Especially, he fought the thought of her as she was in that moment, naked, her creamy white skin likely flushed red from the heat of the tub and the roaring fire in the hearth.

His body stirred, and he drew a slow, unsteady breath through his teeth.

Suddenly, she broke out in song.

As she invariably did.

“This endris night I saw a sight,

A star as bright as day,

And ev’r among, a maiden sung,

‘Lully, bye bye, lullay . . .’”

A wistful smile brought his lips up as that boisterous, loudly sung song briefly tempered a relentless desire for her. Rather, it roused a different hungering for her . . . one that was more dangerous, for it moved him onto a plane beyond mere physical yearning and to that emotional connection he’d forged with Myrtle.

Val had known from the moment Myrtle had entered his life that there would be a finite set to the time they spent with one another.

In those first moments she’d exploded into his existence, there’d been nothing but sheer annoyance, and hungering to be free of her and her chattering and cheer. But everything had . . . changed from their earliest days together.

“This lovely lady sat and sang,

And to her child did say,

‘My son, my brother, father dear,

Why liest thou thus in hay?’”

Their earliest days?

There’d been only days. Yet, how could that even be possible?

How had she turned his whole world inside out in just . . . days?

How had he learned to smile again and laugh again and to talk . . . ? And care about her?

His mind shied away from anything more, from anything deeper that would leave him exposed to a level of grief that this time he’d not recover from.

“My sweetest bird, ’tis thus required,

Though I be king veray,

But nevertheless I will not cease

To sing ‘Bye bye, lullay.’”

As if fate sought to serve up a reminder that he shouldn’t need, Myrtle sang that discordant lyric about goodbyes.

Nay, he’d loved and lost. He’d not be so foolish as to commit himself to that same fate for a second time.

Soon she’d be gone.

Only, that didn’t carry with it the relief it should.

As if fate sought to taunt him with his sudden melancholy, there came a faint giggle, accompanied by a deeper chuckle, and he looked to the end of the hall.

A young couple wound their way down the hall, their arms twined like ivy and their bodies angled toward one another; they stared up at each other, their gazes locked, as they continued walking past Val—Val, who was forced to draw himself impossibly tight to the wall and his legs closer so they didn’t trip over him—oblivious.

Oblivious to anything but one another and their love.

Val wrenched his gaze forward, allowing them their privacy.

Then there came the quick click as they shut the door on the world.