Page 79 of All Scot and Bothered
“How do you know I don’t need you?” In an astounding fit of temper, she flung her wrapper back into the crate. “Because I am not constructed with delicate femininity, I am not allowed to be fragile?” She lifted her jaw and glared at him with all the mutiny she could summon. “Because I am intelligent, I am thereby not in need of assistance? Because I am capable, I have no need of protection, is that it?”
Ramsay blinked down at her, his head cocked in a very doglike gesture of confusion. “I never said—”
Cecelia put her hand to her forehead, feeling feverish and strange. Breathless and a bit drunk. “Everyone always thinks I know what to do. But I don’t! Idon’tknow what to do.” She didn’t inhale so much as she sobbed breaths into lungs that seemed to refuse to inflate. “I’m so. Lost. So weary.” She hated admitting it. Hated herself for her weakness. Hated that he’d see her as weak. “Absolutely everything is a disaster.” Blood rushed in her ears, and her vision swam. Her knees didn’t seem capable of supporting her weight anymore, and she reached out rather blindly, fearing collapse.
He caught her before she buckled, supporting her weight.
“Don’t leave,” she pleaded, surging forward against him. Burrowing into his chest and clutching at his arms. “Don’t leave me alone. What if someone comes for us in the night?” She did her best to keep her voice down, to make certain Phoebe wouldn’t wake to hear the hysteria bubbling within her. “What if you don’t hear me scream in time?”
His hand landed on the back of her hair and cupped her head to his chest. “Och, lass. I didna ken ye were so frightened.” He whispered this as though the discoveryhumbled him, then drew her close against his body. Curling over her, around her, he allowed the storm of her tears to break upon him as he sheltered her.
Somehow her spectacles disappeared, and he set them aside before his palm returned to glide up and down her spine in a slow dance as she gave in to her grief.
She cried for her mother. For Henrietta. Phoebe. For the souls who’d been lost in the explosion. For little Katerina Milovic and any girl who was missing, victimized, afraid, or unloved.
She cried for Ramsay. For the boy who survived alone in this cabin, who’d been mistreated. Forgotten. Abandoned.
She wept because people were so unkind. Because they preyed upon one another in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine, and that fact made her feel helpless and afraid. She wanted to reach out and heal the entire world, and yet she couldn’t even keep those in her household safe from faceless enemies.
“Breathe,” Ramsay murmured. “I have ye. Ye’re safe.”
“I know I am,” she gasped through humiliating hiccups. “Because you’re here. Because you saved Phoebe and me, even though you hated me. How can I ever begin to thank you for that? I cannot repay you for bringing us to a place that causes you pain by forcing you to sleep in the dirt! It’s unthinkable. Unconscionable.”
He expelled a long breath full of so many things left unsaid. She heard it leave his lungs through the ear she’d pressed against the warm muscle of his chest.
“I didna mean to sleep, all told. I was going to keep watch,” he muttered. “Although, after what I put ye through, perhaps the dirt is what I deserve.”
“But don’t you see?” She pulled back, craving the sightof him. Wanting him to witness the depth of her gratitude as well as hear it. “I don’t even care that you were cruel. Every time I’ve needed you, you’ve been there, quite literally lifting the burden from my shoulders. You can’t know what that means to me.”
The glaciers that had once been his irises melted into dark pools of azure before he hid them beneath his lowered lids, turning his face away.
“You’ve barely glanced at me all day.” She reached up to cup his cheek, tugging gently at his stubborn jaw.
“Cecelia.” He resisted her pull, the bristle of his evening stubble sharp against the soft flesh of her palm. “Doona make me. Not now.”
“Do I still disgust you?” she challenged. “Because I cannot tell. Sometimes you look at me like you did that night you kissed me. As though I am extraordinary, or perhaps worthy. And sometimes… I see storms in your eyes. Hatred. Wrath and—”
“Nay. God, woman, ye canna think that.” He lifted a hand as if to silence her, but the knuckles that brushed the bruise on her cheek were infinitely tender. “I canna look at ye without wanting to bring the man to life who did this, just so I can have the pleasure of killing him again. Slower this time.Thatis the wrath ye read in me. A bruise on yer skin is like an open wound on my soul. It hurts me to look.”
Cecelia was so startled by the fervency of his words, contrasted with the reverence of his touch, that she could summon no reply. She stood beneath his gaze, the curves of her body still pressed to the planes of his, and gloried in the sensation his touches provoked within her.
Her hand still shaped to his jaw as his fingers ventured up her cheek to her temple and then threaded in her hair.
Without meaning to, she leaned into his palm, seeking his touch like a cat hungry for affection.
“Christ,” he breathed, turning his head to press his lips against the thin and tender skin on the inside of her wrist. “What are ye doing to me?”
CHAPTERTWELVE
Cecelia hadn’t the first idea what she was doing, but her body certainly seemed to. It responded so intuitively to his proximity. Blossomed and ached where he touched her.
Ramsay exerted a gentle pressure against her scalp, drawing her closer.
His head lowered incrementally toward her, eyes glazed with intent.
At first, the kiss was a ghost haunting the space between them. A specter of what might have bloomed before all of the chaos ripped their worlds asunder.
Her eyes affixed on his lips, finding a hint of the divine where malice had once been. A glimpse of the eternal. An echo of forever.
