Grace Burrowes - The Virtuoso

“I hoped it was our boys and not those other rotten little brats. You shoo them away, and they’re like flies. They just come buzzing back.”

“Are they truly rotten?” He worked an arm under her neck, drawing her closer. “I was a boy once. I hesitate to think all regarded me as an insect merely on the strength of my puerile status.”

“You were a good boy.” Ellen’s voice held the first hint of a smile. “They are not good boys. They are little thugs and worse. I’ve been trying to think up a name for your estate, and I keep thinking it should have to do with the lilies of the field.”

“The lilies of the field?” Val cast back over his dim command of scripture.

“It’s about what seems useless to us being worth the Almighty’s most tender regard.”

“I thought it was about flowers being pretty,” Val said, nuzzling at Ellen’s ear. “Roll over on your side. I would like to cuddle up with someone who is exceedingly pretty and worth some tender regard.”

“So I might be inspired to whisper confidences to you?” Ellen asked, shifting carefully in the hammock. Val waited for her to get situated then rolled to his side and began stroking his hand over her shoulders, neck, and back.

“The boys said you were not your most sanguine today.” Val felt the tension particularly across her shoulders, exactly where his own usually ached when he’d finished a good round of Beethoven. “Have you confidences to share?”

“I do not. You will put me to sleep if you keep that up.”

“Then you can dream of me, and I will dream of you—and vegetables.”

“Vegetables?” Ellen quirked a glance at him over her shoulder.

“Green beans, tomatoes, peppers, you know the kind.” Val kissed her nape. “Fruit helps, but I am beside myself with longing for vegetables. I could write a little rhapsody to the buttered green bean, so great is my torment.”

“I understand this torment.” Ellen rolled her shoulders. “By the end of June, I am practically sleeping in my vegetable patch, so desperately do I want that first bowl of crisp, ripe beans. Mine are almost ready.”

“And what about you?” Val kissed her nape again. “Are you ready?”

His cock had risen in his breeches to subtly nudge at her derriere, and she didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. Rather than answer him, she reached behind her and tugged his hand around her middle.

“I’ll take that for a maybe,” Val whispered in her ear then rested his cheek over hers. “Are you afraid of something, Ellen? Afraid I’ll hurt you?”

“Hurt me?” She scooted around a little. “Of course you’ll hurt me.”

“Blazes.” Val went still behind her. “That answer doesn’t encourage a fellow, love. Whatever do you mean?”

“You will offer me the sort of oblivion widows can discreetly enjoy, Valentine, and some sweet memories, but we both know nothing can come of it. When you are no longer interested, or you sell the property, you’ll move along with your life, selling your furniture, maybe restoring another estate, and I’ll still be here weeding my bed. My beds.”

He was silent, letting the slip of the tongue pass and considering himself responsible for her conclusion that nothing could come of their dealings. He’d all but assured her such was the case, and as his left hand throbbed mercilessly, he couldn’t really rescind his statement. He was aware, though, some part of him was unhappy with her brutal evaluation of the situation.

“Would you want more if I could offer it?” he asked, stroking his hand up to brush over her breast.

“I cannot want more.” She closed her hand over his and pressed his fingers more snugly around her breast.

It wasn’t an answer, but Val was too absorbed with the balance needed to shift her body over his in the swaying hammock to argue with her. When she was straddling him, he levered up to brush a kiss over her mouth.

“Your mood is distant. Where have you gone, Ellen?”

“Hold me.” She twined her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his shoulder. He complied, cradling her head in his palm, resting his cheek against her temple, but wondering how a woman could be clinging to him so tightly and yet be so far away at the same time.

“Are you looking forward to visiting Candlewick this weekend?” Val asked, his hands stroking slowly over her back. “I think Day and Phil are counting the hours.”

“I worked them without mercy at market yesterday.” Ellen tucked her nose against Val’s throat. “How is it you smell so good when you’ve been working all day?”

“We towel off in the springhouse before every meal,” Val replied, content to let Ellen’s conversation hop around like a pair of breeding hares at sunset. “Dare and I do. Day and Phil are becoming otters, and if Axel hasn’t a pond for swimming, he’d better dig one soon.”

“He does. Abby and I went for a stroll, and she showed it to me.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Are you looking forward to the weekend?” Val purposely maintained the easy rhythm of his caresses, but he felt Ellen’s breathing pause nonetheless.

“I am and I’m not.”

“Tell me.”

“I am because they are dear people and very gracious to their guests. I gather they’ve been through a lot, and it has made them sensible, easy to be with.”

“But?”

“But they are so happy with each other,” Ellen said softly. “It destroys some of my illusions, and that is hard.”

“Which illusions, love?”

“I have several illusions,” she said, shifting so she more closely straddled his hips. “I tell myself I was happy with Francis, and I was.”

“But Axel and Abby are happier,” Val guessed. “They were each married before, and it makes them appreciate each other.”

“Maybe.” Ellen’s tone was skeptical. “Francis was married before, and he didn’t look at me or touch me or talk about me the way Axel Belmont regards his Abby.”

“So you and Francis were miserable? What a relief to know he wasn’t actually canonized in the pantheon of saintly husbands.”

“We weren’t miserable.” Ellen found his nipple and bit him through the fabric of his shirt. “But we weren’t close, not like the Belmonts are.”

“I think few couples are, but you said they disabused you of several illusions.” Val made no move to dissuade her from her explorations—for that’s what they were. “The first being they reminded you your marriage was not perfect.”

“The second being that I am happy here in my gardens with no social life, no real friends, and only a trip to market or church to mark the passing of my days and weeks and years.”

“You are lonely.”

“Lonely.” Ellen sighed against his throat. “Also just… inconsequential.”

“We’re all inconsequential. The Regent himself can drop over dead, and the world will keep spinning in the very same direction, but I know something of what you mean.”

“You can’t know what I mean,” Ellen muttered, unbuttoning enough of his shirt that she could lay her cheek on his bare chest. “You have employees at your manufactories, you’ve mentioned brothers, Mr. Lindsey is attached to you, and the Belmonts are your friends. You talk about this Nick fellow, and your viscount physician friend and his wife. You have people, Valentine, lots and lots of people.”

“I’m from a very large family. Lots and lots of people feels natural to me.” But as he reflected on her words, Val realized he hadn’t been quite honest. For all he did have a lot of people, he still felt as Ellen did, isolated and marginal. While he pondered that paradox, he felt Ellen’s fingers undoing his shirt further, until her thumb brushed over his nipple and her cheek lay over his heart.

“Ellen FitzEngle Markham, you are too young and too lovely not to have some pleasures in your life. Your entire existence can’t be about flowers and beans and waving off the nasty boys with your broom.”

“And your entire existence can’t be about slates and shells and bills of lading.”

“Which is why”—Val hugged her close—“we will be pleased to accept the Belmont’s hospitality this weekend, right?”

“Right.” Ellen capitulated with only a hint of truculence in her tone. But then she drew back, peering at Val’s features in the moonlight. “How did your visit to Great Weldon go today?”

“Oh, that.” Val closed his eyes. “Cheatham wasn’t in, and I’m not sure what he’d have to tell me of any use, as his loyalties will clearly lie with Freddy and the Roxbury estate.”

Ellen said nothing but subsided into his embrace. Val gradually drifted off to sleep, leaving Ellen to ponder his answer as the crickets chirped and the breeze stirred gently through the trees. She’d dreaded asking the question and feared to hear his answer. Depending on Cheatham’s discretion, she might have been revealed in the very worst possible light.

But her fears had been for naught. Val had learned nothing, and so she had a reprieve. Maybe in the little time fate had given her, she’d somehow find the courage to tell the man the truth, for surely somebody in the shire—the tenants, the local boys, the well-meaning gossips at the Rooster, somebody—would tell him the woman in his arms was a liar, a cheat, and a thief intent on stealing from him until she had no other choice.

“Where’s your kit?” Axel asked as he and Val repaired to the airy, high-ceilinged guest chamber across the hallway from Ellen’s room.

“Here.” Val tossed a rolled-up shaving kit to Axel as a procession of footmen trooped in carrying the tub, Val’s traveling gear, and steaming buckets of water.

“Shirt off.” Axel stropped a straight razor against a small whetstone. “And sit you here.” He smacked the back of a dressing stool. “I got your note regarding mischief on your roof.”

“I don’t think it was an accident.” Val sat without even trying to put up a fuss about Axel acting as his valet. “Darius has remained behind, essentially to stand guard. And your sons could have been killed.”

“Or you.” Axel dipped a shaving brush into the half-full tub and worked up a lather with Val’s shaving soap. He sniffed the soap and dabbed lather onto Val’s cheeks. “Lovely scent. How do you conclude somebody tampered with your roof?”

“We know there were trespassers.” Val craned his chin up so Axel could lather his throat. “We also know the slates were tight on Friday.”

“You know your roofing crew claims they were tight on Friday,” Axel corrected as he began to scrape the razor along Val’s jaw. “From what you described, it took at least a half ton of fieldstone piled on that scaffolding to loosen the slates. Correct?”

“You don’t think it was mischief,” Val said when Axel swiped the razor clean on a towel.

“I do not. It was too random. Anybody could have been hurt by those stones, or nobody. The weight might have been enough to loosen the slates, and then again it might not. Somebody who really wanted to cause you harm would have taken more predictably troublesome measures to do it—if they had any sense. Hold still.”

Val considered Axel’s reasoning and found it sound. Axel, like his brother, Matthew Belmont, in Sussex, occasionally served as local magistrate. He had experience investigating crimes, and more to the point, he was Day and Phillip’s father. He would not put them at avoidable risk of harm; of that Val was certain.

Axel tossed a clean towel directly at Val’s shaven face. “I think you’ve dropped some weight. Your face is thinner.”

Val shrugged as he stood. “Darius claims the rest of me is thinner, as well. I confess to being indifferent on the matter but not the least indifferent to the thought of that tub of hot water.”

“Cuff links.” Axel waggled his fingers, and Val held out his left hand.

“Ye gods, Windham.” Axel frowned at Val’s swollen joints and reddened flesh. “Did you hit this thing with a hammer? It has to hurt.”

“It flares up,” Val muttered, snatching his hand back as soon as Axel had the cuff link out. “I think I can manage from here.”

“Like hell you can. You either let me unbutton your falls, or I’ll stand here and watch while you attempt it yourself.”

“Axel.” Val scowled at him in earnest.

“What?” He grabbed Val’s breeches by the waistband and scowled right back. “Do you have them made this loose?” He deftly unfastened the buttons while Val stood and suffered the assistance.

“I don’t like them tight.” Val shoved breeches and smalls over his hips. “If you must know, they are a little looser than when they were made.”

“Abby can probably take them in for you.” Axel picked up Val’s discarded clothing and kept further comments on his guest’s leanness to himself.