Whatever it was, Myrtle envied her elder sister the luxuriance of such a dress. What would Myrtle look like in a gown so fine?

Nay, ask the question you really wish . . . a voice silently taunted. What would Val think of you in such a dress?

He’d likely—

“Myrtle?” More annoyance than usual underlined his query.

“I’m almost done,” she called, startled back to the moment and into drawing the garment on. “He’d likely be as unmoved as he always is around you,” she muttered to herself.

“What was that?”

“I said ‘don’t move as they might be around here,’” she called back, not missing a beat, her tendency through the years of speaking to herself having provided her with the skill to prevaricate whatever it was she’d said aloud.

“The men.”

“Yesss, the men,” she repeated, a healthier, safer annoyance taking the place of any regret at Val not seeing her as he might a woman.

She balked, her entire mind, body, and soul recoiling from that.

Not that she cared if he saw her as a woman. She didn’t.

With those girlish musings about him dissolving, and any and all romantic sentiments that had crept in dying, she stomped barefoot across the room.

She yanked the panel open. “I’m done.”

He flicked a cursory glance over her. “I see that.”

That was it . . .

She’d said she didn’t care about whether he viewed her as a desirable woman, and she didn’t.

But she still expected . . . some reaction from him at her being . . . in a fine sapphire gown.

“That’s it?” she blurted, before she could call the words back.

“I . . .” He shook his head, looking so truly hopeless and lost that she found herself battling . . . tears. He drew back. “What is it?” His question came as a harsh command from a man who clearly didn’t wish to ask it but felt compelled to do so anyway.

“I don’t want to have a London Season,” she found herself whispering.

He cocked his head. “I . . . don’t follow.”

“No man is going to want me.”

“They will,” he said gruffly, wrestling with the collar of his jacket.

“No, they won’t. No one ever does, Val. And I’m going to find myself stuck with the next best thing: companionship.”

“And companionship is so bad?” he asked with a gentleness she’d never before heard from him, and one she would have expected he was incapable of.

But then, she should have already learned at every turn there was always more where this man was concerned.

“Did you have companionship?” she returned as gently as she could, already knowing the answer. “Or did you have a grand love?”

“I had a grand love,” he murmured quietly, his gaze growing sad and wistful.