Of course.

As if it were the most common thing in the world for a young lady to dash about London, without so much as the benefit of a servant, to fetch her own baked goods.

She was . . . a marvel.

“Aha!” Myrtle exclaimed happily. “I found them.” Spinning around, she held aloft a collection of thin sticks.

“We’re playing . . . spillikins?”

Her laughter filled the kitchens once more, an effervescent sound as clear as the brightest London bells tinkling, filling corners of his soul that had been devoid of all joy for so long, sparking a light within those shuttered parts of him.

“No,” she said when her amusement had faded, and with her matter-of-fact tone, she gave no indication that she was aware of the profound effect her laugh and smile had upon him. “They are candles, Val,” she explained, returning with that bounty to join Val.

He did a sweep of the kitchens. “I think there’s sufficient light.”

Furthermore, there was no one about to look after those flames. It was a danger he’d not considered . . . until now. It was one of the reasons servants were always awake through the nighttime hours, to roam the halls and ensure candles remained lit.

“Not for light. For the cake, silly.”

He looked from her face to the bounty of tapered candles she waved in his direction, before bringing his gaze back to her sparkling one. “You’re going to stick candles in a cake, and I’m the silly one?”

“It is a tradition,” she explained. “My brother came back from a tour of Germany and shared the story of a man he met in his travels . . . He’d been hosting a party to celebrate his birthday and had a cake he lit with candles. Arran was fascinated, and when he asked, the man regaled him with a story of a different man named Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf. He once held a grand party to celebrate his birthday and had a gigantic”—she let her arms sweep wide—“cake, and stuck within it were candles, enough to correspond with his age.”

She was so wistful, her gaze so faraway it may as well have been in that room in Germany she now spoke of, and he suspected that was where her mind dwelled. In the place her brother had been that she clearly wished to go to. Or perhaps it was merely the memory of that time she’d had with her family. And he hated that she’d gone sad-eyed . . . Val ached to chase that gloom away. “If you stick enough candles to commemorate your age, the thing will be consumed in fire.”

“Are you calling me old?” she asked. Dropping her hands upon her hips and scowling, she was adorable in her indignation. “Because I’ll have you know . . . I’m only eighteen. Hardly an old maid.”

“I’m calling your cake small.”