Page 28 of The Virtuoso
So where had the water bucket walked off to?
He found it out in the stable yard, empty and tossed on its side. When Skunk had had his fill, Darius topped off the bucket at the cistern and hung it in the horse’s stall.
Resolved to find sustenance now that he’d tended to his horse, Darius left the stables, intent on raiding the stores in the springhouse.
“What ho!” Val sang out from the back terrace. “It’s our Darius, wandered back from Londontowne.” He hopped to his feet and extended a hand in welcome. Darius shook it, regarding him curiously.
“You thought I’d abandon you just when the place is actually becoming habitable?”
“We’re a good ways from habitable.” Val eyed his half-replaced roof. “I thought you might be seduced by the comforts of civilization. Particularly as I was not very good company by the end of the week.”
Darius offered a slight smile. “You are seldom good company, though you do entertain. Where are my favorite Visigoths, and can I eat them for lunch?”
“Come.” Val slung an arm around Darius’s shoulders. “Mrs. Belmont fears for my boyish figure, and we’re well provisioned until market on Wednesday.”
“So where are the heathen?” Darius asked when they gained the springhouse and Val had tossed him a towel.
“Mrs. Fitz has set them to transplanting some stock provided by Professor Belmont. Ah, there it is.” He took the soap from a dish on the hearth and plunged his hands into the water in the shallow end of the conduit. “Christ, that is cold.” He pulled his shirt over his head, bathed everything north of his waist, toweled off and replaced the shirt, then started rummaging in the hamper.
“We’ve ham,” Val reported, “and cheese, and bread baked this morning, and an embarrassment of cherry cobbler, as well as a stash of marzipan, and…”—he fell silent for a moment, head down in the hamper—“cider and cold tea, which should have gone in the stream, and bacon already cooked to a crisp, and something that looks like…”—he held up a ceramic dish as if it were the holy grail—“strawberry tarts. Now, which do we hide from the boys, and which do we serve for dinner?”
“We hide all of it. Let them eat trout, charred haunch of bunny, or pigeon. But let’s get out of here before they fall upon us.”
The boys having made a habit of eating in the springhouse, Val and Darius took their hamper up to the carriage house.
“For what we are about to receive,” Val intoned, “we are pathetically damned grateful, and please let us eat in it peace. Amen. How good are you at designing greenhouses with windows in the roof?”
“Could be tricky,” Darius said, piling bread, meat, and cheese into a stack, “but interesting. I’m surprised Ellen will let you do this.”
“She probably thinks I’ll forget.” Val accepted a thick sandwich from Darius. “I won’t. Between her butter and her cheese and supervision of the boys and her… I don’t know, her neighborliness, I am in her debt.”
“I was wondering if her neighborliness was responsible for reviving your spirits this past weekend,” Darius said, tipping the cider jug to his lips.
“She went with us to Candlewick,” Val began, but then Darius caught his eye. “Bugger off, Dare.”
Darius passed him the jug. “I see the improvement in your mood was temporary. I did hear young Roxbury eloped for his country seat. Seems our boy did not take his reprieve to heart but has been running up debts apace.”
Val shrugged. “He’s a lord. Some of them do that.”
“I dropped in on my brother Trent.” Darius passed over the cider jug. “He mentioned Roxbury is an object of pity in the clubs.”
“Pity?” Val wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “His title is older than the Flood, the Roxbury estate is legendarily well run, and he’s yet to be snabbled by the matchmakers. What’s to pity?”
“He has no income to speak of.” Darius withdrew a cobbler from the hamper. “If he remains at Roxbury Hall, he can enjoy every luxury imaginable because the estate funds can be spent at the estate, on the estate without limit. His own portion is quite modest, though, and the previous baron tied most of the rest up in trusts and codicils and conditional bequests. Seems all that good management is a function of the late baron’s hard work and the present army of conscientious solicitors.”
“That would put a crimp in a young man’s stride.” Val frowned at the last bit of his sandwich. “How fortunate we are, not to be burdened with peerage, though such a sentiment sounds appallingly like something His Grace would say.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Darius took another pull from the jug.
“I am not. I see what Westhaven has to go through, now that he has financial control of the duchy, his life hardly his own for all the commerce and land he must oversee. It’s a wonder he had the time to tend the succession, much less the requisite privacy. And now St. Just is saddled with an earldom, and I begin to see why my father has said being the youngest son is a position of good fortune.”
“I’ve wondered if Trent shares His Grace’s point of view.” Darius said, relinquishing the jug again. “How soon do you want to get busy on Mrs. FitzEngle’s addition?”
“As soon as the roof is done. Probably another two weeks or so, and I will prevail on the Belmonts to invite her for a weeklong visit. If the weather cooperates and we plan well in advance, we should be able to get it done in a few days.”
Val repacked the hampers and left Darius muttering numbers under his breath, his pencil scratching across the page nineteen to the dozen.
The hamper in Val’s right hand he lifted without difficulty. His left hand, however, protested its burden vociferously all the way down the stairs. A morning spent laying the terrace slates had left the appendage sore, the redness and swelling spread back to the third finger, and Val’s temper ratchetting up, as well.
