The Virtuoso (23 page)

To feel him growing more aroused, harder and hotter in her grip and her mouth, was prodding Ellen past curiosity and a need to give him pleasure, on to fueling her own arousal. She took him into her mouth and set up a rhythm like the ones he'd used with her, while desire crested higher in her own veins.

“Ellen, I'll spend.” She heard him, though she barely recognized that harsh rasp as her lover's voice. She heard the desperate heat in his words and drew on him gently in the same rhythm that her hand was stroking his strength.

“Ellen…
God…
”

He cupped her jaw and carefully disentangled himself from her mouth, then closed his hand over hers. The firmness of his grip was surprising, the feel of his hot seed spurting over their joined fingers a moment later both intimate and shocking.

When he subsided, his hand still around hers, Ellen remained where she was, her head resting on Val's chest for a long moment while his arousal faded. She relaxed against him, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing beneath her cheek, while tenderness for him threatened to overwhelm her.

Was this what
he
felt when he gave her pleasure? Was this sense of trust and communion as precious to him as it was to her?

“I need to hold my tigress.” There was a different note in his voice—softer and perhaps slightly awed.

Ellen uncurled herself from him, groped around for her handkerchief on the nightstand, and tended to him as he'd tended to her. “Your tigress needs you to hold her, too.” She tossed the hankie away and tucked herself along his side, hiking a leg across his thighs as if she'd protect him with her very body.

“Thank you, tigress.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Ellen felt his lips against her hair. While the storm raged outside, beneath the covers she felt safe and warm, well pleased with her tiger, and pleased with herself, as well.

When Ellen's breathing signaled that she'd drifted into peaceful slumber beside him, Val lay for a long time, gliding his hand over her hair, listening to the storm.

There was a lesson for him here, in Ellen's courage and generosity—in her trust. This intimacy she shared with him came from her heart, and the resulting depth of pleasure was unprecedented in Val's experience.

The best music Val had ever created, the most sublime, had come not from the thrill of playing before a packed salon of educated connoisseurs, not from demonstrating hard-earned technical prowess before fellow students at the conservatory, not even from the polished efforts he'd put before his most learned teachers.

The best, loveliest music he'd ever created had come from the need to give something of value to someone he cared for—reassurance, comfort, consolation, relief from pain or despondency. The best music he'd ever created had come not from his fingers or his musical mind, but from his heart.

***

The next day was spent largely cleaning up after the storm. Because neither Axel, Val, St. Just, nor the boys were inclined to attend services, they spent the day cutting, dragging, and cursing fallen trees and trees limbs.

“Where is Nick Haddonfield's considerable brawn when it's needed?” Val asked the sky as he paused to swig some cold cider.

“Probably in bed with his new countess,” St. Just muttered.

“You miss your Emmie,” Axel observed, a curious smile on his face. “And you are anxious to start your journey north.”

“I am, though I am not pleased to be leaving my brother in such unsettled circumstances.”

“I'm not unsettled.” Val tossed the jug of cider to him. “I am looking forward to moving into my house and living like a human for a change, instead of some forest primate in the tropics. Why is it always the big trees that come down?”

“Not always.” St. Just took his drink and passed the cider to Axel. “Your oaks have withstood centuries of storms.”

“My oaks?”

“As in the oak trees growing along the lane of the property you own and have still refused to name.”

“It isn't that I've refused to name it.” Val slipped the reins of the waiting team around his shoulders and under one arm. “A name just hasn't come to me.”

“Names.” Axel grunted as he took an axe to a sturdy root. “I can't get Abby to name our unborn child.”

“She will.” St. Just took up a second axe and began to hack away at the root in alternating swings with Axel, while Val used the team to keep tension on the entire tree. They kept a steady chop-chop, chop-chop, until Val began to hear something like a clog dance in his head. Hearty, energetic music that managed to be both buoyant and solidly grounded at the same time.

“Look sharp, Val,” St. Just called as he heaved the axe in one mighty, final swing and hacked the root in twain. The team jumped forward but hawed obediently as Val steered them over to the side of the lane, dragging the great weight of the tree trunk with them.

“This one will keep you warm for while,” St. Just said, wiping his brow. Val urged the team forward to get the remains of the tree as close to the woodshed as possible.

“That's the last of the big ones.” Axel glanced at the sky. “I'm guessing it's close to teatime. Let's call it a day.”

“Amen,” St. Just muttered as Axel bellowed instructions to his sons. They waved from where they were sawing branches off another fallen tree and signaled they'd follow by way of the farm pond.

An hour later, the men were scrubbed and presentable for dinner while the boys had yet to be seen.

“We've company, wife,” Axel said as he passed Abby a small serving of wine. “The boys should be here in time for dinner on those rare occasions when we allow civilized folk to dine with them.”

“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?”

“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 want 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 campaigns 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.”

“Ellen?” Val held out an arm, and she went to his side then turned her face into his neck. He kept his arm around her as they made their way back through the wood, and he noted plenty of damage. One of the old pensioners Ellen had warned him about had crashed to its side, taking down limbs and saplings with it.

Blazing hell. The enchanted home wood had gone and changed on him when he'd been unwilling to deal with the need for change himself.

“Oh, ye gods,” Darius said softly behind him. Val followed his friend's gaze across Ellen's back gardens to her lovely little cottage.

Her formerly lovely little cottage. Another tree had toppled, landing mostly in Ellen's side yard, but clipping the south side of her cottage by just enough that the roof was ruined and the wall sagging dangerously beneath it.

The sight was ominous, and to Val, somehow profane, as well.

“We'll fix it,” he said, tipping her chin up so he could see her eyes. “Your conservatory was going in on that side, and this will just speed up construction. Dare, get my crews over here to clear this mess. Nick, we'll be needing the team for sure. Day and Phil can go through the outbuildings and find a suite of bedroom furniture, then pick out a room in the house that's close enough to done we can move Ellen into it.”

He braced a hand on either side of Ellen's neck. “You are going to let me take care of this and no argument, please. God”—he hugged her to him—“if you'd been home, puttering at your embroidering, putting up jam…”

She nodded, eyes teary, and let him hold her.

“Ah, look there.” Val pointed to the base of the fallen tree. “Your greatest treasure is unscathed.” Marmalade sat on his fluffy orange backside, washing a front paw as if he hadn't a care in the world.