Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
The ride home was silent, but it wasn’t quiet.
Eleanor sat beside him, gloved hands folded neatly in her lap, the curve of her mouth betraying nothing of the evening’s laughter or the too-long glances they’d exchanged across the ballroom.
But her thigh was still pressed lightly to his, and Ramsay could feel every ounce of restraint in her spine. He wasn’t immune.
Not to the way her gown had moved with her. Not to the echo of her laugh or the half-daring look she’d given him when she’d licked frosting from her fingertip. He should have stayed on the other side of the carriage. He should have done a thousand things differently.
As they crossed the threshold of the house, something shifted.
The candlelight was low. The staff gone to sleep. The grandmothers retreated to their chambers with many fusses and instructions, leaving only the two of them and the quiet.
“I suppose I’ll retire,” Eleanor said softly, turning toward the stairs.
He followed.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” she asked after a moment.
Ramsay shrugged, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “It was less dreadful than I feared.”
She smiled faintly. “That’s the highest praise you’ve ever given London.”
“I may yet survive the season.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
They reached the landing. Ramsay didn’t move to leave.
Eleanor turned to him, eyes catching the warm lamplight. Her voice lowered, but there was nothing shy in it.
“Would you like to come in?”
His heart punched against his ribs.
She wasn’t coquettish. There was no demure flutter of lashes or strategic shift of the shoulder. She was simply looking at him, steady, waiting for him.
And Ramsay—a brute, a man who had known violence and cold and nothing else for so long—felt warmth surge in his throat like hunger.
“Yes,” he said.
She opened the door and stepped inside. He followed.
The room smelled faintly of rosewater. Her dressing table shimmered with cut-glass bottles. Her gloves lay abandoned on the arm of the chair. Ramsay didn’t look at the bed, yet.
She turned toward him, hands loosening the pearl clasp at her neck.
“You can help,” she murmured.
His fingers found the row of buttons down her back, small and stubborn. He worked them loose slowly, deliberately, breath tightening with each inch of skin revealed.
“Eleanor,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She turned her head, just enough to meet his gaze over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“If you ask me to stop—”
“I won’t.”
The last button gave. He let the fabric slip from her shoulders, catching it at her elbows, easing it down like an offering.
She stepped out of the gown, barefoot now, in her chemise and turned to face him. She didn’t cover herself. Didn’t flinch.
He stepped forward, slid his hand around her waist, and pulled her into him.
The kiss was slow. Not cautious—no, there was nothing cautious left between them—but reverent. As if he were trying to memorize the taste of her. As if kissing her meant something, and God help him, it did.
Her hands found the lapels of his coat. She tugged gently, urging him closer. Ramsay groaned low in his throat and let himself fall into the soft, warm, utterly maddening sensation of her.
She smelled like lavender and clean linen. Her skin was warm silk beneath his palms.
He kissed her again. Harder.
She arched against him, and he caught her with both arms, lifting her off the ground with ease and walking her back toward the bed.
“Wait,” she gasped, breathless.
He stopped. “What is it?”
“I—” She laughed a little. “You’re still wearing half your wardrobe.”
“I can fix that.”
He set her down, hands already moving to his coat.
That was when the knock came.
Ramsay froze.
Eleanor blinked. “Was that—?”
Another knock. Firmer this time.
He growled something obscene beneath his breath and crossed to the door.
Belson stood there, composed as always, as if he hadn’t just interrupted a moment of near-sacred intensity.
“I’m sorry to intrude, Your Grace,” he said, handing over a sealed letter. “But this arrived by hand. The messenger insisted it was urgent. Said it concerns… Inverness.”
Ramsay stared at the envelope.
The seal was unmarked. The script unfamiliar.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own.
Belson bowed and disappeared. Ramsay stepped back inside.
Eleanor was still at the edge of the bed, gown half-fallen from the chair behind her, cheeks flushed, hair a little wild.
“Everything all right?” she asked gently.
He didn’t answer. Not yet.
He broke the seal and unfolded the letter. The paper crumpled slightly in his fist as he read it.
Does your duchess know what you did? Does she know you’re a murderer? That you took his life and never paid for it? You’ve fooled her for now, but you’ll lose her when she learns the truth. And I’ll make sure she will.
There was no signature. No date. Just a smear of ink at the bottom, like the writer had pressed the pen too hard.
Ramsay’s lungs locked. For a moment, the room spun. Then everything went still.
I have to deal with him before he reaches Eleanor…
He folded the letter slowly. He wasn’t cold often, but now, something in him rose to the surface like a beast through ice.
Eleanor was watching him, her eyes burning.
She stood, wrapping her arms loosely around her middle. “What did it say?”
He looked at her.
Really looked.
Not just the surface of her—though that alone was enough to undo him.
Not just the curve of her mouth, still swollen from his kiss, or the dip of her collarbone where the lamplight kissed her skin.
Not just her eyes, wide and questioning, or the way her hair had begun to fall from its pins, soft and untamed and utterly beautiful.
He looked past all of it. Past the gown slipping off her shoulders, past the breath she hadn’t yet released. Past the moment they’d just shared—the heat of it, the promise of more.
He saw her standing there. Open. Unafraid. Trusting him with something he wasn’t sure he deserved. And that was the part that broke him.
Because he wanted her. So badly it ached. He wanted to take that step forward, close the distance between them, and sink into the one place he’d ever felt steady. He wanted to kiss her until the world went quiet, undress her like a prayer, feel her body move with his like she belonged to him.
He wanted to crawl inside this life—this impossible, fragile, beautiful thing they’d built—and never leave it.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let her see what was coming. Couldn’t drag her through the blood and ruin of his past when he’d only just begun to feel clean again. Not when she still looked at him like he was something worth keeping.
So, he stood there, breathing her in, knowing he was about to walk away from the only good thing that had ever looked back.
“Ramsay?” she said softly.
He cleared his throat. “I have to leave.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I have to return to Inverness. Tonight.”
Silence.
Then—
“When are you coming back?”
Ramsay’s chest tightened like a fist closing around his ribs. His spine locked, jaw clenched. He couldn’t look at her and lie, but the truth felt heavier than stone.
“I don’t know.” He said it low. Apologetic. Cowardly.
“You don’t know,” she repeated, breath catching like it might break halfway through. Her eyes sharpened with disbelief. “You don’t know?”
He glanced away. The shadows cast by the lamplight were long now, stretching across the rug like they meant to trap him. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
“I have…” He swallowed. “Private business.”
The words were thick in his throat, rancid with memory. He remembered saying them in a different hallway with a different version of her standing across from him—distant, defiant, untouched. But this Eleanor… this Eleanor had given him her mouth, her care, her trust.
She stared at him, unmoving. Her lips parted then closed again. Her eyes searched his face, trying to find what was missing.
“Private business,” she whispered. “Like… before our wedding.”
“Yes.”
He couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. He dropped his gaze to the carpet, to the faded corner near the skirting board where someone had once spilled wax. It looked darker now.
A silence fell between them—too long, too loud. It rang in his ears like a reckoning.
Then she said, almost too softly—
“I could come with you.”
His head snapped up. She was standing so still, her arms crossed loosely around her waist as if holding herself together. There was no humor in her face. No lightness. Just a quiet, unbearable truth in her posture, in her open hands, in the barest quiver of her chin.
She was offering. Truly offering. Not as a jest or a dare but as a woman who had already decided she would follow him anywhere.
His hands curled into fists at his sides for what he was about to do.
God, he wanted to say yes. To take her hand and pull her close and tell her it would all be fine. That he wasn’t afraid anymore. That this—she—was the only thing he wanted. But wanting had never been enough. Not for men like him.
“No,” he said it too fast. Too flat. Like slamming a door before someone could see what was inside.
Her brows knit. She stepped closer, bare feet brushing the hem of her dressing gown, that silk robe of hers fluttering slightly with the movement. “No?”
He forced a breath through his nose. His lungs felt too small. “This goes against your rules.”
He tried to say it like it was nothing. Like a logical reminder of boundaries set. But the words scraped his throat on the way out. The hollowness in his chest was cavernous now.
Eleanor flinched, just slightly. A ripple across her spine, the tightening of her jaw. Most wouldn’t have noticed. He did. It nearly undid him.
“My rules?” she echoed, voice brittle now. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re the one who insisted you stay in London,” he said too fast.
Her mouth opened. Then closed. Her eyes shone but not with tears. “That was before,” she whispered. “Before I knew what—”
“What?” he snapped. His voice cracked like a whip. “Before you forgot who you were because of me?”
She stepped back. The blow landed. Not on her cheek but in her breath. In the sudden fragility of her expression. He hated himself for it.
He couldn’t stop himself. “No, we made a deal,” he said bitterly. “You wanted to stay in London forever. I was to return to Scotland.”
“That’s not fair,” she breathed. Her voice was shaking now.
“No,” he agreed, turning from her before the scent of her—lavender and warmth and home—dragged him back. “No, it’s not.”
“You can’t say that to me,” she said suddenly, louder now, urgent. “Not after everything we’ve—”
“Everything?” His laugh was low and sharp. “What have I given you, Eleanor, truly? A scandal? A child that’s not even yours? A marriage built on…”
Blackmail.
She winced like he’d struck her.
“You gave me honesty,” she said quietly.
He turned toward her then. Looked her full in the face. “I gave you fear.”
Her breath hitched.
“You gave me a choice,” she said, stepping toward him again.
“I gave you a lie.”
The silence was brutal. He could hear his own breathing. Hers. The clock ticking somewhere down the hall.
Then she moved. Crossed the space between them in two steps, silk whispering around her legs like wind through grass. Her eyes were blazing now. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Pushing me away before I can push you.”
He looked at her.
God, she was beautiful. Her hair half-loosened, her cheeks flushed, the imprint of his mouth still soft on her collarbone. And her eyes, fierce and confused.
“I’m not a man you can mold,” he said quietly. “You keep trying to make me something I’m not. I know myself. I know my past.”
If she knew about my past…
“I haven’t—”
“You want me to be civilized. Gentle. The kind of man who fits into drawing rooms and supper parties. But I was made for something else.”
She stared at him.
“I wasn’t trying to change you,” she said, voice trembling. “I was trying to understand you.”
“You were trying to tame me.”
“I was trying to love you.”
That stopped him. The silence after it stretched, long and heavy.
He hadn’t expected her to say it. And now that she had, it felt like something had been pierced inside him.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” he said hoarsely.
“Then tell me.”
He shook his head.
“I’m not afraid of your past.”
“You should be.”
“I’m not.”
“You will be.”
He turned away before she could reach for him. Before her touch weakened whatever strength he had left.
“You deserve someone better than me, Eleanor.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“It is if I’m the one who’ll destroy you.”
“You won’t.”
“I already have.”
She stepped back and that hurt more than anything else.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, quiet but firm. “I don’t believe that you don’t care. That you can just walk out of here after everything we’ve been building.”
“I’m not doing this to hurt you.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Protecting you.”
“You think you’re the first man to try that?” she snapped. “My whole life has been men deciding what I need, what I can handle, what’s best for me.”
“This is different.”
“Why? Because it’s you?”
“Yes.”
Her lips parted.
And for a second, he thought she might scream. Cry. Laugh. Throw something.
But she didn’t. She just stood there. And then she nodded. Just once.
“I see.”
“Eleanor…”
“No. It’s all right. I suppose you must do what you think is best.”
Her voice was too calm. Too even. It made something fracture inside him.
He wanted to stay. God, he wanted to stay with her, but the letter burned in his coat pocket like a brand. He could still see the words:
DOES YOUR DUCHESS KNOW THAT SHE MARRIED A MURDERER?
If he didn’t fix this—if he didn’t get ahead of whoever had written it—then it would reach her anyway. And it would ruin her.
He wouldn’t let that happen. Even if it meant giving her up. Even if it meant becoming the villain in her story.
“Goodbye, Eleanor,” he said.
She didn’t answer, just stood in the middle of the room as he walked to the door, silent as snowfall.
He paused with his hand on the knob. If she asked—if she said one more word—he wouldn’t have the strength to leave.
Then, he opened the door and stepped out into the hall.
And this time, he didn’t look back.