Page 91 of All Scot and Bothered

If idle hands were the devil’s workshop, then this precarious situation made Ramsay the devil.

Because his thoughts, urges, and desires were endlessly wicked, and it wasn’t only his hands Cecelia Teague need worry about.

Nay, it was better he remain outside and give in to other masculine urges.

Such as bashing things. And killing things.

Ramsay didn’t stray far from the cottage, not when his only directive was to protect those within. Rather, he took up a perch he’d erected years ago in a tall oak directly above a path where the deer meandered down to graze and drink at the river’s edge. From this vantage, he could see for miles. The cottage, the road, the river, and anyone who might be coming or going.

Deer were not his only prey.

It seemed he’d learned an affinity for perching above the world at a young age, from this very spot.

Deciding what lived or died.

If his peers could see him now. Trading the white wig and dark robes of his station for a sodden shirt and the trappings of a huntsman.

It’d prove them right. Everyone who’d whispered that a savage Scottish nobody with a grasping, devious legacy didn’t deserve the station to which he aspired.

Theirs were the voices that had haunted his dark hours, that drove his every decision for so long. He achieved not despite them, buttospite them. He studied harder, worked longer, and did better than them all so that when he entered a room, the naysayers dare not breathe in his direction. In fact, they all had to bow and address him asmy lord.

And he knew the title tasted like ashes in their mouths.

He used to live for it. Dine on it. The power, the prestige, and the prescience awarded to those within the circles he’d forced his way into. Because it didn’t matter what title they were born with, or what privilege they enjoyed; they still couldn’t keep him beneath their boots.

No one would again. Becausehisword was law now. And his judgment final.

Except a new voice rose in the night. A soft, husky alto that sounded of smoke and sex.

Cecelia Teague.

He whispered the two words to the wind in reverent tones. It felt as though her name should always be spoken thus.

There were gods whose names were never allowed to be uttered, whose depictions were forbidden.

Ramsay had never understood such worship.

Until now.

A part of him had known the moment his lips had touched hers that the cosmos had shifted.

Nay, before then.

Perhaps in the gardens at Redmayne Place when they’d spoken of the numerous reasons a union would be disastrous for them both. Or even at Redmayne’s wedding almost a year ago, when he’d spied her across the ballroom in a peacock mask, lingering at the refreshment table.

He’d been mesmerized by her even then, so much so that he’d gone out of his way tonotbe introduced, because something fierce and ferocious he’d thought he’d buried decades ago stirred at the very sight of her.

He’d thanked God the moment he’d found out she was innocent of Henrietta’s crimes.

And cursed that same divinity the moment he’d discovered she was innocent in every sense of the word.

By taking that innocence from her.

A branch broke in the distance, and Ramsay froze at the sound of footsteps approaching.

He held his breath, and gripped his bow. He’d a rifle at his side, as well, but he avoided using it whenever possible. Gunshots tended to advertise one’s position.

A doe stepped from the brush, her long downy ears twitching this way and that, her nostrils testing the wind.