Only, as he opened his eyes and found Myrtle staring earnestly back through the largest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen, the words froze on his tongue.

He couldn’t—this time, anyway—bring himself to hurt or offend her.

Instead, he did the only thing he could think of, the one thing he’d believed himself incapable of anymore: he sought to assuage those irrational fears.

“I understand that it must be daunting for you to find yourself alone, Myrtle,” he said softly, attempting to inject a gentle quality into his voice, which even to his own ears emerged as gravelly and harsh. “But imagining two men who are out to steal from your father’s collection is as unlikely as ghosts haunting your house.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts?” she asked.

That was her takeaway? That was the one particular detail she’d fix on? Val slammed the heel of his palm against his forehead and dragged his fingers down his face. “I believe your parents surely have sense enough to not hire someone so untrustworthy.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, her features a perfect mask of wryness. “The same parents who forgot me here in London.”

Valid point. He tried again. “Very well. Then these men wouldn’t be so unwise as to come to Mayfair and steal from an earl. They’d risk a hanging.”

“But why—”

“There are no strange men. There are no thieves, Myrtle,” he said, this time with a harsh bluntness meant to penetrate her irrationality. “There is just you and me and a pair of men who work for your family who have specific tasks to see to.”

“But then why creep about my family’s house? Hmm?” she probed. “Because I saw them walking around outside just today.”

God, she was as tenacious as ivy clinging to a building. Before he realized what he did, Val tossed his arms up as she did when she was annoyed. “I don’t know, Myrtle,” he said, exasperated. “Mayhap Mr. Phippen employed them for tasks other than inventorying your family’s property. Mayhap they also specialize in assessing windows and are conducting measurements or counting the panes or determining whether any of the glass might again be used.”

The lady chewed at her lower lip, and despite himself, Val’s gaze followed that innocent and unexpectedly arousing effort of her teeth worrying that narrow flesh.

His breath hitched peculiarly in his chest as another swell of desire slipped through him.

Suddenly, she stopped, and he wrenched his eyes up to meet her direct stare.

“That sounds unlikely, Val.”

Through the haze of hungering, his mind was slow to process . . . and then it did.

Val’s eyebrows shot up. “My suggestions are the ones that sound unlikely?” His voice echoed around the stone walls of the kitchen and off the low ceiling.

She shrugged.

That was it, nothing more than a little lift of those narrow shoulders in answer to his question.