He strode to the opposite side of the hall, navigating the space and its furnishings with an ease that made Izzy envious. She stumbled more often than he did, and she had functioning eyesight.
If he’d been recovering in Gostley Castle ever since the injury, he must have worked tirelessly to chart a map of the place in his head. She began to understand why he would be so loath to leave it. Even if he did have finer estates elsewhere, moving houses would mean starting all over again. She didn’t want to be the heartless landowner who forced a blind man from his home.
He lifted her valise from its resting place near the entry—two steps to the right of the door, as he’d told her earlier. Then he strode the same distance back and set it on the table.
“Understand this,” he said. “You are leaving.”
“What?” Panic gathered in her chest as she stared at the valise. “But I haven’t anywhere to go, or any means of getting there.”
“I won’t believe that. If your father was renowned throughout England—knighted, even—you must have funds. Or if not funds, friends.”
At his heel, the wolf-dog snarled.
“What’s in this valise?” he asked, frowning.
“It’s my . . .” She waved a hand. “It’s not important right now. I’ve told you I won’t ask you to leave, Your Grace. But you can’t force me out, either.”
“Oh, can’t I?” He gathered her shawl from its drying place and wadded it into a ball, preparing to stuff it into the valise.
The dog growled and barked.
“What the devil is in this thing?” He opened the valise’s latch.
“No, don’t,” Izzy said, jumping forward. “Be careful. She’s sleeping. If you startle her, you’ll—”
Too late.
With a primal howl of pain, he jerked his hand from the valise. “Mother of—”
Izzy winced. Just as she feared, his finger had a swoop dangling from it. A swoop of slinky, toothy, brown-and-white predator.
“Snowdrop, no.”
The dog went mad, jumping and yipping at the snarling creature attacking his master. Ransom cursed and raised his arm, backing in a circle, trying to keep the two animals apart. Snowdrop being Snowdrop, she latched on tighter still.
“Snowdrop!” Izzy chased circles around the knot of tangling beasts. “Snowdrop, let him go!”
Finally, she scrambled atop the table and made a wild grab for the duke’s wrist. She latched onto his arm with both of hers, using all her weight to hold him in place.
And then she paused there, trying to ignore the accidental intimacy of their posture. His shoulder was a stone against her belly. His elbow wedged tight between her breasts.
“Hold still, please,” she said, breathless. “The more you flail, the harder she bites.”
“I’m not flailing. I don’t flail.”
No, he didn’t. Clutching his arm this way made her acutely aware of the power in his body. But she was equally aware of another force. His restraint.
If he chose, he could fling both Izzy and Snowdrop against the wall, just as easily as he’d demolished those chairs.
She calmed her trembling hands and reached for Snowdrop. With her fingers, she coaxed the animal’s tiny jaws apart. “Let him go, dear. For the sake of us all. Let the duke go.”
At last, she succeeded in prying Snowdrop free of his savaged, bleeding finger.
Every living thing in the room exhaled.
“Good God, Goodnight.” He shook his hand. “What is that? A rat?”
Izzy descended from the table, clutching Snowdrop close to her chest. “Not a rat. She’s an ermine.”
He swore. “You carry a weasel in your valise?”
“No. I carry an ermine.”
“Ermine, stoat, weasel. They’re all the same thing.”
“They’re not,” Izzy objected, giving the agitated Snowdrop a soothing rub along her tiny cheek. “Well, perhaps they are—but ermine sounds more dignified.”
She cradled Snowdrop in one hand and rubbed her belly with the other, then carried her back to the valise and opened the small door in her ball—a spherical cage fashioned of gilded mesh.
“There you are,” she whispered. “Now be good.”