Page 115 of All Scot and Bothered

The question mark had been traced many times, as though Henrietta had reason to puzzle over him.

“You’re pale,mon bijou,” Jean-Yves noted from across the table. “Should we stop to eat?”

Ramsay leaned in from next to her, the hair on his arm almost touching her.

Cecelia stared at the name, attuned to the sound of his breath, to the warmth of his body close, but not touching. She didn’t want to decipher any more. She didn’t want to uncover his secrets.

She didn’t want to hate him.

“What does it say?” His voice was low. Terse and harsh.

“There’s not much here,” she said, pointing to a total of three lines of script. “Perhaps you were telling the truth when you said you had no secrets.”

“What did she write about me, Cecelia?”

Cecelia swallowed, unable to look up. Clenching her pen tightly enough to turn her fingers white, she began the process of using the key. He verbally read each word she revealed.

NO ENTRY TO OFFICE OR DOCUMENTS.

NO EVIDENCE OF CLANDESTINE MEETINGS WITH LC OR OTHER CC MEMBERS.

“We can assume LC means Lord Chancellor, and CC is Crimson Council, yes?” Cecelia babbled.

“Aye, what else?” he asked impatiently.

Cecelia returned to the cipher.

NO LONGER TRUSTS MATILDA.

“Matilda?” Cecelia echoed. “That is the woman Henrietta sent to—”

“Matilda was my mother’s name,” Phoebe joined the conversation from over by the fireplace where she’d been whispering to Frances and Fanny.

They all might have been a tableau of statues frozen in stark astonishment. Even the motes of dust seemed to hang still in the air, afraid to move.

To make it real.

Nigh on eight years, Ramsay had said, since he’d had a woman.

The woman Henrietta sent to spy on him.

Matilda. Phoebe’s mother who died in childbirth.

Phoebe had barely turned seven years old.

Cecelia wanted it to be true, and then she didn’t. She watched the little girl with new eyes. Phoebe wasn’t the right color to belong to the golden giant beside her. Her hair was honey, not flaxen gold. Her eyes hazel rather than blue. She was so little for her age.

And yet. She’d a dimple in her chin that might claim to match Ramsay’s. And strong, broad, handsome features.

“Mon Dieu,” Jean Yves whispered.

Cecelia glanced over to Ramsay who’d yet to move. To speak.

To even breathe.

He stared at the girl, who had risen to her feet and rubbed at a tiny stain on her pink pinafore.

Phoebe blushed, self-consciously aware she was the subject of rather intent conjecture.