Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(55)

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.”