Page 33 of All Scot and Bothered

His admission seemed to startle her. “No harm done,” she finally said. After lifting a shoulder, she turned back toward the path, drifting away in a graceful glide, her skirts flowing as though her feet never touched the ground.

He fell into step with her easily, wondering if she’d truly forgiven him.

If now was a good time to offer his arm again.

If she’d take it.

He locked his hands behind him to stop himself from reaching for her. “In my defense, combat was my initial civil service. I learned to be a warrior and then a commander before I was a lawyer. Domineering is in the job description, ye ken. No matter how much discipline I cultivate as a gentleman, it’s not always easy for a man to temper edges sharpened by violence.”

“That I believe,” she said with a wryness he couldn’t decipher. “Tell me, did I stumble into the middle of a war with the count I was unaware of?”

Only over her attentions.

“Sometimes it feels as though I’m at war with the entire world.” The unintended admission was met by her hesitant pause. “A regrettable by-product of my profession, I’m afraid. I’m forever at odds. Harmony is a luxury I’m rarely afforded.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, her gaze less reproachful than curious. “I imagine you’d find more harmony if you practiced a bit more leniency.”

A strange word,leniency. One he was certain had never been used in a sentence containing himself. In fact, his ruthlessness had made his career. His life. It’d often been his only weapon. When one had nothing to one’s name but sheer determination, one tended to rely on it with astounding frequency.

And yet the fact that Miss Teague found him so unyielding rankled.

Perhaps because he could not find oneunattractive quality about her, but she so obviously considered his ruthlessness a flaw.

“I suspected the count’s intentions toward ye were reprehensible, and I’ll admit that my first instinct was that of a soldier, not a gentleman.” Never in his life had Ramsay explained himself as he did now. He’d never so yearned tobe understood. The longing unsettled and distressed him, and yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself from admitting, “I’m rather famously unpossessed of the skill and charm so easily wielded by men such as Count Armediano and my brother.”

That produced another of her mysterious smiles. “An inconvenient character trait for a man in your position.”

“Character flaw, ye mean.”

“Not necessarily.” She regarded him like he was a problem she’d eventually have to solve, neither agreeing with his estimation, nor rushing to assure him of the severity of his self-assessment.

With no forthcoming placations or condemnations, Ramsay couldn’t be certain what she thought of him. As a man who’d made his fortune examining people under a microscope, tearing apart their lies, and meting out their sentences, he found her peculiar inscrutability disconcerting.

Why did he even care if she held him in her esteem?

The answer was simple. Because he wanted her. He…likedher.

“Are ye ill, Miss Teague?” Her ghostly pallor concerned him, and her fingers trembled slightly on his arm.

“Why do you ask?”

“Yer headache.”

“Oh.” Her mouth thinned into a frown as if she’d forgotten her headache existed. “I’ve had a trying day, my lord,” was all she gave by way of explanation. “I’m sure some rest will put me to rights.”

She walked for a moment in silence, turning his own weapon upon himself.

Which could be the only fathomable reason why he blurted, “Why are ye not married, Miss Teague?”

She hesitated. “A woman may not marry if she is not asked.”

“Ye’ve never been asked?”

“What about you, my lord?” she quickly volleyed. “I can imagine only few women in this city who wouldn’t leap at the chance to be your wife.”

“I’ve spent too much of my life dodging the shrapnel of my family’s rather famously disastrous marriages to have any desire to embark on my own.”

She nodded, though his statement seemed to trouble her. “But don’t you believe there’s someone for everyone?”