Page 70 of All Scot and Bothered

Remembering himself, Ramsay pulled his hand from hers. He believed she didn’t procure those missing girls.

Beyond that, he believed that she could quite easily make him a fool. Or a fiend. One of those empty-eyed addicts haunting the opium dens begging for their poison. He believed they were embroiled in the same dangerous conspiracy and that he needed the information in Henrietta’s book every bit as much as she did.

“I believe I need to get ye to safety,” he finally said, thrusting the book back into her grasp. “I will take ye somewhere they are not likely to find ye. I’ll buy ye the time ye need. Now get dressed and pack.”

All hope collapsed away from her features. “But my employees. The school. I have to make arrangements—”

“We will make them on our way out of the city.” Her silk-clad body blocked his way toward the door, so he backed away from her and took the route around the chair he’d napped in to avoid any dangerous physical contact.

He’d made it to the door latch before she stopped him with the simple weight of her hand on his wrist. Something about her touch shackled him, reminded him that not all restraints were iron.

Some of them could be velvet.

“What about Jean-Yves and Phoebe?” she fretted.

“We’ll take them, of course.” He flexed his hand on the latch.

“Take them? Take them where?”

Ramsay could stand it no longer. Not her scent, nor the outline of her body in that damned wrapper. He had arrangements to make and fortifications to construct if this was going to work.

He shook off her hand and wrenched to door open, managing to slide past her without allowing their bodies to touch.

“To Scotland,” he threw over his retreating shoulder. “Where else?”

CHAPTERELEVEN

Cecelia winced as her fidgeting produced a loud protestation from the stool she occupied next to the bed where Jean-Yves snored softly.

To her utter relief, he remained asleep.

The poor man had been grim but enduring for the entire train journey from London to Dalkeith, a lovely Midlothian town south of Edinburgh. The bumpy carriage ride across the moors to the cottage had been a decidedly different story, and she’d had to double his dose of the opiate in order make the entire ordeal tolerable for everyone involved.

When Cecelia had quizzed Ramsay about their destination, he’d been disturbingly obtuse in his answer. “I’m taking ye to Elphinstone Croft.”

“What’s Elphinstone Croft?” she’d asked.

“A place no one will think to look for ye.” An odd note in his voice twisted something bleak inside of her, and Cecelia hadn’t pressed further.

And when they’d crested the gentle hill, she’d gasped with elation.

Elphinstone Croft had reminded her of a lost paradise. Or perhaps just a neglected one. The white cottage hid in a cluster of trees entirely too narrow to claim the title of forest along the bank of the River Esk. Overgrown ivy and a riot of thorny roses, berries, and wildflowers clung to the decrepit fence and crept up the walls, as though the garden had been trying to devour the edifice at its middle and was halfway finished with the meal.

Ramsay had to rip vines and such from the entry and pit his considerable weight against the oak door before it gave way.

At her questioning look, he explained. “I’ve not had the occasion to visit for a handful of years.”

Jean-Yves had gratefully landed in the first bed Ramsay had been able to provide. Subsequently, it was decided Cecelia could both sit sentinel at the tiny desk by Jean-Yves’s bedside and work on the codex in the remaining daylight.

Ramsay offered to keep Phoebe busy with him as they unloaded the food and supplies from the carriage they’d rented in Dalkeith. They would then set about airing the few rooms and uncovering the Spartan furniture.

The deep rumble of Ramsay’s voice contrasted with the high exuberance of Phoebe’s and became a pleasant distant cacophony by which she worked.

Cecelia was glad the girl hadn’t seemed to mind the damp dereliction of the simple croft. Phoebe had taken to the expedition like Francesca would an adventure, or Alexandra had to any less-than-luxurious archeological locales. She had her dolls, Frances Bacon and Fanny de Beaufort, and couldn’t be happier to venture beyond thetiny corner of the city that had been her entire world thus far.

As much as Cecelia was charmed by the fairy-tale allure of the croft, she had to admit it wasn’t at all what she’d pictured when Ramsay had informed them that their destination was his childhood home in the Scottish Lowlands.

She felt a certain sense of shame to have assumed the elder brother of a powerful duke had loftier origins than herself. It couldn’t be more to the contrary.