And tucked away in the last room of the forgotten end of the hall, away from her McQuoid cousins and siblings, there was no doubting she’d be well and truly alone for the night. More than half tempted to return to her soaking bed, she hung there, considering her options.

Creeeeak.

Somewhere within the household a lone floorboard groaned. Her heart jumping, and she along with it, Myrtle shut the door and moved deeper into the room.

And instantly regretted it.

Stretching a hand into the inky void of night’s hold, she searched around for the imagined ghosts she’d always feared as a girl to the point that her eldest brother and sister had teased, having fun at her fear of the dark.

They’d expect her to be afraid still.

Only, she wasn’t a small child.

She was a grown woman on the cusp of making her Come Out.

That silent reminder came more for herself, an attempt for the logical part within to take hold and shake free of the child’s fears she carried.

Drawing deeper within the folds of her cloak, she rubbed her hands together and marched over to the bed. At some point the servants had draped the furnishings in stark white sheets, and the fabric outlined the frames of the pieces about the room, lending an eerie look to those articles. They were like ghosts, reaching their arms out to her . . .

For her . . .

“Stop it,” she said, loudly into the quiet.

There are no ghosts, and there are none of the bodachs, those old Scottish hobgoblins her eldest siblings had terrified her with tales of.

Childhood nightmares and legends were in the past. She’d had four years to do what her parents had sent her away to do—grow up. To stop behaving like a hoyden, and to stop being so gullible as to believe the yarns her siblings spun.

“I’m not a child. I’m not a child.” She muttered that mantra as she felt the bedding, searching for a hint that the roof overhead had so failed this mattress and pillows and coverlets, too.

A cold lingered upon the fabric of the down coverlet, but only a natural chill from the night and not the wet from a leaking roof that had thoroughly soaked her own pillow and parts of her bed.

Alas, it appeared even the bones of this house were set on making her miserable: only her chambers had suffered.

More than a little regretful at finding it so, and also finding no reason to leave and swallow her pride and curl up with Cassia so she didn’t have to be alone, Myrtle drew back her hand.

Her eyes still fought against the dark, and her mind still struggled with the eerie ring of silence that hung like a phantom specter in the quiet.