Holding her blanket with one hand, she raised the other and dusted her palm along the glass, attempting to scrape away the ice that blurred his household so that she might better see it, so that she could feel closer to him.

So that she could hopefully catch a glimpse of him.

Because in these past few days, she’d grown close with Val. In fact, she felt closer to him than anyone she’d known at Mrs. Belden’s, or even than her own family, for that matter. Her family, whom she no longer felt comfortable being herself around.

Her eldest siblings had been friends until Myrtle had been sent away, and they’d become more strangers.

And there’d been plenty of girls at Mrs. Belden’s . . . but she’d been so busy trying to be the perfect student just so that she could get herself out of that miserable place that the woman she’d been before those ladies had been make-believe. She’d been so busy pretending that none of them had seen the real her.

Val was the first person whom she’d been herself with. She’d not sought to pass herself off as anything other than . . . Myrtle.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to pretend anymore.

Mrs. Belden’s had crushed her spirit, but it hadn’t destroyed it.

She wanted to laugh freely and speak freely and see the world and live within it as she’d done with Val these past days. Val had helped her to realize that.

Their time together, however, was nearing an end. For she wouldn’t be forgotten here by her family forever. They’d come for Myrtle and take her away with them to Scotland, where they would remain as the long-overdue repairs were at last done on their London townhouse. And when they arrived, it would be time for her London Season, where she’d be put on display and paraded before potential husbands until she ultimately found the one with whom she’d spend the remainder of her days.

Her heart pounded hard against her breast, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

A man who would decidedly not be Val, the Duke of Aragon. Which was fine. Because he really only tolerated her, and barely liked her.

Only, that felt very much like a lie, she told herself.

Because he did like her. A solitary man who’d closed himself away from the world, with no one but his dog for company, would never give that loyal creature whom he so clearly loved, a dog that followed him everywhere, to Myrtle.

It was simply easier to think that he didn’t like her, because then it made it easier to face a future without him—a man unlike any other gentleman she’d known or would ever know.