Page 22 of The Virtuoso
Val grimaced. “I hadn’t noticed. Suppose it’s best to go on as I’ve begun, though, unless you object? They aren’t formal people.”
“They are lovely people. Now sit you down, Mr. Windham, and take your medicine.” She withdrew her tin of comfrey salve, and Val frowned.
“You don’t have to do this.” He settled beside her on the bench that circled five interior sides of the hexagonal gazebo.
“Because you’ll be so conscientious about it yourself?” She’d positioned herself to his left and held out her right hand with an imperious wave. Taking Val’s left hand in her right, she studied it carefully.
“I didn’t get to see this the other night. It looks like it hurts.”
“Only when I use it. But if you’ll just hand me the tin, I can see to myself.”
“Stop being stubborn.” She dipped her fingers into the salve. “It’s only a hand, and only a little red and swollen. Maybe you shouldn’t be using it at all.” She began to spread salve over his knuckles while Val closed his eyes. “You have no idea why this has befallen you?”
“I might have overused it. Or it might be a combination of overuse and a childhood injury, or it might be just nerves.”
“Nerves?” Ellen peered over at him while she stroked her fingers over his palm. “One doesn’t usually attribute nerves to such hearty fellows as you.”
“It started the day I buried my second brother,” Val said on a sigh. He turned his head as if gazing out over the gardens or toward the manor house that sat so serenely on a small rise.
“You didn’t tell me you’d lost a brother.” She switched her grip so Val’s hand was between both of hers and her thumbs were circling on his broad and slightly callused palm.
“Two, actually. One on the Peninsula under less than heroic circumstances, though we don’t bruit that about, the other to consumption.” His voice could not have been more casual, but Ellen was holding his hand and felt the tension radiating from him.
“Valentine, I am so very sorry.”
***
“How did your husband die?” Val asked, desperately wanting to change the subject if not snatch his hand away and tear across the fields until he was out of sight.
“Fall from a horse.” Ellen said, though she did not turn loose of Val’s hand. “He lingered for two weeks, put his affairs in order—not that Francis’s affairs were ever out of order—then slipped away. I thought…”
“You thought?”
“I thought he was recovering.” She sighed, her fingers going still, though she kept his hand cradled in both of hers. “There was no outward injury, you see. He took a bump on the head, and there was some bruising around his middle, but no bleeding, no infection, nothing you’d think would kill a man.”
“He might have been bleeding inside. Or that bump on the head might have been what got him.”
“He was upset with himself to be incapacitated,” Ellen said softly. “The Markhams have bad hearts, you see. Their menfolk don’t often live past fifty, and some don’t live half that long. They are particularly careful of their succession, and so my failure to provide a son stood out in great relief. Francis was upset with himself for not seeing to his duty, not upset with me. His first wife had done no better than I, though, and that was some comfort.”
“I didn’t know you were a second wife,” Val said as Ellen shifted her ministrations to his wrist and forearm.
“She died of typhus. They were also married for five years, and I know Francis was very fond of her.”
“Fond.” Val winkled his nose at the term. “I suppose that’s genteel, but I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with somebody of whom I am merely fond. I am fond of Ezekiel.”
“Your horse.” Ellen smiled at him. “He is fond of you, as well, but when you have nobody and nothing to be even fond of, then fond can loom like a great boon.”
“Nobody?” Val cocked his head, addressing her directly. “No cousins, no uncles or aunts, no old granny knitting in some kitchen?”
Ellen shook her head. “I was the only child of only children and born to them late in life. The present generation of Markhams was not prolific either. There’s Frederick, of course, and some theoretical cousin who enjoys the status of Frederick’s heir, but I do not relish Frederick’s company, and I’ve never met the cousin.”
“What is a theoretical cousin?”
“Francis called him that,” Ellen said, switching to long, slow strokes along Val’s forearm. It was a peculiarly soothing way to be touched, though Val had the sense she’d all but forgotten what her hands were doing. “I gather Mr. Grey might be joined so far back to the family tree as to make the connection suspect, or he might have been born to his mother long after she’d separated from Mr. Grey.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” Ellen smiled at him again, the smile reaching her eyes this time. “We are holding hands in a location likely chosen to shield us from the prying eyes of our host and hostess.”
