Page 132 of All Scot and Bothered

A worried frown pinched his brow. “What do ye mean?”

“I know Miss Henrietta’s is currently burning to the ground, but I fully intend to rebuild.”

“I doona care,” he said. “I’ll help lay the fucking stones.”

She drew back, her eyes wide “But you said—”

“I ken what I said. And I’m telling ye I was wrong. I’ve spent too many years honoring the wrong ideals. Respecting the wrong men. It all means nothing, Cecelia. Not anymore.”

“But your position,” she argued.

“I’ll be a nameless pauper before I live without ye. I meant what I said at Elphinstone Croft. I was surrounded by the loneliest, most miserable place I’d ever known, and I was happier there than I’d ever been. And I’ve realized, it was because ye were with me. Cecelia,yeare my happiness. If I have ye and Phoebe, I need nothing else. If yethink well of me, then I’ve achieved the perfection I’ve striven for for so long.”

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 hischest. “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?Canye 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 carriagewindow, 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.