“Nick.” Val heaved a sigh. “He sent poor Lindsey here to be my duenna. He ought to be too busy with his new wife to meddle like this.”
Val understood Axel Belmont was being polite, offering a way for Val to accept help—and dear Nicholas’s spies in his camp—without losing face. Well… there were worse things than taking on a pair of adolescent brothers.
“I will be pleased to have the company of your sons,” Val said, opening his eyes and sitting up, “but we’d better cut that pie before they come charging back here, arguing over how to cut the thing in five exactly equal pieces.”
“Better make that six,” Darius murmured as his gaze went to the path through the woods.
“Six is easy,” Val replied, but then he followed Darius’s line of vision to see Ellen FitzEngle emerging from the trees. “Six is the easiest thing in world,” he concluded, helpless to prevent a smile from spreading across his face.
Ellen was wearing one of her comfortable old dresses and a straw hat. She was also wearing shoes, which Val found mildly disappointing. Since the day he’d first met her—barefoot, a floppy hat on her abundant, chestnut hair—he’d pictured her that way in his imagination. And though she was shod, today her hair was again down, confined in a single thick braid.
“You were drawn by the noise.” Val rose to his feet and greeted his newest guest. “Ellen FitzEngle, may I present to you Mr. Axel Belmont of Candlewick.”
“Mrs. Fitz.” Belmont bowed over her hand, smiling openly. “We’re acquainted. I am a botanist, and Mrs. FitzEngle has the most impressive flower gardens in the shire.”
“You flatter, Professor,” Ellen said, “but I’ll allow it. I came to see the massacre, or what surely sounded like one.”
“You heard my sons,” Belmont concluded dryly. “As soon as we cut the pie, you’ll have the pleasure, or the burden, of meeting them.”
“Won’t you join us?” Val gestured toward the hamper. “Mrs. Belmont sent a picnic as a peace offering in exchange for suffering the company of her familiars.”
“How is your dear wife, Mr. Belmont?” Ellen asked, sinking onto a corner of the blanket.
“Probably blissfully asleep as we speak. She will be eternally indebted to your neighbor here when I return without the boys.”
Ellen smiled at Val. “You’re acquiring your own herd of boys. A sound strategy when the local variety could use some good influences. That looks like a delicious pie.”
“Strawberries are good, no matter the setting,” Belmont rejoined. He drew Ellen into a conversation about her flowers, and Val was interested to see that while she conversed easily and knowledgeably about her craft, there was still a reserved quality in her speech and manners with Belmont. The professor was all that was gentlemanly, though he treated Ellen as an intellectual equal on matters pertaining to plants, but still, she would not be charmed past a certain point.
And this pleased Val inordinately.
Dayton galloped up, Phil beside him. “Did you see the springhouse? It is the keenest! You could practically live in there.”
“Keenest isn’t a word,” Phil said. “It has pipes and conduits and baths and windows and all manner of accommodations—the springhouse, that is.”
“And it’s spotless,” Day added, ignoring the grammar lesson. “You could eat off the floors in there. Hey! You cut the pie.” Belmont handed them each a slice, which—once they’d made hasty bows in Ellen’s direction—they took off with them, eating directly from their own hands, still jabbering about the springhouse.
Ellen met Val’s gaze. “You do have an impressive springhouse. I confess I’ve made use of it myself.”
“Impressive, how?”
“Come.” Ellen rose to her feet unassisted, causing all three men to rise, as well. “I’ll show you. Gentlemen, you need not have gotten up. I know all too well that on the menu for every summer picnic worth the name, a nap follows dessert.”
While Belmont and Darius exchanged a smile, Val offered his arm. He set off with Ellen in the direction of the springhouse, inordinately gratified that she would initiate this private ramble with him.
A few minutes later, Val’s appreciative gaze traveled over the most elaborate springhouse he’d ever beheld. “This is fascinating. It’s as much laundry and bathhouse as springhouse, and I’ve never seen so much glazed yellow tile.”
“Light keeps the moss and mould from growing,” Ellen said. “And what good is a laundry or a bathhouse that isn’t clean?”
The structure itself was stone. Water entered it halfway up one wall, falling into a tiled conduit divided up into a holding pool, then several lower pools, the last of which exited the downstream end of the building near the floor. Pipes allowed the water to be diverted into and out of copper tubs, one of which sat in sturdy hinged brackets over a tiled fire pit.
“So you heat water here and use this for the laundry tub,” Val said, pointing to one of two enormous copper tubs. “This other tub, without a fire under it, would be the bathing tub.”
“Hence, my use of your facility.” As she spoke, Ellen’s gaze was focused on the blue fleur-de-lis pattern decorating a row of tiles at waist height. “I wash my clothes here and use the other tub on occasion, as well.”
“You’re welcome to, of course.” Val glanced around at the pipes lest he be caught staring at her. “I suppose it’s you who’s kept the place so clean.”
“I use the farm pond in warm weather,” Ellen said, coloring slightly, “but when it’s cold, this little springhouse is a godsend. I never dread laundry day.”
“And you must not now.” Val shoved himself back to sit on the worktable beside the only door—the door he had left wide open in deference to the lady’s sensibilities. “What day is laundry day?”
“Thursday or Friday. Wednesday is market; Sunday is services. Little market is Saturday, if need be.”
“I ask, lest we attempt to use this facility on the same day. One wouldn’t want to intrude on a lady at her bath.”
“Or a gentleman,” Ellen agreed, this blush more apparent.
“I hadn’t considered the issue of our laundry. Working on the house, Darius and I will pile up a deal of dirty clothes.”
“It will be no trouble to toss in a few more shirts and socks when I do my own,” Ellen suggested, still not meeting his eyes.
“I will not allow you to do my laundry, Ellen.” Val shoved off the table and crossed the space to frown down at her.
“I will not allow you to use my given name without permission,” she retorted, her gaze meeting his then dropping. His arched an eyebrow but held his ground, peering down at her.
“Show me where this pond is,” he said abruptly, taking her hand and placing it on his forearm. “I love nothing at the end of a hot summer day so much as a good swim, and that will be equally true when I’m not playing… idling my days away indoors.”
“I did not mean to bark at you,” Ellen said as they walked into the woods. “I am used to my solitude here.”
“I have intruded,” Val guessed. “You hear us over here, like you did this morning. You heard the hammers and the sawing. The birds are quiet, and we are not. You sense movement beyond your woods, and it isn’t little beasts or even local boys. It’s change, and you can’t control it.”
“And because I can control who calls me what, up to a point,” Ellen said with a slow smile, “you must ask permission to call me Ellen.”
“My name is Valentine,” he said quietly. “I beg you to use it and ask your leave to adopt comparably informal address when private with you.”
“Valentine,” she said, enunciating each syllable as they moved toward a break in the trees. “It’s a lovely name. It shall be my privilege to use it. And you must call me Ellen when we are not in the churchyard.”
“Thank you,” Val said, releasing a breath. “So this is your pond?”
