The Virtuoso (29 page)

Val tried to see that response as positive—she hadn't stomped off, railed at him, or tossed his words back in his face. Yet. But neither had she reciprocated.

“My name is Valentine Windham,” he said slowly, “but you've asked about my family, and in that regard—and that regard only—I have not been entirely forthcoming.”

“Come forth now,” she commanded softly, her hand going still.

“My father is the Duke of Moreland. That's all. I'm a commoner, my title only a courtesy, and I'm not even technically the spare anymore, a situation that should improve further, because my brother Gayle is deeply enamored of his wife.”

“Improve?” Ellen's voice was soft, preoccupied.

“I don't want the title, Ellen.” Val sat up, needing to see her eyes. “I don't ever want it, not for me, not for my son or grandson. I make pianos, and it's a good income. I can provide well for you, if you'll let me.”

“As your mistress?”

“Bloody, blazing… no!” Val rose and paced across the porch, turning to face her when he could go no farther. “As my wife, as my beloved, dearest wife.”

A few heartbeats of silence went by, and with each one, Val felt the ringing of a death knell over his hopes.

“I would be your mistress. I care for you, too, but I cannot be your wife.”

Val frowned at that. It wasn't what he'd been expecting. A conditional rejection, that's what it was. She'd give him time, he supposed, to get over his feelings and move along with his life.

“Why not marry me?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

She crossed her arms too. “What else haven't you told me?”

“Fair enough.” Val came back to sit beside her and searched his mind. “I play the piano. I don't just mess about with it for polite entertainment. Playing the piano used to be who I was.”

“You were a musician?”

Val snorted. “I was a coward, but yes, I was a musician, a
virtuoso
of the keyboard. Then my hand”—he held up his perfectly unremarkable left hand—“rebelled against all the wear and tear, or came a cropper somehow. I could not play anymore, not without either damaging it beyond all repair or risking a laudanum addiction, maybe both.”

“So you came out here?” Ellen guessed. “You took on the monumental task of setting to rights what I had put wrong on this estate and thought that would be… what?”

“A way to feel useful or maybe just a way to get tired enough each day that I didn't miss the music so much, and then…”

“Then?” She took his hand in hers, but Val wasn't reassured.
His
mistress, indeed.

“Then I became enamored of my neighbor. She beguiled me—she's lovely and dear and patient. She's a virtuoso of the flower garden. She cared about my hand and about me without once hearing me play the piano, and this intrigued me.”

“You intrigued me,” Ellen admitted, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek. “You still do.”

“My Ellen loves to make beauty, as do I.” Val turned and used his free hand to trace the line of Ellen's jaw. “She is as independent as I am and values her privacy, as I do.”

“You are merely lonely, Val.” Ellen bent a little over their joined hands but then looked up and frowned slightly. “Lord Valentine.”

“Not to you,
Lady
Roxbury
.”

Her frown became considerably more fierce. “What was Freddy doing in Little Weldon?” she asked, straightening.

“I invited him ostensibly to see the progress on the estate,” Val said, watching a battle light come into Ellen's eye. “He confessed to setting the various traps on the property and did so before witnesses. I also treated myself to landing a single blow on his ugly face and made sure he knew I did so in your name.”

“
You did what?
” Ellen shot to her feet, dropping Val's hand as if it were diseased. “You struck Freddy? You confronted him?”

“I did. His mischief was deadly, Ellen. And his only motivation was to regain possession of the estate. He thought he could scare me off by creating accidents and setbacks, then buy the place back for a pittance, probably to sell for considerably more.”

Ellen shook her head. “He wants the rents. It's about the money, and with him it will always be about the money.”

“What aren't you telling me?” Val rose to stand behind her where she stood looking out over her gardens. “Ellen?” But she shook her head and remained unyielding when Val slipped his arms around her waist. That, more than any words, alarmed him.

“Ellen,” Val spoke quietly, “Freddy won't be bothering you anymore. I've seen to it.”

“No.” She huffed out a breath. “No, you have not, Valentine. You have merely waved a red flag before a very angry and powerful little bull. Freddy will go off, tend his wounds, and plot his moves. He sulks and fumes and skulks about, but he does not learn his lesson.”

“You're keeping secrets.” Val rested his forehead against her nape. “Why in God's name won't you trust me, Ellen?”

“If I tell you, will you leave?”

It was Val's turn to be silent, to consider, to weigh what was in the balance, and where, if anywhere, lay the path of hope.

“I'm not going anywhere until the house and farms are completely functional,” he said. “That will take a few more weeks.”

“Weeks.” Ellen stood very straight in his arms. “And then you'll go?”

“If that's still what you want and you've told me the reasons why by then,” Val said, tossing his entire future into the hands of a fate that hadn't dealt with him very kindly of late. “And until I go?”

“I will be your mistress,” Ellen said, her posturing relaxing.

“No.” Val turned her in his arms and tucked his chin against her temple. “You will be my love.”

***

What followed for Val was a period of peculiar joy, mixed with acute sorrow. He respected Ellen's choice as one she felt compelled to make, not easy for her, but necessary.

He also hoped when he heard her reasons, he could argue her past them, and the hoping was… awful. Hope and Val Windham were old enemies.

Best enemies.

He'd hoped his brother Victor would recover, but consumption seldom eased its grip once its victims had been chosen.

He'd hoped his hand wasn't truly getting worse, until he couldn't deny that reality without losing use of the hand entirely.

He'd hoped his brother Bart would come home from war safe and sound, not in a damned coffin.

He'd hoped St. Just might escape military service without substantial wound to body or soul, but found even St. Just had left part of his sanity and his spirit at Waterloo.

He'd hoped he might someday do something with his music, but what that silly hope was about, he'd never been quite sure.

And now, he was hoping he and Ellen had a future. The hope sustained him and tortured him and made each second pass too quickly when he was with her. But he couldn't always be with her, because Ellen insisted she have time to tend her gardens and set up her little conservatory.

Val sent Dayton and Phillip back to Candlewick, with hugs and thanks and best wishes all around. He hired a few servants and commissioned the wily Hazlit to complete a few more errands. He wrote to his brother Gayle, who controlled both the Windham family finances and the Moreland exchequer, and he wrote to David and Letty Worthington, and not just about bat houses and vegetable plots. He wrote a long letter to Edward Kirkland and sent missives to several other musical friends.

He retrieved the damned puppy from Sir Dewey, dropped off the sworn statements, and spent a long, pretty afternoon exhorting Sir Dewey over drinks to look after Ellen's safety in the event Val was unable to.

As Val mounted up later that afternoon, he recalled his original purpose in departing his estate had been to tune the piano in the Little Weldon assembly rooms. How he'd ended up at Sir Dewey's was a mystery known only to lovelorn fellows at loose ends, among whom Val would not admit he numbered.

On that sour note, Val turned his attention to the task he'd set for himself, slipping off Zeke's bridle and saddle before turning him out in the paddock on the village green.

To Valentine Windham, each piano developed a particular personality. It wasn't always possible to tell as a piano left his shops what the personality might be, but he could usually make an educated guess by playing the instrument at length.

So Val approached the assembly rooms, wondering who awaited him abovestairs. He found a little brown instrument sitting to the side of what passed for a stage at one end of the room—a piano, but likely some venerable forerunner to the small upright pianos growing popular for cottage use. It sat in shadows and a layer of dust, giving Val the impression of a little old dowager, forgotten in the corner, her lace cap askew, her fichu stained, and the light in her eye growing vague.

It took hours. She'd forgotten where most of her pitches were and wasn't inclined to be reminded too sternly all at once. Val had to compromise with her on more than one occasion, for he could break a wire, strip a screw, or even—heaven help him—crack the sound board if he demanded too much too abruptly. So he coaxed and wheedled and badgered and begged, and eventually, she began to boast something close to a well-tempered tuning. Her tone quality was as gracious and merry as Val had suspected it would be, and he was pleased for her, that she could once again demonstrate her competence as she deserved.

“You've some music left in you yet.” Val patted the piano before putting away his tools. It was tempting—so terribly tempting—to try just a few tunes and see how she liked them, but he resisted. The entire village would hear him playing this piano, and it was bad enough they knew he could tune such an instrument.

So he put away the rags he'd used to clean it, the felt and tools he'd used to tune it, and carefully closed the lid over the keys. As he left the assembly rooms, he looked back and saw the little piano on the empty stage. No longer dusty, no longer quite so shopworn. It was the least he could do for a friend.

And to his surprise, leaving the piano to rejoin Ellen at his home was no more effort than that.

***

“Valentine?” Ellen's sleepy voice called from her bedroom.

“Of course it's Valentine,” he replied, not lighting a lamp. In the past week, he'd learned to navigate her little cottage in pitch darkness, because, while Ellen would not share the manor house with him, he would share the cottage with her. “And as soon as I get this damned thing unknotted, I will be there in that bed with you. I've missed you the livelong day,” Val went on as he made quick use of the wash water, “and not just at lunch. God spare me from London solicitors.”

“Were they here on your commercial business?”

“There's always plenty of that. I gain more sympathy for my father as I age. Neither he nor I have any patience for the hours of meetings solicitors seem to think make civilization progress.”

“Francis abhorred that, as well,” Ellen observed on a yawn. “Are you ever coming to bed?”

“I am here.” Val climbed into the bed. “So what are you doing over there?” His arms came around her and drew her close. “I love you, Ellen Markham.” He kissed her cheek. “When are you going to tell me you love me?”

“How can you be sure I do?”

Val hiked a leg across her thighs. “First, you are sending me away. This is proof positive you love me, for you are trying to protect me from some sort of grave peril only you can perceive.”

Ellen's breathing hitched, and Val knew his guess had been right. Gratified by that success, he marched forward.

“Second”—he slipped a hand over her breast—“you make love with me, Ellen. You hold nothing back, ever, and are so passionate I am nigh mindless with the pleasure of our intimacy.” He punctuated this sentiment by dipping his head and suckling gently on her nipple. She groaned and arched up toward him.

“I make my point.” Val smiled in the dark and raised his head. “Third, there is the way I make love with you.”

“And how is that?” She sounded more breathless than curious.

Val shifted his body over hers. “As if I trust you. I know you are human, and you will do what you think best, but you do it with my interests in mind, Ellen. I don't have to watch myself with you, because you love me, truly. I know it. It isn't the way my siblings love me, though they are dear. It isn't how my parents love me, which is more instinct than insight. It isn't the way my friends love me, though they are both dear and insightful.”

“So how is it?” Ellen asked, slipping her legs apart to cradle him intimately.

“It's the way I want and need to be loved,” Val said quietly, resting his weight against the soft, curving length of her. “It's perfect.”

“But I am sending you away,” Ellen reminded him, her fingers at his nape.

Val levered up on his forearms and began to nudge lazily at her sex with his erection. “So you're running out of time to tell me the things that matter, aren't you?”

If she was going to use words to answer, Val forestalled her reply by kissing her within an inch of her soul. Her response was made with her body, and to Val's mind she told him, as emphatically as any woman ever told her man, she did, indeed, unequivocally love him.

And always would.

“What has you sighing?” Val asked as his hand stroked over her hair when they were both sated. “Missing me already?”

“Of course I'm missing you.” Ellen hitched herself more closely to him. “I will always miss you.”

“You might trust me instead,” Val said softly.

She remained silent, and for the hundredth time that day, his heart broke, and he battled back despair. “Ellen?” He kissed her crown. “The assembly is this Saturday. I'll be leaving the next day, as will Dare and Nick.”