Izzy could have whooped with triumph, but she restrained herself.
Instead, she stepped back, smoothing her skirts and hair. Her cheeks burned, but at least he couldn’t know.
“Just one night,” the duke said. “And I’m only agreeing to that much because I expect one night in this place will be enough for you.”
It was a small victory, admittedly, but it was a start.
“Come along, then. I’ll show you to a room. My manservant will bring your things later.”
Izzy followed him out of the great hall and up a spiraling flight of stairs. The closeness of the stairwell made her shudder. Once darkness fell, these stone stairways and corridors would feel like a tomb.
“You’ll want the finest chamber, no doubt. Since you seem to believe it’s your castle now.”
They emerged into a long corridor. Heavy steps carried him down the center of it. He didn’t count aloud, but she could feel him taking the measurements in his head. His mastery of the space was a marvel.
At last he stopped, then made a brisk quarter turn.
“Here you are. I expect this will suit.”
When Izzy peered inside, she was surprised to find a richly furnished chamber. A massive bed occupied one half of it, situated on a raised dais with mahogany posts soaring nearly to the ceiling. Velvet and tapestries hung on all sides. The rest of the furniture didn’t consist of much—a chair with a caved-in seat, a few abandoned traveling trunks, and a dressing table covered in dust an inch thick. A gallery of arched Gothic windows lined the far wall, but the glass had been broken out of nearly all of them.
“Oh,” she said, struggling to take in the room’s decrepit state. “My.”
“Take it all in,” he said wryly. “View the full splendor of your supposed inheritance. Until I arrived some months ago, no one had resided in this place for decades. It’s been looted thoroughly. There are only a few furnished rooms, all of them in states of decay.”
“If that’s the case, I’m grateful this many furnishings have survived.” Izzy moved into the room. A patterned carpet covered the floor. A threadbare one, but to have lasted this long, it must have been well made. “Just look at this bed.”
“Eight paces wide. Big enough for a duke and a half dozen women, besides. Makes a man yearn for the medieval ages.”
“It wasn’t for sleeping,” she told him. “At least, it wasn’t for . . . that. This would have been the castle’s great chamber. The medieval lords conducted business from these beds, the way kings sit on thrones. That’s why it’s raised on a platform and built to such an impressive size.”
“Fascinating.”
“My father was an expert on these things.” Izzy approached the bed, peering at the hangings. She pulled a face. “It looks as though the moths have feasted on these tapestries. What a shame.”
“Yes. And the rats have had their way with the mattress.”
Rats? Izzy jumped back. She put her hands over her face and peered through her fingers at the bed enclosed by shredded hangings. Yes, the mattress had been disemboweled—its straw and horsehair contents strewn about and arranged into . . .
Oh, goodness, those could be nests.
If she stared hard enough, she could have sworn she saw the rotted straw moving.
She forced herself to say, “Snowdrop will be happy. And very well fed.” A distant moaning startled her. “What’s that noise?”
He shrugged. “Probably one of the ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“This is a borderlands castle, Miss Goodnight. If you know about castles, you should know what that means.”
“I do.”
Gostley Castle’s original purpose would have been to quell Scottish rebellion. Quelling rebellion meant capturing rebels—and not to keep them as houseguests. There was no telling how many people had been imprisoned in this castle, even tortured and killed, over the centuries. By the duke’s own ancestors, no less.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said.