And by the stream of servants filing into conveyances, it was all of them.

Yea, and here he’d believed nothing good remained in this world. Only, with the McQuoids on their way to wherever it was they traveled during the holiday season, it didn’t really much matter to him. It didn’t matter to him at all. Just that they were leaving.

There’d be no noses pressed to the window or constant stares directed his way.

Or young women peering inside his windows and chattering his ears off and attempting to steal the affections of his dog.

Despite himself, he did a search of the assembled kin, the men attired in black cloaks, the women dressed in matching shades of green as though it were a requirement expected of them as McQuoid women. With the snow beginning to fall rapidly, they had the look of a gaggle of ducks set upon by a wolf as they ran in frantic circles, confused into chaos.

He couldn’t have picked her out of that lot of staff and family had he wanted to.

Which he absolutely did not.

Why, then, did he feel a sense of reluctance?

“Only because I want to ensure they’re gone,” he muttered to himself.

Because they were always a nuisance, but they were increasingly a bother when all their kin assembled, each clamoring for a glimpse of him, for reasons he couldn’t understand. Nor cared to.

It was why even now he, who cared about absolutely nothing and no one, watched on with a feeling as close to glee and relief as he expected to ever again experience, as a ridiculous line of some twelve or so carriages were packed with people . . . and then rolled off with one following after another.

He stared until the last had left, until they were, each and every one of them, gone, and then promptly dismissed for the day the handful of servants who’d stayed on.

So that Val was well and truly, and thankfully, alone.

KnockKnockKnock.

That gratitude proved as short as had the happiness in his life.

With a curse, he dug his fingertips against his temples and pressed . . . and prayed.

KnockKnockKnockKnock.

Alas, the figure on the other side of that door proved stubborn.

KnockKnockKnock.

The interloper in his peace and quiet was decidedly not leaving.

Val marched over to the door and yanked it open hard enough that the figure on the other side was left with his hand poised midknock. A jovial smile wreathed the younger man’s face.

“Answering our own doors again, which can only mean one thing . . . You’ve sent your servants off for the holiday season.”