beyond Mr Lansing, her father’s steward and man of business, and he could hardly bring himself to communicate with her, he was so shocked to find himself answering to a woman. She had expected this man to show disapproval of her having no chaperon, but perhaps that was simply her lack of experience of the world beyond the castle walls, the place that held all her fears, her lost hopes.
She stood, glad of the table edge to steady herself, and he rose, too, a good head taller than she, despite her height. ‘Please. Sit.’ The lid of the coffer creaked open until it was stopped by a retaining chain, standing as a screen between Mr Ransome and its contents. Madelyn lifted out the rolls and bundles of paper and parchment that it contained and placed them on the table in a pile at her left hand, except for one which she partly opened out. She kept her right hand on that as she sat again.
‘What I require, Mr Ransome, is a husband.’ She had rehearsed this and now her voice hardly shook at all. In some strange way this situation went beyond shocking and frightening into a nightmare, and nightmares were not real. Father had left careful and exact instructions and she had always obeyed him, as she did now. Even so, she kept her gaze on the parchment that crackled under her palm.
‘Then I fear you have approached the wrong man. I do not act as a marriage broker.’ When she looked up, Mr Ransome shifted on the carved wooden chair as though to stand again.
‘You do not understand, of course. I have not made myself plain. I do not require you to find me a husband. I wish you to marry me. Yourself,’ she added, just in case that was not clear enough.
Jack Ransome did get up then. He stood looking down at her while her heart thudded, one, two, three, four. Then he sat again, slowly.
Madelyn made herself focus on him and not on her own churning stomach. So, he was capable of being taken by surprise, of an unguarded reaction, however good he was at getting himself under control again.
‘Why?’
‘I have no desire to die a spinster, which means I must wed. And my father wished most particularly that I marry a man with bloodlines that can be traced back to before the Conquest, a man of impeccable breeding. He had intended approaching you with his proposition. And then he died.’
‘My title, for what it is worth, was granted by Henry the Eighth. The Ransome of the time had his favour for reasons I have never understood, but it was probably something thoroughly disreputable. His father had awarded us with a barony because my ancestor chose the right side at the Battle of Bosworth, but Henry the Eighth created the earldom.’
At least he hasn’t laughed in my face or walked out.
‘There are no titles of nobility left at that date from before the sixteenth century,’ she said. If he was interested she could lecture him on the subject all morning, but somehow she did not think he was. ‘The Tudors saw to that, because the aristocracy was too closely tied by blood to the Plantagenets and so many had as good a claim to the throne as theirs. But Father traced your lineage to Sieur Edmund fitzRanulf, who fought at Hastings, and the intermarriages since then were very satisfactory to him.’
‘They were very satisfactory to me, considering that I am the result of them,’ Ransome said drily. ‘Virtually all aristocrats have an ancestry that can be traced in this way, not to say hundreds, if not thousands, of gentry. The College of Heralds spends its time doing just that.’ He was humouring her, she could tell.
Earning his fee. We will see about that, she thought, stiffening her spine. She had begun now, how much worse could it get?
‘My father wished for an aristocratic connection. There are very few noblemen of ancient lineage who might be prevailed upon to wed me who are unmarried, of marriageable age, of good character and who are interested in women.’ He looked a question and she managed not to blush. ‘I do understand about that. There are, in fact, just seven of you at present who meet the criteria and who hold titles or are the heirs.’
‘Thank you for the most flattering offer, Miss Aylmer, but I am not available for stud purposes.’ Jack Ransome reached for his gloves.
He had kept his voice level, but the crude words were used as a weapon, the first betraying sign of an emotion besides surprise. He might well talk about pride—she had apparently pricked his painfully. The lines between his nose and the corners of his mouth were suddenly apparent, as though his whole face had stiffened.
Somehow Madelyn fought the urge to flee the room and shut herself in a turret for ten years, or however long it would take for them both to forget this conversation. But he was not the only one with verbal weapons at his disposal. ‘No? Not even if my marriage portion includes the entirety of your family’s lost lands and properties?’
Jack Ransome stared at her, his eyes unblinking, and she knew she had his full attention now as his pupils widened until the blue eyes darkened. ‘My father, grandfather and elder brother between them broke the entail ten years ago. Over the course of eight years—the time it took all three of them to die one way or another—my father and brother managed to sell or gamble away virtually everything. I sold the last few remaining acres to pay the debts. How do you propose to restore all of that to me?’
‘When my mother and brother died my father sought out the men who best fitted his criteria for me. He then made it his business to discover what was most likely to make the match acceptable to them. In most cases there was nothing that he could—’ she almost said use as a lever, but managed to bite her tongue in time ‘—identify.’
The other candidates came from families that seemed, as far as Peregrine Aylmer could discover, quite secure and likely to be wary of an alliance with Castle-Mad Aylmer’s daughter.
But Jack Ransome had inherited an empty title and so her father had become relentless in his pursuit of the scattered lands and properties. Relentless and ruthless, she feared, not above exerting pressure on whatever weaknesses he could find to secure a purchase. Antiquarian research had given him the skills to dig deep into family cupboards to discover the skeletons they held.
Madelyn pushed away the unsettling memories and made herself meet the dark gaze that seemed fixed on her face. ‘Father searched out every scrap of land, every building, of the lost Dersington estates and acquired them. He identified your brother first, but did not add him to the list because of his way of life. But then Lord Roderick died almost as soon as he had inherited the title and you inherited.’
She could remember her father returning home, crowing with delight, ordering all the banners to be flown from turrets and battlements in celebration. He had found the ideal candidate and one he could exert a hold over.
Under her left hand the stack of deeds felt as substantial as a pile of bricks. Under her right, the unfolded parchment crackled betrayingly and she forced her fingers to stillness. ‘Be grateful,’ he had told her. ‘I have found you a man free from his family’s vices and I have the shackles to bind him to you.’ She had known better than to protest that she did not want a husband who had to be coerced and shackled.
‘Your mother and brother died six years ago,’ Jack Ransome said blankly. ‘Six—I was twenty-one when he started looking, twenty-three when Roderick died. How did he know I would not marry someone else?’
‘Then your lost lands would remain in here.’ She gestured towards the chest. ‘They would be
