For how else was she to account for thinking about inviting him to join her? How, after he’d fled from her home like a man whose heels had caught fire?

But then, what was the alternative? That she spend her eighteenth birthday alone and forgotten? And as pathetic as it might be to seek out the company of someone who so clearly did not wish to be with her, it was preferable to sitting alone, wallowing in the reminder that her family had forgotten her.

With a sigh, Myrtle swung her legs over the side of the bench and stood. Heading over to the hearth, she stopped to stoke the fire, adding a log and then waiting until the flames had licked at the edges and embroiled the kindling in a conflagration before returning the poker to its stand.

And before her courage deserted her, Myrtle started from the parlor and, pulling the hood of her cloak up into place, made her way to the front door and then outside.

A blast of cold air rushed to greet her, slapping her in her cheeks and stealing her breath so sharply that she gasped; the frigid air froze the insides of her nostrils.

Burrowing deeper into her cloak, Myrtle descended the handful of steps and started for Val’s residence. An eerie quiet hung over the London streets, so thick and heavy and absolute, the kind that made a young woman recall she was alone and that her family had gone off and that she was at the complete and total mercy of possible thieves planning a heist.

Stop it.

It’s surely your overactive imagination that has you conjuring up that threat.

After all, wasn’t that why nightmares came to children when the house slept and the world went quiet?

And she was certainly not a child. She was a grown woman. Why, even one year older today. A woman who’d spent the better part of four years away from her family, learning how to survive and make a life on her own without them. How many young women could say that?

“At least two dozen or so each year that you’ve been gone,” she muttered aloud, just so she might hear herself speak again. “You weren’t the only woman at Mrs. Belden’s.”

Those assurances didn’t help.

Quickening her steps, Myrtle hastened across the street and bounded swiftly up his steps. She already had a hand out and was knocking.

Hard.

Rocking back on her heels, she waited for several beats of silence before pounding away, louder and harder.

All the while her nape prickled, and shivers traipsed down her spine. Ones that had absolutely nothing to do with the cold or her impending meeting with Val, and everything to do with the sense that she was being watched.

A sense that danger was imminent and coming to her. For her.