Romancing the Duke

Ransom considered. She watched his chest expand with a deep breath. He scratched his neck as he stared at the floor.

Blaylock moved forward. “Well, Your Grace?”

Do it, she silently willed him, trying to send the message all the way across the hall to where he stood. Disclaim all of this. Save yourself.

Just tell the truth.

“I will say only this.” When Ransom lifted his head, a sly smile played about his lips. “Doubt not.”

Her heart flipped over in her chest. “No. No, Ransom, don’t.”

“Doubt not, my lady. I shall return.”

“Not this,” she pleaded. “Not now.”

He began to walk in her direction, continuing the recitation. “Doubt not my steel. Chains, arrows, blades, stones. I shall never know their sting.”

Not Ulric’s speech. Anything but this.

“Doubt not my strength.” His voice was getting stronger, too. “No storm . . . No storm . . .”

He paused.

Good. Izzy knew what came next, but she wasn’t about to help him.

He looked to the knights for a cue.

One of them whispered, “No storm-churned seas.”

“Right, right.” He took a step in retreat and began that bit again. “Doubt not my strength. No storm-churned seas, no windblown sands. Nor mountain tall could bar me from you.”

“See?” Blaylock prodded the doctor. “He’s gone raving mad. He thinks he’s a character in some fairy story.”

Ransom paid them no attention. He didn’t acknowledge anyone in the hall but Izzy. His progress toward her was slow, but unswerving.

On the edges of the great hall, the handmaidens looked ready to swoon.

“Doubt not my heart.” He was declaiming loudly now, and with feeling. His deep, resonant voice was made for this role. “Time may pile into months and years. It cannot sway the eternal.”

“Ransom, please,” she whispered. “They think you’re mad. I’m starting to wonder, too.”

The solicitors and doctor moved toward him, as though he needed to be restrained.

And they could try to hold him back. But Izzy knew he’d just keep coming.

In fact, he kicked aside a chair and forged on with the next part:

“Doubt not my love.”

By this point, all the knights and handmaidens were joining in. Of course, they all knew the words, better than Izzy knew them herself.

But Ransom was the only one who knew the words were hers. That they’d always been hers. And now he was giving them back to her. In a gesture of love and faith, and . . .

And sheer insanity.

She pressed a hand to her heart. Her hero.

A dozen handmaidens rushed to her side, lifting her down from the table and sweeping her forward to meet him in the center of the hall.

“Doubt not my love,” he repeated, with a chorus of knights to bolster him. “If men would seek to part us, death itself would be a veil too thin. For lo, though I wander the earth for my king, you remain—now and ever—queen of my heart.”

He went down on one knee and kissed her hand.

“Don’t be angry,” he murmured, coming to his feet. “It’s your life’s work, and they’re our friends. I couldn’t do it.”

“Of course I’m not angry.” She took his face in her hands. “You can’t know how much I love you right now.”

“Then say you’ll marry me. I’ll go to London, sort out this legal business. And then I’ll come back with a ring. Diamonds or sapphires?”

“I don’t need a ring at all. I just want you.”

There was time to steal a quick, heartfelt kiss.

And then they tried to take him into custody.

“Your Grace, remain calm.” The solicitors flanked him. “We’ll be taking you to London now. There are some very fine doctors we wish you to see.”

He shrugged off their hands. “I’ll take myself to London. No custody required. But yes, you had better believe I’ll be seeing you in court.”

“Actually,” Mr. Havers interjected, “I don’t believe there will be any proceedings. Not a lunacy hearing, anyhow.”

“What?” Blaylock said. He waved at the scene. “But you witnessed that . . . display just now.”

“I did. And I assure you, the Lord Chancellor will be wholly uninterested in hearing the matter.” Havers turned to Izzy. “As I told Miss Goodnight, his son is a great admirer of these tales. The young man fell from a horse in his childhood, and he’s been confined to his bed ever since. The stories have been a boon to him.”

“Confined to his bed?” A suspicion formed in Izzy’s mind. “But you can’t be speaking of Lord Peregrine?”

“The very one,” Havers said. “The Lord Chancellor will have no desire to hear this matter. Lock away Izzy Goodnight’s intended groom for lunacy? He’d never hear the end of it at family dinners. For that matter, all England would be grumbling.”

Riggett gestured wildly. “But the knights. The armor. The Order of the Poppy.”

“For God’s sake, man. They’re just stories. The rest of us here understand that.” Mr. Havers gestured at Ransom. “Look at him. The man’s not delusional. He’s in love.”

Ransom’s lips quirked in that familiar half smile. “Well, that’s one charge I can’t argue.”

It wasn’t a typical wedding. Rather a quiet affair.

The ceremony took place early on a Tuesday morning. The bride wore red, so the groom could see her in a crowd. The narrow pews of the village chapel were crushed with knights in makeshift armor and handmaidens in medieval gowns.

And, after a wedding breakfast at the village inn, the happy couple eschewed the waiting carriage in favor of a long, leisurely stroll back to their castle, walking arm-in-arm.

As they approached the barbican, Izzy stared up at the ancient stone fortress. The new glass panes in the windows acted like facets of a diamond, sparkling in the morning sun. So much had changed since that first rainy, gloomy afternoon, when she’d been deposited here with nothing more to her name than a weasel, a letter, and her last shred of hope.

Ransom stopped her in the courtyard. “Wait.”

She glanced up at him. And then she spent the next few moments collecting her scattered wits. The castle might have changed in her perception, but this man hadn’t. That wild, untamed masculine beauty made her knees weak every time.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did we leave something behind at the inn?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just been wanting to do this again.”

He bent at the waist, and in one swift move, he scooped her into his arms, tucking her close to his chest.

And this time, Izzy managed not to swoon.

Just barely.

Epilogue

Several months later

The candle was nearly guttered in its holder when Ransom reached the thirty-fourth stair. “Izzy, it’s late. You should come to bed.”

“I know.” Izzy replaced her quill in the inkwell and propped her elbows on the desk. With a sigh of fatigue, she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

He came to stand behind her. His strong hands settled heavily on her shoulders. “You’re working much too hard these last few weeks.”

“I know that, too.” She picked up the quill and began to write again. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I’m desperate to have a few months’ worth of installments completed before the baby arrives. The work’s going more slowly than I’d like. Add to that, I’m drowning in correspondence to answer.”

His thumbs kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck, coaxing a deep sigh from her chest.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“That massage is a lovely start.” She sorted through the pile of envelopes. “Maybe you can help me answer this letter from Lord Peregrine?”

“What conundrum has he posed this time?”

“It’s my turn to pose the conundrum, actually, and I’m stumped for one.” She tapped her quill on the blotter. “Aha. I have it.” She dipped her pen and began to write. “ ‘Would you rather find a weasel in your bed or an octopus?’ ” She scribbled the letter’s closing and set it aside.

“That’s unfair. He gets to choose? I don’t get to choose.”

“No, you don’t. You’re stuck with both.” Smiling, Izzy pulled a magazine from her pile of correspondence. “Now here’s something from the post you’ll find amusing. There’s a letter to the editor of the Gentleman’s Review. And it’s about me.”

“Read it, then.”

Izzy opened the magazine to a marked page and read aloud in a lofty, affected baritone. “ ‘Like so many devoted readers of your publication, I was pleased to see that England’s beloved daughter, little Izzy Goodnight, newly the Duchess of Rothbury, has taken up her pen and decided to continue writing in the marvelous world Sir Henry gave to her, and to us. I read the first installments with great anticipation and much interest, but I am sorry to say they did not impress.’ ”

Ransom scowled. “Impertinent jackass.”

“He’s entitled to his opinion. Let’s see . . . Here we are.” She lowered her voice again. “ ‘Though she has swiftly ascended to a higher social rank than her late father enjoyed, these first chapters make it sadly clear that Her Grace will never be his literary equal. Her writing pales beside the richness of Sir Henry’s prose though I am pained to say it.”

“I’ll pain him to say it,” Ransom grumbled.

“Oh, but it gets better,” she told him, skimming ahead. “He goes on, ‘The Shadow Knight’s Journey isn’t without its faint glimmers of promise, however. With maturity and time to hone her craft, perhaps the duchess can aspire to be half the writer her father was—and that in itself would be a genuine accomplishment for any writer so young, and so female.’ And it’s signed, The Right Honorable Edmund Creeley, of Chatton, Kent.”

She set aside the magazine, laughing helplessly.

Ransom didn’t laugh. He didn’t say anything.

“Well?” she prodded. “Aren’t you amused? Have you no response?”

“Oh, I have a response. The Right Honorable Edmund Creeley can take his quill and—”

The profanity that followed had Izzy clapping her hands to her belly, as if she could cover her unborn child’s tender ears. The babe, however, merrily kicked and cartwheeled in her womb.

Oh, goodness. It seemed this child would take after Ransom.

She didn’t mind that one bit.

“We will have the last laugh,” she reminded him. “Mr. Creeley will be forced to eat his words, if not . . . those other things you listed. He’ll learn the truth in time. As will everyone.”

Ransom had given her a fairy-tale ending, and Izzy had vowed not to squander it. She was going to claim her work, and continue the stories she—and so many others—loved. But she wanted to go about it cautiously, with respect for Cressida and Ulric, and for her father’s memory and that purple counterpane—and most especially, for the readers who’d made The Goodnight Tales not quite “true” but truly meaningful.

So rather than pick up where the original tales left off, she’d begun a new story: The Shadow Knight’s Journey.

No doubt many readers, those more perceptive than Edmund Creeley, would begin to guess the truth. A few had already written her with their suspicions. But for now, Izzy was playing coy.

She meant to follow the Shadow Knight through his side of the adventures, right up until that climactic scene at the parapet. And then, once the two tales were intertwined, he would lift the visor, revealing his true identity—