“If I were drowning, would I be talking?” she shot back.

And fortunately, he let the matter rest.

For a moment.

“Are there intruders in there?”

Are there . . . ?

It took a moment, and then it hit her.

Why, he was . . . teasing her.

Squeezing the washcloth into a wet, soapy ball, she hurled it at the door, catching the panel. Water droplets sprayed as it hit with a thump and sailed to the floor with a thwack.

A laugh sounded on the other side of that oak panel, a deep, booming, and roughened sound of amusement.

And she stilled.

Why . . .

“Valentine . . . are you . . . laughing?”

The rumbling instantly stopped.

There was a pause as only silence filled the air. “No.”

A smile deepened on her lips, and Myrtle sat upright, sloshing water on the other side of the tub onto the floor. “And now . . . lying?”

“I’m not lying. Don’t you have a bath to take?”

“I do.” She paused, eyeing the cloth she’d hurled his way. “Except I dropped my washcloth.”

“You threw it,” he corrected.

She stuck her tongue out. “Very well. I threw it, but can you fetch—”

“No.”

Myrtle sighed.

Climbing out of the bath, she padded quickly across the kitchen floor. Gathering up a new cloth, she hurried over and climbed back in.

The water, still hot but less steamy, closed over her shoulders, and she sighed. And this time as she soaped her body, scrubbing away the dirt, she spoke to Val. “Do you really believe those men work for Mr. Phippen?”

“I do.”

“And that I’m being ridiculous?”

“I didn’t say you were ridiculous,” he said in gruff protest. He paused. “But I do believe it’s fanciful imagining thieves attempting to break in, particularly as they would have just done so by this point, no?”

She hesitated, considering that. “I’d not thought of that.”

“Fear doesn’t always allow us to be rational in our thought process.” He spoke as one who knew.

“Do you have things you fear?” she asked, and she expected him to deliver either a scathing rebuke of her question or another mocking response.

“Yes,” he said quietly. That was it.

She waited for him to say more.

But he didn’t.

And this time, Myrtle sensed his need for an end to that particular questioning, and the woman whom she’d always been would not have hesitated to press him for more.

But she didn’t.

She continued her bath in silence.

Reaching for the cake of soap, she lathered her hair, and once properly scrubbed, she submerged herself once more, and then stopped.

Blast and tarnation.

“Val, I have a problem,” she said.

A quiet curse met her ears, and she found herself smiling once more at the freedom with which he responded.

“What now?”

“I forgot garments to change into. Will you fetch them for me?”

She braced for an immediate declination.

“Where am I going?”