Page 99 of All Scot and Bothered

Phoebe approached the table, hiding something behind her back.

“I see you and Lord Ramsay already had your baths,” Cecelia noted, smiling across at the dear girl.

“Lord Ramsay had to wash the blood of his deer from him in the loch,” Phoebe explained, affixing a rapturous look up as she took her place beside him. “Then he taught me how to swim.”

“Did he, indeed?” Cecelia also cast a level gaze toward the Scot in question. “I imagine that’s why your lips are blue.”

“I’m almost warm.” Phoebe rushed to cut off any objection by complimenting her. “And I think it’s wonderful that you found the bacon code. You’re ever so clever, Cecelia.”

“Thank you, darling.” She was glad someone thought so. “Aren’t you hungry after swimming?”

“Don’t you think she’s clever, Lord Ramsay?” Phoebe gave him a meaningful look, nudging him with her elbow.

Ramsay paused with a sandwich halfway to his mouth before looking down at the girl rather than across at her. “Aye, she’s both clever and wise, little one. Now eat yer supper.”

“And beautiful,” Phoebe added. “You can’t forget beautiful, because you mentioned how lovely she was by the loch.”

Jean-Yves’s ill-muffled chortle drowned out Cecelia’s drastic intake of breath.

Phoebe slid a bouquet of heather with little sprigs of gypsophila from behind her back as two cheeky dimples appeared next to her mouth.

“Are those for me?” Cecelia asked, flushing with maternal pleasure.

Phoebe didn’t answer. Instead, she nudged the Highlander in his biceps, her finger giving before his muscle did. “Here. Lord Ramsay, here.”

“What’s going on?” Jean-Yves asked. “You picked flowers for Lord Ramsay,petite?”

“No,” Phoebe said from the side of her mouth toward Jean-Yves. “He’s supposed to give it toher.” She thrust the bouquet beneath Ramsay’s nose, forcing him to drop his sandwich. “Go on,” she urged. “Don’t be shy.”

Ramsay curled every finger slowly around the base of the bouquet as if it might be the little girl’s neck. “Impeccable timing, lass,” he muttered.

Phoebe beamed, oblivious—or perhaps immune—to the sarcasm oozing from Ramsay’s comment. He thrust the flowers at her over the table, and Cecelia had to wipe her fingers on a linen before she reached for them.

“No,” Phoebe crowed. “Not like that. You must stand and present it to her properly.”

“Gallantly, I daresay,” Jean-Yves chimed in, earning him a soft elbow jab from Cecelia.

“Gallant, exactly,” Phoebe agreed with an emphatic nod as she sat and gathered her sandwich into both hands. “A moment like this demands gallantry. A hero cannot simply hand his lady a flower.”

“I’m no hero,” Ramsay said at the same moment Cecelia thought it prudent to point out, “I’m not his lady.”

Phoebe ignored all of this. “There must be a gesture of some sort, wouldn’t you agree?”

“A grand gesture,” Jean-Yves agreed.

Cecelia had a few choice gestures for her butler, but she couldn’t bring herself to make them in front of a child.

She watched half in hope and half in agony as Ramsay set his jaw and stood.

Following his lead, she faced him, her heart pounding out of her chest. She very studiously avoided looking in the direction of the rocking chair, keeping her eyes focused on the flowers.

Ramsay reached in and plucked the largest, most vibrant blossom from the bouquet and extended it toward her. He stepped closer in order to tuck the flower into her hair.

Rough-skinned fingers skimmed the shell of her ear, causing shivers of delight to erupt over her entire body.

Along with pulses of need in a few secret places.

Overwhelmed, Cecelia closed her eyes and breathed him in. His scent was a masculine undercurrent to the fragrant flowers, soap and earth and water and sky. A scent as delicious to her as a room full of books and leather furniture. Or the most sumptuous truffles.