The Virtuoso

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 the rightness. 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.

“What does this week hold for you?” he asked his driver.

Ellen’s smile was knowing, as if she realized he was taking refuge in small talk. “Weeding, of course, and some transplanting. We have to get the professor’s little plants taken care of too, though, so you’ll need to tell me where you want them.”

“You must take your pick first. And you cannot keep donating your time and effort to me, Ellen.”

“I will not allow you to pay me,” she shot back, spine straightening. “The boys do most of the labor, anyway, and I just order them around.”

“Order them—and me—to do something for you,” Val insisted. “Wouldn’t you like a glass house, for example, a place to start your seedlings early or conserve your tender plants over the winter?”

Ellen’s brows rose. “I’ve never considered such a thing.”

“I could build a little conservatory onto that cottage of yours,” Val said, his imagination getting hold of the project. “You already have a window on your southern exposure, and we could simply cut that into a door.”

“Cottages do not sport conservatories.”

Val waved a hand and used one of his father’s favorite expressions. “Bah. If I made you a separate hothouse, you’d have to go outside in the winter months to tend it, and it would need a separate fire and so on. Your cottage will already have some heat to lend it, and we could elevate it a few steps, or I could make the addition the same height as your cottage and put the glass in the roof.”

“A skylight,” Ellen murmured. “They’re called skylights.”

“Pretty name. I’m going to ask Dare to come up with some sketches, and you are going to let me do this.”

“It will bring in the damp.”

Val rolled his eyes. “This is England. The damp comes in, but we’ll bring in the sun too, and ventilate the thing properly.”

“You mustn’t.”

“Ellen, I went the entire weekend without playing a single note.”

“And the significance of this?”

“I don’t know how many more such weekends I can bear.” He wasn’t complaining now, he was being brutally, unbecomingly honest. “The only thing that helps is staying busy, and a little addition to your cottage will keep me busy.”

“You are busy enough.”

“I am not.” He met her eyes and let her see the misery in them. She wouldn’t understand all of it, but she’d see it. “I need to be busier.” So busy he dropped from exhaustion even if he had to ruin his hand to do it, which made no sense at all.

“All right.” Ellen’s gaze shifted to the broad rumps of the horses. “But you will allow me to tend your hand, and you will keep the boys occupied with your house and your grounds.”

“Under your supervision.”

“I won’t stand over them every minute.”

“Certainly not.” Val grinned at her, wondering when he’d developed a penchant for arguing with ladies. “They require frequent dunking in the pond to retain any semblance of cleanliness, and your modesty would be offended.”

“As would theirs.”

He let her have the last word, content to conjure up plans for her addition as the wagon rolled toward the old… His estate.

Five

“What?” Darius approached the stall where his piebald gelding stood, a mulish expression on the beast’s long face. “I groomed your hairy arse and scratched your withers. I picked out your feet and scratched your withers again. Go play.”

Skunk, for that was the horse’s name, sniffed along the wall of his stall then glared at Darius. As Darius eyed his horse, the vague sense of something being out of place grew until he stepped closer and surveyed the stall.

No water bucket.

“My apologies,” Darius muttered to his horse. Of course the animal would be thirsty, but when Darius had left Saturday morning, he distinctly recalled there being a full bucket of water in Skunk’s stall. Val had taken the draft horses to Axel’s, leaving Ezekiel to fend for himself in a grassy paddock that boasted shade and a running stream.

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