And with that her sister left, her cousins dispersed, and Myrtle was left alone . . . with the window and the stranger and his wolf dog outside.

Myrtle lingered at the edge of the curtains; her mother’s and sister’s voices grew fainter until only silence remained. A silence made all the more eerie for the tale told by her sister.

A mad duke?

Myrtle dampened her lips.

This was nothing more than Cassia up to her usual storytelling, meant to elicit the precise response she’d had from Myrtle.

Well, Myrtle wasn’t the same young girl who’d been marched off to Mrs. Belden’s. She was a young woman, just months away from making her London debut.

Her cousins could believe that rubbish yarn her sister had woven all they wanted.

Myrtle, however . . . Myrtle had left fanciful and returned practical. She’d had to. After all, it had been her hoydenish ways that had seen her sent away to that miserable, if distinguished, finishing school.

No, she was decidedly not one to go about believing tall tales about her family’s new neighbor. Or . . . new-to-her neighbor. It appeared she was the last of the McQuoids to learn about the gentleman.

Those assurances did not completely chase away the chill left by her sister’s telling.

You are being ridiculous . . . There is no mad duke next door.

Before her courage deserted her, Myrtle stole one more peek, immediately catching sight of him. In an attempt to bring the gentleman into focus, she squinted . . . just as he disappeared into the stables.

He returned a short while later with his horse.

As any gentleman might.

“Murderer,” she muttered. “Impossible.”

And yet, her gaze crept over to the window, and she followed him as he rode off. She wasn’t so silly as to believe all that.

The gentleman was likely only lonesome, was all.

And that was certainly a sentiment she could relate to. She’d endured four lonely years at Mrs. Belden’s, where friends were few and far between, only to return and find, even with the household swarming with McQuoid kin and servants, she was lonelier than she’d ever been.

It would bring her great satisfaction to inform Cassia that not only was there an abundance of servants in their ducal neighbor’s household but also that he was an entirely affable chap.

Enlivened for the first time since she’d returned home, Myrtle released the curtains, setting the fabric rustling . . . and waited for the duke’s return.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

They’d been staring again.

Such had been the way since Valentine “Val” Bancroft, the Duke of Aragon, had moved into the sprawling limestone Mayfair townhouse four years earlier.

Just before his life had fallen apart when he’d suddenly found himself a widower.

From that moment on, he’d shut the world out and attempted in vain to bury the demons of his recent past.

Only to find demons of a different sort.