telling you this is because I think Ellen could use a friend.”
“I am her friend. Maybe her only friend.”
“As her friend, you should make those inquiries. Find out what’s to do with that money; maybe dig a little regarding the late baron’s death.”
“I see your point.” Though he hated the idea of rummaging around in Ellen’s past without her knowledge or consent. “How does one dig past loyal solicitors?”
Axel snorted. “Loyal to whom? Not to the widowed baroness, certainly. But if the solicitors do hold the purse strings, they’ve likely held on to the late baron’s staff, as well. You might talk to them, see what they recall.”
“Or send somebody off to talk to them,” Val agreed, a certain someone coming to mind. “Before I go tearing around, violating the woman’s privacy, hadn’t I better stop to ask why I’m going to such an effort?”
“Because you’re smitten.” Axel slouched down, his drink cradled in his lap. “Even if you weren’t smitten, you’re constitutionally unable to ignore a damsel in distress.”
“I can ignore them. I have five sisters.”
“Distress is not a missing hair ribbon. St. Just has told me how careful you were with Winnie last winter, how much time you spent with her. Nicholas reports you dote on little Rose, as well.”
Nicholas and his damned
“You have honor,” Axel said simply. “You do not tolerate injustice, and that is a fine quality in any man—or any man’s son.”
“Tell that to Moreland,” Val muttered before taking a hefty swallow of his drink.
“I think he already knows.” Axel yawned. “You’ll see what you can do to help Ellen?”
“I will. Have you somebody to take a message to London tonight?”
Axel glanced out the window. “Moon’s up. Wheeler will likely be game. You can afford this?”
Val smiled at him, knowing the question wasn’t intended as an insult. “You are a good friend, Axel Belmont, and a brave man. Compared to what I’ve put into the estate, this little investigation will be a pittance, and I can well afford it. I haven’t just produced a few pianos for the occasional schoolroom; I’ve also imported a lot of rare and antique instruments from the Continent. The Corsican left many an old family with little enough coin, so I can buy very, very cheaply and sell very, very dearly.”
“Trade.” Axel smiled. “One doesn’t want to admit it, but it can be fun.”
“Fun and profitable. I am seeing to it priceless instruments find a home where they’ll be taken care of, appreciated, and even played.”
“Shrewd of you,” Axel said, his gaze appraising. “St. Just claims your business sense is every bit as astute as Westhaven’s.”
“Maybe, but only in my very limited field.”
“I don’t buy that,” Axel countered, rising, going to the desk, and rummaging for paper, ink, pen, and sand. “I’ll leave you to your correspondence and warn Wheeler somebody had better be saddling up.”
“My thanks.” Val took the seat behind the desk.
“And Val?” Axel paused by the door. “I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a connection we’re missing.”
“Connecting what?”
“Your estate has been beset with hidden traps, and it’s as if Ellen’s future has been sabotaged, as well. I can’t see the common thread, but I sense there is one.”
“As do I. I’ll see what I can find out.”
But after he jotted off a note to Benjamin Hazlit in London and had it delivered to the stables, Val sat for a long time, pondering Axel’s parting words. He knew what it felt like to have one’s future sabotaged, and it wasn’t a feeling easily tolerated.
Ellen came awake when Val quietly closed her bedroom door, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s going to storm and I wanted to be with you. Go back to sleep.”
“I can handle a storm, Valentine,” Ellen said, but she heard something brittle in her own voice. Her confidences to Abby earlier in the evening reminded her that she’d handled too many storms, truth be told, and hated each and every one.
“Maybe I can’t,” Val replied, lifting the covers and slipping in beside her. “Budge over and cuddle up, wench.”
“It is blowing something fierce,” Ellen admitted, snuggling closer. Snow might pile up, and rain might come down, but the violence and wind of the summer storm intimidated her the most.
“You’re safe with me.” Val kissed her crown. “Do you believe that?”
“Safe?” Ellen frowned in the darkness as she curled up against him. “Safe how?”
“I will not let harm befall you, Ellen. Now go to sleep.”
What an odd declaration, and how lovely to find he was as naked as she. “Can one be safe in the embrace of a tiger?”
“Yes, though perhaps one cannot get a good night’s rest in the arms of a tigress.”
Ellen considered his words while the wind picked up and the rain slapped down in gusts and torrents just beyond her window. The darkness and the fact that Valentine would seek her out in the middle of the night gave her courage. “May I ask you something, Valentine?”
He left off nuzzling her temple. “You may ask me anything, Ellen. That is part of what it means to be safe in the company of another. You are also safe in my esteem.”
She stretched up and put her lips near his ear. “Would you allow me to put my mouth on you?” To elucidate her inquiry, she slid her hand down over the flat, warm plane of his torso to cup him gently and then wrap her fingers around his member. “I’ve wondered about it since we were by the stream earlier. I’ve wondered a very great deal.”
“Your
She held him a little more snugly. “Is it wrong to want such a thing with you?”
This was a request she could not have made in daylight. In her hand, Valentine’s arousal was literally growing by the moment, and where she was draped along his naked frame, he’d gone still.
“It isn’t wrong. There is no bodily intimacy between us that could be wrong, Ellen, but neither is it something a decent man expects of any woman.”
She heard hesitance in his voice, which was not the same thing at all as censure, distaste, or shock. “When we were at the stream, Valentine, you surprised me, but I enjoyed it. Why did you use your mouth on me? I’m sure decent women don’t expect that, either.”
He wrapped one hand around her nape and used the other to cradle her jaw. “You trusted me. You did not let shyness overcome your curiosity, and I wanted to give you pleasure.” He fell silent a moment, his fingers moving slowly over her face as if to map her features in the darkness. “It pleased me tremendously to give you that pleasure, Ellen.”
In the next silence, she stroked the burgeoning length of him under the covers. Maybe what she wanted was wicked, but she could not reconcile wickedness with the pleasure and closeness he’d shown her earlier in the day, or with the tenderness welling within her for the man who’d come to her bed in the middle of a storm.
He pushed the covers aside and lay there, signaling in one eloquent gesture his willingness to appease her curiosity.
“Thank you, Valentine.” She pressed her mouth to his chest, drawing in the scent of him, gathering her courage. He did not offer her instructions or warnings or prose on about rules and pinches. She concluded from his silence and his passivity that in this, he was deciding simply to trust her.
She scooted a little and pillowed her cheek low on his abdomen. His scent was different here. No less clean but more male. Using her hand, she guided him to her mouth and allowed herself one lapping pass of her tongue over the soft skin of his crown.
Beneath her cheek, his belly tensed, and then she heard and felt him let out a sigh.
Perhaps a few words were not a bad idea. “You’ll tell me if I do it wrong?”
“You won’t.” He brushed his hand over her hair then let it rest at her nape.
When she licked him again, she let herself explore him with her tongue, found the different textures of the male organ, learned the contour of it from a wonderfully intimate and sensitive perspective. With long, slow strokes,
