Page 29 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
She blinked, struck with the novel idea. “Far away? What good would I do?”
“Much.”
“You are so sure,” she chided him.
“Look what we have accomplished here. What we could do elsewhere.”
“No,” she insisted. She would not tie him to her forever and see him die because of it.
“Then Sedan! Verdun,” he offered.
“No.”
“Karlsruhe.”
“No!”
He set his jaw. “Even the Rhine, Amsterdam. London!”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to go. I have no one in any of those places. No friends. No family.”
“You will have me.” He pointed to himself.
I must not take you for such simple emotions as fear or gratitude.“I cannot live off your grace and favor.”
“Why not? I am a man of circumstance. I can give all that I have.”
His words, so reminiscent of his mother’s definition of love, thrilled her—and sent dismay through her.
Ram could not love her. Should not. A woman adrift from herself, she would be his ruin. “You are too generous.”
He flinched. “Think on it.”
She had insulted him, and in small compensation, she hugged him closer.
He planted a kiss to her forehead. “But for now, we will return to the Boyers’ house and dress for dinner.”
Chapter Eight
The festival ballthat night began as the mayor took to the makeshift stage and the village orchestra opened with a country dance. All in the Boyer family plus their servants, Ram, and Amber had walked to the center of town at dusk and taken a table among others around the dance floor. The square glowed with the fires from huge braziers set at the periphery of the green.
Ram took Amber out for the first dance, and she felt new warmth flow through her. But she knew it was not the flames from the braziers that ignited her. The serenity that flowed through her like honey was Ram.
His tenderness toward her. His words of compassion. His restraint.
Their minutes by the river this afternoon had been an idyll. She’d needed the time to confide in him. The memory of other girls and women being raped and beaten by Carmes’s guards was one she had denied herself for years. She had never uttered the words to anyone. Maurice had probed for the cause of her collaboration with the team of agents, but she had told him nothing. He had known she engaged in the transfer of sensitive information to spies for the British, but he had not directly asked her for details. Nor had she spontaneously given them.
Revealing her justification to Ram was unusual for her. An agent himself, what did her own reasons matter? She simplyacted. The same as he, she discovered new information and transferred it. Yet somehow that he knew her motivation was a comfort to her.
She would have gone on forever in her role reporting to her superior as long as necessary, too, if Rene Vaillancourt had not taken an unnerving interest in her. But he had, and in it was more inspiration to defy those who would grab power for themselves at all costs.
All of that had brought her to this sweet moment, this charming town—and this enchanting man.
*
After the firstset, she and Ram had parted to do their social duty and dance with others. The man who was her protector and guide was a gentleman who would command any ballroom. So tall and dark and convivial, her Ram was a scrumptious devil whom many a girl would crave to have as a beau, or husband, or lover.
I do.
