Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(45)
Author: Tessa Dare

“Duncan and Miss Pelham are certain to come looking for us,” he said. “When we hear footsteps, we’ll shout for help.”

She caught his coat. Her breathing was a labored rasp. “Just don’t let go.”

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

He felt her head shake no. Her hands found his coat lapels and curled in fists. “It’s just . . . so dark, and I . . .”

“And you’re not fond of the dark. I recall.”

She ducked her head, burrowing into his shoulder.

Gods above. She hadn’t been exaggerating. This was not merely fear but terror. He could feel it in the tremors that raced beneath her skin. He could hear it in the quickness of her breath. The same woman who stood defiant in the face of bats, rats, ghosts, and dukes was utterly petrified . . .

Of the dark.

Ransom couldn’t bring himself to tease or gloat. All his angry lust had dissipated into the murky gloom. Sliding his arms around her back, he pulled her against his chest and clutched tight. Because he understood that fear, as well as he knew his own heart. He’d been that miserable soul, alone and terrified in the fresh hell of darkness.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s dark, but you’re not alone. I’m here.”

Her quaking continued. “It’s s-so embarrassing and childish. It’s been this way since I was nine.”

“What happened when you were nine?”

That seemed rather late in life to develop an aversion to darkness. Maybe talking about it would banish the fear. At the least, it would fill the silence.

“I used to spend summers with my aunt in Essex. She had no daughters. Just a son, Martin. I might have mentioned him.”

“The one who tossed you in a pond?”

“Yes.” Her chest rose and fell with her accelerated breaths. Her story came in short bursts of words. “That’s the one. Miserable, horrid boy. He was jealous, hated me. He wanted me gone. Whenever he caught me alone, he would strike me and call me cruel names. When his casual tormenting didn’t work, he tried throwing me in the pond. And since that didn’t get rid of me either, he caught me in the garden one day, dragged me into the root cellar, and locked me there. It was some thirty paces from the house, and, naturally, underground. No one heard my screams. A full day and night passed before they found me. And Martin got his wish. I cried so hysterically, Aunt Lilith sent me home. I’ve hated the dark ever since.”

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.