The Virtuoso

by Grace Burrowes

  The point, Val mused as he carefully lifted Ellen against his chest and made his way into her cottage, was that life yet held pleasures and mysteries and interest for him. He would get through the weekend at Belmont’s on the strength of that insight. As he tucked a sleeping Ellen into her bed and left a good-night kiss on her cheek, Val silently sent up a prayer of thanks.

  By trusting him with her grief, Ellen had relieved a little of his own.

  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 i
nto 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, li
ke 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.