Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(85)

A murmur of reluctant confirmation swept the room.

She turned to Ransom. “So tell them. It’s all right. I don’t need to pretend any longer, and you don’t need to protect me. Just tell them everything you’ve been saying to me for weeks. You’re perfectly sane. Romance is the delusion.” She pressed her hand to her belly. “It’s all right. Truly.”

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.”