“I tried to tell my father and mother, but noooooooo.” She stretched more syllables than he’d ever known were capable of being added to a single-syllable word, and as if that weren’t exaggeration enough, she waved her palms in front of her for emphasis. “They insist Mr. Phippen has them doing his work, which I find highly suspect. Inventorying items,” she muttered under her breath. She shook her head. “They don’t even know antiquities. As such, what were they even labeling them?” She stared at Val as if expecting he’d have the answer to that very question.

He attempted desperately to follow what in blazes she was saying.

And failed.

He shook his head.

The lady jabbed a finger in the air. “Exactly. If they don’t know what the historical significances of the pieces are, they can’t properly inventory them.”

“You believe there are men who’ve come to steal from you?”

“I’ve already said as much, have I not?”

She had.

Twice. Mayhap even three times now. It was all confused at this moment.

As was he, and everything else when it came to Myrtle McQuoid.

“Not from me, per se,” she clarified. “But my father, as it is his collection . . . I don’t have valuables. Not any that I’ve collected,” she spouted on, and then her gaze suddenly grew wistful. “Unlike my older brother Arran. He has a collection of his own and has seen the world in his travels.”

She’d a faraway look to her, as if equal parts entranced at the possibility of travel and envious of the brother whom she now spoke of, and he found himself intrigued in that moment by the lady before him, who herself was besotted not by bolts of fabric but by the prospect of seeing a world beyond London.

Discomfited by this unwanted awareness of the lady, he forced them back to the worrying that had brought about an already entirely too lengthy discourse.

“Your father himself has hired these men,” Val said.

“Yes.”

“As such, I expect he’d know those he’s hired.”

“Then you do not know my father,” she countered. “He is very trusting.” She held Val’s eyes. “Very.”

This . . . from her? Good God, what did that say about the man who’d sired her?

“If you happen to see anything amiss, Your Grace”—she leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper—“anything at all, you must come and alert me.”

He kept his features deadpan. “You’ve my word.”

“Thank you.” Myrtle flashed another one of her sunny smiles, and oddly, that flash of cheer didn’t have the same grating effect it had before. Suddenly, she chewed at the tip of her glove. “I daresay if we’re now working together to apprehend these fiends, we are certainly friends now.”