Page 26 of The Virtuoso
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“Let me have the reins,” Ellen said quietly. They’d made their good-byes to the Belmonts, the savages were asleep in the back of the wagon, and yet she’d waited only until to the foot of Candlewick lane to state her demand.
Val glanced over at her in consternation. “You?”
“Me.” She reached for the reins, and Val saw she was wearing riding gloves. They weren’t as heavy as the driving gloves he sported, but they’d do.
He passed her the reins. “Why?”
“Because these are very sweet beasts and well trained,” Ellen said, shifting a little closer to Val, “and yet they are big fellows and will pull on that hand of yours.”
Amusement fled, leaving Val to frown at his gloved hand then at his companion.
“Did resting it and taking care of it this weekend help?” she asked.
“Maybe. A little. It certainly didn’t hurt.”
“Well, then.” Ellen nodded, apparently feeling her point had been made.
“Ellen, I’ve been resting it for weeks now, and sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse, but it never heals.”
“Take off your glove.” She gestured with her chin. “The left one.”
He complied and inspected his hand. He tried not to look at it, usually—the results were invariably disappointing. Besides, he could feel the differences, between the good days and the other days. Friday had been a bad day.
“See.” Ellen nodded at his hand. “Your third finger is losing its redness, and even your thumb and first finger look a little better. Rest helps, Valentine, real rest.”
“How am I to rebuild an entire estate and rest my hand, Ellen?” Even to his own ears, Val’s voice was petulant. He was surprised she answered him.
“You admit you need to, for starters,” she chided softly. “Of course you will have to use it some, but you hardly give yourself any consideration at all. I see you, sir, up on that roof, tossing slates, or on the lane hacking at the weeds, or hefting stones the size of a five-gallon bucket. Even were you completely hale, you’d be sorely trying that hand.”
She didn’t know the half of it, so Val kept his silence, feeling resentment and frustration build in the soft morning air.
“I didn’t play a single note this weekend,” he said at length, but he said it so quietly, Ellen cocked her head and leaned a little closer.
“On the piano,” Val clarified. “I peeked, though, and it’s a lovely instrument. Belmont plays the violin, and Abby is a passable pianist, or she must be. She has a deal of Beethoven, and you don’t merely dabble, if he’s to your taste.”
“You are musical?”
Val exhaled a world of loss. “Until this summer, I was nothing but musical. Now I am forbidden to play.”
Ellen glanced at his hand. “So you work?”
“So I work.” He scowled at his hand, wanting to hide it. “I keep hoping that one day I’ll wake up and it will be better.”
“Like I used to hope I’d wake up one day and realize my husband was alive and I’d merely dreamed his death. Bloody unfair, but I’m not dreaming.”
Val smiled at her language, finding commiseration in it from an unlikely source. “Bloody unfair. You drive well.”
“And you rebuild estates like you were born to it. But it’s still bloody unfair, isn’t it?”
“Bloody blazingly unfair.”
He hadn’t kissed her again after their interlude in the gazebo, and when she had dragooned him onto a bench with her tin of salve twice on Sunday, they’d stayed more or less in plain sight while she worked on his hand. It meant somebody might see his infirmity, but that was a price Val had been willing to pay for the corresponding assistance with his self-control.
That kiss had taken him aback, the intensity of it and therightness. More disconcerting still was the way Ellen had felt in his arms, the way he’d been content to hold her and caress her and she’d been content to be held.
Whatever was growing between them, Val sensed it wasn’t just a sexual itch that wanted scratching and then forgetting. It wasn’t just about his cock, but about his hands, and his mouth, and so much more. He hadn’t thought it through to his satisfaction and wasn’t sure he even could.
