Page 27 of All Scot and Bothered

When he’d garnered news of poor Katerina MilovicafterHenrietta’s death, though, he knew he had to act. Because the kidnappings did not stop once she was in the ground.

He’d swarmed the establishment today, a Fridayafternoon, when the working wealthy in the emerging merchant class struck out early in search of a good time at the sides of the idle rich.

They must have known he was coming, because there wasn’t a card sharp in sight and the place had been devoid of customers.

And then there had been belowstairs, which oddly enough resembled an actual school.

A stern butler named Winston had followed Ramsay and his constables around the bottom floor, insisting he leave the belowstairs tenants alone. These women had not all been glittering butterflies who ran the tables and the dice. Many of them had the hollowed eyes of refugees; some of them didn’t even speak English.

But he’d no grounds upon which to exert his authority, because no one had been involved in illegal activity at the time of his arrival.

They’d been in class. Their papers in order.

But who did they think they were fooling?

When the carriage halted, Ramsay hesitated to disembark. He buttoned his long jacket over his chest and hips, waiting for his arousal to cool.

Why her?he wondered. Why now? After so many years of keeping his appetites leashed in chains of iron, why did his body seem to strain against them? For a soulless she-devil, no less?

Her and one other. Cecelia Teague.

It’d been three months since he’d last seen her, and the comely woman still often permeated his thoughts.

When he was on the bench, he’d remember her mouth sucking softly on her finger, dragging her teeth across the pad to scrape the last vestiges of chocolate. Once at a debate in the House of Lords, when men bandied insults and screamed over one another, he’d longed for someonewith her gentle wisdom. If only these angry, volatile men could make a study of her respectful reprobation.

Aye, he summoned Miss Teague to his mind entirely too often. Christ, he hardly knew the woman. And she was certainly no fit companion for a Lord Chief Justice. University-educated? Opinionated and independent. While she was agreeable, she was by no means demure. And she made no qualms about her indulgences. For all he knew she could be an alcoholic or a fiend for any number of vices.

Her cherubic features could hide a deviant.

His mother had certainly carried an air of innocence about her, and she’d lived her life in such a way that she’d given the whore of Babylon a run for her money.

Or perhaps the Scarlet Lady.

Hell, they might have been friends, Gwendolyn Atherton and Henrietta Thistledown.

And then there had been Matilda. The last woman he’d been tempted to trust. Ramsay pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache bloomed behind his eyelids. What a disaster that had been.

Still… Cecelia had none of the mischief or deviousness that had sparkled in the eyes of his mother. Nor had she any of the courtly manners and skill at artifice Matilda had displayed.

She was so unabashedly charming. So smooth and soft and lovely.

Perhaps…

“My lord Ramsay?”

He started and looked to his left at the footman waiting uneasily holding the carriage door ajar.

“We’re here, my lord. And the Lord Chancellor is awaiting you in his study.”

“Aye,” he said curtly, pushing all thoughts of thetroubling Miss Teague out of his mind as he disembarked the coach. Ramsay mounted the steps two at a time, eager to establish a plan of action against their new adversary.

The Scarlet Lady could not be a hydra, sprouting two heads for every one that was severed. Eventually she would be vanquished, and he needed to be the man to do it if he wanted to secure the appointment to the next chancellorship.

Christ, perhaps the current Lord Chancellor had been right to suggest Ramsay should seriously consider getting a wife. Some respectable duty-bound woman with whom to beget a brood and to further shore up his respectability.

His gut twisted at the idea, rejecting it as violently as he would a toxin.

He’d never meant to marry. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to have another mistress, not after last time.