Page 41 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
He squeezed her hand. “Let’s get to it.”
She batted her lashes at him. “Afterward, we can adjourn once more to our bedroom.”
“I like the way you think. We’ll find our answers quickly.”
But if they did—certainly when they did—they would once more have to discuss what to do with all that information.
Amber knew the conclusion they must both draw. To return to Paris so that Ram might disclose all they knew to his friend, Lord Ashley, was the right course of action.
Ram would fight it.
There had been a day when she would have feared it and the threat to her safety. But she understood the value of returning. And she valued his protection. In that, she had safety.
After so many weeks together, after so much delight in who he was as a man, as her protector and now as her lover, she’d thought long and hard about a return to Paris. She was no naïve girl who knew not how to ascribe responsibility for that change of heart. She was a widow, a worldly woman who had grown up amid the machinations of men and women who strove for power. She knew why she was changing her mind about her old role. It was not simply her understanding that her network was most likely gone, destroyed when she’d run from Paris and Vaillancourt. It was that she cared for Godfrey DuClare. Caring more each day in new and novel ways in bed and out of it, she valued him more.
Valued him more than she had wished.
But she would never stand between him and his duty to his country and to his colleagues. His honor demanded him to report any vital information. Just as hers had.
*
After their breakfast,they emerged from their room onto the sunny cobbled path. She had shrugged off her questions. She had no answers to them. Not now. Not yet. What she could do would be to help Ram discover the information that would be valuable to the British. “What do you suggest we do?”
“Let’s find a popular café and sit with coffee and pastry.”
“Coffee for me. No food. After that breakfast, I won’t eat again for a hundred years.”
Strolling the city, she carried a sketchbook she’d purchased in Buzancy. She was no artist, but carrying it gave her anexcuse to gaze overlong at scenery—or people. Today, when they stopped to dine, she did not take it out.
“You don’t care to draw today?” Ram asked with mischief in his blue eyes.
“The tables,” she explained.
“Ah, yes. I see. Too close together.”
“Exactly.”
He chuckled as he pulled out the small chair for her. “We don’t want anyone questioning your talents.”
She wrinkled her nose. She could draw stick figures very well and had shown Ram her inglorious examples. “I am dedicated, if nothing else.”
He took his own chair, a rueful frown on his features. “God knows that’s true.”
On the nearby dock, two fishermen argued, and it appeared they were soon to pummel each other. When the café owner appeared at their side, he was officious. Bounding off to get their waffles and coffee, he muttered about foreigners.
“You would think,” she said beneath her breath, “being on the border, he’d be used to new people coming and going.”
“On the borders, life is tenuous. Your Parisian French and my poor hack of it does not endear either of us to him.”
She rolled a shoulder. “He fears what he does not know.”
Ram tipped his head. No one else came to patronize the establishment, even though at this hour many emerged from their cottages to walk thequai.
“Do you miss home?” He closely watched her reaction.
“I miss the peace.” How well did she wear her heart on her sleeve? Most likely her views about marriage and about intolerant people gave it away.
He stared at her. “Care to explain that?”
