“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.”
Riggett gestured wildly. “But the knights. The armor. The Order of the Poppy.”
“For God’s sake, man. They’re just stories. The rest of us here understand that.” Mr. Havers gestured at Ransom. “Look at him. The man’s not delusional. He’s in love.”
Ransom’s lips quirked in that familiar half smile. “Well, that’s one charge I can’t argue.”
It wasn’t a typical wedding. Rather a quiet affair.
The ceremony took place early on a Tuesday morning. The bride wore red, so the groom could see her in a crowd. The narrow pews of the village chapel were crushed with knights in makeshift armor and handmaidens in medieval gowns.
And, after a wedding breakfast at the village inn, the happy couple eschewed the waiting carriage in favor of a long, leisurely stroll back to their castle, walking arm-in-arm.
As they approached the barbican, Izzy stared up at the ancient stone fortress. The new glass panes in the windows acted like facets of a diamond, sparkling in the morning sun. So much had changed since that first rainy, gloomy afternoon, when she’d been deposited here with nothing more to her name than a weasel, a letter, and her last shred of hope.
Ransom stopped her in the courtyard. “Wait.”
She glanced up at him. And then she spent the next few moments collecting her scattered wits. The castle might have changed in her perception, but this man hadn’t. That wild, untamed masculine beauty made her knees weak every time.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did we leave something behind at the inn?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just been wanting to do this again.”
He bent at the waist, and in one swift move, he scooped her into his arms, tucking her close to his chest.
And this time, Izzy managed not to swoon.
Just barely.
Epilogue
Several months later
The candle was nearly guttered in its holder when Ransom reached the thirty-fourth stair. “Izzy, it’s late. You should come to bed.”
“I know.” Izzy replaced her quill in the inkwell and propped her elbows on the desk. With a sigh of fatigue, she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.