“It isn’t like them to be rude,” Abby replied, “we’ll just enjoy our drinks and be patient a while longer.”
“One hopes,” a baritone voice intoned from the door, “there is a drink for my weary little self?”
“Nick!” Val watched as Abby passed her husband her drink and pelted across the room to fling herself against the newcomer. “Oh, Nicholas Haddonfield, you are a sight for sore eyes. Axel, did you do this?”
“I was warned.” Axel smiled at his wife where she stood in the careful embrace of a blond, blue-eyed, enormously tall, enormously good-looking man.
“Professor.” Nick’s smile gleamed with a pirate’s sense of mischief. “I see you’ve been busy, and holy matrimony is agreeing with our Abby. And my little Valentine.” Nick beamed at Val. “Gone ruralizing in the wilds of Oxfordshire, leaving me all by my lonesome in Kent. I am desolated without you, Val.”
“You are happily married without me,” Val chided, but he stepped into Nick’s arms anyway, as one just did.
“And who have we here?” Nick turned to Ellen and flashed her a charming smile.
Val performed the introductions. “Ellen, may I make known to you Nick Haddonfield, the biggest scamp in the realm, and since his marriage, the happiest. Nick, Ellen Markham, Baroness Roxbury, my neighbor and friend.”
“Baroness.” Nick executed a very proper bow but kissed Ellen’s hand—a shocking presumption—rather than merely bowing over it.
“Ignore him,” Axel warned. “Any attempt to chide, flirt, or comment only encourages him, and this is after he has found a woman willing to marry him.”
“And bear my children,” Nick added, eyes twinkling. Talk from there wandered over mutual acquaintances, family, and various females in confinement.
“Does your countess cry a lot?” Nick asked St. Just as they moved in to dinner. “Poor Leah cries at the sight of a kitten, a puppy, or a foal. Of course, this necessitates that I comfort her, which I am all too willing to do.”
“One would think she’d cry at the sight of you,” Val said.
“Oh, she does.” Nick’s teeth gleamed, and his blue eyes sparkled. “With rapture.”
“Nicholas,” Abby chided, but Nick only grinned more broadly.
“Pass my starving Valentine the peas,” Nick suggested. “He’s likely to chew my leg off if we don’t get him some more food. Aren’t you keeping well, Val?”
“I’m working hard,” Val said, but he did take another helping of peas. And potatoes and more ham. “It tends to whittle off the lard. You look to be in good health.”
“I am. Leah insists I stay more in one place, and as long as she’s in the same place, I am content.”
“How did we merit a visit?” Abby asked. “Though I’m delighted to see you.”
“Likewise, Abby love.” Nick blew her a kiss. “But this one”—Nick tilted his chin at Val—“has abandoned my townhouse for this estate renovation project, and I must see what prompts his desertion. Leah was worried for you, Val, and we cannot have my wife worried when in a delicate condition, for that worries me.”
“Can’t have that,” Val remarked between bites, though he couldn’t entirely mask the affection from his tone. “So you’ll be jaunting out to Little Weldon with us tomorrow?”
“I will if you can tolerate my company.”
“I will be delighted to have your company, but the accommodations are rustic at best.”
“This,” Nick scoffed, “to a man whose height means he must camp half the time rather than be squashed into what passes for a bed at the typical posting inn. We’ll manage, Val, and I’m curious to see what has lured you into the shires. But, St. Just, I am also curious to know how you fare up north. Our families are related, I think.”
A general round of what-does-that-make-you followed, with cousins and removes and in-laws being bandied about the table, since Nick’s wife was distantly related to St. Just’s stepdaughter and to Abby, as well.
“Abby.” Val addressed his hostess in a break in the conversation. “I know we’ve yet to enjoy our chocolate cake, but I find I could use a little constitutional before the final course. Would there be objection to having cake on the back terrace thereafter?”
“Excellent suggestion.”
Nick met Abby’s gaze. “And I will provide mine hostess escort, with your permission, Professor?”
“Abby?” Axel cocked his head at his wife.
“A stroll sounds like just the thing.” Abby rose and leaned over to kiss her husband’s cheek. “Particularly if Nick is to depart tomorrow and it might be my only chance to pry confidences from him.”
Axel smiled at Nick. “Take care of her, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
“But of course.” Nick bowed graciously and held his arm out for Abby.
“Ellen.” Val raised an eyebrow. “Would you join me?” She went to him with something that could only be gratitude in her eyes, and they silently took their leave.
***
“Last night was so violent,” Val observed as Ellen strolled silently on his arm, “and tonight is lovely. One wonders how the creatures and plants are supposed to cope.”
“Some of them don’t cope. Axel will put a number of trees to rest in his woodshed this fall, and I can only wonder what shape your home wood is in.”
“Hadn’t thought of that.” He hadn’t wanted to think of that, really. “These summer storms are sometimes very localized. So what did you think of Nick?”
“Nick?” Ellen’s voice held the slightest chill. “Don’t you mean Lord Reston? I met him before, you know, when Francis was alive and we occasionally spent time in Town. He’s charming, if a bit too flirtatious, but Francis liked him. What I cannot decipher, Valentine, is why you’re trying to keep me from finding out that your friend—for the man clearly is your friend—has a title. You’ve already mentioned as much, so can you explain your prevarication to me, please?”
Eleven
“You have something against titles?” Val kept his tone excruciatingly neutral as they strolled along.
“I am titled,” Ellen said, “so no, I don’t have anything in particular against titles. I do not hold them in any great esteem either, however. When Francis died, I was surrounded by titles at his funeral, and they all said kind things and murmured the appropriate platitudes. They even sent letters of condolence, but I can tell you, Valentine, not a one of those kind, caring titles has bothered with me since.”
“That is certainly plain speaking. Nick would agree with you.”
“Lord Reston,” she said again, very firmly.
“He’s the Earl of Bellefonte now. Viscount Reston was his courtesy title. The old earl died only a few weeks ago and the loss is quite fresh. How well do you know Nicholas?”
“Not well.” Ellen’s tone relented a little. She kicked a pebble out of her path. “We were introduced twice, a couple years apart. I do not believe he recognized me, but he leaves an impression.”
Of course he did. Between Nick’s great height and his gorgeous, blond, blue-eyed appearance—and his outrageous flirting—Ellen would probably recall meeting Nick Haddonfield when she couldn’t recall her own name.
“Nick dropped out of sight for a few years because he did not want to be forced to marry,” Val said. “He traveled to Sussex and took a position as a groom, then as stable master on a rural estate.”
“He worked with his hands?” There was grudging curiosity in her tone.
“With a muck fork, more likely. That was the time I got to know him. He was just Wee Nick to me, an occasional companion to sport about Town with. If I omitted his title, it was an oversight, but Nick did not correct me.”
“He did not,” Ellen agreed, and some of the starch seemed to go out of her. She leaned a little more on Val’s arm, her weight welcome and even comforting. “And are you in the habit of having him check up on you?”
“He moves around a lot and checks up on most of his friends,” Val explained. He did not w
ant to defend Nick—Nick needed no defending—but he wanted Ellen to understand why Val considered the man a friend. “This spring I moved in with him for a few weeks during the Season. I’d come down from the north and was at loose ends and was most assuredly not willing to dwell in one of my parents’ residences.”
“Hence the appeal of your new acquisition,” Ellen concluded. “You are taking more than a passing interest in it.”
“I am.” Val smiled at the observation. “Home was anywhere there was a decent piano.”
“You were that serious?”
“I was; then this happened.” He held up his left hand. “One must make a different plan sometimes, and really, spending the rest of my life on a piano bench wasn’t much of a plan.” To his surprise, he could make this honest observation without any rancor.
“But you make furniture,” Ellen protested. “That must take up some of your time.”
“I make pianos, Ellen,” Val said, feeling a curious relief to have this truth revealed. “Or my employees do. It’s very lucrative, at least for the present.”
“Pianos?” Ellen stopped in the middle of the path, cocked her head, and regarded him.
Val waited, even as he knew the female gears in her brain were whizzing about, perfectly recalling every God’s blessed word he’d ever uttered about making furniture or any other damned thing of the smallest relevance to his latest admission.
“You didn’t lie, exactly,” she said as she slowly resumed walking, “but you prevaricated. Why?”
“What sort of dashing young man makes pianos? And how does the peace of the realm require pianos? Pianos are frivolous extravagances, unlike chairs and tables. Civilized society needs chairs and tables.” To his horror, Val heard echoes of His Grace’s reasoning in his voice, though it had been years since his father had even muttered this sort of logic in Val’s hearing.
“You don’t seriously believe this, do you?” Ellen’s voice held consternation and she was again looking at him.
“Many people do, including, I suspect, my own father.” Val dropped her hand to slip an arm around her shoulders. “Many more people are willing to part with their coin to get their hands on one of my pianos, so I try not to dwell on it.”
“I am still trying to grasp that you make pianos,” Ellen said as they approached the back terrace. “It has to be terribly complicated.”
“It’s wonderful, really.” Val assisted her up the steps from the gardens to the terrace. “All that wood and wire and metal, and from it comes the most sublime sound.”
“Like brilliant, fragrant flowers from simple dirt,” Ellen replied. “There has to be something of divinity in the process. There is no other explanation, really.”
“It’s exactly that,” he said softly, “something of the divine.” In the muted moonshine, he settled for running the backs of his fingers over her cheek and taking her hand in his, but this was part of what he had in common with her. They both had the artist’s need to create beauty, to nurture it, watch it grow and develop, and see it please the senses and the soul.
As they took their places among the others, Val wanted to pull his oldest brother aside and lecture him at length. St. Just had been of the erroneous opinion Valentine lacked common ground with anyone.
Anyone at all.
***
“I had thought to part ways with you in Little Weldon,” St. Just said the next morning as they passed through the village, “but given there’s more storm damage here than at Candlewick, I think I’ll just see you safely home.”
“You needn’t,” Val said from atop the wagon. “I’ve Wee Nick to babysit me, Darius is guarding the fort, and the heathen are my extra eyes and ears.”
“Here, here,” Nick said from his perch on his mare. “Heathen?”
“Here,” Dayton chirped.
“And here,” Phil added.
“It’s less than three miles,” St. Just said. “By the time we’ve argued it through, we can be halfway there.”
“Suit yourself.” Val clucked his team forward. To his relief, the lane to his estate was clear except for considerable leaf litter and the occasional small limb. The house looked to be unscathed, and the outbuildings were all standing.
“Guess you were due for some good luck,” St. Just observed. “Heathen, if you’ll take the team, I will make my good-byes to my baby brother.”
While Val assisted Ellen from the wagon, St. Just grabbed each boy, rubbed his knuckles hard across their crowns, and then bear-hugged the breath right out of them. Nick offered his arm to Ellen, insisting that she have escort through the woods to the cottage, but offering St. Just a friendly wave and salute.
“At least he didn’t hug me,” St. Just muttered, smiling at Val. “My final orders to you are to marry the widow, settle down, and get some babies for your as yet unnamed estate. I imparted much the same wisdom to her.”
“She isn’t interested in marriage.” She hadn’t ever said as much, but neither had she pestered Val for his hand, so to speak.
“Change her mind,” St. Just shot back. “She’s a lady with troubles, Val. I can smell it on her the way I smelled it on Anna and on Emmie. Solve her troubles and put a ring on her finger.”
“I still don’t think she’d have me.”
“You ass.” St. Just stepped closer and fisted a hand in the hair at the nape of Val’s neck. “Do you really think without a piano bench under your backside you aren’t worth the ducal associations? Is that what this subterfuge is about? Denying you’re Moreland’s legitimate son because you are only a mere mortal, not a god of the keyboard, due to a simple sore hand?”
Val glanced at his hand. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”
“You didn’t think I’d noticed?” St. Just growled and shook him a little, as if he were a naughty puppy. “When I came back from Waterloo, you played for hours and hours just so I could sleep. You fetched me home from certain death then played me a lifeline. When I went haring off to York, you spent the damned winter up there just to make sure I was coping adequately. You are the first friend Winnie has made, and when she can’t tell me or Emmie what’s wrong, she bangs at that piano until Scout’s ears hurt. You tucked us in each night with lullabies, you interceded for me with the biddies, you… Damn you.”
“Damn you, too.” Val stepped close, and mostly to give himself a moment to swallow back the lump in his throat, hugged his brother. “Sometimes”—he dropped his forehead to St. Just’s shoulder—“I wonder if it isn’t all just a lot of noise. It’s good to know somebody was listening.”
“I was listening. I heard every note, Val.” St. Just held him a little tighter then let him step back. “Every note.”
St. Just shot him a look then, one that allowed Val to see just a hint of the weary soldier St. Just had been, a hint of the despair and bewilderment that had followed him and so many others home from Waterloo.
“Write,” Val said, unwilling to hold that gaze. “I promise to reply within two years at least.” He walked with his brother over to where the horse was waiting. “Don’t take stupid risks, give Emmie and Winnie all my love, and here.” He reached into his waistcoat and drew out a folded piece of paper. “For Winnie.”
“A letter?” St. Just tucked it inside his own pocket without unfolding it.
“Something like that.” Val smiled a little. “A love letter, maybe. Be off with you, and my thanks for all you’ve done here.”
“My pleasure.” St. Just grabbed him by the back of the neck again, kissed his forehead, and swung up on the horse. “Marry the widow, little brother. She makes you smile.”
Val nodded, saying nothing, as there was a damned lump in his throat again preventing speech. He watched St. Just canter down the lane on his fine chestnut horse and knew the urge to scream at him to turn around, not to go, not to leave him all alone. It was an old memory, of the times when St. Just had come home from the Peninsula on winter leave and enjoyed the holidays with family, only to depart again when the c
ampaigns resumed after the New Year. Bart had come home with him, all jolly swagger and loud stories, and then Bart had never come home again.
But Val also wanted to bellow at St. Just to tell him—just one more time—that the music had meant something. That somebody had been listening.
He blew out a breath and forcibly turned his gaze to the manor house, where his crews had started work for the day. The roof would be completed by the end of the week, and the interior work was moving along nicely. It would soon be time to move in furniture and even people.
How had that happened, and then what would he do with himself all day? Val’s gaze strayed down the empty lane, and the lump in his throat ached almost as fiercely as his hand might have several weeks ago.
“You’re back.” Darius strode out of the house. “Wasn’t sure the roads would be passable after that damned storm. Did St. Just take off without a farewell for me?”
“I’m sure he meant no offense, and we about farewelled him to death.” Even as he said it, Val was convinced Darius had waited in the house on purpose just to avoid the parting scenes. “How was the weekend?”
“The weekend was quiet except for that damned storm. Your home wood is probably a wreck, but I was too busy at the home farm on Sunday to really inspect. Your father sent you the largest crate of something mysterious, by the way. It arrived Saturday, thank the gods, and you’re to keep the team that hauled it in.”
“I’m to keep the team?” Westhaven had sent a team north to St. Just as part of a housewarming. Maybe it was to be a family tradition, and any team was going to be a useful addition, since Axel would need his own back when the boys went home.
“As I live and breathe.” Darius exhaled, his gaze going past Val’s shoulder. “Is that my brother-in-law dragging Mrs. Fitz through the woods?”
“It is.” Nick was not the type to hurry needlessly. “And something is wrong.”
“Valentine.” Nick wasn’t panting, but at his side, Ellen was. “You’d better take a look at Ellen’s property, and you won’t like what we found.”
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