Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(65)

“Set up?” Izzy echoed. “By the solicitors? Why would they do that?”

“They’re working in concert with my heir, most likely. You’re not the only one with a grasping cousin. Mine wouldn’t dare throw me in a pond or lock me in a root cellar, but he’d happily take the title and control of my fortune, given the chance.”

Izzy sifted through the pile of notices. “This is beyond my expertise. You need help. A new solicitor, perhaps.”

He dismissed the idea. “I can’t trust anyone.”

“I know, and that’s a problem. You need to start trusting people, Ransom. Start by letting them know you. Not just your strengths, but your weaknesses, too.”

He paced back and forth on the stone floor. “Let them know the real me. All my weaknesses. Yes, I’ll make plans to do that. Right on the heels of your announcement that Izzy Goodnight isn’t a girl anymore but a twenty-six-year-old woman who likes her ni**les pinched.”

Izzy supposed his point was valid. They were both hiding parts of themselves. But the consequences weren’t quite the same.

She tapped a stack of papers to tidy them. “I’m just saying that matters progressed to this stage because you were too ashamed—”

“Ashamed?”

“Yes. Ashamed.” Izzy was tired of dancing around it. He was the one who’d insisted he didn’t want coddling. “You’re a duke, and your intended bride ran off with a lowly farmer. Then the farmer bested you in a duel, leaving you blinded. That had to have been humiliating.”

“The farmer did not best me in anything, damn it.” He stopped by the windows. “Do you know the only thing more dangerous than fencing against a master swordsman?”

“What?” she asked.

“Fencing against a love-drunk fool who hasn’t a goddamn clue what he’s doing. It’s like defending both sides at once. He’d never even held a sword before. I had to try like hell not to run him through.”

What was he saying? That he’d incurred his injury while trying not to win?

She rose from the table and moved toward him. “Ransom . . .”

“I couldn’t kill him. What good would that have done anyone? I only chased after them because I feared she hadn’t gone willingly. On that point, I was corrected.”

Izzy ached for him. Now she regretted using the word ashamed. He shouldn’t feel ashamed of his actions. He’d risked everything to protect that girl. He should wear that scar like a badge of pride.

“It was good of you.” She said it firmly. Not as a placating gesture, but as a fact she wouldn’t let him contradict. “You must have cared for her.”

“I was planning to marry her,” he said. “Of course I cared. As much as a man like me is able to care. No, we didn’t share any grand passion or meeting of hearts and minds, but I thought she was . . . practical. Interested in becoming a duchess and spending my money, and patient enough to put up with my faults in exchange.” He flexed one hand. “In the end, it seems I misjudged.”

Izzy felt a powerful twinge of guilt, thinking of Lady Emily’s letter. “She was so young. Probably just impressionable and frightened.”

“No, no. I think it’s the other way round. She was more perceptive than I gave her credit for.” He turned back toward the pile of correspondence. “When I lose all control of my fortune, she will be able to celebrate her narrow escape.”

If you lose all control of your fortune, what becomes of me?

Izzy chided herself for thinking it, but the fear was creeping in fast. It would seem the castle was legally hers, after all. But she’d never be able to keep the place—or find another home—without the wages he’d promised her.

“My goodness.” Abigail and Duncan entered the room, surveying the drifts of paper. “What’s happened here?”

Ransom rose to his feet. “Treachery. That’s what’s happened here.”

“Was there another body in the walls?”

“No.” Izzy lifted the letter that had come express. “We’re expecting important visitors next week. Apparently, His Grace is to be the subject of a mental-competence hearing.”

“A lunacy hearing? But that’s absurd. The duke’s not mad.” She turned and whispered to Izzy, “He isn’t mad, is he?”

Oh, Abigail. Izzy lifted her eyebrows and shook her head no.

The vicar’s daughter continued in a not-quite-confidential murmur, “I mean, he did behave rather strangely last night.”

Ransom cleared his throat. “Miss Pelham, I am standing right here. I am not deaf. And as it will be plain for the lawyers and doctors to discern, I am not mad.”

But he was blind.

That was the true unspoken source of concern, and everyone was thinking it. Blind people were often put in asylums even if they were otherwise of sound mind. Considering the neglected state of his business affairs and his prolonged, dramatic absence from society, Ransom wasn’t going to have an easy time of this. If his solicitors wanted him gone, the truth would be a heavy stroke against him.

“Christ.” He pushed both hands through his hair. “I could lose everything.”

“No, you won’t,” Izzy said. “We won’t let it happen. Because if you lose everything, so do I. For that matter, so do Duncan and Abigail.”