“My lord,” she said, “I think our host is eager to have us gone. Might I ask about this bequest my godfather left me?”
“Ah, yes.” Lord Archer rummaged in a small portmanteau. “I’ve brought all the papers with me. We can have it done today. Rothbury can hand over the keys if there are any.”
“Keys?” She sat tall. “I don’t understand.”
“Your inheritance, Miss Goodnight. It’s this. The castle.”
Her breath left her. “What?”
In a dark voice, the duke protested, too. “Impossible.”
Lord Archer squinted at the documents. “Here we are. ‘To Miss Isolde Ophelia Goodnight, I leave the property known as Gostley Castle.’ Is it pronounced like ‘Ghostly’ or ‘Ghastly’? Either one seems accurate.”
“I thought the bequest was money,” Izzy said, shaking her head. “A hundred pounds, perhaps two.”
“There is no money, Miss Goodnight. Just the castle. Lynforth had several goddaughters, and apparently he gifted them with too few ponies or hair ribbons over the years. In the last months of his life, he decided to leave each of them every girl’s dream. Her very own castle.”
“Now wait,” the duke interrupted. “This castle has been in my family for hundreds of years.”
Archer looked at the papers. “And apparently it was sold to Lynforth just a few months back.” He looked over his papers at Izzy. “I take it you’re surprised by this?”
“I’m stunned,” Izzy admitted. “The earl was kind to me, but he wasn’t even my godfather. Not properly. He was my father’s patron at Court.”
Izzy had been introduced to Lord Lynforth a few times, most recently when Papa received his knighthood. On that illustrious occasion, the dear old man had slipped Izzy a sweetmeat from his waistcoat pocket and given her a fond pat on the head. Never mind that she’d been mere days from her twenty-second birthday. His intentions were kind.
Now the dear old man had left her a castle?
A castle.
Archer pressed the folio of papers into Izzy’s keeping. “It’s all there. A copy of the will, the property deed. This castle and everything in it—it’s yours now.”
She blinked at the folio. “What am I to do with the place?”
“If you don’t want to live in it?” Lord Archer looked at the soaring ceiling and shrugged. “I suppose you could clean it up. Try to sell—”
Crash.
Izzy ducked as something exploded against the far wall.
She looked around for the source. She didn’t have to search far. In another fearsome explosion of strength, the duke picked up a chair and sent it sailing against the wall, too.
Crash, part second.
Splintered wood cascaded to the floor.
In the aftermath, he stood working for breath, every muscle tensed and coiled with energy. He was a magnificent, volatile, and undeniably virile portrait of anger. Izzy was torn between admiration and fear.
“She can’t have it,” he said. “She can’t live in it. She can’t clean it up to sell.” He pounded one fist against his chest, and the small hairs on Izzy’s arms lifted. “I am Ransom William Dacre Vane, the eleventh Duke of Rothbury. This is my castle.”
The wolf-dog growled. Tension crackled and filled the great hall, right up to the vaulted ceiling.
Lord Archer shuffled papers at his leisure. As though furniture hadn’t recently exploded. “Yes, well. Duke or not . . . Matters don’t seem to have gone your way recently. Have they, Rothbury?”
The duke didn’t reply. Unless one counted palpable seething as a reply—in which case, he replied quite fiercely.
“I’m afraid the papers are clear,” Archer said. “The castle is Miss Goodnight’s now.”
“It can’t be,” the duke replied. “Because I didn’t sell it.”