Romancing the Duke (18 page)

Things began to make sense to him. “That’s why the bedtime stories began. Because you were afraid of the dark.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you’re always downstairs when I wake in the morning. Because you’re still afraid of the dark.”

She exhaled slowly. “Yes.”

With a gruff curse, he ran his hands up and down her back. “That cousin of yours was a vile little bastard. I hope he got what he deserved.”

“Not at all. He’s a full-grown bastard now, and he reaped every reward for his vile behavior.”

“How so?”

“My father’s only will was older than I am, drawn up when he reached his majority. I never even knew it existed, and he never revised it. But it left everything to his closest male heir, so . . .”

“Your cousin inherited everything.”

She nodded. “When he came to claim the house and all our material possessions, I thought surely Martin would have matured over the years. Perhaps we might work out some arrangement. But no. He was still the same malicious, petty bully, and he only hated me more for my father’s success. He took everything from me, down to the last pen nib. And he did it gleefully.”

Ransom stayed completely still, not wanting to alarm her. Meanwhile, rage burned through him like a wildfire. He reconsidered the plan of waiting on Duncan and Miss Pelham to find them. He was angry enough to punch straight through the wall.

“You’ve gone very quiet,” she said.

He inhaled and exhaled, trying to moderate his emotions. “I’m engaged in a creative-thinking exercise. Would I rather throw your cousin to a pack of famished jackals? Or watch him be picked apart by a teeming school of piranha?”

“That’s a good one.” She laughed a little. “I’ll be sure to pose that question to Lord Peregrine.”

All was quiet for a few moments.

“How do you bear it?” she asked. “How do you bear this all the time? The darkness.”

“It wasn’t easy at first.” A grave understatement. “But with time, I’ve grown accustomed. The dark scares you because it seems boundless. But it isn’t as vast as it seems. You can explore it, learn the shape of it, take its measure—just as you can see a room with your eyes. You have your hands, nose, ears.”

“I have my mind,” she whispered. “That’s the worst part. It’s my mind that fills the darkness with horrid things. I have too much imagination.”

“Shut the door to it, then. No stories or wild tales. Concentrate only on the things you can sense. What’s in front of you?”

Her hands flattened on the linen of his shirt, light and chilled. “You are.”

“What’s to either side of you?”

“Your arms.”

“What’s behind you?”

She inhaled slowly. “Your hands. Your hands are on my back.”

He rubbed his hands up and down, warming her. “Then that’s all you need to know. I have you. If there are beasties in the dark, they have to get through me.”

After a few more moments, her trembling began to ease. Some knot of tension unraveled in his chest.

“You’re so big and strong,” she murmured.

He didn’t answer.

“And you smell so comforting.” Her forehead rested on his shoulder. “Like whisky and leather. And dog.”

The description startled a laugh from him. “You’re learning the way of it. There’s a great deal you can sense about people without seeing them at all. Scents, sounds, textures. It amazes me sometimes how little attention I paid such things before I was injured. If there’s a boon in all this, it’s that I notice things I would have overlooked.”

The woman in his arms, for instance.

If he’d crossed paths with Izzy Goodnight at Court a few years back, Ransom was certain of one thing. He would not have given her a second look. She was dark, slightly built, and modestly dressed. Innocent, uncertain of her attractions. In sum, not his sort. His eyes had typically wandered to vivacious, fair-haired types.

In this case, his eyes would have done him a disservice.

Because this woman . . . she was a revelation. Every time he took her in his arms, he was astonished anew by her warmth and softness. The fresh, green scent of her hair and the wild-honey sweetness of her voice. Her instinctive passion.

And her tenderness. Her hands skimmed downward, and she slid her arms around his waist to hug him close.

Then she pressed her face to his shirtfront.

Nuzzling.

Well, she was back to herself again.

“So if noticing things you might have overlooked is the best part of being blinded, what’s the worst?” she asked.

God. There were too many contenders for that honor. She could guess at many of them. Others, she could never fathom, and he would never share.

“Learning to hate surprise,” he said, surprising himself with the confession. “I’m a creature of routine now. I have a mental chart of every room in this place, every tabletop. I have to put everything back precisely where I found it, or I’m lost. Makes me feel like an old curmudgeon, growling at anything unexpected.”

“I was unexpected,” she said.

“Yes. You were.”

“And I’ve been altering your routine. Moving things about on your mental chart.”

“Yes. You have.”

She lifted her head from his chest. “I understand why you didn’t want me in the castle. I was a surprise. You must have hated me.”

He swept a touch to her face. “I didn’t hate you.”

“Well, if you didn’t hate me at the first, you have reason now. Ransom, you must believe me. I’m just so sorry. For the letter, for the castle, for Lady Emily. For everything. You have every right to be—”

He shushed her. “Goodnight. We’re trapped together in a small, dark space. For the moment, we’re getting on as well as could possibly be expected. I don’t think this is the time to remind me of my many valid reasons to resent your presence and despise everything you stand for.”

“Right.” She took a deep breath. “On second thought, perhaps we shouldn’t wait to be rescued. There must be a release latch somewhere.”

“I’ll find it.”

“No, it has to be me.” Izzy shifted her body. “Maybe if we re-create our position just before the panel turned. You were between my legs, and I had my hand on the shelf just about . . . here.”

Ransom moved dutifully into place, lifting her by the hips and feeling like a jackass about it. Had he really held her like this? Spread wide and wrapped around him, while he pawed at her and made lewd demands, just so he could prove something to his wounded pride?

Yes. Evidently he had.

“Let’s see,” she said. “How did it go? Oh, yes. You had your fingers
inside
me, and you were pleading with me to say your name, and then . . .”

“Can we dispense with the details?”

Bloody hell. She was a penniless and homeless virgin who was just as much a victim of her father’s charlatanry as anyone. And Ransom had never felt more disgusting. She had every reason to despise him, too.

“And then”—her body arced as she stretched high—“I think I pulled just here . . .”

Whoosh.

Chapter Seventeen

I
zzy’s world tilted once again.

The panel spun on its axis, spitting them back out into the library. But this time, the hidden door didn’t make a complete rotation. It lurched and stopped halfway.

They both tumbled forward with the momentum.

“Oof.”

Ransom twisted as they fell, catching her in his arms and taking the brunt of the fall.

She landed in his embrace, sprawled atop him and gasping for breath.

“Thank you,” she said.

He released her. “Don’t thank me. I was merely—”

“Oh, don’t.” Smiling, she pressed her fingers to his lips, shushing him. “Don’t even bother.”

Izzy refused to listen to yet another speech about his dastardly behavior and his life that was a scourge on decency and romance.

Everything was different now. He’d eased her trembling in the darkness. They’d shared their innermost thoughts and memories. He’d threatened her vile cousin with two imaginary, delightfully gory deaths.

They understood one another. At least, a little bit.

Most of all, Izzy knew, beyond a whisper of doubt, that all his talk of being a heartless villain was nothing more than that: talk.

Just to prove it . . . just to get back at him for all his crude, sensual games earlier . . . she bent over and pressed a tender kiss to his forehead.

And she held it, for two heartbeats more.

Take that, sweet man.

Then she pushed to her feet and did her best to cover herself with her displaced corset and the torn bodice. He remained exactly where he was, flat on the threadbare carpet.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

He let his arms fall to the sides. “I’m slain.”

Footsteps thundered down the corridor. Abigail and Duncan reeled around the corner and into the library.

“My God,” Duncan said. He went straight to Ransom, surveying the dust and grime on his coat.

“There you are. We’ve been searching all over.” Abigail ran to Izzy, taking in her ripped garments and disheveled hair. Then she glanced toward Ransom where he lay on the floor. “My goodness. What’s happened?”

“We were . . . We were stuck.” Unable to find the words to explain it, Izzy motioned toward the priest hole and hoped the rest would be obvious.

Abigail screamed.

“Well, it wasn’t
that
bad,” Izzy said. “We did get out. And I’m so sorry about your gown.”

“It’s not that,” Abigail said weakly. She turned Izzy toward the priest hole. “Look.”

Izzy looked. “Is that . . . ?” She cocked her head to the side, moving closer until there could be no doubt. Then she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. It is.”

There, tucked in the shadowed, dusty back corner of the priest hole, were bones.

An entire person’s worth of bones.

They hadn’t been alone in the dark at all.

T
he discovery brought a swift end to the dinner party. Centuries-old corpses had a way of doing that.

Ransom sent for both the magistrate and the vicar, and the two spent a full hour debating what was to be done with the bones. Whether reports needed to be filed; whether the remains could be buried on holy ground, and so forth. Even though he was found in a priest hole, he could have just as easily been a vagrant or a smuggler or a thief. There was no telling whether the dead man was even a Protestant or Catholic, so the men gratefully took Izzy’s suggestion that the bones be interred in the castle’s chapel.

They swept up the remains with as much dignity as could be mustered and laid them under a stone in the chapel floor. The vicar said a prayer.

And once the vicar had gone home, taking Miss Pelham and Izzy with him, Ransom was alone. He decided to honor the dead man in a different time-honored way. With heavy drinking.

He was on his second tumbler of whisky when he heard light footsteps traversing the hall.

“Is that a ghost?” he asked.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, remember?”

Izzy.

She walked the length of the hall. “Abigail decided she’d rather sleep at the vicarage tonight. I can’t say I blame her.”

“I can’t say I do, either.” He’d assumed Izzy would be spending the night at the vicarage, too.

But she hadn’t stayed at the vicarage. She’d come back to him.

His chest swelled with some unnameable, unthinkable emotion. He blamed the whisky.

She stopped by the hearth. “Why is the fire dying?”

“All the new servants left. No one wants to work in a haunted castle of horrors.”

“Oh.” She added wood to the hearth and gave it a stir with the poker. “What about Duncan?”

“Sent him down to the village pub,” Ransom said. “He needed a drink, and he’s not the sort to drink alone.”

“But he wouldn’t be alone. He’d be here with you.”

“
I’m
the sort to drink alone.” He tossed back another swallow. The earthy tang of whisky smoldered all the way down. “Why didn’t you stay at the vicarage with Miss Pelham?”

“She invited me. But I declined.”

“Not three hours ago, we found a dead man in the wall. And spent several minutes with him, in close company. You’re not frightened to stay here tonight?”

“Of course I am,” she said. “I’m always frightened, every night. You should know that now. But this is my house. I’ve waited too long for a proper home just to run away at the first—well, third or fourth—sign of unpleasantness.”

She drew up a chair. “And if I’m honest, there’s another reason I returned.” Her voice softened. “I was worried. I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Good Lord. How was it that this woman saw the rest of the world through the gauzy filter of some fairy tale but had an eagle’s keenness when it came to Ransom’s shortcomings? No matter how small the weakness, now matter how he tried to hide it . . . she homed in on that vulnerability and latched onto it with talons.

She sat down next to him. “Finding that poor man’s remains . . .” He sensed her shudder. “Well, it shocked us all. But it seemed to truly unnerve you.”

It had. It had unnerved him greatly. Because it could have
been
him.

He leaned forward, letting his head hang toward the floor. Two hundred years from now, that could have been him. A wasted, forgotten sack of bones in this castle.

“I’ll have you know, Goodnight, you have been the ruination of all my plans.”

“All of them?” she said. “Really? That sounds like an accomplishment.”

“Don’t be so smug. There weren’t many plans left to ruin. There was exactly one plan remaining, in point of fact, which was to stay here until I rotted to dust.” He sat tall again and pushed a hand through his hair. “Then you came along.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found the desire to live again, and it’s all to do with me.” Fabric whispered as she slid farther into her chair. “I wouldn’t recognize you.”

“For God’s sake. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Smile.”

“How do you know I’m smiling?”

“I can hear it. Hell, I can
feel
it. It’s all warm and sweet and . . .” He scowled. “Bah.”

She made a little crooning noise. “Oh, Ransom.”

“That’s even worse.” He lifted his shoulders, as if they could shield his ears. “See, this is why you’ve ruined everything. Just ask that fellow we found in the wall. For centuries now, a man couldn’t find a better place than Gostley Castle to shrivel up and decay. Not anymore. Now there are draperies and dinner parties. It’s insupportable.”

“Maybe,” she said gently, “this means you should return to London. Rejoin the world of the living.”

He shook his head. Return for what? There was nothing for him there.

He had no true friends. He’d never wanted them. He was the Duke of Rothbury, one of the highest-ranked and wealthiest men in England. He didn’t need to go courting acceptance, and anyone who tried to court
his
favor was a candidate for suspicion. They could only want something from him.

As for enemies . . . In his youth, he’d collected enemies like a boy collects shiny pebbles. If people hated him, at least he knew he came by that revulsion honestly. And it wasn’t as though his enemies could hurt him. He was invulnerable.

Right up until the moment he wasn’t.

Damn his eyes. Of all the injuries to incur. If he’d lost a hand, he could have done without. For that matter, he could have given a leg. Both of them. But unless he regained his sight, he could never manage his affairs unaided. Now he was a prisoner of his own youthful arrogance. Left alone, with no one he could trust.

Well, he revised grudgingly, that wasn’t quite true tonight.

Right now, he was very much not alone. He couldn’t remember ever being so aware of a woman in his life. The rawness of his senses was painful. Izzy was killing him in a hundred tiny ways.

The fire she’d stoked was sending waves of heat in his direction, and they were all scented of her. Smoky and herbal. He felt drugged by her nearness.

He could hear her removing the pins from her hair. One by one, those slender bits of metal hit the side table. Each tap concussed his eardrums like a powder blast.

Then she sighed. Just the faintest, softest release of breath. The sound swept through his chest like a hurricane, with the force to topple trees.

The irony didn’t escape him.

They were alone. He was a little drunk, and she was more than a little vulnerable. This would have been the perfect time to continue with his ravishment scheme. He could lay siege to her virginal clothing. Ruthlessly dismantle her inhibitions. Steal an hour or two of fleeting pleasure before proving beyond a shadow of doubt: Romance is an exercise in willful delusion and nothing—
nothing
—ends happily. At least, not in this castle, and not with a man like him.

There was only one wrinkle in that scheme.

He liked her too much to go through with it.

“You need to retire for the night,” he said darkly. “Now.”

“Yes.” She yawned. “I suppose I should.”

But she didn’t leave straightaway. She rose from her chair and did some moving about. At first, he assumed she was gathering a candle to light her way upstairs. But that couldn’t possibly take her so long.

He listened to a solid minute’s worth of andirons rattling and fabric rustling and furniture inching over slate before the truth sank in.

“Stop.” He pushed to his feet. “Stop at once.”

“Stop what?” Her voice carried an unmistakable note of guilt.

“Stop what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” He rose to his feet and moved in her direction. “You just pushed that chair toward the table. And before that, you hung my coat on the peg.”

“Very well, you caught me. Call the magistrate. Put me in the stocks for excessive tidiness.”

“That’s not tidiness, Goodnight. You know it’s not.”

She couldn’t get away with this. He knew exactly what she was doing. She was putting the room to rights before she left for the evening. Making certain every chair and pillow and fireplace poker was in its place.

For him.

That wasn’t mere tidiness. It was understanding and thoughtfulness. And considering his emotional state, tonight that behavior was dangerous. Any way she cared to spell it.

“I’ll see you to your turret.” He offered his arm before she could accuse him of chivalry or gallantry or anything else equally absurd. His motives were entirely disgusting.

He wanted to be close to her, shoulder to shoulder as they climbed the stairs to the next floor. He wanted to guide her down the corridor, sliding his hand across her waist and letting it settle just at the small of her back. He wanted to feel her unbound curls brushing against his exposed wrist.

He wanted . . .

God, he wanted her. All of her.

“Here we are.” She stopped at the archway that led to her turret room. “Good night, Ransom.”

He lingered, counting her steps as she climbed the stairs.
One, two, three, four . . .

“Goodnight.”

She stopped. Then came back down a few steps.
One, two . . .

“Was that a dismissal or a summons?” she asked. “ ‘Goodnight, come here’? or ‘Good night to you, now go away’? ”

Hell, Ransom didn’t even know. The word had just ripped from him. He suspected the sentiment behind it was something like,
Goodnight, take off all your clothing and wrap your limbs around me and never let go.

“The fifteenth step,” he said. “It’s a bit more narrow than the rest.”

“And you don’t want me to fall and be hurt. How sweet.”

“It’s not sweet.” He gritted his teeth. “I already swept up one pile of bones today. I’d rather not contend with another.”

“Just the same.” Her hand touched his face. “Thank you.”

Her fingertips rested on his cheek, like a constellation of unexpected kindness. He encircled her wrist with his fingers, planning to wrench her touch away.

Instead, he brushed his thumb over the fluttering beat of her pulse. Her skin was so soft there. His mind’s eye bloomed with petals. In every shade of pink. And since it seemed he’d already crossed the border into sentimental madness, and he couldn’t possibly make it much worse—

He brought her wrist to his lips. And he kissed that tender, precious heartbeat, like a damn besotted fool.

Bless you.

He released her, squeezing his eyes shut. He was dangling by a thread already. If his eyesight miraculously returned to him at this moment, she would have no chance at all.

“Have mercy on a broken man. Just go to bed.”

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening to her light steps spiraling up to the turret. Everything in him ached to follow. He leaned against the archway and gripped the stone, wrestling his desire.

As her last steps faded, he turned to walk away. He’d reached the end of the corridor and counted half the stairs back down to the great hall when he heard it.

“Ransom!”

He froze, one hand on the stone. A chill shot down his spine.

“Ransom, come at once.”

And then, in the space of a second, he understood it. He understood the reason he’d walked this castle every night in the dark. Learning the length and breadth of every room, arch, corridor, and stair. It wasn’t about regaining his strength, or mastering the space that was now his home and prison. He’d done it all for one purpose: