Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)

Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1) Page 4

“I’m stunned,” Izzy admitted. “The earl was kind to me, but he wasn’t even my godfather. Not properly. He was my father’s patron at Court.”

Izzy had been introduced to Lord Lynforth a few times, most recently when Papa received his knighthood. On that illustrious occasion, the dear old man had slipped Izzy a sweetmeat from his waistcoat pocket and given her a fond pat on the head. Never mind that she’d been mere days from her twenty-second birthday. His intentions were kind.

Now the dear old man had left her a castle?

A castle.

Archer pressed the folio of papers into Izzy’s keeping. “It’s all there. A copy of the will, the property deed. This castle and everything in it—it’s yours now.”

She blinked at the folio. “What am I to do with the place?”

“If you don’t want to live in it?” Lord Archer looked at the soaring ceiling and shrugged. “I suppose you could clean it up. Try to sell—”

Crash.

Izzy ducked as something exploded against the far wall.

She looked around for the source. She didn’t have to search far. In another fearsome explosion of strength, the duke picked up a chair and sent it sailing against the wall, too.

Crash, part second.

Splintered wood cascaded to the floor.

In the aftermath, he stood working for breath, every muscle tensed and coiled with energy. He was a magnificent, volatile, and undeniably virile portrait of anger. Izzy was torn between admiration and fear.

“She can’t have it,” he said. “She can’t live in it. She can’t clean it up to sell.” He pounded one fist against his chest, and the small hairs on Izzy’s arms lifted. “I am Ransom William Dacre Vane, the eleventh Duke of Rothbury. This is my castle.”

The wolf-dog growled. Tension crackled and filled the great hall, right up to the vaulted ceiling.

Lord Archer shuffled papers at his leisure. As though furniture hadn’t recently exploded. “Yes, well. Duke or not . . . Matters don’t seem to have gone your way recently. Have they, Rothbury?”

The duke didn’t reply. Unless one counted palpable seething as a reply—in which case, he replied quite fiercely.

“I’m afraid the papers are clear,” Archer said. “The castle is Miss Goodnight’s now.”

“It can’t be,” the duke replied. “Because I didn’t sell it.”

“When a man drops off the face of England for seven months, I should think his solicitors begin handling matters.” Archer cast a glance at the long table heaped with unopened envelopes. “Most likely, the information is somewhere in that postal avalanche.”

Izzy stared at the folio in her hand. She’d arrived with an empty purse and a growling belly. She still had an empty purse and a growling belly. But now she had a castle. And there was a duke in it.

“Well, then. That’s done. I’ll be off.” After snapping the portmanteau closed, Lord Archer picked up his case and moved as though he would quit the room.

“Wait.” Izzy lunged after him, catching him by the sleeve. She lowered her voice. “You mean to just leave me here? Alone, in this . . . this ghostly and ghastly castle? Surely not.”

“Miss Goodnight, much as I’d love to spend more time in this charming locale, I’m a very busy man. Lynforth’s estate has me running all over England parceling out these musty heaps of stone to unsuspecting young women. I could offer you a ride back into the village. But surely your driver will come for you soon?”

Her driver?

Of course. Lord Archer would never believe her to be destitute—utterly without funds, a home, or transportation. He assumed that her well-sprung carriage and white ponies were just around the corner.

And unless she meant to sully her father’s memory, exposing him as a neglectful spendthrift, Izzy couldn’t correct the assumption.

“Yes, he will come for me soon,” she said weakly. “Doubt not.”

Lord Archer looked around at the castle, then at her. His brow arched in amusement.

And then he did the most unforgivable of things.

He gave her a patronizing pat on the head. “That’s little Izzy Goodnight. You do love an adventure.”

Chapter Three

Well,” Izzy ventured to remark, some minutes into the tense silence Lord Archer had left behind, “this is an awkward situation.”

“Awkward.” The duke paced the floor, swinging his arms at his sides. Then he stopped in his tracks and said it again. “Awkward.”

The word rang through the great hall, bouncing off the ceiling vaults.

Izzy just stood there. Awkwardly.

“Adolescence,” he said, “is awkward. Attending a past lover’s wedding is awkward. Making love on horseback is awkward.”

She was in agreement, so far as the first part. She’d have to take his word on it when it came to the second and third.

“This situation is not awkward,” he declared. “This is treachery.”

“Treachery?” She clutched the folio of papers tight. “I’m sure I didn’t do anything treacherous, Your Grace. I didn’t ask Lord Lynforth to leave me a castle. I didn’t know him any better than I know you.”

“This castle was never Lynforth’s to give.” His voice was low and stern. “And you don’t know me at all.”

Perhaps not. But she wanted to. She couldn’t help it. He was just so intriguing.

Now that they were alone again, she took the opportunity to study his face. His scar aside, his facial topography was a proud, noble landscape, with strong cheekbones and a wide, square jaw. His hair was tawny, leonine brown with streaks of gold. But his eyes . . . those were Celtic eyes. Dark, horizontal slashes in his face, wide-set. Guarded.

Those eyes would be difficult to read even if he had perfect eyesight. If not for his trouble with the candle, Izzy might have gone hours without realizing he was blind.

She had a hundred questions she wanted to ask him. Nay, a thousand. And the stupidest questions of all were the ones that clamored loudest to get out.

Have you truly made love on horseback? she wanted to ask. How does that even work? Was it how you were injured?

“Your Grace, I don’t plan to evict you.” She didn’t imagine a man like this could be made to do anything. “I’m not your enemy. Apparently, I’m now your landlady.”

“My landlady,” he echoed, sounding incredulous.

“Yes. And surely we can reach an understanding.”

“An understanding.”

He strode to the opposite side of the hall, navigating the space and its furnishings with an ease that made Izzy envious. She stumbled more often than he did, and she had functioning eyesight.

If he’d been recovering in Gostley Castle ever since the injury, he must have worked tirelessly to chart a map of the place in his head. She began to understand why he would be so loath to leave it. Even if he did have finer estates elsewhere, moving houses would mean starting all over again. She didn’t want to be the heartless landowner who forced a blind man from his home.

He lifted her valise from its resting place near the entry—two steps to the right of the door, as he’d told her earlier. Then he strode the same distance back and set it on the table.

“Understand this,” he said. “You are leaving.”

“What?” Panic gathered in her chest as she stared at the valise. “But I haven’t anywhere to go, or any means of getting there.”

“I won’t believe that. If your father was renowned throughout England—knighted, even—you must have funds. Or if not funds, friends.”

At his heel, the wolf-dog snarled.

“What’s in this valise?” he asked, frowning.

“It’s my . . .” She waved a hand. “It’s not important right now. I’ve told you I won’t ask you to leave, Your Grace. But you can’t force me out, either.”

“Oh, can’t I?” He gathered her shawl from its drying place and wadded it into a ball, preparing to stuff it into the valise.

The dog growled and barked.

“What the devil is in this thing?” He opened the valise’s latch.

“No, don’t,” Izzy said, jumping forward. “Be careful. She’s sleeping. If you startle her, you’ll—”

Too late.

With a primal howl of pain, he jerked his hand from the valise. “Mother of—”

Izzy winced. Just as she feared, his finger had a swoop dangling from it. A swoop of slinky, toothy, brown-and-white predator.

“Snowdrop, no.”

The dog went mad, jumping and yipping at the snarling creature attacking his master. Ransom cursed and raised his arm, backing in a circle, trying to keep the two animals apart. Snowdrop being Snowdrop, she latched on tighter still.

“Snowdrop!” Izzy chased circles around the knot of tangling beasts. “Snowdrop, let him go!”

Finally, she scrambled atop the table and made a wild grab for the duke’s wrist. She latched onto his arm with both of hers, using all her weight to hold him in place.

And then she paused there, trying to ignore the accidental intimacy of their posture. His shoulder was a stone against her belly. His elbow wedged tight between her breasts.

“Hold still, please,” she said, breathless. “The more you flail, the harder she bites.”

“I’m not flailing. I don’t flail.”

No, he didn’t. Clutching his arm this way made her acutely aware of the power in his body. But she was equally aware of another force. His restraint.

If he chose, he could fling both Izzy and Snowdrop against the wall, just as easily as he’d demolished those chairs.

She calmed her trembling hands and reached for Snowdrop. With her fingers, she coaxed the animal’s tiny jaws apart. “Let him go, dear. For the sake of us all. Let the duke go.”

At last, she succeeded in prying Snowdrop free of his savaged, bleeding finger.

Every living thing in the room exhaled.

“Good God, Goodnight.” He shook his hand. “What is that? A rat?”

Izzy descended from the table, clutching Snowdrop close to her chest. “Not a rat. She’s an ermine.”

He swore. “You carry a weasel in your valise?”

“No. I carry an ermine.”

“Ermine, stoat, weasel. They’re all the same thing.”

“They’re not,” Izzy objected, giving the agitated Snowdrop a soothing rub along her tiny cheek. “Well, perhaps they are—but ermine sounds more dignified.”

She cradled Snowdrop in one hand and rubbed her belly with the other, then carried her back to the valise and opened the small door in her ball—a spherical cage fashioned of gilded mesh.

“There you are,” she whispered. “Now be good.”

The dog growled at Snowdrop. In response, Snowdrop curled her lip, flashing needlelike teeth.

“Be good,” Izzy whispered, sharply this time. She turned to the duke. “Your Grace, let me see to your wound.”

“Never mind it.”

Undeterred, she caught him by the wrist and examined his fingertip. “There’s a fair amount of blood, I’m afraid. You’ll want to clean this. It shouldn’t wait. Perhaps we could . . . Ooh.”

As she prattled on, he’d picked up his decanter of whisky from the table and poured a liberal stream of the amber spirits right over the oozing bite.

Izzy winced, just watching.

He didn’t even flinch.

She pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket. “Here. Let me see.”

As she dabbed at the wound, she studied his hand. Big, strong. Marred with all manner of small cuts and burns—some fresh, others faded. On his third right finger, he wore a gold signet ring. The oval crest was massive. Apparently, dukes did everything writ large.