She lowered her voice to a horrified whisper. “I can’t believe you just said that. Aloud, in front of everyone.”

She couldn’t even bring herself to look around for the handmaidens’ reactions. Much less Abigail’s. Unshed tears burned at the corners of her eyes.

All this effort. All this work. All this love in her heart. And it was nothing to him. He was throwing it away. She’d been hoping they could make it through tomorrow together—and they couldn’t even make it through this afternoon.

And to make it worse, he’d just ruined her in front of the only friends she had left.

“You need to break free of this, Izzy.” He tilted his head toward the shocked onlookers. “For that matter, so do they. You do them no favors by hiding the truth. Are you afraid they’ll find out that fairy tales are a load of bollocks, all their ‘oaths’ and vows are worth precisely shite, and happy endings only exist in your father’s storybooks? Good. I hope they do learn it. It might save some other man in my position a great deal of trouble.”

She pulled away from him. “So that’s it. This isn’t about The Goodnight Tales or your solicitors. And it’s not about me. This is about your pride, and Lady Emily Riverdale.”

Duncan coughed, loudly and frantically.

“Lady Shemily Liverpail,” she corrected. “Sorry. Either way. This is revenge for you. Is that it, Ransom? It wasn’t enough to ruin England’s precious sweetheart. Now you want to marry me, just to even the score.”

He shook his head. “It’s not about scores.”

“You are the deluded one.” She jabbed a finger in his chest. Poking right at that empty place where he ought to have a heart. “She didn’t leave you because of my father’s stories. She left you because you were cold and unfeeling toward her. The reason you find yourself alone and blinded and helpless is the fault of exactly one person in this room. You.”

“Izzy . . .”

She swiped a scalding tear from her cheek. “And do you know what? She was right to run away. She deserved better. I deserve better, too.”

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.”

A stillborn child, the previous year?

Ransom had never known this.

“But she wanted to take the risk,” Duncan continued. “She wanted you so much. Once the birthing was over, I was sent in to remove the doctor’s case from the room. She reached out, and her hand caught my arm.” The old valet cleared emotion from his throat. “ ‘Promise,’ she said. ‘Promise you’ll show him love.’ ”

Ransom couldn’t move.

“She was delirious,” Duncan said. “Already slipping away. I knew she’d mistaken me for the duke. But I couldn’t tell her so, and there wasn’t time to summon him. The duke wouldn’t have told her what she yearned to hear, anyway.”

Damn right he wouldn’t have. His father had remained a cold, unforgiving bastard until the day he died.

“But I couldn’t let the young duchess die uneasy. So I told her, I promise. I promise to show him love. And for thirty years, I’ve done my best to honor that.”

Jesus. Where was another ewer of freezing water when he needed one, to mask all these other droplets on his face?

Sinking down into the tub, Ransom drew his knees to his chest and scrubbed his face with both hands. His nursemaids and tutors had been forbidden to show him kindness. But who had been there for him? Cleaned him up after every night of debauchery, stitched his wounds, slipped him into immaculate tailcoats made tighter than a mother’s hug?

Who had stayed by him these seven months, as he crawled and fumbled his way back from the brink of death?

Duncan.

Duncan, all this time.

“Now,” he scraped out. “You’re just telling me this now.”

“I never thought you were ready to hear it before. And I was right.”

“But . . . why? There’s no pension in the world worth thirty years of serving me. It’s not as though I gave you any reason for devotion.”

“Of course you didn’t. I kept that promise for thirty years because it gave my work meaning. It gave me honor. A small, domestic kind of honor, but honor nonetheless.

“But apparently, in your view, I’ve wasted my whole life. Just another of those shite-filled vows and bollocks oaths. Now that you’ve released me from it . . .” The valet heaved a deep breath. “I believe I’ll retire to a little seaside cottage in Ireland. I’m rather looking forward to that.”

Ransom groped about for a towel or his clothing. Nothing.

“Where’s my shirt?”

“I wouldn’t know, Your Grace. That’s not my job anymore. But if I might offer you one bit of parting advice . . . You’re not in a position to be selective. If someone offers you love or friendship, take it. Even if it comes dressed in a tea tray. Also, stay away from stripes. Unflattering.”

Ransom was left blind, naked, wet, and shivering. And completely alone, just as the day he was born.

There was nothing to do but start over.

And try to get everything back.

Izzy paced her bedchamber by the light of a single candle.

She checked the clock again. Half past two in the morning. Only nine minutes since the last time she’d checked.

Where on earth could Ransom have gone? In the dark of night, on his own? At her insistence, Duncan had gone out searching for him. They should have returned hours ago. Now, Izzy was worried for them both.

She alternated between anger at his desertion and the fear that something horrid had happened. He was a grown man, she told herself. Magnus was a faithful guide. But none of that was a guarantee against accidents or injury. What if he’d gotten lost? What if he’d fallen in the stream?

What if he’d gone to Scotland with one of the handmaidens instead? She didn’t know that she would blame him, after some of the angry things she’d said.

Lord. The uncertainty was killing her. Maybe she should venture out herself. She could take a lamp and rouse Snowdrop from her bed of wood shavings.

That was it. Izzy reached for her cloak and boots. She couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

Her fingers trembled as she worked at unknotting the laces of her boots. Why she never unlaced them when she took her boots off at the end of the day, Izzy didn’t know. It was a lazy habit, and she’d never regretted it more than she did this moment.

Now that she’d made the decision to go out in search of him, her anxiety had intensified. And unlike her usual heart-pounding terror in the dark, this fear had a defined shape and edges she could grasp on to.