Myrtle’s steps slowed, and she came to a complete standstill.

In fact, there was . . . nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The candles had been doused.

At some point since she’d made the trek to a different wing of the house, white sheets had been laid over the remaining furnishings.

The quiet that had hung in the nighttime air as her only company when she’d sought out her guest chambers proved the same silent friend to greet her that morn.

Or mayhap it wasn’t morn?

Reaching her rooms, Myrtle pressed the handle and let herself in.

Her bed had since been covered with those same white linens.

Frowning, she headed for her vanity, and peeling back the edge of the sheet, she consulted the gold and porcelain there. The painted couple who framed the circular timepiece connected fingers, holding hands as if they were all that held the crystal cylinder aloft.

She leaned down and peered at the numbers there.

“Nine o’clock,” she said aloud, and unlike the habit she’d developed over the years of speaking to herself, this time there was a deliberateness to that pronouncement, one that came from the need to hear herself so that she might hear something.

“Mama?” she called out, her voice an answering echo. “Papa?”

Only more silence met her calls.

And somewhere amongst her search of the main floors and the hall where her extended family slept and then the freezing kitchens, devoid of the usual fire that blazed in the stoves, it hit her—why . . . they’d left. Her family had left for Scotland.

Surely not.

Her teeth clanking from the cold, Myrtle frantically rubbed her hands together, and heading to the nearest window, she brushed a palm over the frosted pane.

A light snow had begun to fall, coating the ground with a dusting of white.

Only . . . is it really so impossible to believe your family forgot you? You’ve been all but forgotten for the past four years.

Myrtle stood there, tapping the tip of her right foot on the cold earthen floor as she let the truth of her family’s departure and her circumstances sink in.

They had not only left . . . They had left her. They’d gone on to Scotland to hold the revelries that were always reserved for London.

And here she was, with only herself for company.

No noisy cousins about.

No vexing siblings.

No always-correcting-her parents.

And Myrtle slowly ceased tapping her toes, and a slow smile turned her lips up.

She was alone here in London.

With a jubilant shout, she took off running; bypassing her own rooms, she made for Cassia’s chambers. Not breaking stride, she threw the white-paneled double doors wide.