The Virtuoso

Four

“You look skinny,” Axel Belmont observed as he closed the guest room door behind the last of the bucket-laden footmen. “And you’ve spent a deal of time in the sun.”

“Roofs tend to be in the sun,” Val said, “if one is fortunate.”

“Let me.” Belmont snagged Val’s sleeve and deftly removed a cuff link. Val let him, thinking back to how long it had taken his left hand to actually get the right cuff link fastened. Darius had taken his inconsiderate self off to London at first light, leaving Val to don proper attire for the first time in days, and make a slow, difficult job of it.

“What’s wrong with this hand?” Belmont took Val’s left hand in his own and peered at it curiously.

“I’ve managed to do some damage to it.” Val sat to remove his boots, taking his hand from Belmont’s inspection. “Manual labor is not without its perils.”

“Tell me about it.” Belmont took Val’s boots and set them outside the door. “I was resetting a pair of shoes on Abby’s gelding a few days ago, and he spooked on the cross ties. My toes will probably be purple until Christmas. Good for sympathy, though.”

“You’re in need of sympathy from your new wife already?” Val asked as he stepped out of his breeches. He eyed the tub with something close to lust and stepped in without another word.

Belmont regarded Val’s naked form with frank appraisal. “My wife will want to stuff you like a goose, Windham. Have you no provisions at your campsite?”

“We eat regularly.” Val sank into the water on a heartfelt sigh. “I’m not sitting on my arse all day anymore, playing pretty tunes and idling hours away. God in heaven, was there ever a pleasure greater than a hot bath?”

“If you have to ask that, you are not right in the head, or somewhere else.”

“I’ve been accused of same.” Val closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “There is a kind of grime farm ponds do not get clean.”

“It has been at least a year since I’ve gone swimming,” Belmont replied, gathering up Val’s breeches, shirt, and socks. “Now you may soak. I’ve no doubt my wife is grilling Mrs. Fitz at some length, so take your time. By the way, you seem to be getting on with the lady well enough.”

“She is amiable,” Val pronounced from his tub. “As am I.”

“Amiable.” Belmont frowned. “Well, all right. I won’t pry, but Abby will get the details out of Mrs. Fitz, so you might want to spill anyway.”

Val frowned right back. “What I tell you will get straight back to our mutual friend Nick, who will tell my brother Westhaven, who will tell his wife, who will be interrogated by Her Grace, and so forth. You and your brother are no doubt discreet fellows who do not cut up each other’s peace. My borders are not as easily defended as yours.”

“Fair enough. So let me leave it at this: If you do want to talk, I can, contrary to your surmise, keep my mouth shut. Ellen is lovely, and had I been a different kind of widower and she a different kind of widow, she and I might have been closer friends.”

“What does that mean?” Val scowled, abruptly wishing they were having this discussion when he was dressed and not lounging naked in a tub.

“It means I would not blame either one of you for what you did in private,” Belmont said. “Neither would Abby.”

Val blinked. “My thanks.”

“I’ll see your boots cleaned and leave them at the door.”

Axel repaired to his library, there to start a letter to Nick Haddonfield, generally regarded to be Val Windham’s closest friend. And while Axel would not violate a confidence, something had to be relayed to Nick regarding his brother-in-law Darius and his friend Lord Val, if only placatory generalities. Darius had attached himself to Val at Nick’s request, after all, and this little plan to foster Day and Phillip in Windham’s camp had been Nick’s casual suggestion, as well.

Casual, indeed.

Ellen unpinned her hat and surveyed the gracious, airy guestroom. “You weren’t joking about a bath, were you?” Maids were trooping in, each one dumping two buckets of warm water into a large copper bathing tub.

“Travel in summer is often a dusty, uncomfortable business,” Abby Belmont said as she closed the drapes to the balcony doors. “And being around Day and Phillip can leave anybody in need of some peace and quiet. Shall I send a maid in to assist you?”

“Oh, good heavens, no.” Ellen blushed to even think of it, and Abby regarded her curiously.

“Axel told me you don’t use the title. By rights we should be ladyshipping you and so forth. Let’s get you out of that dress, and you can tell me how the boys really behaved.”

Grateful for the change in topic, Ellen pattered on cheerfully about Day and Phillip until she was soaked, shampooed, rinsed, brushed out, dried off, and dressed for luncheon.

“You didn’t love your first husband the way you love Mr. Belmont, did you?” Ellen asked before they’d left the privacy of the guest room. The question would have been unthinkable even an hour ago, but pretty, dark-haired Abby Belmont—formerly Abby Stoneleigh—had a comfortable, unpretentious air about her.

“That is a difficult question,” Abby replied slowly, “but no, I was never in love with Gerald and probably never truly loved him, though I was—however mistakenly—grateful to him. I am in love with my present husband, but even he, who loved his first wife dearly, would tell you a second marriage is not like a first.”

Ellen said nothing—the topic was one of idle curiosity only—and let Abby link their arms and lead her to the family dining room.

In the course of the meal, Ellen watched as Val consumed a tremendous quantity of good food, all the while conversing with the Belmonts about plans for his property, the boys’ upcoming matriculation, and mutual acquaintances. At the conclusion of the meal, Belmont offered Val and Ellen a tour of the property, and Abby departed on her husband’s arm to take her afternoon nap.

“May I offer you a turn through the back gardens while we wait for our host?” Val asked Ellen when the Belmonts had repaired abovestairs. “There’s plenty of shade, and I need to move lest I turn into a sculpture of ham and potatoes.”

He soon had her out the back door, her straw hat on her head. She wrapped her fingers around Val’s arm and pitched her voice conspiratorially low. “Find us some shade and a bench.”

He led her through gardens that were obviously the pride and joy of a man with a particular interest in flora, to a little gazebo under a spreading oak.

“Did we bore you at lunch with all of our talk of third parties and family ties?” he asked as he seated her inside the gazebo.

“Not at all, but you unnerved me with your familiar address.”

Val grimaced. “I hadn’t noticed. Suppose it’s best to go on as I’ve begun, though, unless you object? They aren’t formal people.”

“They are lovely people. Now sit you down, Mr. Windham, and take your medicine.” She withdrew her tin of comfrey salve, and Val frowned.

“You don’t have to do this.” He settled beside her on the bench that circled five interior sides of the hexagonal gazebo.

“Because you’ll be so conscientious about it yourself?” She’d positioned herself to his left and held out her right hand with an imperious wave. Taking Val’s left hand in her right, she studied it carefully.

“I didn’t get to see this the other night. It looks like it hurts.”

“Only when I use it. But if you’ll just hand me the tin, I can see to myself.”

“Stop being stubborn.” She dipped her fingers into the salve. “It’s only a hand, and only a little red and swollen. Maybe you shouldn’t be using it at all.” She began to spread salve over his knuckles while Val closed his eyes. “You have no idea why this has befallen you?”

“I might have overused it. Or it might be a combination of overuse and a childhood injury, or it might be just nerves.”

“Nerves?” Ellen peered over at him while she stroked her fingers over his palm. “One doesn’t usually attribute nerves to such hearty fellows as you.”

“It started the day I buried my second brother,” Val said on a sigh. He turned his head as if gazing out over the gardens or toward the manor house that sat so serenely on a small rise.

“You didn’t tell me you’d lost a brother.” She switched her grip so Val’s hand was between both of hers and her thumbs were circling on his broad and slightly callused palm.

“Two, actually. One on the Peninsula under less than heroic circumstances, though we don’t bruit that about, the other to consumption.” His voice could not have been more casual, but Ellen was holding his hand and felt the tension radiating from him.

“Valentine, I am so very sorry.”

“How did your husband die?” Val asked, desperately wanting to change the subject if not snatch his hand away and tear across the fields until he was out of sight.

“Fall from a horse.” Ellen said, though she did not turn loose of Val’s hand. “He lingered for two weeks, put his affairs in order—not that Francis’s affairs were ever out of order—then slipped away. I thought…”

“You thought?”

“I thought he was recovering.” She sighed, her fingers going still, though she kept his hand cradled in both of hers. “There was no outward injury, you see. He took a bump on the head, and there was some bruising around his middle, but no bleeding, no infection, nothing you’d think would kill a man.”

“He might have been bleeding inside. Or that bump on the head might have been what got him.”

“He was upset with himself to be incapacitated,” Ellen said softly. “The Markhams have bad hearts, you see. Their menfolk don’t often live past fifty, and some don’t live half that long. They are particularly careful of their succession, and so my failure to provide a son stood out in great relief. Francis was upset with himself for not seeing to his duty, not upset with me. His first wife had done no better than I, though, and that was some comfort.”

“I didn’t know you were a second wife,” Val said as Ellen shifted her ministrations to his wrist and forearm.

“She died of typhus. They were also married for five years, and I know Francis was very fond of her.”

“Fond.” Val winkled his nose at the term. “I suppose that’s genteel, but I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with somebody of whom I am merely fond. I am fond of Ezekiel.”

“Your horse.” Ellen smiled at him. “He is fond of you, as well, but when you have nobody and nothing to be even fond of, then fond can loom like a great boon.”

“Nobody?” Val cocked his head, addressing her directly. “No cousins, no uncles or aunts, no old granny knitting in some kitchen?”

Ellen shook her head. “I was the only child of only children and born to them late in life. The present generation of Markhams was not prolific either. There’s Frederick, of course, and some theoretical cousin who enjoys the status of Frederick’s heir, but I do not relish Frederick’s company, and I’ve never met the cousin.”

“What is a theoretical cousin?”

“Francis called him that,” Ellen said, switching to long, slow strokes along Val’s forearm. It was a peculiarly soothing way to be touched, though Val had the sense she’d all but forgotten what her hands were doing. “I gather Mr. Grey might be joined so far back to the family tree as to make the connection suspect, or he might have been born to his mother long after she’d separated from Mr. Grey.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” Ellen smiled at him again, the smile reaching her eyes this time. “We are holding hands in a location likely chosen to shield us from the prying eyes of our host and hostess.”

Val smiled back. “I am found out, though since when does it take an hour to escort one’s wife abovestairs?”

“I don’t begrudge them their marital bliss, or a lady in an interesting condition her rest.”

“If rest is what she’s getting.”

“Your question?”

“Why don’t you use the Markham name? You go by Ellen FitzEngle, when in fact you are Baroness Roxbury, and not even the dowager baroness, since Frederick hasn’t remarried.”

“FitzEngle was my mother’s maiden name,” Ellen said, her grip shifting back down to his palm and knuckles. “I wanted no associations with the Roxbury barony when I moved to Little Weldon, and there are few who know exactly to whom I was married.”

“Why? Were you ashamed of the connection?”

“I was ashamed of myself. I failed my husband in the one duty a wife is expected to perform. I did not want anybody’s pity or their scorn. My privacy means a lot to me.”

“But you dissemble,” Val said gently. “You are entitled to the respect of your position, and yet you labor all day in those gardens as if you have no portion, no connections, no place in society.”

Val tightened his fingers around hers when she would have drawn away. “You haven’t any portion, have you? No dower property. Why, Ellen? You speak of your husband as if he were some kind of saint, and yet even when he had time to put his affairs in order, he did not provide for you.”

“You will not speak ill of my husband. He provided for me.”

Secrets had a particular scent all their own, an unpleasant, cloying sweetness from being held too closely and carrying more power than they should. Val admitted he himself was keeping secrets from the woman beside him—the secret of his father’s ducal title, the secret of his musical ability—his former musical ability. Ellen wasn’t simply hiding her own title, however. She was hiding an entire past from an entire village.

“I did not mean to impugn Francis,” Val said carefully, turning his hand over to stroke his thumb over Ellen’s wrist. “I am concerned for you.”

“My situation is adequate for the present. Your concern is misplaced.”

His concern was not misplaced, though neither was it appreciated. A change of topic was in order. “Are you done with my hand, or might I convince you to hold on to it as we admire Axel’s gardens?”

“You might.” Ellen rose, and Val escorted her along a shady, winding path. He counted himself lucky, because she did indeed keep hold of his hand as she turned the topic. “Does this place give you ideas about your own grounds?”

“It does.” Val understood the conversation must not stray back to the personal until Ellen had her emotional balance. “The first such idea is that my estate needs a name. It will be the old Markham place until fifty years after I hang something else on the gateposts.”

“What comes to mind?”

“Nothing. And I don’t want to force a name on the place when names and labels have a way of becoming permanent.”

“What does the estate signify to you?” Ellen asked, keeping his fingers loosely linked with her own.

Val pursed his lips in thought. “Hard work. A summer project, an escape.” A dalliance.

He didn’t say that, of course. He wasn’t sure it was true. When he’d risen that morning and seen Darius departing on his piebald gelding, Val had felt a measure of relief to think the weekend would be spent in company. Somehow, sitting on Ellen’s porch in the evening darkness, he’d opened the topic of a different relationship with Ellen—a dalliance.

He’d meant to apologize for a year-old kiss, maybe, or to kiss her again. He wasn’t sure which, but he certainly hadn’t intended to baldly proposition the lady.

The matter had arisen unbidden, without Val planning to broach it. In his view, women as intimate partners were lovely creatures, like birds or pets or pretty house plants. They graced his life but were hardly necessary to it. When the occasional urge arose, he often felt it as a distraction from his music, indulging his sexual proclivities as an afterthought or an aside between the more fascinating business to be transacted at his keyboard.

He liked sex—he liked it a lot—but he seldom went in search of it.

And thus, he mused, he was probably no damned good at comprehending when he needed what Nick called a friendly poke, or how to arrange it with a minimum of fuss.

“You are quiet,” Ellen said. “Do you think of your brothers?”

“Every day,” Val said on a resigned sigh. It appeared they were going to brush up against this most uncomfortable topic again.

“It will get better,” Ellen assured him. “If it hasn’t already. You don’t just think of the loss, you also think of the good times and the gifts they left you with. You see the whole picture on your good days, and the ache fades.”

“Maybe. But it felt like I was just getting to that place with Bart’s death, which was stupid and avoidable, when Victor’s decline became impossible to ignore. And Victor and I had grown closer when Bart and Dev went off to war.”

She was silent for a moment as they strolled along. “I have pouted because I was an only child, but I never did consider what an affront it would be to lose siblings, particularly siblings in their prime, and siblings I was close to. I am sorry, Valentine, for your losses.”

He stopped walking, the emotional breath knocked out of him for reasons he could not consider. He’d heard the same platitude a thousand times before—two thousand—and knew the polite replies, but now Ellen’s arms went around his waist, and the polite replies choked him. Slowly, tentatively, he wrapped an arm, then two, around her shoulders, closed his eyes, and rested his cheek against her hair.

Frederick Markham was angry, and when he was angry his digestion became dyspeptic, which made him angrier still. A fellow needed the comforts of good food and fine spirits to soothe him when aggravations such as petty debts plagued him.

God damn Cousin Francis. With each passing quarter, the indignity of the late baron’s scheme became harder to bear. If it weren’t for the rents Ellen had passed along from Little Weldon, there would have been no hunting in the shires the previous winter. Even with burdensome economies, the Season itself had been cramped. Now, Frederick had tarried too long in Town, and there was no convenient house party to entertain him as summer got under way.

And because he’d gambled his last unentailed property away, there would not be as much rental income. What on earth had he been thinking?

The old place out near Little Weldon had been a ruin, true, but it had been, to some extent, his ruin. Frederick had gotten the deed from the solicitors so he might study it, not toss it aside in a damned card game. And study it he had, while Windham—Lord Valentine, rather—apparently had not.

Else why would the man be pouring time and money into the place? Ellen was a young woman and technically entitled to live there for the rest of her days. She wasn’t a fool, of course—the income wouldn’t be hers regardless of what any deed said, but Windham might get to sniffing around the legalities and wondering what exactly was afoot.

Frederick’s hand absently rubbed at his chest, where heartburn was making him almost as miserable as the summer’s heat. Creditors would hound a gentleman to death. He scowled, eyeing a pile of duns on his desk. Perhaps it was time for a respite at Roxbury Hall, and perhaps it was time Frederick reminded dear Ellen of her priorities too.

It was Saturday, the skies were clear, and the roads would be deserted outside of Town. He bellowed for his curricle, bellowed for his valet to toss a few things into an overnight bag, then bellowed for his medicinal flask. If he was tooling out to Oxfordshire in this heat, he’d have to settle his stomach first.

“I’ve come to kidnap your hand again.” Ellen waved her little tin under Val’s nose. She’d knocked on his door very boldly about an hour after the household had risen from another very fine evening meal. It was full dark, the crickets were chirping, and Val had been resisting the pull of Axel’s music room with every fiber of his being.

“You may have my hand,” he said, stepping into the hallway. “Shall you drag me terrified into the night, or will you turn Axel’s library into a temporary prison?”

“Let’s go out. It’s a lovely night, and I am not used to such rich fare. Then too, I miss my gardens.”

Val offered his right hand, she laced her fingers through his, and within minutes, they were back at the gazebo, watching a three-quarter moon drift up over the flowers.

“You must tell me if I hurt you,” Ellen cautioned him. “I literally cannot see what I’m doing in this darkness.”

Val smiled at the thought. “I doubt you could hurt me, but do your worst.”

She bent to her task, her touch now familiar, the smell of the salve oddly reassuring.

“What can I do to repay your kindness?” Val asked as the soothing pleasure of her touch worked its magic. “You’ve given me surplus food that makes the difference between starving and maintaining one’s spirits, you look after my hand, and you’ve broken Belmont’s savages to the bridle. You really must let me do something for you, Ellen FitzEngle. I am as afflicted with pride as the next man.”

“Probably more so,” she observed, turning his hand over and starting on his knuckles. “But you must allow it does me good to be of use to someone else. For five years, I’ve puttered in my gardens, being not more than cordial with my neighbors and not quite included in with the local community. I like my privacy, but I realize it comes at a cost.”

“What cost would that be?” Val asked, wishing he could see her expression.

“I am expendable.” She said the words easily—too easily, maybe. “Widows occupy a niche in most villages. They look after children when others can’t. They attend confinements; they nurse the sick; they are involved in charitable endeavors if they have the means. Relax your arm, sir, or I will take stern measures.”

Val complied, trying to focus on her words without losing awareness of her touch.

“You don’t think you contribute as a widow should?”

“I know I don’t.” She shifted to stroke Val’s wrist and forearm. “I might be more involved, had I children, but I don’t. I am purely a widow, not a mother, a sister, a sister-in-law, a close neighbor, a shopkeeper.”

Val closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Do you think you are more inclined or less than other widows to take a lover?” He sat forward abruptly and opened his eyes. “Forget I asked that and forgive me.”

What on earth was plaguing him, that such a thing would come out of his mouth?

“That isn’t a question one easily forgets,” Ellen replied, and Val was relieved to hear humor in her voice. “If it’s an oblique way of asking if I’m lonely, then you needn’t mince around the issue: I am lonely, and I miss my husband’s attentions. Perhaps I’m a snob, but I can’t see loneliness being assuaged by casual affiliations.”

Val shot her a frown and blew out a breath. She’d just articulated something he himself had long tried to put into words: Casual sex was only mildly appealing because in his experience, it might ease lust, but it only heightened loneliness.

Well, hell.

Hell and the devil.

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” Val said slowly, “because I am a man, and I agree with you.”

“You agree with me, how?” Ellen clasped his hand between both of hers, the warmth of her palms seeping into Val’s sore and aching bones.

“Loneliness and lust are two different things. I still want to kiss you.”

“I did not come out here for that.” She carefully set Val’s hand on his own thigh and sat up.

“Neither did I.” And he wasn’t pleased to admit it. “But you’ll have to be the one to stop me, as I think we need to get this taken care of.”

As introductions to dalliance went, that had to be the worst tone of voice and the worst line of speech Val had ever heard himself compose. He gave her all the time in the world to call him on it and laugh or slap his face or make an abrupt, indignant run for the house. She simply held his gaze, and when he lifted his right hand to brush her hair back, she closed her eyes.

So Val started there, setting his lips on her eyelid, letting the floral scent of her hair tease his nose, then drawing back to kiss the other eye. When he heard her sigh, he shifted to graze his mouth over her cheek and brow and temple, taking his time, learning the contour of each feature with his lips.

When he’d inventoried her face, he paused and switched tactics, bringing the fingers of his right hand up to caress her neck then her jaw. He closed his eyes and traced her bones with his index and middle fingers, reveling in the softness of her skin. It occurred to him he was doing as he’d thought he might when he’d been close to her in the darkness before: He was learning her by touch.

“Valentine,” Ellen whispered, “kiss me, please.”

“Hush.” He bussed her cheek. “I am kissing you.” But he wasn’t done orienting himself with his fingers or nuzzling at her neck or burying his hand in her hair. She moved toward him, her hands slipping up his chest to link at his nape.

“Please.”

She sounded as if she’d put five years of longing and loneliness in that one word, and Val gathered his focus to bring his mouth to hers. He paused again, his lips a quarter inch from hers, then closed his eyes and joined their mouths. Ellen’s mouth clung to his, her hands winnowed through his hair, and her body arched closer to his.

Oh, God, he hadn’t dreamed this. In his mind, Val had referred repeatedly to their sharing one kiss as if it had been some polite little gesture stolen in a moment under the rose arbor.

In truth, a year ago, in the waning light of the overgrown woods, he’d kissed her forever, like he was kissing her now. Lips were just the start of it, as Ellen’s fingers drifted through his hair, around his neck, over his ears—his surprisingly sensitive ears—and down along his chest. She pressed forward, her very body burrowing closer to him, and she conveyed both eagerness and a kind of shy wonder in her touch and posture.

And her mouth, Jesus in the manger, her mouth…

“Sweetheart,” Val whispered, “slow down, easy…” But Ellen took advantage of his lapse to seam his lips with her tongue and cradle his jaw with her hands. He tasted her in return and she groaned, a soft, sweet sound of longing and encouragement.

Val shifted and hoisted her to straddle his lap. He hadn’t planned to do such a thing, but when Ellen looked down at him, dazed, her lips glistening in the moonlight, he had to approve of the impulse.

“You kiss me,” he urged, his hand running down her arm and back up to her collarbone. “Please.”

She framed his face with her hands and bent to the task, tasting him first with her tongue then sealing her mouth to his. Val’s palm moved to the base of her spine, to urge her down, down onto the rising ridge of flesh at his groin. His left hand remained at his side and never had it felt more useless.

“Give me your weight,” he whispered between kisses. “Let me feel your body over mine.”

When he pressed down this time, she let him guide her into his lap. She stopped abruptly when she met his erection then cautiously continued her descent until Val had the gratification of her weight resting on his cock.

“Better,” he murmured, laying his cheek against her sternum. His hand found her calf next, and Ellen went still.

Around them, the sounds and scents of the summer night went into high relief: The pause between breezes and the lift in the air when the lightest wind resumed, the subtle shift in the moon shadows as the air stirred, the blending of fragrances in the warm night.

Val knew what came next. He’d ease her skirts up, diddle her until she either came or was begging him to make her come, then he’d penetrate that sweet heat of hers, and spend—or, if he were going to be a gentleman, he’d withdraw before he spent, cuddle her for a bit, lend her his hankie, and see her back to the house.

It didn’t seem like enough. Not with her.

“Just let me hold you,” he murmured, leaving his hand on the firm muscle of her calf. She relaxed against him, and he felt her lips against his neck. He shifted, enjoying the rub of his cock against her weight but for some reason not repeating the movement. His hand settled on her back, and she relaxed further.

For long moments, she stayed draped over him, letting him rub her back, smooth his hand over her hair, and just pet her. His erection subsided some, but the desire to hold her and touch her did not.

It occurred to him the weakness in his hand might be spreading to his cock, but it was just a passing, insecure thought. It felt right to hold her, and while it didn’t feel wrong to desire her, it didn’t feel desperately necessary to have her sexually, either.

Not just yet.

“Let me have the reins,” Ellen said quietly. They’d made their good-byes to the Belmonts, the savages were asleep in the back of the wagon, and yet she’d waited only until to the foot of Candlewick lane to state her demand.

Val glanced over at her in consternation. “You?”

“Me.” She reached for the reins, and Val saw she was wearing riding gloves. They weren’t as heavy as the driving gloves he sported, but they’d do.

He passed her the reins. “Why?”

“Because these are very sweet beasts and well trained,” Ellen said, shifting a little closer to Val, “and yet they are big fellows and will pull on that hand of yours.”

Amusement fled, leaving Val to frown at his gloved hand then at his companion.

“Did resting it and taking care of it this weekend help?” she asked.

“Maybe. A little. It certainly didn’t hurt.”

“Well, then.” Ellen nodded, apparently feeling her point had been made.

“Ellen, I’ve been resting it for weeks now, and sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse, but it never heals.”

“Take off your glove.” She gestured with her chin. “The left one.”

He complied and inspected his hand. He tried not to look at it, usually—the results were invariably disappointing. Besides, he could feel the differences, between the good days and the other days. Friday had been a bad day.

“See.” Ellen nodded at his hand. “Your third finger is losing its redness, and even your thumb and first finger look a little better. Rest helps, Valentine, real rest.”

“How am I to rebuild an entire estate and rest my hand, Ellen?” Even to his own ears, Val’s voice was petulant. He was surprised she answered him.

“You admit you need to, for starters,” she chided softly. “Of course you will have to use it some, but you hardly give yourself any consideration at all. I see you, sir, up on that roof, tossing slates, or on the lane hacking at the weeds, or hefting stones the size of a five-gallon bucket. Even were you completely hale, you’d be sorely trying that hand.”

She didn’t know the half of it, so Val kept his silence, feeling resentment and frustration build in the soft morning air.

“I didn’t play a single note this weekend,” he said at length, but he said it so quietly, Ellen cocked her head and leaned a little closer.

“On the piano,” Val clarified. “I peeked, though, and it’s a lovely instrument. Belmont plays the violin, and Abby is a passable pianist, or she must be. She has a deal of Beethoven, and you don’t merely dabble, if he’s to your taste.”

“You are musical?”

Val exhaled a world of loss. “Until this summer, I was nothing but musical. Now I am forbidden to play.”

Ellen glanced at his hand. “So you work?”

“So I work.” He scowled at his hand, wanting to hide it. “I keep hoping that one day I’ll wake up and it will be better.”

“Like I used to hope I’d wake up one day and realize my husband was alive and I’d merely dreamed his death. Bloody unfair, but I’m not dreaming.”

Val smiled at her language, finding commiseration in it from an unlikely source. “Bloody unfair. You drive well.”

“And you rebuild estates like you were born to it. But it’s still bloody unfair, isn’t it?”

“Bloody blazingly unfair.”

He hadn’t kissed her again after their interlude in the gazebo, and when she had dragooned him onto a bench with her tin of salve twice on Sunday, they’d stayed more or less in plain sight while she worked on his hand. It meant somebody might see his infirmity, but that was a price Val had been willing to pay for the corresponding assistance with his self-control.

That kiss had taken him aback, the intensity of it and the rightness. More disconcerting still was the way Ellen had felt in his arms, the way he’d been content to hold her and caress her and she’d been content to be held.

Whatever was growing between them, Val sensed it wasn’t just a sexual itch that wanted scratching and then forgetting. It wasn’t just about his cock, but about his hands, and his mouth, and so much more. He hadn’t thought it through to his satisfaction and wasn’t sure he even could.

“What does this week hold for you?” he asked his driver.

Ellen’s smile was knowing, as if she realized he was taking refuge in small talk. “Weeding, of course, and some transplanting. We have to get the professor’s little plants taken care of too, though, so you’ll need to tell me where you want them.”

“You must take your pick first. And you cannot keep donating your time and effort to me, Ellen.”

“I will not allow you to pay me,” she shot back, spine straightening. “The boys do most of the labor, anyway, and I just order them around.”

“Order them—and me—to do something for you,” Val insisted. “Wouldn’t you like a glass house, for example, a place to start your seedlings early or conserve your tender plants over the winter?”

Ellen’s brows rose. “I’ve never considered such a thing.”

“I could build a little conservatory onto that cottage of yours,” Val said, his imagination getting hold of the project. “You already have a window on your southern exposure, and we could simply cut that into a door.”

“Cottages do not sport conservatories.”

Val waved a hand and used one of his father’s favorite expressions. “Bah. If I made you a separate hothouse, you’d have to go outside in the winter months to tend it, and it would need a separate fire and so on. Your cottage will already have some heat to lend it, and we could elevate it a few steps, or I could make the addition the same height as your cottage and put the glass in the roof.”

“A skylight,” Ellen murmured. “They’re called skylights.”

“Pretty name. I’m going to ask Dare to come up with some sketches, and you are going to let me do this.”

“It will bring in the damp.”

Val rolled his eyes. “This is England. The damp comes in, but we’ll bring in the sun too, and ventilate the thing properly.”

“You mustn’t.”

“Ellen, I went the entire weekend without playing a single note.”

“And the significance of this?”

“I don’t know how many more such weekends I can bear.” He wasn’t complaining now, he was being brutally, unbecomingly honest. “The only thing that helps is staying busy, and a little addition to your cottage will keep me busy.”

“You are busy enough.”

“I am not.” He met her eyes and let her see the misery in them. She wouldn’t understand all of it, but she’d see it. “I need to be busier.” So busy he dropped from exhaustion even if he had to ruin his hand to do it, which made no sense at all.

“All right.” Ellen’s gaze shifted to the broad rumps of the horses. “But you will allow me to tend your hand, and you will keep the boys occupied with your house and your grounds.”

“Under your supervision.”

“I won’t stand over them every minute.”

“Certainly not.” Val grinned at her, wondering when he’d developed a penchant for arguing with ladies. “They require frequent dunking in the pond to retain any semblance of cleanliness, and your modesty would be offended.”

“As would theirs.”

He let her have the last word, content to conjure up plans for her addition as the wagon rolled toward the old… His estate.