Page 48 of All Scot and Bothered
“Don’t fall asleep,” she admonished, frightened that if he did, he truly would never wake again. How she wished she could dim the sun or call the eternal gray back over the London skies, if only to comfort him. “Phoebe will want to make certain you are all right. Promise me you won’t sleep before she returns.”
The girl in question arrived dragging a burly ambulancemedic in her wake like a tiny blond tugboat. Another medic was followed by Francesca and Alexandra, each of them pale, filthy, and alarmed.
The medics freed Jean-Yves from the rest of the rubble, wrapped his head wound, and secured his arm to his chest with no small amount of foul language on Jean-Yves’s part.
“Do not fret,mon Rogues,” he grunted when they could finally load him onto a stretcher. “You are not ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world unchaperoned.”
“I’ll follow you to hospital.” Cecelia clutched his hand.
“No need. I’ve had enough bruised or broken ribs in my day to know what they feel like,” he said. “They’ll patch me up, set my shoulder, and send me home with the most wonderful morphine.”
“We’re coming to hospital, old man,” Francesca declared, her stubbornness doing little to conceal the hard-won fondness softening her gaze. “You’re too wounded to fight us on this.”
“A herd of stampeding rhinoceroses wouldn’t keep us away,” Alexandra chimed in, smoothing his hair with cautious gentility.
“The three of ye are going exactly nowhere,” growled a most unwelcome voice.
Cecelia’s mouth turned to ash when she looked up to see Ramsay storming into the gardens like an advancing general. With his features drawn into a furious mask of wrath, she had to fight a very primal instinct to flee such a masculine, mercenary onslaught.
It was a wonder that nations didn’t fall before him, with a countenance that fierce. That rivers didn’t divert at his word and mountains shouldn’t move to make way for his march.
Genny had been right: It was easy to forget how astonishingly large he was until one was faced with two-hundred-plus pounds of Scots muscle and icy wrath charging forward like a golden bull. Head low. Nostrils flaring. Untouched by the chaos and destruction around him.
Untouchable.
Cecelia was surprised to find that she rather disliked the idea of him trailing his disgust and self-righteousness all over her establishment.
Indeed. Whether she liked it or not, it washers. She owned it.
And she would now be forced to ownupto it.
There would be no seducing secrets from the Vicar of Vice. Not now that he was about to find out just who exactly she was.
Her tongue felt like sandpaper as Ramsay planted his boots a few feet away from them, his gaze making a trail of blue fire up and down Cecelia’s filthy frame.
“First of all, is anyone wounded?” he snarled.
“Other than the Frenchman on the stretcher and nine others being hefted into ambulances?” Francesca retorted, folding her arms.
“The wounded on the lawn are being seen to. My question is directed at yeladies.” The word dripped from him with acerbic sarcasm as he adopted the exact same posture.
Cecelia noted how his suitcoat stretched over the bulk of his shoulders, straining at the seams. It seemed he could flex but once and the entire thing, though very well made, would be forced to give way.
What a strange thing to notice at a time like this.
She put a hand to her forehead. Perhaps she was concussed.
“We’re unharmed, thank you, Ramsay.” Alexandra answered her brother-in-law’s query when it became apparent no one else was about to.
“Does my brother know ye’re here, Yer Grace?” The last syllable slithered from between his teeth like a hiss.
“Of course he does,” Alexandra replied. “Which is why I expect him to burst through the doors any moment wild and disheveled and terrified for me.” Alexandra’s bravado had begun to fade, her bright brunette eyes now pinching with strain. “I should like him to hurry.”
Cecelia wrapped her arm around Alexandra’s waist to offer what comfort she could until her husband arrived.
What would it be like to have someone care and worry for her as Redmayne did for his wife? With all of himself. The duke would have thrown his own body over his duchess in a blast such as this. He’d have carried her to safety on two broken legs. He’d have bled out before allowing harm to come to her.
Cecelia didn’t want to feel sorry for herself, but with Jean-Yves so frighteningly injured and a new charge to look after, she felt heavier than she ever had both physically and otherwise. Weighted down with unknown secrets and unidentified enemies, the blood of four innocent souls, the innocence of missing girls, and the safety of everyone now in her care and employ.
