Unlike Myrtle’s room, fairly littered with pots to catch the moisture dripping from the ceiling, her sister’s chambers were perfectly dry. Running headlong for the four-poster bed in pink satin, Myrtle launched herself onto the top; the mattress bounced, and she rolled onto her back, flinging her arms out wide as she burrowed into the comfortable bedding, chilled from only the silky material and not the same deluge of roof water that had thoroughly soaked her own bed.

Of course they’d return.

They would realize shortly that she was here and be forced to turn the carriages back.

Depending on how long it was before they did, why, her family might have no choice except to remain in London for the holiday season.

Until then, she was alone.

On the heels of her initial giddiness came rushing in the reality of her circumstances.

She was . . . alone.

There were no siblings or servants about.

There was just her.

And suddenly she was unsure whether to find herself excited about her solitary state . . . or filled with fear.

“Do not be a ninny,” she muttered into the quiet, and unlike most all the times before when she’d spoken to herself out of habit, now she did so as much to hear the sound of her own voice so there wasn’t this absolute silence. “You are not a child.” Myrtle popped up and headed across the room, over to her sister’s armoire. “You are a grown woman, due to have your first London Season,” she reminded herself as she searched the many dresses that had been left behind.

Because unlike Myrtle, who’d been sent to finishing school and lived away from home, Cassia resided here year-round.

Frowning, she grabbed a sapphire dress, opting for one cut in velvet, and hugging it close to her chest, she wandered over to the windows and stared out.

In the short time between her flight from the kitchens to Cassia’s chambers, the snow had begun to fall in earnest.

The streets below proved as empty as her household.

There were no passersby.

There were no street sweepers.

Or servants.

It was as though all of London had been abandoned.

And that absolute stillness below added a whole other layer of isolation to her current circumstances.

She shivered, from the fear of being alone as much as from the wind battering relentlessly against the window.

And then she spied it.

A sliver of movement.

Nay, not “it.”

Rather . . . him.

Surly and rude, and more than a bit boorish, the Duke of Aragon.

Myrtle rubbed her palm over the frosted glass to better get a look at him, not even bothering to attempt to conceal her interest or her study.

With the snow and the space between them, he’d never notice her.

He wasn’t friendly. Far from it. In fact, with all his growling and grumbling, he’d been quite rude.