She slapped the edge of her desk. “Come on, man. Just leave a door open for me. Better yet, tell me where he is, and I’ll do it all myself. You owe me that, at least.”
“I. Owe. Ye?” His dangerous tone would have sent any number of men scampering away, but Francesca had never scampered in her entire life, and she wasn’t about to start.
“Remember two weeks ago when I gave you Lord Colfax? That was a career-making indictment, and do not pretend otherwise.”
“I only indicted Colfax for fraud on the provided evidence,” Ramsay argued. “Ye gave me nothing to do with the Crimson Council.”
“What does it matter if he’s in chains? Soon they will all be in chains,” she vowed. “But Murphy proved the Lord Chancellor was part of the Triad, and so I have to interrogate Lord Hubert or I’ll never get the answers I—er—we need.”
Ramsay’s sigh was a windy sound against his receiver. “Why doona ye tell me what to ask him about, and I’ll get ye the information ye need through proper channels. I have a contact inside the Secret Services. A spy who helped me take him down.”
“No. It has to be me.” She had some questions of her own to ask the bastard. Questions twenty years overdue.
“Lady Francesca.” Ramsay’s voice had quieted, tightened, to one he might use with a hysterical child. “I respect and admire your dedication to your cause—”
“Oh horsewallop, don’t you dare condescend to me, you arrogant—”
“And I truly sympathize with what ye’ve lost.”
“You have no fucking idea what I’ve lost!” What she’d lost was her temper, the one she’d never quite had to begin with. “You have status and wealth and respect. You have Cecelia. You have a darling child, Phoebe. You have what you were born with between your legs to give you a generous head start out of the womb, goddammit. I only have this!”
“My woman and my daughter were almost taken from me by the council, if ye remember,” Ramsay said quietly, as if her words made an impact, but not the one she’d intended. “And ye ken that ye have more than this mission of yers. More than yer revenge. Ye have Cecelia, and Alexandra. And … us.”
Us. He meant himself? His brother, Piers?
“You almost lost them, Ramsay,” she said, adjusting her tone to match his. “Almost being the operative word. But you didn’t, you rescued them and claimed revenge on those who would have taken them from you.”
Francesca normally fought her emotions, but as they welled into her voice, she painfully allowed Ramsay to experience them. “I can never bring my family back, but I can bring down those who took them from me. Dammit, Ramsay. I’m not asking you to break the law, just to look the other way while I do it.”
Another sigh, this one more defeated. “Lady Francesca. The Lord Chancellor is many things, but not a fool. If he is not handled by the book, he might be able to use what little influence he has left to lever leniency for himself in the courts.”
“Oh, dog bollocks!”
“Ye ken that means he wouldn’t pay for his crimes. Not as he should. I willna allow it. And that is my final word upon it.”
Francesca curled her fingers into talons. A man had spoken and his word was final. If she heard that one more bloody time in her life, she might shove those final words one final time up their patriarchal arses. No, she’d get nowhere like this. With beseeching, logic, or argument. She needed to change tactics. She needed to trip him up.
“I understand your concerns, Ramsay, but he’s not in a prison, I’ve checked. So surely he’s not being kept in a place where I’d be found out. I could dose him with my tonic and he’d be certain my entire action was all a dream. No one else need know about it.”
“Francesca.” Ramsay dropped all pretense of civility. “Ye canna sneak into a place like Trenton Park. It’s utterly guarded, and the balconies are three stories high. I’m sorry. It’s just not possible. Ye’ll have to find another way.”
“Fine. I hope you can sleep tonight, you bloody Scottish blowhole.”
This time, his sigh was one of relief. “I’ll give Cecelia yer regards.”
“Hang your regards, you stubborn bastard.”
“See ye at supper, then?”
“I’ll be there at half seven,” she muttered. “But only so I can poison you.”
“Earlier maybe?” Ramsay’s tone warmed to that of a friendly acquaintance. “Phoebe is begging for yer help