Page 20 of The Virtuoso
“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.”
BaronRoxbury?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.Whatwasshedoingrusticatinglikeatenantfarmer’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.
Four
“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.
