Chapter 18
Eighteen
The auction was being held in the ballroom of a viscount’s estate west of the city. It was predictably gaudy—gilt-framed portraits, too many mirrors, and velvet drapes the color of old bruises.
Ramsay scanned the crowd with a disinterested eye.
Ladies clutched fans and husbands. Gentlemen whispered in corners like they had secrets worth keeping.
Eleanor disappeared almost immediately, dragged away by Lady Winthrop and a handful of other wives who considered her something between exotic and cautionary.
“Careful,” came a voice beside him. “That kind of staring could get a man accused of feelings.”
Ramsay turned.
The Duke of Foxdrey stood at his shoulder—Andrew Pasley, Eleanor’s cousin. Younger than Ramsay by a few years though he carried himself like someone who’d long since stopped trying to prove anything. Straight-backed. Calm-eyed. He held his glass like a man who enjoyed drinking.
Ramsay had seen him at the wedding, speaking with Norman for most of the night, but this was the first time they stood this close.
“Didn’t peg you for the possessive type,” Andrew said, voice mild, expression unreadable.
“I’m not,” Ramsay replied.
“Mm.” Andrew sipped his drink. “Funny seeing her married.”
Ramsay glanced sideways. “Aye, well, funny’s a low bar in London.”
“She never left London until this year. Not even for a week. Greece was the first time she stepped outside the city.”
Ramsay’s brow lifted. “She loves the city that much?”
“She loves her family that much,” Andrew corrected gently. “The city just came with us.”
He took another sip, voice light but not careless. “You pulled her away from all that. That’s no small thing.”
“She came willingly,” Ramsay said.
Andrew nodded slowly. “Of course, she did. She’s always had a taste for trouble.”
Ramsay’s mouth twitched. “On that, I’ll agree with you.”
“I think you’re the first man she’s followed. The rest just tried to follow her.”
There was no accusation in his voice—just truth and something dangerously close to affection.
Ramsay’s gaze returned to Eleanor. She was laughing again, head tipped back, entirely herself. Entirely elsewhere.
“She’ll find her footing,” Andrew said, more to his drink than to Ramsay. “She always does.” Then he tipped his glass in a vague salute and offered the barest hint of a grin. “If you’ll excuse me—”
He turned without waiting for a reply and vanished into the crowd.
Not the strangest English lad I’ve met.
Ramsay went back to watching her from across the room. She laughed at something. Tilted her head. Held a glass of champagne like it was second nature.
He wondered, not for the first time, what she’d been like before. Before him.
Now she stood at the edge of the ballroom, posture straight, eyes bright, smile practiced but not false. She laughed at something Lady Harwood said, and the sound of it—light, unbothered—went straight through him.
She moved with the kind of grace that didn’t come from breeding. It came from survival. From knowing how to walk through a room that wanted her small and making herself impossible to ignore.
“Is that the Egerton girl?” came a voice just behind him.
Ramsay didn’t turn.
“God, she’s still not married right? I wouldn’t mind a taste.”
Ramsay turned. Slowly.
The man was vaguely familiar—Viscount something, all teeth and perfume and the kind of smirk that belonged in a brothel, not a ballroom.
“She’s taken,” Ramsay said coldly.
The Viscount blinked. “Is she?”
“She is.” Ramsay’s voice dropped. “And if I hear you speak of her again like that, I’ll tear out your tongue and feed it to my horse.”
A long beat of silence.
Then the man cleared his throat, muttered something unintelligible, and backed away like he’d just remembered an urgent appointment.
Ramsay turned back toward Eleanor. She was still laughing. Still glowing. Still his. And damn him, it wasn’t enough that she wore his ring. It wasn’t enough that she carried his name.
The world should know. Should see. That she was his. His wife. His woman. Only his.
There were moments—like this one—when he could almost see it. The girl she’d been. The girl Gifford had chased through sun-warmed ruins, the girl who said what she meant and hit harder than most men dared.
And in that moment, something twisted in his chest. She could have had anyone. An English gentleman. A quiet life. Even happiness.
But she’d married him instead. A Highland wolf. All sharp edges and bad manners. A duke from nowhere with no interest in lace-curtained domesticity.
Would she have been better off with someone else? And what would happen after he left for Scotland? Would she still be his?
His gaze narrowed.
Across the ballroom, Gifford was laughing. That in itself was not unusual. What was unusual was the man beside him—Lord Everly, sycophantic and small—and the way Gifford was speaking too loudly for the setting.
“—very enthusiastic,” Gifford was saying to the same viscount from earlier, whom Ramsay still half-meant to gut. “Uncommonly willing, if you know what I mean. She had a particular fondness for ruins. And for being ruined. Our time in Greece was quite… memorable.”
The man chuckled, lewd and oily. “I daresay you’ll miss her.”
Ramsay felt it in his spine. He moved without thinking.
“Gifford,” he said, stepping into their circle, voice calm and cold.
The laughter cut short.
Gifford turned, smiling too broadly. “Oh, the Duke of Stormglen. I wasn’t aware you were nearby.”
“I was.”
A long pause.
“Your Grace,” the man stammered, backing away.
Ramsay didn’t blink. “Repeat what you just said.”
Gifford’s smile faltered. “It was only a jest.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“I meant nothing by it—”
“That was my Duchess you were talking about. My wife.”
Mine.
The room had gone quiet. Heads turned.
“Your Grace—”
The Viscount had already backed away, suddenly interested in the punch table. A few others were beginning to turn.
Ramsay stepped forward. “Walk with me.”
Gifford hesitated. Ramsay didn’t ask again. He gripped the other man’s shoulder and steered him toward one of the side corridors, cool and dim and blessedly empty.
When they were out of view, Gifford wrenched his arm free. “There’s no need for dramatics, Your Grace.”
“Then apologize.”
Gifford swallowed. “Apologies. Of course. It was foolish of me.”
“Louder.”
“I apologize.”
“To whom?”
“To the duchess.”
Ramsay stared at him. Let the silence stretch.
Gifford shifted. Cleared his throat.
“I never understood your type,” he muttered, eyes flicking down the hall. “Risking a dukedom for a used-up little—”
Ramsay saw red.
His fist connected before the sentence had finished forming.
Bone met bone with a sickening crack, and Gifford’s head snapped sideways—hard. He slammed into the wall with a thud that echoed then he crumpled, clutching his jaw as he slid to the floor like something discarded.
The corridor rang with the silence that followed.
Eleanor had punched Gifford too. It only felt natural for Ramsay to follow suit. He almost smiled.
Well. Wasn’t that rather… romantic?
Ramsay stood over the man, shoulders braced. He flexed his hand once. No blood. Not enough.
“You don’t speak her name,” he said, voice low and shaking with restraint. “Not again. Not anywhere.” Ramsay adjusted his cuffs and added. “Next time, I won’t be so polite.”
Eleanor’s voice broke the spell.
“Ramsay!”
“It had to be done,” Ramsay said, still brimming with heat from the argument. “He had it coming.”
“You say that,” Eleanor replied, voice hushed, “as if that excuses everything.”
They stood just beyond the crowd, a little removed from the main floor of the auction, tucked beneath the carved archway that separated the drawing hall from the vestibule.
Light poured in from the tall windows, gilding Ramsay’s hair like fire.
She couldn’t look at him. Not properly. Not when her pulse was still tumbling from the scene he’d just made.
He turned toward her fully then, still brimming with heat, his breath coming faster. His pupils still hadn’t shrunk.
And she—God help her—she felt it. The air between them trembled. Her fingers curled around her gloves like a lifeline. His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth then back to her eyes, and the sheer force of him made her stomach twist.
“What is it you want from me, Eleanor?” he asked, voice low, taut with something unsaid.
She gave a breathless shake of her head. “I want to understand you. That’s all.”
That stopped him. His jaw flexed, as though he didn’t know what to do with that kind of answer. For a second, he looked like he might say something—something real. But instead, his gaze snapped back toward the auction floor.
He stepped in, just once, close enough that her skirts brushed his boots. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him.
“Then pay attention,” he said.
And just like that, he grabbed her hand—the heat of him burning her—already striding forward, shoulders squared, cutting through the crowd like it owed him something.
She followed, breathless, unsettled. And aching in ways she hadn’t let herself feel in years.
The next item up for bid was nothing of note. A vase, slender and cracked in one place near the base, but Ramsay lifted his hand, and the bidding began.
Across the room, Gifford did the same.
Oh no. Not again. Eleanor’s heart sank. This was not going to be subtle.
The auctioneer brightened, sensing drama. “A fine piece of Hellenic craftsmanship, recovered just outside of Athens. Shall we begin at forty?”
Ramsay raised a brow. Nodded once.
“Forty-five,” Gifford called immediately.
“Sixty,” Ramsay said, voice booming through the room.
Eleanor bit down on a groan.
They were no longer bidding on a vase. They were battling with numbers—each one sharper than the last. Bows exchanged instead of swords. Salvos delivered in the form of crisp nods and slow, deliberate raises.
A gentleman near Eleanor whispered, “What on earth is in that thing? Ambrosia?”
She might’ve laughed if her chest didn’t feel like it was made of stone.
Ramsay didn’t even blink. “Eighty.”
“Eighty-five.”
“Ninety-five.”
Someone gasped.
Eleanor could feel every muscle in her neck tighten.
It was madness. Ludicrous. The vase was cracked, likely worthless, and yet here they were—two grown men engaged in a bidding war over a misshapen antique, all because one of them couldn’t stand to lose and the other refused to yield.
Gifford hesitated. Only for a breath. “One hundred,” he said, like he meant to bite it.
Ramsay lifted his hand again. “One hundred and fifty.”
A collective murmur rippled through the room.
The auctioneer nearly fell over his lectern. “One hundred and fifty. Once. Twice—”
At last, the auctioneer slammed his gavel. “Sold. To the Duke of Stormglen.”
Ramsay.
There was a strange sort of hush. Everyone else moved on. Ramsay, however, did not.
He picked up the vase himself and carried it.
To her.
She blinked.
“You seem surprised,” he said, pressing it gently into her hands.
“It’s… Greek,” she murmured.
“Obviously.”
“I don’t understand.”
He nodded toward the vase. “The last one broke. This one won’t. Consider it a replacement.”
It took her a moment to understand. Their very first meeting. The hallway on the ship. Her falling. The crash. The vase intended for Norman, breaking on the ship.
“You remembered,” she said quietly.
“I remember everything you’ve thrown at me,” he said, lips tugging. “That includes ancient pottery.”
She should have smiled. Should have teased him.
But all she could do was look at the vase. She didn’t care for it—not really. It wasn’t even particularly beautiful. But the fact that he’d noticed, remembered, bid for it…
Something caught in her throat.
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it more than he would ever know.
So much for ignoring him. That plan had just gone up in smoke—and she was the one fanning the flames.