“I know I am, Myrtle,” he said, and a sound of frustration escaped him as he stalked off. “If we hadn’t been making the journey to my mother’s affair, then she would still be here.”

And he and Myrtle would not.

And yet, that did not mean anything to him.

Not as it mattered to her, and how she wished it to mean something to him.

But this moment . . . it was not about her.

Myrtle started over to him, then stopped just beyond the edge of his shoulder.

“When I was to turn thirteen, my brother was set to make his first journey.” She hugged herself, recalling the envy she’d felt. “How I wished I could join him,” she said wistfully. “He was going to the Americas. His closest friend in the world has a shipping business, and they intended to make a journey together.” She knew the moment Val’s demons had fled, and the moment he’d begun listening to her. “I entered his rooms, where he and his servants were packing his things, and insisted that it was not every day that a young girl became a woman.” Because she’d been so certain she’d been a woman the moment she reached those teen years that had put her that much closer to eighteen and her first London Season. “I begged him to remain with me because our parents had begun speaking about me leaving the following birthday for Mrs. Belden’s, and . . . he stayed. His friend, however, did not. The ship he was to sail upon, the one his friend did sail upon . . . went down at sea.”

Val’s body drew taut, and she tightened her arms reflexively around herself.

“When I learned of it, I spent days crying, because it was my fault Jeremy had perished. Jeremy had been like another brother to me, and I’d failed him.”

A guttural groan escaped him as he turned back and took her in his arms, and she accepted all the warmth that came in his embrace.

“I’ll have you know, he did not perish,” she said, grateful when he did not release her at that admission, though she felt him draw slightly back.

“He didn’t?”

That question was met with the same wonder she’d felt upon learning of Jeremy’s return from the grave.

“No. He was rescued at sea, and the day he appeared on our doorstep, informing my brother of his survival, I threw myself at him and pleaded his forgiveness.” Myrtle tipped her neck back so that she might meet Val’s eyes. “Do you know what he said to me?