But that hardly made the fantastical tales told by her sister about a man who’d killed his staff true.

And furthermore, being lonely was certainly a sentiment she could relate to all too well. Why, she could actually relate to him very—

Just then, the duke stopped, and his gaze went flying up.

Myrtle froze, her heart hammering wildly as she was held motionless by a piercing stare that, even with all the space separating them, managed to penetrate her.

That frosty, harsh, and unforgiving glare as powerful hundreds of paces away as it had been a single step from his wrath.

With a slow, methodical intent to his movements, the gentleman turned the axe over in his hands, and raised it slowly—

Gasping, Myrtle raced across the room and dived onto the bed. Wrestling her way under the white sheet, she burrowed under the covers and lay there.

Tomorrow, she’d leave. Nay, in just a few short hours, she and her family would be loaded into the carriages, and they’d make the long journey away from this household and onward for Scotland.

Only this time, unlike all the times before it, as Myrtle lay shivering under the covers, as she drifted off to sleep, she found herself cowardly eager to put some distance between herself, this place, and the enigmatic duke across the way.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Through the years, Val’s relationship with God had been rather complex.

As a boy, he’d attended mass with his parents, but the Lord and Savior had been more of an otherworldly, unapproachable being to whom Val had not felt a personal connection.

He’d not, however, failed to believe in the all-powerful God—until that gruesome carriage accident nearly four years to the date.

That moment with his young wife—their babe in her belly—staring sightlessly up at the dark night sky had been the instant he’d ceased to believe. With the snow falling furiously, those flakes clinging to her brows and lashes while her eyes had remained wide open in death, Val had known there was no one overhead, after all.

For how could a supreme creator capable of moving mountains and making miracles have done nothing to stop the death of a woman with the purest, kindest heart?

He’d gone through the expected motions of Polite Society, holding a funeral with a vicar speaking in solemn tones, the words of a hymn intending to bring comfort but only strengthening Val’s sense of an absolute absence of any man seated atop a throne, in control of all, and deserving of prayer and praise.

Yes, Val had ceased to believe.

Until now.

Now, with winter snow already beginning to fall and his neighbors and their noisy, nosy brood, and their extended relations, equally noisy and nosy, all scrambling inside carriages, he thought he might have been wrong.

Mayhap there was a God, after all.

They were leaving.