“Compliments of my wife,” Belmont said, “in exchange for getting her menfolk out from underfoot for a few hours.”
“Lunch!” Dayton and Phillip gamboled up, every bit as energetic as they’d been hours earlier.
“One of their nine favorite meals of the day. Sit down, you lot, and wait for your elders to snatch a few crumbs before you destroy all in your path.”
As food was passed around among the adults, Belmont continued speaking. “Day and Phil concocted a plan for Phillip to start school a year early so all five Belmont cousins could have one year at university together. Abby was enthusiastic about it, since it will give us a little time at Candlewick before the baby arrives and all hell breaks loose once again.”
“I didn’t realize you were in anticipation of a happy event.” Val smiled genially, but ye gods… Val’s sister-in-law Anna had just been delivered of a son, while the wife of his other brother, Devlin, was expecting. David and Letty were still adjusting to the arrival of a daughter. Nick’s wife would no doubt soon be in a similar condition, and it seemed as if all in Val’s world could be measured by the birth—imminent or recent—of a child.
“I find the prospect of parenthood…”—Belmont’s expression became pensive—“sweet, an unexpected opportunity to revisit a previous responsibility I took too much for granted.”
“He didn’t appreciate us,” Day translated solemnly then ruined the effect by meeting his brother’s gaze and bursting into guffaws.
“I did.” Belmont corrected them easily. “But as a very young father might. I am an old hand now and will go about the job differently.”
Val rummaged in the hamper, finding the topic unaccountably unsettling. “I put you at, what? Less than five years my senior?”
“We’re surrounded by duffers, Day.” Phil rolled his eyes dramatically. “The only saving grace is they’ve no teeth and can’t do justice to the meat.”
“You two.” Belmont scowled at his sons. “No dessert if you don’t make some pretense of domestication immediately.”
“Not that.” Day rolled to his back, letting his arms and legs twitch in the air. “Phil, he uttered the Worst Curse, and we’ve hardly done anything yet.”
“May I finish your sandwich?” Phillip reached for his brother’s uneaten portion.
“Touch it”—Day sat up immediately—“and it’s pistols, swords, or bare-knuckle rules.”
Darius accepted the pie Val withdrew from the hamper. “And to think, Valentine,” Darius drawled, “your mother raised five of these, what are they? Boys?”
“Demons,” Belmont muttered. “Spawn of Satan, imps from hell.”
“Beloved offspring,” Dayton and Phillip chorused together.
“Hush,” Belmont reproved. “I haven’t sprung Nick’s plan on Lord Val yet, so you’ve made a complete hash of my strategy.”
“Oops.” Dayton glanced at Phillip. “Let’s go check on the horses, Phil. You swear you’ll let us have a piece of pie?” He drilled his father with a very adult look.
“Honor of a Belmont. Now scat.”
They went at a run that nonetheless included elbows shoved into ribs and laughter tossed into the building heat. The sense of silence and stillness left in their wake was slightly disorienting.
“And you’ve another on the way,” Val reminded him. “I suppose you want to leave your beloved offspring with me for a bit?”
“How did you guess?”
“He’s canny like that,” Darius said, munching on a chicken leg. “And desperately in need of free labor.”
“Don’t kid yourself.” Belmont examined his hands while he spoke. “They will eat every bit as much as you would spend to hire such as them, but they do work hard, and Nick thought you might not mind some company.”
“Nick.” Val heaved a sigh. “He sent poor Lindsey here to be my duenna. He ought to be too busy with his new wife to meddle like this.”
Val understood Axel Belmont was being polite, offering a way for Val to accept help—and dear Nicholas’s spies in his camp—without losing face. Well… there were worse things than taking on a pair of adolescent brothers.
“I will be pleased to have the company of your sons,” Val said, opening his eyes and sitting up, “but we’d better cut that pie before they come charging back here, arguing over how to cut the thing in five exactly equal pieces.”
“Better make that six,” Darius murmured as his gaze went to the path through the woods.
“Six is easy,” Val replied, but then he followed Darius’s line of vision to see Ellen FitzEngle emerging from the trees. “Six is the easiest thing in world,” he concluded, helpless to prevent a smile from spreading across his face.
***
Ellen was wearing one of her comfortable old dresses and a straw hat. She was also wearing shoes, which Val found mildly disappointing. Since the day he’d first met her—barefoot, a floppy hat on her abundant, chestnut hair—he’d pictured her that way in his imagination. And though she was shod, today her hair was again down, confined in a single thick braid.
“You were drawn by the noise.” Val rose to his feet and greeted his newest guest. “Ellen FitzEngle, may I present to you Mr. Axel Belmont of Candlewick.”
“Mrs. Fitz.” Belmont bowed over her hand, smiling openly. “We’re acquainted. I am a botanist, and Mrs. FitzEngle has the most impressive flower gardens in the shire.”
“You flatter, Professor,” Ellen said, “but I’ll allow it. I came to see the massacre, or what surely sounded like one.”
“You heard my sons,” Belmont concluded dryly. “As soon as we cut the pie, you’ll have the pleasure, or the burden, of meeting them.”
“Won’t you join us?” Val gestured toward the hamper. “Mrs. Belmont sent a picnic as a peace offering in exchange for suffering the company of her familiars.”
“How is your dear wife, Mr. Belmont?” Ellen asked, sinking onto a corner of the blanket.
“Probably blissfully asleep as we speak. She will be eternally indebted to your neighbor here when I return without the boys.”
Ellen smiled at Val. “You’re acquiring your own herd of boys. A sound strategy when the local variety could use some good influences. That looks like a delicious pie.”
“Strawberries are good, no matter the setting,” Belmont rejoined. He drew Ellen into a conversation about her flowers, and Val was interested to see that while she conversed easily and knowledgeably about her craft, there was still a reserved quality in her speech and manners with Belmont. The professor was all that was gentlemanly, though he treated Ellen as an intellectual equal on matters pertaining to plants, but still, she would not be charmed past a certain point.
And this pleased Val inordinately.
Dayton galloped up, Phil beside him. “Did you see the springhouse? It is the keenest! You could practically live in there.”
“Keenest isn’t a word,” Phil said. “It has pipes and conduits and baths and windows and all manner of accommodations—the springhouse, that is.”
“And it’s spotless,” Day added, ignoring the grammar lesson. “You could eat off the floors in there. Hey! You cut the pie.” Belmont handed them each a slice, which—once they’d made hasty bows in Ellen’s direction—they took off with them, eating directly from their own hands, still jabbering about the springhouse.
Ellen met Val’s gaze. “You do have an impressive springhouse. I confess I’ve made use of it myself.”
“Impressive, how?”
“Come.” Ellen rose to her feet unassisted, causing all three men to rise, as well. “I’ll show you. Gentlemen, you need not have gotten up. I know all too well that on the menu for every summer picnic worth the name, a nap follows dessert.”
While Belmont and Darius exchanged a smile, Val offered his arm. He set off with Ellen in the direction of the springhouse, inordinately gratified that she would initiate this private ramble with him.
A few minutes later, Val’s appreciative gaze traveled over the mos
t elaborate springhouse he’d ever beheld. “This is fascinating. It’s as much laundry and bathhouse as springhouse, and I’ve never seen so much glazed yellow tile.”
“Light keeps the moss and mould from growing,” Ellen said. “And what good is a laundry or a bathhouse that isn’t clean?”
The structure itself was stone. Water entered it halfway up one wall, falling into a tiled conduit divided up into a holding pool, then several lower pools, the last of which exited the downstream end of the building near the floor. Pipes allowed the water to be diverted into and out of copper tubs, one of which sat in sturdy hinged brackets over a tiled fire pit.
“So you heat water here and use this for the laundry tub,” Val said, pointing to one of two enormous copper tubs. “This other tub, without a fire under it, would be the bathing tub.”
“Hence, my use of your facility.” As she spoke, Ellen’s gaze was focused on the blue fleur-de-lis pattern decorating a row of tiles at waist height. “I wash my clothes here and use the other tub on occasion, as well.”
“You’re welcome to, of course.” Val glanced around at the pipes lest he be caught staring at her. “I suppose it’s you who’s kept the place so clean.”
“I use the farm pond in warm weather,” Ellen said, coloring slightly, “but when it’s cold, this little springhouse is a godsend. I never dread laundry day.”
“And you must not now.” Val shoved himself back to sit on the worktable beside the only door—the door he had left wide open in deference to the lady’s sensibilities. “What day is laundry day?”
“Thursday or Friday. Wednesday is market; Sunday is services. Little market is Saturday, if need be.”
“I ask, lest we attempt to use this facility on the same day. One wouldn’t want to intrude on a lady at her bath.”
“Or a gentleman,” Ellen agreed, this blush more apparent.
“I hadn’t considered the issue of our laundry. Working on the house, Darius and I will pile up a deal of dirty clothes.”
“It will be no trouble to toss in a few more shirts and socks when I do my own,” Ellen suggested, still not meeting his eyes.
“I will not allow you to do my laundry, Ellen.” Val shoved off the table and crossed the space to frown down at her.
“I will not allow you to use my given name without permission,” she retorted, her gaze meeting his then dropping. His arched an eyebrow but held his ground, peering down at her.
“Show me where this pond is,” he said abruptly, taking her hand and placing it on his forearm. “I love nothing at the end of a hot summer day so much as a good swim, and that will be equally true when I’m not playing… idling my days away indoors.”
“I did not mean to bark at you,” Ellen said as they walked into the woods. “I am used to my solitude here.”
“I have intruded,” Val guessed. “You hear us over here, like you did this morning. You heard the hammers and the sawing. The birds are quiet, and we are not. You sense movement beyond your woods, and it isn’t little beasts or even local boys. It’s change, and you can’t control it.”
And what was he going on about, as if he could divine her thoughts?
“And because I can control who calls me what, up to a point,” Ellen said with a slow smile, “you must ask permission to call me Ellen.”
“My name is Valentine,” he said quietly. “I beg you to use it and ask your leave to adopt comparably informal address when private with you.”
“Valentine,” she said, enunciating each syllable as they moved toward a break in the trees. “It’s a lovely name. It shall be my privilege to use it. And you must call me Ellen when we are not in the churchyard.”
“Thank you,” Val said, releasing a breath. “So this is your pond?”
“Yours, actually.” Ellen dropped his arm and hopped up on the dock that extended a good forty feet out over the pond. “I use it after dark, and the local boys use it whenever they please.”
“A pond should be used.” Val stepped onto the boards, as well, watching Ellen move to the end of the dock, her features obscured by the floppy brim of her hat. While she surveyed the tranquil surface of the water, he sat about ten feet from her and started tugging off his boots.
Ellen’s gaze lit on him where he sat. “You are going to soak your feet?”
“And invite you to do likewise.” Val tugged off his second boot. “Ellen.”
She surprised him by nimbly slipping off her shoes and taking a seat beside him. Their bodies did not touch, and yet Val caught a whiff of the lovely honeysuckle and lavender scent of her. She carefully hiked her skirts just a little and let her toes dangle in the water.
“My feet are going to love this pond.” Val cuffed his breeches to just under the knees and slipped his feet into the cool water. “All of me will love it, in fact.”
“You are a good swimmer? The far end is quite deep.”
“I am a very good swimmer. You?” He swirled his toes in the water, unabashedly letting her fix her gaze on his feet. They were big feet, of course, in keeping with the rest of him, and long, with high arches.
“I am competent,” Ellen replied, “in a pond. I would not take on the ocean.”
“Nor I. Who are these boys you despair of?”
He distracted her with questions for about the next twenty minutes, regarding it as time well spent in his efforts to set her at ease. They were going to be neighbors at the very least, and a man was hardly a man if he didn’t take a little opportunity to appreciate a pair of bare, very pretty female feet.
“You have guests,” Ellen reminded him. “I should not monopolize your time, Mr. Windham.”
“Valentine. And they are uninvited guests.”
“Good manners do not distinguish.” She lifted her feet from the water and looked around as if searching for her shoes.
“Here.” Val took his feet out, as well, and spun to sit facing her, cross-legged. He pulled his shirt over his head and held it over his lap. “Give me your foot.”
“My foot?” Ellen’s eyes were glued to the expanse of his chest. Val knew it was a chest that boasted an abundance of nicely arranged male muscle—mostly courtesy of years at the keyboard—and for a widow, it could hardly be considered a shocking sight.
“I’ll dry you off.” Val gestured with his makeshift towel, holding her gaze as if to imply he exposed himself like this to women every day, when in fact, he was by nature fairly modest. Cautiously, she leaned back on her hands and extended a foot toward him.
He seized the foot gently and buffed it with the linen shirt. He dried first one foot then the other, then tarried over his own feet before finally putting the somewhat damp shirt back on.
“Shall we?” Val had put his boots on and risen to extend a hand down to her. He’d left her no choice but to accept that hand and allow him to assist her to her feet. She didn’t protest when he kept hold of her hand as he led her off the dock.
A year ago, Ellen had taken him by the hand to show him the wood, a casual gesture on her part—Val was sure of it. She could hardly object that he was turning the tables now, lacing his fingers through hers and setting a sedate pace back toward the house.
“Belmont’s boys will be staying for a while,” he said as they gained the shade of the woods. “They’re good boys, but I think the professor wants to test out being separated from them before he must send them to university.”
“I’m ten years away from my parents’ house, and I still miss them both desperately. But I’m also relieved they’re gone in another sense.”
“Relieved?” Val stopped walking to peer at her. “Was there illness?”
“My father was quite a bit older than my mother,” she replied, frowning down at some ferns trying to encroach on the path. “He was probably failing, but I was a child, and his death seemed sudden to me. My mother wasn’t young when I was born, so I was their treasured miracle.”
“Of course you were.”
“And were you somebody’s treasured mir
acle?” Ellen asked, bending to tug at the ferns.
“I was one of ten such miracles,” Val said. “But I do not doubt my parents’ regard for me.” He fell silent on that thought, a little disconcerted to realize it was the truth. He had never doubted their regard for him, though he’d also never felt he had their understanding. He was pondering this realization when Ellen shifted her hand so her fingers gripped his arm near the elbow, which was probably prudent. They would soon be out of the trees, and he had no desire to rush his fences.
Though what fences those would be, he would have to puzzle out later.
Three
“Thank you for showing me the pond,” Val said as they approached the picnic blanket.
“My pleasure. It appears the fairies have been here, casting the post-picnic sleeping spell on your companions.”
“We’re not asleep.” Darius opened his eyes and sat up. “Well, Belmont might be, but he had two helpings of cobbler, so allowances must be made. It’s too quiet. Where do you think the savages have got off to?”
Belmont sat up and yawned. “They’ll be putting up their tent. It’s a sturdy business, that tent. If they use some of the lumber I brought to build a proper platform, it will keep them snug and dry and out of your hair.”
“Savages with their own accommodations,” Val remarked. “Decent of you.”
“My brother Matthew and I put a tent to good use on many a summer night,” Belmont said. “You might want to help the boys pick out a spot for a tree house, as well, but I’d set them to clearing all these damned saplings, were I you. Then Mrs. Fitz here can draft them as assistant gardeners. Pardon the language, Mrs. Fitz.”
Val arched a brow at Ellen. “Gardeners?”
“Good heavens, Windham.” Belmont got to his feet. “You can’t be thinking your work is limited to the house? If you’re to have a proper manor, you need to landscape it. The jungle will just take over again, if you don’t. The oaks need to be pruned so they don’t continue to litter your roof with acorns and leaves. You’ll want flowers near the house, an herb garden for your kitchen, a medicinal garden, a vegetable garden near your home farm.”
The Virtuoso Page 4