With everything her brother had revealed at dinner the previous evening, however, the gentleman was certainly entitled to his misery, and to being miserable.

And she tended not to opt to spend her time with people who were miserable.

However, with all of London gone but for the two of them, beggars could hardly be choosers.

As such, when the gentleman guided his horse through the two gates that hung open outside his properties and climbed astride the enormous creature, setting the mount off at a quick canter, Myrtle hurried as best as she was able through her morning ablutions, and then she grabbed some volumes off her bookshelf, headed down the stairs . . . and out the door.

As much as Val despised Christmas and the company of people, that was equal to how much he loved riding his horse.

At the heart of the London Season, he took care to ride well before the sun rose, at the ungodly hours when people slept and he could be assured that he wouldn’t have to suffer through anyone’s company.

But the winter was different.

During the winter, he was free to ride without a worry of the hour or running into people for the simple reason that London was empty.

Which he did, and did often.

And yet, as he returned from his morning ride, dismounting outside the front of his residence, he found London wasn’t so very empty, after all.

And what was worse . . . for a second time that day, he found himself . . . with company.

Unblinking, Val stared at his stables.

The young lady sat just outside them on an overturned crate that, since his absence, she appeared to have dragged over and fashioned into a makeshift seat for herself.

With a book held between her fingers and all her attention on her reading, the minx may as well have been at the Temple of the Muses bookshop rather than seated outside in the midst of a rapidly increasing snowstorm.

She licked the tip of her gloved index finger and turned the page.

Val narrowed his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he barked.

The lady emitted a little shriek; the book flew from her fingers, shooting upward before landing with a thump, muffled by the snow, on the earth.

She hopped up. “Your Grace,” she greeted with a confusing amount of warmth and eagerness.

At his presence?

Most feared coming ’round him for a host of reasons.

Those who did—his butler and, on occasion, Val’s brother—did so out of obligation.

“I asked what the hell you are doing here,” he demanded for a second time when the lady continued to stand there with that wide, double-dimpled smile on her plump cheeks.

She rescued her book and then held it aloft, waggling the small leather volume his way. “I was reading.”

His brow dipped.

Reading?

“Reading,” she confirmed with a nod, silently answering the question that had existed solely in his mind.