“Precisely,” she said, hating herself for being so petty as to resent the woman he’d had who’d known such love and devotion. “And I won’t. I’m passable at best.”

“Roads are passable.”

“Precisely.” She pounced, pointing a finger at him. “And men don’t fall in love with roads.” They fell in love with glorious, interesting women. “I don’t have golden curls.” She yanked at a sopping tress that, even soaked as it had been by the bath, had resumed a frizzy curl.

“I . . . Myrtle, you’re . . . perfectly desirable.”

Except, when he said it in that garbled, reluctant way, as if the admission had been dragged from him, a lady found herself hard-pressed to believe there was any sincerity to it.

She hugged her arms around her middle. “I’m not desirable, Val. People don’t want me about. I’m entirely forgettable.” A half laugh, half sob climbed from her throat and lent a warble to the next words she spoke. “As you can probably tell from my entirely enormous family having forgotten me.” The same family had sent her away to Mrs. Belden and continued on perfectly, as if they’d always been a family of seven and the one missing eighth member had truly never belonged.

Knuckles brushed her chin, as a touch equal parts firm and gentle guided Myrtle’s face over.

“I can’t attest to your family’s failure,” he murmured, his fingers stroking back and forth from her chin to cheek in a tender touch that stole her breath, in a caress she wasn’t even sure he was aware he conducted.

But she was aware.

God help her, she was aware of it, and warmth spiraled in her belly. And butterflies danced.

“Do you know what I do know, Myrtle?” he murmured, and she was capable of nothing more than shaking her head.

“I know that when you have your debut, you’ll be surrounded by a sea of ordinary. Of women who were told to not smile too widely, or laugh too loudly, and who perfectly followed those terrible dictates from cold instructors. And amongst them all, there will be you, with a smile like sunshine and a spirit not crushed by the constraints society placed upon every other woman, whose light will be so very dim in the bright rays that emanate from you.”

Her breath caught, and her heart along with it, and words failed.

As in this moment, with his murmured, silken words leaving her heady, she fell more than a bit in love with Val Bancroft, the Duke of Aragon.

He stilled his touch; his eyes, previously locked with hers, shifted lower, his gaze dipping to her mouth.

And she knew with the intuition of Eve that he was thinking of kissing her, and knew even as his head tipped only a fraction that he intended to.

And she closed her eyes just as his mouth met hers.