Page 32 of The Scottish Duke's Deal

He looked at her then, squarely. “Athena was my brother’s mistress. Penelope’s mother. George kept them in London for three years, but he was meant to marry someone else. An Englishwoman. He had to let go of Athena. When the pressure came, he folded. Sent her away. She took Penelope and returned to her hometown in Corfu, and George died before he could make any of it right.”

Eleanor’s lips parted slightly. She hadn’t expected the answer to strike so deep. “You went to find her.”

He nodded. “It was my brother’s dying wish.”

Eleanor studied him, uncertain. “And how did you feel? Suddenly taking in a child who wasn’t yours.”

Ramsay let out a breath through his nose. “Unprepared. Furious. Terrified. But I wasn’t going to abandon her. She looked at me like I was the only one left.”He glanced toward the fire. “Maybe I was.”

Eleanor absorbed this in silence, stunned by the quiet nobility of it. He had taken on a life that wasn’t his—no obligation, no reward—just a promise made to the dying and a child who clung to his coat.

There was no performance in him, no martyr’s posture. Just a steady, brutal goodness that left her breathless. She was surprised by the bluntness of it, the way he neither excused nor sentimentalized anything.

It was more than strength. It was something rare. And it terrified her.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, quieter now.

She shrugged, but the gesture didn’t land. “I don’t know. I suppose I’m trying to understand you.”

“That’s dangerous,” Ramsay said quietly. His tone was not mocking. Just honest.

Eleanor tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “What, you don’t like women trying to understand you?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t like being understood.”

She smiled slowly, amused. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It keeps most people away.”

“And yet here I am.”

His gaze flicked over her. “Yes. Here you are. Drenched in scandal. Daring to ask questions. Terribly inconvenient.”

“Irresistibly so, I hope.”

A beat.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Ramsay said, low.

“Why not?”

“Because I might take them seriously.”

Her pulse fluttered. “And if I meant it seriously?”

He didn’t move toward her. Not yet. But something in the air did. It shifted. Tightened.

“Then I’d have to do something about it,” he said.

Her breath caught. The way he said it—quiet, steady, like it was fact, not threat—sent a ripple of heat down her spine.

He studied her closely, as if memorizing the shift of her breath, the flush in her neck, the way her lips parted without sound.

Something flickered in his gaze, a spark of approval that made her skin heat. And it seemed, from the faint tilt at the corner of his mouth, that he liked the effect he had on her.

After a beat, he spoke.

“I came here tonight to speak to you first,” he said, “because if you say no, I see no reason to speak to your brother.”