He was rude, was he?
“What in hell were you doing at my windows?” he said tightly.
“Looking for servants. My sister said—” The young woman instantly stopped speaking, clamping her lips in a line and letting her words go unfinished.
Good. At last, he’d silence from her. And he took advantage of it. “I don’t care if your sisters like stories. I don’t care if they write them, sell them, or anything else for that matter.” He looked to his dog.
His dog.
Val patted his thigh once.
Horace cocked his head and remained locked at the McQuoid girl’s side.
His planned tirade briefly forgotten, Val slapped his leg a second time—this time harder.
When his faithful pup made no attempt to come, Val swallowed a curse and stalked the remaining distance until he towered over lady and dog.
Up close, he appreciated the lady was an even tinier thing than he’d credited. Her curls were an even greater tangle, and her round eyes were even wider, giving her the look of an owl startled from its perch.
Hardly pretty but certainly interesting to look at, in a peculiar way.
Interesting to look at? Val started. Where in hell had that thought come from?
He recoiled. His face flushed.
“Come,” he commanded, and his dog whimpered, stepping behind the young woman’s skirts.
Val gritted his teeth. This was really enough.
The lady gave him a pitying look, and then leaning close to Horace’s pointed grey ear, she whispered something that sounded a good deal like, “Your master is sad. Go be with him . . .” She nudged him lightly with her palm.
Alas, Horace did not budge.
The lady said something else, and at last, the dog trotted over, back to Val’s side.
He clenched his teeth all the harder, the muscles of his jaw radiating in painful protest. “Do you know what I do care about, my lady?”
“Your dog?” she ventured.
“Yes.” Flummoxed, he tried to right the remainder of his curt argument. “But that wasn’t—” He gave his head a hard shake. “That isn’t what I was talking about.”
“Oh.” She tipped her head back so she could more directly meet his eyes—she, the unlikely first person to do so after his wife’s passing. That subtle angling of her neck only put her features on prominent display: an elfin nose and slightly too-large ears that peeked out from her hair. She gave those curls a slight shake. “You were saying?”
“I care about trespassers who’ve invaded my properties and made a pest of themselves,” he hissed. He infused as much steel as he could into that pronouncement, and yet, even as he spoke, the lady nodded. “I care about people who peer in my windows and pry.” The last words spoken seemed to penetrate.
She widened her eyes. “You are speaking of . . . me?”
Was he . . . ?
With a growl, Val leaned down and stuck his face in hers and snarled. “Are there any other people about, invading my properties and peering in my windows to pry?”
The young miss gasped softly, and she darted her tongue out, trailing it along a seam of thin lips.
At last, he’d frightened her.
Good.
Val, however, wasn’t done with Lady Myrtle McQuoid. He wanted her gone not just today . . . but every day beyond this.
“You are not wanted, Lady Myrtle McQuoid. Do not come back here again . . .” He paused for effect, letting the prominent break linger. “Or else.”
The lady drew back, pulling away from him.
Immobile with fear? Or rooted there by the same stubbornness she’d displayed this day?
Neither caring nor wishing to find out, he snarled, “Now, go!”
With that, the young woman took off running, tripping and slipping slightly as she went, but moving at a quick pace and managing to keep her footing, an impressive feat with the icy snow coating the cobblestones.
Val stood, staring after her retreating form as it grew smaller and smaller . . . He followed her flight all the way to the front door of her family’s property, and then as a servant on the other side of that double doorway drew the panels open and let the lady inside.
And he’d confirmation she was, at last, gone.
For good.
With his nose, Horace nudged Val hard against his knee.
“What?” he asked defensively. “She was a busybody, peering in our windows. I’ll not feel badly for running her off.” Nay, the only thing he would feel badly about was that he’d entertained the nosy chit as long as he had. “We’re better without her sort.” Or any sort, for that matter.
He’d come to appreciate surliness and coldness for the armor they provided; they insulated him from people, which kept him safe from feeling anything. Feeling nothing was safer. He’d come to appreciate ennui as the gift it was. Loving and living and laughing had been highly overrated emotions that only left a person crippled with pain.
“Who was that, Your Grace?”
Startled, he peered over his shoulder.
He looked to Jenkins, having failed to hear the older servant’s approach. The man was permitted greater freedom than most in the questions he asked. He was one of the few servants whom Val had kept on. The rest he’d scattered to his various estates throughout England. But the old man had come with Dinah from her family’s home, and for that Val had remained unable to send him away.
“No one,” he said, and it was an honest answer. “It was no one.” That was precisely what the peculiar, long-winded creature was to him—nothing. “Why are you out here?” he demanded as he headed for his townhouse.
“I wanted to report to you on the current state of the household.” Jenkins limped, managing to keep up.
“And that could not have taken place when I’d come inside?” he asked tightly, adjusting his step slightly to accommodate the fool servant’s gout.
“Most of the staff has gone,” Jenkins said when they reached the inside. “Only three remain for now: Cook and the footman, Thomas, will stay on. The remainder of the maids will depart in the early-morn hours, Your Grace.”
And it was a testament to the older man’s place in the household and the length of his tenure that he took the liberty of ignoring the question Val had put to him, and instead issued an enumeration of the staff.
“Good, they should have left a week ago,” Val said, stalking—albeit at a leisurely pace—along the corridors, largely doused in the darkness he preferred. “And you should have gone with them.” He reached his offices and, drawing the door open, let Horace inside first, then made for the drink cart.
A day like this called for brandy. This time of year invariably did, and had, since his wife’s passing. But after the vexing visit from a nosy woman, with her busybody ways, he especially needed a drink more than ever.
The gall of her. Insolent baggage.
Jenkins hovered in the entrance of the room. “I would, however, like to propose”—as he invariably did—“that all be allowed to—”
“No,” Val said, already anticipating the suggestion.
“Remain on.”
“It is Christmas.” That godforsaken, most hated, heinous time of year—for Val. The last thing he cared to have about was anyone, family or staff. Not at a season where people were invariably cheerful and joyous and all things he’d never be, and never wanted to be, again. “You should be with your family.”