He eyed her with an inscrutable stare, one so opaque she could make nothing of it.

And then he grunted. “You have Horace. Furthermore, it would be inappropriate—”

“Nothing about these past few days has been appropriate, Val,” she interrupted him. “It’s all been scandalous. But neither does that mean you have to suffer through the cold.”

“I don’t ride in carriages,” he gritted out.

“Yes, I understand most men prefer their mounts. My brothers both always—”

“No. No. It is not . . . that,” he said tightly, and then dragged a hand through his hair, knocking his hat loose.

With a restlessness to his movements, Val stalked over to the black garment resting upon the ground and swiped the article up. He beat it several times against the side of his leg. “My wife.” Myrtle stared blankly at Val, but she may as well not have been looking at him. For his gaze remained locked, fixed firmly above her head, his eyes off in the distance, staring at a sight only he could see. “She was killed in a carriage accident.”

And then she drew back, her entire body recoiled away from that revelation. “Oh, Val,” she whispered. And here she’d been so self-absorbed. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m a blunderbuss. I did not think . . .”

“No, no. It is fine,” he said gruffly. “It is silly.”

She swept over and took his hands. “It is not.” Myrtle squeezed his long fingers in her own. “It is not,” she repeated, this time more emphatically and applying another bout of pressure. “It makes sense.” And then another thought slammed into her, nearly knocking her feet out from under her. Here she’d been so consumed in her own misery at their nearing end and mourning the loss of the time with him. All the while, he had been trapped in the hell of his past. Haunted by memories made stronger by carriages, of the wife he loved.

I am the worst . . .

The ghost of a smile formed on Val’s lips. “No, you aren’t, Myrtle,” he said quietly in an affirmation that she’d accidentally spoken those thoughts aloud. “You are all that is good.” His smile withered, faded, and then died, leaving his features solemn and ushering in a cold to rival the one hanging in the winter air. “It is why I’d see you nowhere near me.”

Myrtle traced her gaze over each cherished plane of his beloved face, committing those harsh angles to her memory to store away for a later time. “Is that what you think?” she murmured, drifting closer once more. “That you were somehow to blame for what happened?” To your wife.

She couldn’t bring herself to utter those words that made her ghostly foe real, but she loved Val too much to refer to that same nemesis for his affections in the past tense.