“As you should, for killing your staff,” the lady scolded as she handed two logs over to him, shoving them against his chest.

Val caught them reflexively.

“At the very least. Killing servants is in bad form.” Lady Myrtle paused in her search and then, bending down, dug through the snow, pulling out another log.

She added it to the fast-growing stack in his arms.

And he proved as helpless to keep back a second question, this time a droll one. “And killing anyone else is in good form?”

“Well, I’d say servants are deserving of far greater respect and appreciation for the work they do. In fact, I can think of a number of unkind lords and ladies who the world would be best served if they met an accident or as quick an end as your servants did.”

It didn’t matter what outlandish tale she and her deuced nosy family had concocted, and yet . . . “I did not murder my servants,” he said in the same frosty ducal tones his late grandfather had perfected and Val had vowed never to use.

But then, that had been before he’d met this one.

The lady patted the top of his gloved hand. “As all killers certainly insist.”

The young woman straightened, gathered up her skirts, and he expected—prayed—she intended to leave. But only returned to her search for the remainder of his wood.

And he, Val Bancroft, the Duke of Aragon, found himself at a complete, total, and absolute loss.

As she hummed a happy little tune under her breath, it stirred the air, filling the winter sky, and wafting higher, up to the heavens—if there were, in fact, such a place in the hereafter.

“Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the Feast of Stephen

When the snow lay round about

Deep and crisp and even . . .”

Val froze.

“Brightly shone the moon that night

Though the frost was cruel

When a poor man came in sight

Gathering winter fuel . . .”

The lady paused briefly in her song, and Val gave thanks to a God he’d ceased believing in that she’d stopped. “Funny that you are a poor man gathering fuel. Not poor-poor,” she jabbered. “But there are different forms of poor, and you certainly fall into one of those categories.”

Uncaring of which she’d place him in, just wanting her gone, he was opening his mouth to tell her as much when she erupted into song for a second time.

“Hither, page, and stand by me,

If thou knowst it, telling

Yonder peasant, who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?”

And it mattered not the icy snow beneath the heels of his boots or the frigidity of the winter’s day—a sweat broke out over his skin as he was transported back to another young lady, cheerfully singing.

The lyrical tones of an earth-angel.

“Bring me flesh and bring me wine

Bring me pine logs hither