes with happiness.
He wanted her. He’d wanted her all along. He thought she was beautiful and brilliant. She, pudgy, bespectacled Cecelia Teague, tempted the Vicar of Vice to the brink of his iron will.
A heady knowledge, that.
Instead of going inside, she went to him. Pressing her hand against his back, she felt the column of muscle bracketing his spine tense and twitch beneath the thin fabric of his shirt.
Stimulated, encouraged, and intensely curious, she slid both hands to the front of him, encircling his torso. The fingers of one hand splayed on the corrugated mounds of his abs and the other on the place where his heart hurled itself against his ribs.
“Cecelia.” Her name was half a groan and half a plea. “Please. I canna bear—”
“You could guard me here, you know, in the garden,” she invited in a timid voice.
He placed his hands over hers, the rough fingers trembling as he peeled her away before turning to face her. His mouth opened as though to admonish her, but no words escaped.
His eyes were no longer shards of ice. They’d kindled into something else entirely. A flame hot enough to burn through her clothing and scorch the flesh beneath.
Cecelia allowed her wrapper to slip off her shoulder, and watched his control disappear with every increment of skin unveiled to the moonlight. “You could thoroughly guard every inch of me beneath the stars.”
“Ye’re killing me, woman,” he said through increasingly harsh breaths.
She sidled closer, her face to the sky. “I’d rather be kissing you.”
He stood still. His nose flaring, his every muscle locked as though he violently grappled with invisible shackles. “Ye should run, Cecelia.” His voice became impossibly lower. More growl than groan.
More animal than human.
Her loins bloomed at the sound, a delicious thrill of excitement mingling with her arousal. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Ye would be if ye understood what I wanted to do to ye.”
A bizarre instinct overtook her, much like that of conquered prey about to be devoured. She felt both powerful and passive. Like a lioness surrendering to her mate. She wanted him to unleash the beast growling through him and devour her. She yearned to be his prize, his temptation.
His indulgence.
Instead of reaching for him, she watched him through lids half closed as she lifted her hand to the collar of her wrapper, drawing her fingertips down to separate the folds in a move both bold and bashful. As she undid the garment, she unbound the man, and as soon as it pooled into a puddle of silk at her feet, she knew the last shreds of his control joined it.