Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(72)

Chapter Twenty-two

The men and women filling the dining hall were utterly silent as the last of Izzy’s footsteps faded. Ransom could feel their collective condemnation.

The echoes of her words still rang in the ceiling vaults.

She deserved better. I deserve better, too.

Ransom tugged at his cravat, loosening the restrictive knot.

It came as a sick sort of relief to hear that sentiment voiced aloud, and to know everyone around him agreed. These past few days of amiable assistance and cheerful industry had made him feel like a stranger in his own house. Dozens of people organized to help him, for no wages or discernable reward? He scarcely recognized his life.

But this sense of empty, echoing isolation . . . ?

This was familiar. This was what he’d always known. What he’d been told, since before he could understand words. There could be no comfort for him. No kindness, no mercies. No one had ever loved him, and no one ever could.

You don’t deserve that, boy.

Ransom wouldn’t argue.

As he left the room and made his way to his dressing room, only Duncan followed.

“Duncan, draw me a bath, prepare my finest suit, and pack everything else. We’re leaving tonight.”

“For Scotland?”

“No. For Town.”

Ransom crossed the room and began tugging loose his cuffs.

They would leave for London at once. Once there, he would go straight for the bank and empty his accounts. In the event his traitorous solicitors had already frozen his accounts, he’d go to the clubs—wherever he was still a member—and beg or borrow as much as he could.

Whatever funds he could manage to raise, it all went to Izzy. She didn’t need to like him, much less love him—but he needed to know she was safe.

“Your Grace,” Duncan began, “are you certain it’s wise—”

Ransom cut him off. “No. Stop there. I don’t want any sage advice. You’re not my counselor, you’re my valet.”

“I thought I’d been promoted to butler.”

“You’ve been demoted again. Draw a bath. Prepare my suit. Pack.”

Ransom undressed while he listened to the sounds of kettles being put on to warm and the tub scraping across the floor toward the hearth.

When all sounded ready, he found the tub and lowered his body into it, anticipating the perfectly warmed bathwater to be poured over his shoulders.

What he got was a deluge of ice-cold, freezing shock. Dashed straight over his head.

He sputtered. “What the . . . ?”

“You can consider that my resignation, Your Grace.”

“You can’t quit.”

“Certainly I can. My pension was settled and prepared years ago. I’ve only stayed on in the position for the stupidest of reasons. A promise I made long ago. But today, in the dining hall, you enlightened me. You made it perfectly clear that those oaths and allegiances are . . . Was it shite or bollocks? I can’t recall.”

Ransom pushed the freezing droplets from his face. “What are you going on about? You never swore an oath. There’s no Valet’s Promise, or Order of the Starched Cravat.”

“Not to you. I swore an oath to her.”

“To Miss Goodnight?”

“No. To your mother. I promised your dying mother that I would look after you. Absurd, isn’t it? Like something from a soppy story.”

Ransom inhaled slowly.

So, it wasn’t enough that he’d been the instrument of his mother’s death. He’d ruined Duncan’s life, too. That was lovely to know.

Well, he could put an end to that torture quickly. “Consider yourself released from that promise.”

“Oh, I do, Your Grace. I do.”

Another barrage of ice-cold water crashed down over his head.

“You fool,” Duncan said, in a seething tone that Ransom had never heard his valet use before. “I’ve seen you drunk, debauched, engaged in all manner of devilry. But I’ve never seen you behave so stupidly as you did today. If you let that girl get away, you are a true idiot.”

Ransom shook himself. His teeth chattered. “It’s b-better this way.”

“Better?” Another dipper of freezing water splashed over his shoulders. “For whom?”

“For her.” He pushed the water off his face. “For Izzy. You heard her. I d-don’t deserve her.”

“Of course you don’t deserve her. No man deserves a woman like that. He mortgages his very soul to win her and spends his life paying off the debt.”

“Soon I won’t have a single asset to my name. I’m not going to take you and her and everyone else down with me.”

Duncan was silent for a long moment. “She loved you, you know.”

Loved. Funny, how that one little “d” took a miraculous sentence and made it heart-shredding. “You and Miss Goodnight have a great many chats.”

“I’m not speaking of Miss Goodnight. I’m speaking of the late duchess.”

Ransom steeled himself against the sharp pain of the mention. “Yet another woman who would have been better off if I’d never been born.”

“I was just a young footman, hired on when you were in the womb. Everyone in the house walked on eggshells. There’d been a stillborn child the prior year, they told me. Rumor in the serving quarters was, the doctors had warned that the duchess might not survive another birth.”