The Virtuoso

“We’re movin’ the pianna, guv.” Neal frowned. “Can’t leave it outside all night.” Neal’s brothers nodded agreeably, as if any damned fool could see what they were about.

“You nigh bumped the legs right off of her,” Val shot back. “If you can’t be any more careful than that, you might as well leave her out here for the rain and the dewfall to destroy her more gently.”

“Her?” Neal set his end of the piano down, and a moment later his brothers did likewise with their end. “This is a pianna, not a her.”

“For God’s sake,” Val nearly shouted, “I know that, but it doesn’t give you leave to wrestle it around like damned sack of oats. You neglect her year after year, and still you expect music when you come to do your drunken stomping about, and then you can’t be bothered to take the least care of an instrument old enough to be your grandmother. There’s music in here”—he smacked the lid of the piano. “There’s craftsmanship you can’t even conceive of, there’s… goodness and beauty.” He stopped, and his voice dropped considerably. “There’s… something of the divine, and you just can’t… you can’t take it for granted and endlessly bash it about. You can’t do that, much less again and again and again. You just… you can’t.”

An awkward, very unmerry quiet fell, underscored by the continued sounds of revelry coming from the Rooster. Val looked up from the little piano to see Neal’s slack-jawed confusion mirrored on faces all around him.

“Lads.” Sir Dewey appeared at Val’s side, Nick looming behind him. “Let’s try this again and treat this piano like it was your grannie’s coffin, shall we?” Neal exchanged a look with his brothers, one of whom shrugged and bent to pick up his corner. Nick took the fourth corner, and the procession carefully moved up the stairs.

“You’ll want to see her situated,” Sir Dewey said softly, his hand on Val’s arm.

What Val wanted was for the earth to swallow him up and end this miserable, unbearable day. No music, no Ellen, nothing to fight for but a battered old piano that had been knocked about long before the Bragdoll brothers’ drunken buffoonery.

Still, Sir Dewey was looking at Val with a kind of steadying, level gaze, and what else was there to do, really? Val nodded and followed Sir Dewey up the stairs.

“There’s an ale for each of you gentlemen,” Sir Dewey said when the piano was back in its place. “Tell Rafe to put it on my tab.”

“Thankee.” Neal tugged his forelock, shot a glance at the piano once again sitting on the stage, and left with only one puzzled look at Val.

“You’ll stay with him?” Sir Dewey directed the question at Nick, who nodded and began moving around the room, blowing out candles. “I must return to the Rooster or there will be hell to pay within the hour. Rafe’s special blends are mayhem waiting to happen.”

“My thanks,” Val got out.

“Sir Dewey.” Nick saluted in farewell and went on with his task. Val sank down on the piano bench where it sat along the far wall, facing out so he could watch Nick’s perambulations around the room.

“This looks like a metaphor for my life,” Val said.

“A bit in need of a tidying?” Nick asked as he picked up the last branch of candles and moved to set it on the piano.

“Not on the piano,” Val barked then shook his head. “I beg your pardon. Set it wherever you please.”

Nick put the candles on the floor and budged up next to Val on the bench. “So why is this room like your life?”

“The party is over, meaning Ellen will not have me.” To his own ears, he sounded utterly, absolutely defeated.

“This hurts,” Nick observed, a hankie appearing in his large, elegant hands.

“I thought…” Val looked away from that infernal handkerchief. “I thought losing Bart was the worst, and then Victor was worse yet. I am still mad at them for dying, for leaving. Bart especially, because it was so stupid.”

“You are grieving,” Nick said, folding the hankie into perfect quarters on his thigh. “It hasn’t been that long, and each loss reminds you of the others.”

“I miss them.” Three words, but they held universes of pain and bewilderment. And anger.

“I know, lovey.” Nick scrunched the handkerchief up in a tight ball. “I know.”

“I missed the piano,” Val said slowly, “but not as I thought I would.” He looked up enough to glance into the gloom where the little piano stood. “I saw myself as talented and having something to offer because I could conjure a few tunes on a keyboard.”

“You are talented,” Nick said staunchly. “You’re bloody brilliant.”

Val laughed shortly. “I’m so bloody brilliant I thought if I just played well enough, I might stop…”

“Stop?”

“Stop hurting. Stop missing them,” Val said slowly, then fell silent. “I am being pathetic, and you will please shoot me.”

“Valentine?”

Nick was a friend, a dear, true friend. He’d neither ridicule nor judge, and Val’s dignity had eloped the moment Ellen had made it plain she’d never really intended to confide in him.

What did that leave to lose?

“Being invisible to your father hurts,” Val said. He fell silent, wondering where the words had come from. Growing up, he’d been the runt, too young, too dreamy, too artistic to keep up with his brothers or their friends. As a younger man, he’d been disinclined to academic brilliance, social wit, or business acumen, and denied by ducal fiat from buying his colors. For the first time, he wondered if he’d chosen the piano or simply chained himself to it by default.

Nick shot him a curious glance. “Would it be so much better if you’d ended up like Bart and Victor? If Esther and Percy had to bury three sons instead of two, while you were spared the pains of living the life God gave you? I think the more important question now, Val, is are you invisible to yourself?”

“No, Nick.” A mirthless laugh. “I am not, but just when I realize what a pit I had fallen into with my slavish devotion to a simple manual skill, just when I can begin to hope there might be more to life than benumbing myself on a piano bench, I find a woman I can love, but she can’t love me back.”

“I think she does love you,” Nick replied, remaining seated as Val rose and crossed the room. “And you certainly do love her.”

Val considered Nick’s words. They settled something inside him, in his head—where he planned and worked out strategies—and in his heart, where his music and his love for Ellen both resided.

“I do love her.” Val lowered himself to sit on the little stage enthroning the piano. “I most assuredly do. It’s helpful to be reminded of this.”

“Now I am going to cry,” Nick said with mock disgust as he crossed the room and once again sat right next to Val. “What will you do about Ellen?”

“About Ellen? I agree with you: We love each other. She believes her love for me requires us to part. I believe our love requires us to be together for whatever time the good Lord grants.”

“So you must convince her,” Nick concluded with a nod. “How will you go about this?”

“I have some ideas.” Those ideas were like the first stirrings of a musical theme in Val’s head. Tenuous, in need of development, but they were taking hold in Val’s mind with the same tenacity as a lovely new tune. “God alone knows if my ideas will work.”

Val remained sitting side by side with his friend pondering these ideas as the convivial sounds from the green eventually faded, leaving only the occasional burst of voices from the Rooster, until Darius appeared in the door, Ellen at his side.

“The coach is ready to take us home,” Darius said, “and I am ready to go.”

“You go.” Val rose. “I’m not quite ready. Ellen, pleasant dreams. I’ll see you in the morning.”

* * *

There was nothing brittle or dismissive in Val’s tone as he bid her good night. He sounded weary and resigned—kind, even. She’d seen him remonstrating the Bragdolls but not been able to hear exactly what was said.

“I’m not quite ready to go either,” she said, drawing her white shawl more closely around her.