in hymns of joy, unknown before, conspire,

the praises of redeeming love they sang,

and heav’n’s whole orb with alleluias rang,

God’s highest glory was their anthem still,

peace on the earth, and unto men good will . . .”

Myrtle let her song trail off, and he closed his mouth, also allowing it to die upon his lips.

“You were singing,” she remarked softly.

“Is that what you would call it?” he asked drolly. Unable to meet the intense emotion pouring from her expressive eyes, Val wandered restlessly over to the window and peered out, intent on severing this growing connection.

Alas, the feat proved impossible. “You were singing the lyrics, Val.” Even in the pane, his eyes went not to the storm that raged outside, but to her still seated on the floor. “I saw you.”

He felt his cheeks go warm. “I don’t sing anymore.”

“Because of your late wife.”

“Dinah,” he said sharply, needing to say her name as a reminder, because he’d not thought of her, because he was forgetting her.

“And you don’t sing because of Dinah?”

“Yes. No.” He yanked his fingers through his hair, tousling the strands, and loosening them from the queue at his nape. “I don’t sing because my happiness died with her.”

Myrtle jumped up, brandishing that brush as she spoke. “Happiness only dies if you let it, and even then, Val,” she continued in an earnest way, “it is always inside you, resting like the banked embers of a fire.” She angled herself closer and rested her fingers on her chest, touching herself in that place where her heart beat, and the cadence of his own increased. “But if you nurture it and allow it to breathe, it can grow again. Your wife, your Dinah, would not want you to be sad.”

Her use of his wife’s name, the resurrection of that ghost who deserved his allegiance, scraped like nails upon a board. “You don’t know that,” he said sharply. “You didn’t know her, and you don’t know . . . what she would have wanted.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Myrtle paused. “You, however, did. As such, you tell me, Val . . . Was she the manner of woman who’d have wanted you to never again sing or smile?”

“No,” he murmured, a new type of hurt hitting him square in the chest at those words, but not for the reason they should cause this pang. Myrtle wasn’t wrong. Val didn’t sing or smile; Myrtle deserved a man who could do both of those with her. “She used to insist if anything were to happen to her that I not become one of those brooding dukes.” Yet that was precisely what he’d become. Until Myrtle.