Page 112 of All Scot and Bothered
“Semantics,” he growled.
“Not semantics. You wouldn’t pay me, obviously. We’ve each our own fortunes. We could just… be together.”
“Nay,” he said. “It’s impossible.” He had to have her. To possess and protect her. How could she not understand that?
A sober frown wrinkled her forehead. “But only moments ago, you said you would shoot the moon if I asked it of you. That you could stay here with me forever.”
“Aye, then let us stay here.” He seized her shoulders, desperately needing her to understand. “Let us work the earth if we must. Or do nothing at all. I’m wealthy enough to retire. Let us do anything where we are not considered lower than the sewer rats in the eyes of London society.”
Cecelia put her hands over his and brought one to her lips. “I love it here. But I cannot stay. I am resolved. I would share my life with you, if you are brave enough to share my chosen future with me.” She gestured to the airbetween them. The space that seemed to be growing into a chasm by the second.
“Ye have to understand what ye’re asking,” Ramsay said. “Ye’re expecting me to give up not only my hard-won position, but my reputation. My very reason forexistence.”
“No,” she rushed. “No, I do not intend for you to give up your life. But that certainly seems to be your expectation of me. To give up what I have, what I want, so that we might be together. Do you expect me to conform to the societal expectation of what a woman should be so that I’ll fit neatly into the world?”
“Well…” He blinked rapidly, wondering why her question suddenly sounded like he wasn’t being at all logical. “Yes.”
She gasped in as if someone had punctured her lungs with a knife, and then breathed out a shaky sigh. “If there’s one thing you’d have learned in a lifetime with me, it’s that I don’t fit neatly anywhere.” She regarded him with infinite sadness, but he could tell he’d not surprised her in the least.
Ramsay fought desperation at the retreat he read in her eyes, and on its heels a fury surged.
“I’m not the one being unreasonable here!” He slapped the ground in frustration. “I simply doona want a mistress or an exile. Ye’ve seen how dangerous this life is.”
“If you want me as a wife, you’ll get everything I am.” She stood, dropping the blanket and snatching up her wrapper. “If we were to marry, I’d take you despite your pride and your perfectionism, not because of it.” She donned the robe in a graceful motion and belted it firmly.
Ramsay didn’t even get the proper chance to mourn the loss of her skin as she continued to set fire to the hopes he’d planted for them, leaving them in ashes. “I’mnotperfect, Ramsay. Idoindulge in the pleasures life has to offer, and I don’t intend to stop. Life is forliving. To enjoy. I’ll not tie my fate to yours if you’re only going to smother me with expectations. I’ll not have it.”
Ramsay stood and stalked forward. He captured her lips with his and kissed her with wild, desperate abandon. He poured all of his need, his will, his desire, and his feeling into her mouth. Hoping it would reach her heart. Wishing she would soften.
When she broke the kiss and turned away, they were both breathing heavily. Her lips were bruised and his felt swollen, along with another part of his anatomy begging for him to give in so he could be inside her again.
“Will ye not yield, Cecelia?” he whispered urgently. “Even for a chance at this?”
She whirled around, all semblance of gentility and kindness wiped away by a stronger emotion than he’d ever seen. Pain, the same pain he’d spied gazing back at him from the mirror.
The kind of pain that eventually turned into rage.
“Why is itIwho must yield toyourambitions?” she demanded, slicing her hand through the air. “Because I am a woman? Do you realize how many men have requested me to yield because of my sex? The vicar who raised me. Who imprisoned me because he believed I was at fault for the indiscretions of others.” She paced again, making large, passionate gestures, each word of her refusal a shard of glass embedded in his heart.
“Every professor I ever had asked me to yield my seat, my marks, my chosen passion to a man. Every male student who was forced to sit next to me, or humbled himself to ask me for help in private because my mind was superior to his, only to depose me publicly for being fat, tall,bespectacled, or, worse, unmarried—no,unmarriable.” She said the word with a disgust that pounded the nail into their coffin.
“Because I wore a dress, my existence as an intellectual has been an insult to everyone. They’ve all asked me to be other than I am. Men seem to think that because they must give me their seats on the train, I must yield to them my very identity. Or my choices. My body or, in this case, myentire life.” She marched up to him, looking like Boudicca the warrior queen, proud and angry and determined. “I have not, and I will not, and it is wrong of you to ask,” she said with absolute finality. “Can you not love me, even if I do not yield?”
Ramsay felt himself turning hard. Cold. Building walls against the barrage of her words so he didn’t have to hear them, to wonder if they made sense.
“We have not yet spoken of love,” he said in a voice that would have been inaudible if her nose wasn’t almost touching his.
She stumbled backward, clutching her heart.
He’d driven the knife home.
“I see.” She bent down, gathered her nightgown and turned to take the path back to the house.
“Cecelia.” Ramsay was not a man who chased a woman, but he did it for her. He did his best to explain. That he knew best. That she could not ask him to return to nothing. “I am who I am every bit as much as ye are. Who am I if not the Lord Chief Justice of the High Court? What achievements could ye take pride in? What do I have to offer ye if not my position? My reputation? My principles and my pride?”
Her steps faltered, and her chin touched her shoulder. “Those are excellent questions,” she said stiffly. “You’llhave to find the answers yourself before we discuss this again.”
As she walked away with her back straight Ramsay already knew the answers.
