Page 76 of The Virtuoso
Of course he did. Between Nick’s great height and his gorgeous, blond, blue-eyed appearance—and his outrageous flirting—Ellen would probably recall meeting Nick Haddonfield when she couldn’t recall her own name.
“Nick dropped out of sight for a few years because he did not want to be forced to marry,” Val said. “He traveled to Sussex and took a position as a groom, then as stable master on a rural estate.”
“He worked with his hands?” There was grudging curiosity in her tone.
“With a muck fork, more likely. That was the time I got to know him. He was just Wee Nick to me, an occasional companion to sport about Town with. If I omitted his title, it was an oversight, but Nick did not correct me.”
“He did not,” Ellen agreed, and some of the starch seemed to go out of her. She leaned a little more on Val’s arm, her weight welcome and even comforting. “And are you in the habit of having him check up on you?”
“He moves around a lot and checks up on most of his friends,” Val explained. He did not want to defend Nick—Nick needed no defending—but he wanted Ellen to understand why Val considered the man a friend. “This spring I moved in with him for a few weeks during the Season. I’d come down from the north and was at loose ends and was most assuredly not willing to dwell in one of my parents’ residences.”
“Hence the appeal of your new acquisition,” Ellen concluded. “You are taking more than a passing interest in it.”
“I am.” Val smiled at the observation. “Home was anywhere there was a decent piano.”
“You were that serious?”
“I was; then this happened.” He held up his left hand. “One must make a different plan sometimes, and really, spending the rest of my life on a piano bench wasn’t much of a plan.” To his surprise, he could make this honest observation without any rancor.
“But you make furniture,” Ellen protested. “That must take up some of your time.”
“I make pianos, Ellen,” Val said, feeling a curious relief to have this truth revealed. “Or my employees do. It’s very lucrative, at least for the present.”
“Pianos?” Ellen stopped in the middle of the path, cocked her head, and regarded him.
Val waited, even as he knew the female gears in her brain were whizzing about, perfectly recalling every God’s blessed word he’d ever uttered about making furniture or any other damned thing of the smallest relevance to his latest admission.
“You didn’t lie, exactly,” she said as she slowly resumed walking, “but you prevaricated. Why?”
“What sort of dashing young man makes pianos? And how does the peace of the realm require pianos? Pianos are frivolous extravagances, unlike chairs and tables. Civilized society needs chairs and tables.” To his horror, Val heard echoes of His Grace’s reasoning in his voice, though it had been years since his father had even muttered this sort of logic in Val’s hearing.
“You don’t seriously believe this, do you?” Ellen’s voice held consternation and she was again looking at him.
“Many people do, including, I suspect, my own father.” Val dropped her hand to slip an arm around her shoulders. “Many more people are willing to part with their coin to get their hands on one of my pianos, so I try not to dwell on it.”
“I am still trying to grasp that you make pianos,” Ellen said as they approached the back terrace. “It has to be terribly complicated.”
“It’s wonderful, really.” Val assisted her up the steps from the gardens to the terrace. “All that wood and wire and metal, and from it comes the most sublime sound.”
“Like brilliant, fragrant flowers from simple dirt,” Ellen replied. “There has to be something of divinity in the process. There is no other explanation, really.”
“It’s exactly that,” he said softly, “something of the divine.” In the muted moonshine, he settled for running the backs of his fingers over her cheek and taking her hand in his, but this was part of what he had in common with her. They both had the artist’s need to create beauty, to nurture it, watch it grow and develop, and see it please the senses and the soul.
As they took their places among the others, Val wanted to pull his oldest brother aside and lecture him at length. St. Just had been of the erroneous opinion Valentine lacked common ground with anyone.
Anyone at all.
***
“I had thought to part ways with you in Little Weldon,” St. Just said the next morning as they passed through the village, “but given there’s more storm damage here than at Candlewick, I think I’ll just see you safely home.”
“You needn’t,” Val said from atop the wagon. “I’ve Wee Nick to babysit me, Darius is guarding the fort, and the heathen are my extra eyes and ears.”
“Here, here,” Nick said from his perch on his mare. “Heathen?”
“Here,” Dayton chirped.
“And here,” Phil added.
