He came to stand behind her. His strong hands settled heavily on her shoulders. “You’re working much too hard these last few weeks.”
“I know that, too.” She picked up the quill and began to write again. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I’m desperate to have a few months’ worth of installments completed before the baby arrives. The work’s going more slowly than I’d like. Add to that, I’m drowning in correspondence to answer.”
His thumbs kneaded the muscles at the back of her neck, coaxing a deep sigh from her chest.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“That massage is a lovely start.” She sorted through the pile of envelopes. “Maybe you can help me answer this letter from Lord Peregrine?”
“What conundrum has he posed this time?”
“It’s my turn to pose the conundrum, actually, and I’m stumped for one.” She tapped her quill on the blotter. “Aha. I have it.” She dipped her pen and began to write. “ ‘Would you rather find a weasel in your bed or an octopus?’ ” She scribbled the letter’s closing and set it aside.
“That’s unfair. He gets to choose? I don’t get to choose.”
“No, you don’t. You’re stuck with both.” Smiling, Izzy pulled a magazine from her pile of correspondence. “Now here’s something from the post you’ll find amusing. There’s a letter to the editor of the Gentleman’s Review. And it’s about me.”
“Read it, then.”
Izzy opened the magazine to a marked page and read aloud in a lofty, affected baritone. “ ‘Like so many devoted readers of your publication, I was pleased to see that England’s beloved daughter, little Izzy Goodnight, newly the Duchess of Rothbury, has taken up her pen and decided to continue writing in the marvelous world Sir Henry gave to her, and to us. I read the first installments with great anticipation and much interest, but I am sorry to say they did not impress.’ ”
Ransom scowled. “Impertinent jackass.”
“He’s entitled to his opinion. Let’s see . . . Here we are.” She lowered her voice again. “ ‘Though she has swiftly ascended to a higher social rank than her late father enjoyed, these first chapters make it sadly clear that Her Grace will never be his literary equal. Her writing pales beside the richness of Sir Henry’s prose though I am pained to say it.”
“I’ll pain him to say it,” Ransom grumbled.
“Oh, but it gets better,” she told him, skimming ahead. “He goes on, ‘The Shadow Knight’s Journey isn’t without its faint glimmers of promise, however. With maturity and time to hone her craft, perhaps the duchess can aspire to be half the writer her father was—and that in itself would be a genuine accomplishment for any writer so young, and so female.’ And it’s signed, The Right Honorable Edmund Creeley, of Chatton, Kent.”
She set aside the magazine, laughing helplessly.
Ransom didn’t laugh. He didn’t say anything.
“Well?” she prodded. “Aren’t you amused? Have you no response?”
“Oh, I have a response. The Right Honorable Edmund Creeley can take his quill and—”
The profanity that followed had Izzy clapping her hands to her belly, as if she could cover her unborn child’s tender ears. The babe, however, merrily kicked and cartwheeled in her womb.
Oh, goodness. It seemed this child would take after Ransom.
She didn’t mind that one bit.
“We will have the last laugh,” she reminded him. “Mr. Creeley will be forced to eat his words, if not . . . those other things you listed. He’ll learn the truth in time. As will everyone.”
Ransom had given her a fairy-tale ending, and Izzy had vowed not to squander it. She was going to claim her work, and continue the stories she—and so many others—loved. But she wanted to go about it cautiously, with respect for Cressida and Ulric, and for her father’s memory and that purple counterpane—and most especially, for the readers who’d made The Goodnight Tales not quite “true” but truly meaningful.
So rather than pick up where the original tales left off, she’d begun a new story: The Shadow Knight’s Journey.
No doubt many readers, those more perceptive than Edmund Creeley, would begin to guess the truth. A few had already written her with their suspicions. But for now, Izzy was playing coy.
She meant to follow the Shadow Knight through his side of the adventures, right up until that climactic scene at the parapet. And then, once the two tales were intertwined, he would lift the visor, revealing his true identity—
And Izzy’s.
When the truth came out, there was bound to be a bit of scandal. Izzy worried more about how Ransom would cope than she worried for her own feelings. She hoped reading him Mr. Creeley’s letter might work as an inoculation of sorts.
“You’d better prepare yourself, Ransom. When that installment is published in a few years, no one will be patting me on the head. I’m sure to receive more unpleasant letters.”
He was silent for a moment. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Yes, good. Because I’ve decided that the proper response to any unpleasant letter is kisses, and I like having excuses to kiss you.”
“I think this particular unpleasant letter merits more than one kiss. Something like ten or twelve.”
“I won’t stop until you count one hundred,” he said wickedly. “Later.”
She pouted. “Later?”
“Right now, I want to show you something. It’s a surprise.”
Izzy was undeniably intrigued as she followed him down the spiraling stairs. She went slowly, cautiously. Her center of balance was changing by the day.
“What surprise could be better than a hundred kisses?” she asked, following Ransom down the corridor.
“This one, I hope.”
He stopped before a particular bedchamber. The one they’d designated as a nursery. He pushed open the door.
She clapped her hands together. “Is it finished?”
Izzy had been strictly forbidden from involvement in the major renovations—too much dust and danger, Ransom said. She hadn’t argued. She was happy to focus on the writing for now. And it warmed her heart to see his growing investment in the castle that had been his ancestral home.
The castle that was now their home.
“It’s done, as of today. The laborers finished painting this afternoon.” He waved her toward the open door. “Have a look.”