gathering his clothes at the end of the dock… They made a hot night hotter and made Ellen’s clothes feel clingy and damp next to her skin. As full darkness fell, she stripped down and slipped into the water, circling the pond many times, just as Valentine had.
And just as unable to find relief from the guilt and grief troubling her.
“The boys will be all right in their tent?” Val asked as he poured two cups of tea from the pot on the stove while a few drops of rain spattered the roof of the carriage house.
“They’re waterproof,” Darius replied, accepting his cup. “Rain or shine, this whole summer is a lark to them, as it should be.”
“They’ve gotten a lot done this week. There’s not a sapling standing in the yard, the beds are dug and planted, the vegetables are in, and the drive is looking better.”
Darius regarded Val by the flickering light of a single candle. “But you are not satisfied.”
“With them? Of course I am. They’re good boys, and they work hard. I’m lucky to have them.”
“With them, maybe, not with yourself.”
“And you are such a paragon of self-satisfaction?” The last thing Val wanted at the end of yet another grueling day was Darius Lindsey peering into his soul.
“You will take the boys and Mrs. Fitz to Candlewick tomorrow,” Darius replied. “Get some decent cooking into you, play Belmont’s grand piano for a few hours, and set yourself to rights.”
Val was silent a long time, until he expelled a hard breath and set his mug down on the bricks under the stove. “I will not be playing Belmont’s piano or any other, and I will thank you not to raise the matter before others.” He crossed the room in two strides and sat on his bunk, hauling off his boots and tossing them hard against the opposite wall.
“So that’s what all the gloves are about?” Darius asked, reclining on his cot. “Your left hand is still buggered up?”
“How did you know?”
“I have eyes, Valentine. It took me about two days to figure out you own the world’s largest collection of gloves, because you’ve bought them ready-made in two different sizes. From there, I observed your left hand is swollen, the thumb, index, and middle fingers noticeably red and painful-looking. You make every effort not to favor the hand for fine tasks but beat it to death on manual labor. One has to wonder if your actions are well advised.”
“Fairly forbid me the piano,” Val bit out. “So I don’t play the bloody piano.”
“And does your hand improve?”
“Not much.” Val tried to match his companion’s casual tone. “At first, there was some improvement, but lately, it’s no better. I might as well use it for what I can, while I can.”
“You say that like you are angry at your hand,” Darius mused, “though you do every kind of rough work there is to do with it, and you certainly make me look like I’m barely pulling my weight most days.”
“I do every kind of work the common laborers do,” Val corrected him. He rose and crossed the room to where his boots lay against the far wall and set them tidily next to the door. “I just can’t do the kind of work I was born to do.”
“And that would be?”
“Play the piano. My art is how I go on, Darius, and the only thing I know how to do well enough to matter.”
“Doing it a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” Darius crossed his arms behind his head and regarded Val where he once again sat on his cot.
“No, I don’t think. Were I going to be dramatic, I’d slit my wrists, hang myself, or jump into the Thames when the tide was leaving.”
“Valentine.” Darius sat up. “That is not funny.”
“How funny do you think it feels not to be able to play the piano when it’s all I’ve done of worth in the past twenty-some years? I did not excel at school, and I can’t point to an illustrious career like my brother, the former cavalry officer. I haven’t Westhaven’s head for business. I wasn’t a jolly good time like Bart or a charmer like Vic.
“And you can build stone walls and referee between Day and Phil and keep an eye on Nick Haddonfield when he hares all over the Home Counties,” Darius retorted. “Do you think one activity defines you?”
“I’m like a whore, Darius, in that, yes, the one activity, in my case playing the piano, defines me.” Val heard weariness in his own voice. “When Dev was driven mad by nightmares, I played for him so he couldn’t hear the battles anymore. When his little Winnie was scared witless by all the changes in her life, I played for her and taught her a few things to play for herself. When Victor was so sick, I’d play for him, and he’d stop coughing for a little while. It’s how I let people know they matter to me, Darius, and now…”
Darius got up and crossed the room, then lowered himself to sit beside Val in the shifting candlelight. “Now all this playing for others has left you one-handed, angry, and beating yourself up.”
Not beating himself up, precisely, but
“You talk about an instrument as if it’s animate,” Darius said, hunching forward. “I know you are grieving the inability to exercise a considerable talent, but you are too old—and far too dear a man—to be relying on an imaginary friend. You deserve more than to think of yourself as merely the slave of your muse.”
Val shot off the bed and crossed to the door, pausing only long enough to tug on his boots.
“I’m sorry.” Darius rose and might have stopped him, but Val turned his back and got his hand on the door latch first. “I don’t like seeing you suffer, but were you really happy spending your entire life on the piano bench?”
“You think I’m happy now?” Val asked without turning.
He was down the stairs and out into the night without any sense of where he was headed or why movement might help. Darius was too damned perceptive by half, but really—an imaginary friend?
It was the kind of devastating observation older brothers might make of a younger sibling and then laugh about. Maybe, Val thought as his steps took him along a bridle path in the moonlit woods, this was why the artistic temperament was so unsteady. People not afflicted with the need to create could not understand what frustration of the urge felt like.
The weekend at Belmont’s loomed like an obstacle course in Val’s mind.
No finger exercises, no visiting friendly old repertoire to limber up, no reading open score to keep abreast of the symphonic literature, no letting themes and melodies wander around in his hands just to see what became of them. No glancing up and realizing he’d spent three hours on a single musical question and still gotten no closer to a satisfactory answer.
All of that, Val thought as he emerged from the darkened woods, was apparently never to be again. His hand was not getting better, though it wasn’t getting worse, either. It merely hurt and looked ugly and managed only activities requiring brute strength of the arm and not much real grip.
He found himself at the foot of Ellen FitzEngle’s garden and wondered if he could have navigated his way there on purpose. Her cottage was dark, but her back yard was redolent with all manner of enticing floral scents in the dewy evening air. If her gardens were pretty to the eye by day, they were gorgeous to the nose at night. Silently, Val wandered the rows until his steps took him to the back porch, where a fat orange cat strolled down the moonlit steps to strop itself against Val’s legs.
“He’s shameless.” Ellen’s voice floated through the shadows. “Can’t abide having to catch mice and never saw a cream bowl he couldn’t lick spotless in a minute.”
“What’s his name?” Val asked, not even questioning why Ellen would be alone on her porch after dark.
“Marmalade. Not very original.”
“Because he’s orange?” Val bent to pick the cat up and lowered himself to the top porch step.
“And sweet,” Ellen added, shifting from her porch swing to sit beside Val. “I take it you were too hot to sleep?”
