Grace Burrowes - The Virtuoso

She didn’t know the half of it, so Val kept his silence, feeling resentment and frustration build in the soft morning air.

“I didn’t play a single note this weekend,” he said at length, but he said it so quietly, Ellen cocked her head and leaned a little closer.

“On the piano,” Val clarified. “I peeked, though, and it’s a lovely instrument. Belmont plays the violin, and Abby is a passable pianist, or she must be. She has a deal of Beethoven, and you don’t merely dabble, if he’s to your taste.”

“You are musical?”

Val exhaled a world of loss. “Until this summer, I was nothing but musical. Now I am forbidden to play.”

Ellen glanced at his hand. “So you work?”

“So I work.” He scowled at his hand, wanting to hide it. “I keep hoping that one day I’ll wake up and it will be better.”

“Like I used to hope I’d wake up one day and realize my husband was alive and I’d merely dreamed his death. Bloody unfair, but I’m not dreaming.”

Val smiled at her language, finding commiseration in it from an unlikely source. “Bloody unfair. You drive well.”

“And you rebuild estates like you were born to it. But it’s still bloody unfair, isn’t it?”

“Bloody blazingly unfair.”

He hadn’t kissed her again after their interlude in the gazebo, and when she had dragooned him onto a bench with her tin of salve twice on Sunday, they’d stayed more or less in plain sight while she worked on his hand. It meant somebody might see his infirmity, but that was a price Val had been willing to pay for the corresponding assistance with his self-control.

That kiss had taken him aback, the intensity of it and the rightness. More disconcerting still was the way Ellen had felt in his arms, the way he’d been content to hold her and caress her and she’d been content to be held.

Whatever was growing between them, Val sensed it wasn’t just a sexual itch that wanted scratching and then forgetting. It wasn’t just about his cock, but about his hands, and his mouth, and so much more. He hadn’t thought it through to his satisfaction and wasn’t sure he even could.

“What does this week hold for you?” he asked his driver.

Ellen’s smile was knowing, as if she realized he was taking refuge in small talk. “Weeding, of course, and some transplanting. We have to get the professor’s little plants taken care of too, though, so you’ll need to tell me where you want them.”

“You must take your pick first. And you cannot keep donating your time and effort to me, Ellen.”

“I will not allow you to pay me,” she shot back, spine straightening. “The boys do most of the labor, anyway, and I just order them around.”

“Order them—and me—to do something for you,” Val insisted. “Wouldn’t you like a glass house, for example, a place to start your seedlings early or conserve your tender plants over the winter?”

Ellen’s brows rose. “I’ve never considered such a thing.”

“I could build a little conservatory onto that cottage of yours,” Val said, his imagination getting hold of the project. “You already have a window on your southern exposure, and we could simply cut that into a door.”

“Cottages do not sport conservatories.”

Val waved a hand and used one of his father’s favorite expressions. “Bah. If I made you a separate hothouse, you’d have to go outside in the winter months to tend it, and it would need a separate fire and so on. Your cottage will already have some heat to lend it, and we could elevate it a few steps, or I could make the addition the same height as your cottage and put the glass in the roof.”

“A skylight,” Ellen murmured. “They’re called skylights.”

“Pretty name. I’m going to ask Dare to come up with some sketches, and you are going to let me do this.”

“It will bring in the damp.”

Val rolled his eyes. “This is England. The damp comes in, but we’ll bring in the sun too, and ventilate the thing properly.”

“You mustn’t.”

“Ellen, I went the entire weekend without playing a single note.”

“And the significance of this?”

“I don’t know how many more such weekends I can bear.” He wasn’t complaining now, he was being brutally, unbecomingly honest. “The only thing that helps is staying busy, and a little addition to your cottage will keep me busy.”

“You are busy enough.”

“I am not.” He met her eyes and let her see the misery in them. She wouldn’t understand all of it, but she’d see it. “I need to be busier.” So busy he dropped from exhaustion even if he had to ruin his hand to do it, which made no sense at all.

“All right.” Ellen’s gaze shifted to the broad rumps of the horses. “But you will allow me to tend your hand, and you will keep the boys occupied with your house and your grounds.”

“Under your supervision.”

“I won’t stand over them every minute.”

“Certainly not.” Val grinned at her, wondering when he’d developed a penchant for arguing with ladies. “They require frequent dunking in the pond to retain any semblance of cleanliness, and your modesty would be offended.”

“As would theirs.”

He let her have the last word, content to conjure up plans for her addition as the wagon rolled toward the old… His estate.

“What?” Darius approached the stall where his piebald gelding stood, a mulish expression on the beast’s long face. “I groomed your hairy arse and scratched your withers. I picked out your feet and scratched your withers again. Go play.”

Skunk, for that was the horse’s name, sniffed along the wall of his stall then glared at Darius. As Darius eyed his horse, the vague sense of something being out of place grew until he stepped closer and surveyed the stall.

No water bucket.

“My apologies,” Darius muttered to his horse. Of course the animal would be thirsty, but when Darius had left Saturday morning, he distinctly recalled there being a full bucket of water in Skunk’s stall. Val had taken the draft horses to Axel’s, leaving Ezekiel to fend for himself in a grassy paddock that boasted shade and a running stream.

So where had the water bucket walked off to?

He found it out in the stable yard, empty and tossed on its side. When Skunk had had his fill, Darius topped off the bucket at the cistern and hung it in the horse’s stall.

Resolved to find sustenance now that he’d tended to his horse, Darius left the stables, intent on raiding the stores in the springhouse.

“What ho!” Val sang out from the back terrace. “It’s our Darius, wandered back from Londontowne.” He hopped to his feet and extended a hand in welcome. Darius shook it, regarding him curiously.

“You thought I’d abandon you just when the place is actually becoming habitable?”

“We’re a good ways from habitable.” Val eyed his half-replaced roof. “I thought you might be seduced by the comforts of civilization. Particularly as I was not very good company by the end of the week.”

Darius offered a slight smile. “You are seldom good company, though you do entertain. Where are my favorite Visigoths, and can I eat them for lunch?”

“Come.” Val slung an arm around Darius’s shoulders. “Mrs. Belmont fears for my boyish figure, and we’re well provisioned until market on Wednesday.”

“So where are the heathen?” Darius asked when they gained the springhouse and Val had tossed him a towel.

“Mrs. Fitz has set them to transplanting some stock provided by Professor Belmont. Ah, there it is.” He took the soap from a dish on the hearth and plunged his hands into the water in the shallow end of the conduit. “Christ, that is cold.” He pulled his shirt over his head, bathed everything north of his waist, toweled off and replaced the shirt, then started rummaging in the hamper.

“We’ve ham,” Val reported, “and cheese, and bread baked this morning, and an embarrassment of cherry cobbler, as well as a stash of marzipan, and…”—he fell silent for a moment, head down in the hamper—“cider and cold tea, which should have gone in the stream, and bacon already cooked to a crisp, and something that looks like…”—he held up a ceramic dish as if it were the holy grail—“strawberry tarts. Now, which do we hide from the boys, and which do we serve for dinner?”

“We hide all of it. Let them eat trout, charred haunch of bunny, or pigeon. But let’s get out of here before they fall upon us.”

The boys having made a habit of eating in the springhouse, Val and Darius took their hamper up to the carriage house.

“For what we are about to receive,” Val intoned, “we are pathetically damned grateful, and please let us eat in it peace. Amen. How good are you at designing greenhouses with windows in the roof?”

“Could be tricky,” Darius said, piling bread, meat, and cheese into a stack, “but interesting. I’m surprised Ellen will let you do this.”

“She probably thinks I’ll forget.” Val accepted a thick sandwich from Darius. “I won’t. Between her butter and her cheese and supervision of the boys and her… I don’t know, her neighborliness, I am in her debt.”

“I was wondering if her neighborliness was responsible for reviving your spirits this past weekend,” Darius said, tipping the cider jug to his lips.

“She went with us to Candlewick,” Val began, but then Darius caught his eye. “Bugger off, Dare.”

Darius passed him the jug. “I see the improvement in your mood was temporary. I did hear young Roxbury eloped for his country seat. Seems our boy did not take his reprieve to heart but has been running up debts apace.”

Val shrugged. “He’s a lord. Some of them do that.”

“I dropped in on my brother Trent.” Darius passed over the cider jug. “He mentioned Roxbury is an object of pity in the clubs.”

“Pity?” Val wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “His title is older than the Flood, the Roxbury estate is legendarily well run, and he’s yet to be snabbled by the matchmakers. What’s to pity?”

“He has no income to speak of.” Darius withdrew a cobbler from the hamper. “If he remains at Roxbury Hall, he can enjoy every luxury imaginable because the estate funds can be spent at the estate, on the estate without limit. His own portion is quite modest, though, and the previous baron tied most of the rest up in trusts and codicils and conditional bequests. Seems all that good management is a function of the late baron’s hard work and the present army of conscientious solicitors.”

“That would put a crimp in a young man’s stride.” Val frowned at the last bit of his sandwich. “How fortunate we are, not to be burdened with peerage, though such a sentiment sounds appallingly like something His Grace would say.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Darius took another pull from the jug.

“I am not. I see what Westhaven has to go through, now that he has financial control of the duchy, his life hardly his own for all the commerce and land he must oversee. It’s a wonder he had the time to tend the succession, much less the requisite privacy. And now St. Just is saddled with an earldom, and I begin to see why my father has said being the youngest son is a position of good fortune.”

“I’ve wondered if Trent shares His Grace’s point of view.” Darius said, relinquishing the jug again. “How soon do you want to get busy on Mrs. FitzEngle’s addition?”

“As soon as the roof is done. Probably another two weeks or so, and I will prevail on the Belmonts to invite her for a weeklong visit. If the weather cooperates and we plan well in advance, we should be able to get it done in a few days.”

Val repacked the hampers and left Darius muttering numbers under his breath, his pencil scratching across the page nineteen to the dozen.

The hamper in Val’s right hand he lifted without difficulty. His left hand, however, protested its burden vociferously all the way down the stairs. A morning spent laying the terrace slates had left the appendage sore, the redness and swelling spread back to the third finger, and Val’s temper ratchetting up, as well.

Ellen, blast the woman, had been right: Resting the hand completely apparently had a salubrious effect. Working it, no matter how mundane the task, aggravated the condition. Val eyed the manor house, deciding to forego his plan to spend the afternoon with the masons on the roof, and turned to make his way through the home wood.

He emerged from the woods at the back of Ellen’s property and scanned her yard. In the heat of the day she was toiling over her beds, her floppy hat the only part of her visible as she knelt among her flowers. Val stood at the edge of the trees, watching silently, letting the peace and quiet of the scene seep into his bones. Through the trees he could still hear the occasional shout from workers on the roof of the manor, the swing of a hammer, the clatter of a board being dropped into place.