Cecelia’s smile was more brilliant than the flames. Than the sun on the summer solstice. It pressed her cheeks against his hands as she drew her fingers up his arms to his shoulders. “It appears, my lord Chief Justice, that you’ve changed your mind about love. Or did I hear you incorrectly?”
He shook his head. “Nay, ye heard the right of it. I meant it when I said it. I love ye Cecelia Teague. I love ye and I’m sorry. I’ll never stop being sorry for the hurtful things I’ve said to ye. Ye’ll never hear another cruel word from my lips. And I’ll rip anyone’s tongue out who dares disparage ye.”
Cecelia surged to her toes and pressed her lips to his in a tumultuous, ecstatic kiss. It was messy and wet and tasted of salt and ash and desperate happiness.
His body responded immediately, and he had to drag her shoulders away from him lest he debauch her here in front of London’s fire brigade and half of Scotland Yard.
“And here I thought your brother was the savage one,” she panted, flashing him a mischievous grin.
“He is,” Ramsay insisted, clutching at her. Unable to let her out of his grasp, lest she slip away again. “I’m not … usually like this. I’ve never…” He forced his fingers to unclench from her, only to thrust them through his hair. “I’ve never lost such control, Cecelia. I’ve never felt the kind of fear and rage I did when I returned to the house to find ye’d been taken. Chandler was right, I became a butcher last night, and I’d do it again for ye and Phoebe. I’d burn this entire city to the ground if ye asked me.”
Cecelia reached for him, smoothing a hand over his chest. “That doesn’t sound much like the Vicar of Vice to me,” she teased gently.
He shook his head, nostrils flaring, his fists clenched at his side. “I am not him,” he insisted. “I mean it, I doona even ken who I am anymore, but…” He gathered her hands into his, imprisoning them over his heart. The one that beat only for her. “Will ye not answer me, lass?”
She quirked an eyebrow up at him. “Answer you? I’ve not heard a question.”
His lips compressed into a thin line. He was bungling this again. “Will ye just be mine, Cecelia? Will ye share yer life with me, in any capacity ye deem fit? Will ye love me? Can ye love me, after all that’s happened?”
“Of course I can, you silly Scot.” She stepped closer, nuzzling into him. “I already do. I think I have for quite some time.”
“Why didna ye tell me?”
“Because I’m so far from perfect,” she murmured. “I didn’t ever want you to hate me for asking you to accept me despite your principles.”
“Nay,” he said. “I should have accepted ye always.”
He gathered her to him once again, linking his arms about her shoulders and burrowing his face into her hair.
“I love you,” she whispered against his heart.
A carriage with his seal pulled up and a man jumped down to open the door. “My lord Chief Justice,” the driver said diffidently.
“Let us go home,” Ramsay suggested.
“Where’s that?”
He nudged her nose with his. “Wherever ye are.”
* * *
Home, as it turned out, was a vast West End estate called Rutherleigh Point.
Cecelia couldn’t see the entirety of it from the carriage window, but the red stone gables and charming floor-to-ceiling windows thrilled her to no end.
Ramsay had told her that Phoebe and Jean-Yves were inside waiting for her, and so she lifted her soiled skirts and dashed up the front steps as quickly as she could.
The door slammed open and she called for the girl.
Phoebe appeared at the top of the grand staircase, clutching at the rather splendid white marble rails.
“Cecelia!” she called, nearly tripping down the steps in her exuberance. She flew off the third from the last step straight into her arms. “I was so frightened for you. So frightened, but I knew that you wouldn’t leave. That you’d come back.”
Her throat stopped by waves of emotion, Cecelia merely clung to the girl, petting her bouncing curls and doing her best not to cry.
“Why are you so dirty?” the girl asked.
“There was a fire,” Cecelia explained. “Miss Henrietta’s burned to the ground.”
Phoebe sobered. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yes, they’d all moved out after the explosion, remember?”
“Oh.” Her little forehead wrinkled. “They could move in here, probably, could they not? There’s ever so many empty rooms.”
Cecelia glanced back at Ramsay, who’d donned a coat over his bare chest. He ran a hand across his soiled face and spoke a few words in Gaelic that needed no interpretation.
“We’ll figure something out,” Cecelia placated the girl.
After a while, Phoebe squirmed to be let down, and Cecelia was forced allow the girl her freedom. “Cecelia, Lord Ramsay told me on the train that he’s my papa! That’s what you were trying to figure out all along? The riddle in Henrietta’s book?”
“Yes,” Cecelia said. “Yes, darling, it was. Wasn’t it a fantastic riddle? A wonderful find?”
“I always wanted a papa,” Phoebe whispered. “But I never thought he’d be so big and handsome and rich.” She extended her hands to encompass the vast grand hall. It was bigger than Henrietta’s by far. Grander, even, than Castle Redmayne, the duke’s estate.
“It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it?” Phoebe asked.
Cecelia had to admit, it was, indeed.
Ramsay called for a bath and then allowed Phoebe to take Cecelia on an unofficial tour of the place. They weaved through room after room, some gilded in French paper and others in expensive paint.
Almost all of them empty.
He’d turned the library into a comfortable study, she noted, and a few bedrooms were well appointed, but beyond that the space was utterly wasted.
“It’s a house,” Ramsay said a little bashfully. “A status symbol, really, but I never had much need to make it a home.”
“You do now,” Phoebe said, clutching at his hand and pulling him toward the kitchen.
“I do now.” Ramsay looked back at Cecelia, reaching out to tug her along. His eyes glimmered with a powerful emotion, but beyond that, Cecelia could make out no traces of the arctic coldness she’d found before. All she could see was a blue as deep and clear as the summer sky.
After they’d eaten and settled Phoebe, Ramsay pulled Cecelia into his bedroom and locked the door. It was a simple room, she noted, masculine and spare. Like the man.
The man who was becoming someone else. Someone who smiled. Someone who prowled toward her with every intention of perpetrating both vice and villainy upon her person.
Cecelia allowed herself to be caught. Hoping he’d carry her to the tub in the corner.
“I’m glad you’ve overcome your mistrust of women,” she teased. “Seeing as how you’re now outnumbered by them.”
“Only by one,” he noted before dipping down to root in the hollow of her neck. “Perhaps I can persuade ye to allow me to plant a son inside ye.”
Her womb shivered in a very hasty response.