Was he the . . . ? He turned back just as the young woman struggled to her feet; the way in which she winced as she brushed off her skirts suggested she’d indeed taken a hard fall. What in hell business could this one—or anyone—possibly have with him? As a rule he avoided all.

But especially strangers.

Apparently, no confirmation was necessary. “I have it on authority you are the duke,” the jabberpot continued on, “and as such, I was looking for you.”

In her fall, her hood had been knocked back, revealing a lion’s mane of midnight-black curls, a bold tangle perfectly suited to the audacious creature before him.

He’d never seen a lady possessed of so many tight ringlets.

Or if he had, they’d always been flawlessly arranged in an elegant coiffure, held back with jewel-encrusted hair combs, and not an untamed mass of tresses that threatened to swallow a slightly too-pointed, faintly freckled face.

“Are you?” she pressed him.

That question cut through his study of the peculiar creature, and it took a moment for Val to register.

“Am I what?” he barked, his voice rough from lack of use, and also from his fury and frustration with life.

Others had run; with the exception of his stubborn butler, all the loyal servants who’d remained on had invariably fled when presented with those fury-encrusted tones.

This one merely smiled. “The Duke of Aragon. Are you he?”

He was and wanted her gone. “I am,” he said coolly. Val opened his mouth again, prepared to tell her that latter part.

The lady beamed. “Splendid.” She punctuated that exclamation with a little clap, as if she truly meant it.

Which was bloody impossible. One, she was a damned stranger. Two, the people he did know and who did know of him, because of his notoriously surly reputation, hardly sought him out. Lord knew his former friends and family had learned to keep their distance.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”

Anyone else would have been offended with his crass, harshly barked query.

Not this woman, who very well may have been a half-wit. She dropped a quick curtsy. “I am Lady Myrtle McQuoid.” Myrtle McQuoid? With a name like that, the girl’s parents clearly hated her. “I do believe we are neighbors.”

The McQuoids, the big family next door filled with children of varying ages who always found themselves at their windows staring at his. “Splendid,” he muttered. They’d more spawn.

Lady Myrtle cupped a hand around her ear and leaned in. “What was that?” she called, using that as an invitation to come closer.

She looked to be five feet nothing, and her cloak hung large on her small form, revealing little of the woman under that emerald-green fabric.

And unlike her siblings, who made it a habit of running when he was in sight, this particular spawn came toward him.

Fucking hell.