The Virtuoso (7 page)

Val's left hand, the one she'd just held for such long, lovely moments between her own, drifted up to trace slow patterns on her back. “We're strangers who kissed. Passionately, if memory serves.”

“But on only one occasion and that nearly a year ago.”

“Should I have written? I did not think to see you again, nor you me, I'm guessing.” Now he wished he'd written, though it would hardly have been proper, even to a widow.

That hand Valentine considered so damaged continued its easy caresses on Ellen's back, intent on stealing the starch from her spine and the resolve from her best intentions. And she must have liked his touch, because the longer he stroked his hand over her back, the more she relaxed and leaned against him.

“I did not think to see you again,” Ellen admitted. “It would have been much easier had you kept to your place in my memory and imagination. But here you are.”

“Here we are.” Haunting a woman's imagination had to be a good thing for a man whose own dreams had turned to nightmares. “Sitting on the porch in the moonlight, trying to sort out a single kiss from months ago.”

“I shouldn't have kissed you,” Ellen said, her head coming to rest on Val's shoulder as if the weight of truth were a wearying thing. “But I'm lonely and sometimes a little desperate, and it seemed safe, to steal a kiss from a handsome stranger.”

“It was safe,” Val assured her, seeing the matter from her perspective. In the year since he'd seen Ellen FitzEngle, he'd hardly been celibate. He wasn't a profligate Philistine, but neither was he a monk. There had been an older maid in Nick's household, some professional ladies up in York, the rare trip upstairs at David's brothel, and the frequent occasion of self-gratification.

But he surmised Ellen, despite the privileges of widowhood, had not been kissed or cuddled or swived or flirted with in all those days and weeks and months.

“And now?” Ellen pressed. “You show up on my porch after dark and think perhaps it's still safe, and here I am, doing not one thing to dissuade you.”

“You are safe with me, Ellen.” He punctuated the sentiment with a kiss to her temple then rested his cheek where his lips had been. “I am a gentleman, if nothing else. I might try to steal a kiss, but you can stop me with a word from even that at any time. The question is, how safe do you want to be?”

“Shame on you,” Ellen whispered, turning her face to his shoulder.

“Shame on me is right, for I do not offer you anything, you see, but kisses and illicit pleasures. Those I can give you in abundance, if you want them.”

She pulled away, peering at him in the moonlight. “Are you insulting me?”

“I am not. I am commenting on my own unworthiness as a mate to a decent woman. I can bring you pleasure and take some for myself, if you offer it, but that is the extent of my utility.”

“You do not intend to stay here,” Ellen concluded, pulling her wrapper a little more snugly around her.

“I rarely stay in one place for long.” His home had been wherever there was a piano. He had no idea how to define home now. “I am not looking to marry, Ellen. I hazard you are not either, else you would have ended your widowhood some time in these past five years.”

Sitting beside her, Val felt a creeping fatalism seeping through him. This reckoning between them had sneaked up on him, but now that he was sitting in the dark, making indecent offers to a decent woman, he realized they needed to have this conversation and be done with it.

He could get her rejection of him behind them, and they could set about being cordial neighbors through their shared wood, just as if they'd never kissed. Were his hand not crippled—he hadn't wanted to admit to that word previously—he might at some point be offering for her instead. She was gently bred, a lady to the bone, and sexually attractive to him on a level beyond the superficial easing of lust.

But he
was
a cripple, and the longer he went without playing the piano, the more he experienced his disability as emotional as well as physical. He'd been right to tell Darius the piano was how he'd had a soul. How he'd known himself to possess a soul.

“You are looking to dally,” Ellen said softly, bringing Val's thoughts back to the present.

“I am looking to share pleasure,” Val replied, hoping it was true. God above, what if he couldn't even please a woman anymore? With his arm around her and her fragrance wafting to his nose among the myriad floral scents, his strongest urge was not to lay her down and bury himself inside her.

It was to hold her close and learn the feel of her under his hands, to offer himself to her for her own stroking and petting and caressing. To take his time and learn how to pay attention to her as carefully as he'd attend a fascinating piece of new music.

“I have not your sophistication,” Ellen said, her head back on his shoulder. “Physically, I was married. I comprehend for men certain acts are more profoundly pleasurable than they are for women. Emotionally…”

“Ah.” Val's hand stroked over her spine and rested on her shoulder so his thumb could caress her nape. “I will protect your privacy, Ellen, and your good name.” And he would show her when it came to
certain
acts
, women could experience more pleasure than any man could endure.

“And if I conceive?”

“I will provide for you and the child.” It was the answer required of a gentleman to a lady without a reputation to protect, and it sat ill with him. “If you demanded it, I would marry you.”

“I would not demand marriage,” Ellen said on a sigh. “I was married for five years and could not give my husband a child.” There was such sadness in her voice, such surrender in the way she rested against him, Val knew in her single, quiet sentence she was hiding a story with an unhappy ending.

“You wanted children.”

“Desperately. Francis needed an heir, and I was his choice as wife. I could not produce even one son for him.”

“Francis was your husband, and you loved him.”

“I did.” Ellen seemed to grow smaller as she leaned against him. “Not well enough, not soon enough, but I did. I would have done anything to provide him the children it was my duty to give him.”

Val stroked her back, feeling his heart constrict painfully—for her. “Sometimes we are denied our fondest wish.”

“He was a good man.”

“Tell me about him,” Val urged, his hand returning to her neck. If there was etiquette involved with a prospective lover asking about a late spouse, he neither knew nor cared about it. Apparently, neither did she.

“As Baron Roxbury, Francis held one of the oldest titles short of the monarchy,” Ellen began, “but he wasn't pompous or pretentious. I didn't know him well when we married, but I thought him such a prig at first. He was merely shy and uncertain how to deal with a wife nearly half his age.”

Baron
Roxbury?
Val held still, kept up his easy caresses on Ellen's back, and absorbed the fact that he had propositioned the Baroness Roxbury on her own back steps.
What
was
she
doing
rusticating
like
a
tenant
farmer's widow when she held such a title?

“You must have been very young,” Val managed.

“Seventeen. I was presented after my marriage, of course, but never had to compete with the other girls for a husband. Francis spared me that, and I went from being my parents' treasured miracle to his treasured wife. I didn't know how lucky I was.”

“We often don't.” Val forced himself to keep listening, to keep his questions behind his teeth, as he sensed Ellen did not discuss her past often. It wasn't just that she had secrets, it was that she grieved privately. “You miss your Francis.”

“I miss…” Ellen's voice dipped. “I miss him bodily, of course. As we became friends, we also became affectionate, and that was a comfort when the children did not arrive. I miss him in other ways, too, though, as my spouse, the person through whom I was afforded social standing and a place in society. That's a trite phrase until you don't have that place anymore.”

Val said nothing but turned slightly and looped his other arm around her so she was resting not merely against him but in his embrace. He willed her to cry, but she only laid her forehead to his collarbone and sighed against his neck.

He rested his chin on her crown and gazed out across the moon shadows in her yard. There was peace to be found in holding Ellen FitzEngle like this. Not the kind of peace he'd anticipated, and maybe not a peace he deserved, but he'd take it as long as she allowed it.

“It isn't well done of me,” Ellen murmured, trying to draw back, “pining for my husband in your arms.”

“Hush. Whose arms have been available to you, hmm? Marmalade's, perhaps?”

“You are a generous man and far too trusting.”

From her words, Val knew she wasn't being entirely honest, but he also knew she'd had little comfort for her grief and woes, and trust in such matters was a delicate thing. When he shifted a few minutes later and lifted her against his chest, she did not protest but looped her arms around his neck, and that was a kind of trust too. He carried her to her porch swing and sat at one end so her back was supported by the pillows banking the arm of the swing. He set the swing in motion and gathered her close until she drifted away into sleep.

Val stayed on that swing long after the woman in his arms had fallen asleep, knowing he was stealing a pleasure from her he should not. He'd never been in her cottage, though, and was reluctant to invade her privacy.

Or so he told himself.

In truth, the warm, trusting weight of Ellen FitzEngle in his arms anchored him on a night when he'd been at risk of wandering off, of putting just a little more space between his body and his soul; his intellect and his emotions. Darius had delivered a telling blow when he'd characterized music, and the piano, as an imaginary friend.

And it was enough, Val realized, to admit no creative art could meet the artist's every need or fulfill every wish. Ellen FitzEngle wasn't going to be able to do that either, of course; that wasn't the point.

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.

“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?”