Page 116 of All Scot and Bothered
Though his features didn’t so much as twitch, his eyes glittered with myriad things.
“Ramsay?” Cecelia ventured.
His hand lifted to silence her. “When is yer birthday, lass?” He whispered the question to Phoebe, but it carried through the house like a cannon blast.
“The fourteenth of June,” she answered brightly. “Next year, I’m going to ask Cecelia for a parasol, that is if I don’t get one for Christmas.”
Ramsay’s chest deflated drastically, as if he’d been kicked in the ribs by a rather powerful ghost.
Cecelia looked down at the codex, blinking a well of tears away as they blurred the last coded sentence. She needn’t bother with it. It didn’t take a genius or even a mathematician to figure out his secret.
Ramsay had fathered a bastard.
The Scot said nothing. He stood so quickly his chair toppled over, strode to the door, and slammed it shut behind him.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
It was a blessed,blessedthing that Ramsay had something to butcher.
Every time he cleaved into the deer as he dressed and prepared it, he had to wonder whose bones he’d rather be breaking. Who most deserved the crux of his rage? The Lord Chancellor? Matilda? Henrietta?
Himself?
Once the meat was prepared, Ramsay bathed and swam alone, knowing no one would come looking for him.
A father.
His rage had no place to land. All his tormentors were not ghosts.
And if he was honest, he’d no one to blame but himself.
Ramsay remembered back to the day he’d found Matilda’s dark head bent over his desk after she had picked the lock to his home office. He’d railed at thebeauty like a harbinger of wrath and righteousness. Had condemned her for all manner of things.
Even after she confessed that Henrietta had sent her. She’d asked him for his mercy, his forgiveness. But he’d allowed his pain at her betrayal to flare into fury. He’d looked at his lover, the woman he’d considered marriage for, and he’d thrown her out into the gutter. He’d told her she belonged there. Had vowed to her the next time he saw her, it would be in shackles. That he’d love nothing so much as to see her rot in a prison for a treacherous slag.
And, in the end, she’d reaped the greatest revenge. She’d given birth to his daughter, and let his enemy raise her.
This was his nightmare.
Every time he’d kicked the door to Henrietta’s establishment in, he’d put little Phoebe at risk. He’d been too blinded by his own self-importance, his distrust of women, and the vendetta he excused with ambitious ideals, to much care how his actions might affect those in his warpath.
If he’d have taken Henrietta down earlier, he’d have impoverished his own daughter.
And Cecelia.
Not to mention the employees of the gambling hell and the students beneath.
So why didn’t the old hag tell him? Why didn’t she come to him with this secret and do her level best to blackmail him out of his vast fortunes as was her wont?
Instead, she raised uphisdaughter.
Ramsay stood in the lake and heaved great swaths of water with his arms in a very uncharacteristic fit of temper. He roared to the sky and created waves of his ire.
He’d have to tell Phoebe who he was.
A pang of anxiety paralyzed him as the last of the sundipped below the trees. In the silence, he could hear Cecelia’s and Phoebe’s voices filtering through the thin forest as they ventured near to pick berries from the overgrown forest. Even at this distance, the false brightness in Cecelia’s interaction plucked at him.
His daughter adored Cecelia already because she’d taken the girl in and shown her the love any motherless child would yearn for. She’d have made certain Phoebe’s dream of being a doctor was realized.
