Page 19 of The Virtuoso
“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 hewasa 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 tocertainacts, 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.”
