The Duke’s Obsession Bundle (103 page)

A few heartbeats of silence went by, and with each one, Val felt the ringing of a death knell over his hopes.

“I would be your mistress. I care for you, too, but I cannot be your wife.”

Val frowned at that. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. A conditional rejection, that’s what it was. She’d give him time, he supposed, to get over his feelings and move along with his life.

“Why not marry me?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

She crossed her arms too. “What else haven’t you told me?”

“Fair enough.” Val came back to sit beside her and searched his mind. “I play the piano. I don’t just mess about with it for polite entertainment. Playing the piano used to be who I was.”

“You were a musician?”

Val snorted. “I was a coward, but yes, I was a musician, a
virtuoso
of the keyboard. Then my hand”—he held up his perfectly unremarkable left hand—“rebelled against all the wear and tear, or came a cropper somehow. I could not play anymore, not without either damaging it beyond all repair or risking a laudanum addiction, maybe both.”

“So you came out here?” Ellen guessed. “You took on the monumental task of setting to rights what I had put wrong on this estate and thought that would be… what?”

“A way to feel useful or maybe just a way to get tired enough each day that I didn’t miss the music so much, and then…”

“Then?” She took his hand in hers, but Val wasn’t reassured.
His
mistress, indeed.

“Then I became enamored of my neighbor. She beguiled me—she’s lovely and dear and patient. She’s a virtuoso of the flower garden. She cared about my hand and about me without once hearing me play the piano, and this intrigued me.”

“You intrigued me,” Ellen admitted, pressing the back of his hand to her cheek. “You still do.”

“My Ellen loves to make beauty, as do I.” Val turned and used his free hand to trace the line of Ellen’s jaw. “She is as independent as I am and values her privacy, as I do.”

“You are merely lonely, Val.” Ellen bent a little over their joined hands but then looked up and frowned slightly. “Lord Valentine.”

“Not to you,
Lady
Roxbury
.”

Her frown became considerably more fierce. “What was Freddy doing in Little Weldon?” she asked, straightening.

“I invited him ostensibly to see the progress on the estate,” Val said, watching a battle light come into Ellen’s eye. “He confessed to setting the various traps on the property and did so before witnesses. I also treated myself to landing a single blow on his ugly face and made sure he knew I did so in your name.”

“
You did what?
” Ellen shot to her feet, dropping Val’s hand as if it were diseased. “You struck Freddy? You confronted him?”

“I did. His mischief was deadly, Ellen. And his only motivation was to regain possession of the estate. He thought he could scare me off by creating accidents and setbacks, then buy the place back for a pittance, probably to sell for considerably more.”

Ellen shook her head. “He wants the rents. It’s about the money, and with him it will always be about the money.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” Val rose to stand behind her where she stood looking out over her gardens. “Ellen?” But she shook her head and remained unyielding when Val slipped his arms around her waist. That, more than any words, alarmed him.

“Ellen,” Val spoke quietly, “Freddy won’t be bothering you anymore. I’ve seen to it.”

“No.” She huffed out a breath. “No, you have not, Valentine. You have merely waved a red flag before a very angry and powerful little bull. Freddy will go off, tend his wounds, and plot his moves. He sulks and fumes and skulks about, but he does not learn his lesson.”

“You’re keeping secrets.” Val rested his forehead against her nape. “Why in God’s name won’t you trust me, Ellen?”

“If I tell you, will you leave?”

It was Val’s turn to be silent, to consider, to weigh what was in the balance, and where, if anywhere, lay the path of hope.

“I’m not going anywhere until the house and farms are completely functional,” he said. “That will take a few more weeks.”

“Weeks.” Ellen stood very straight in his arms. “And then you’ll go?”

“If that’s still what you want and you’ve told me the reasons why by then,” Val said, tossing his entire future into the hands of a fate that hadn’t dealt with him very kindly of late. “And until I go?”

“I will be your mistress,” Ellen said, her posturing relaxing.

“No.” Val turned her in his arms and tucked his chin against her temple. “You will be my love.”

***

What followed for Val was a period of peculiar joy, mixed with acute sorrow. He respected Ellen’s choice as one she felt compelled to make, not easy for her, but necessary.

He also hoped when he heard her reasons, he could argue her past them, and the hoping was… awful. Hope and Val Windham were old enemies.

Best enemies.

He’d hoped his brother Victor would recover, but consumption seldom eased its grip once its victims had been chosen.

He’d hoped his hand wasn’t truly getting worse, until he couldn’t deny that reality without losing use of the hand entirely.

He’d hoped his brother Bart would come home from war safe and sound, not in a damned coffin.

He’d hoped St. Just might escape military service without substantial wound to body or soul, but found even St. Just had left part of his sanity and his spirit at Waterloo.

He’d hoped he might someday do something with his music, but what that silly hope was about, he’d never been quite sure.

And now, he was hoping he and Ellen had a future. The hope sustained him and tortured him and made each second pass too quickly when he was with her. But he couldn’t always be with her, because Ellen insisted she have time to tend her gardens and set up her little conservatory.

Val sent Dayton and Phillip back to Candlewick, with hugs and thanks and best wishes all around. He hired a few servants and commissioned the wily Hazlit to complete a few more errands. He wrote to his brother Gayle, who controlled both the Windham family finances and the Moreland exchequer, and he wrote to David and Letty Worthington, and not just about bat houses and vegetable plots. He wrote a long letter to Edward Kirkland and sent missives to several other musical friends.

He retrieved the damned puppy from Sir Dewey, dropped off the sworn statements, and spent a long, pretty afternoon exhorting Sir Dewey over drinks to look after Ellen’s safety in the event Val was unable to.

As Val mounted up later that afternoon, he recalled his original purpose in departing his estate had been to tune the piano in the Little Weldon assembly rooms. How he’d ended up at Sir Dewey’s was a mystery known only to lovelorn fellows at loose ends, among whom Val would not admit he numbered.

On that sour note, Val turned his attention to the task he’d set for himself, slipping off Zeke’s bridle and saddle before turning him out in the paddock on the village green.

To Valentine Windham, each piano developed a particular personality. It wasn’t always possible to tell as a piano left his shops what the personality might be, but he could usually make an educated guess by playing the instrument at length.

So Val approached the assembly rooms, wondering who awaited him abovestairs. He found a little brown instrument sitting to the side of what passed for a stage at one end of the room—a piano, but likely some venerable forerunner to the small upright pianos growing popular for cottage use. It sat in shadows and a layer of dust, giving Val the impression of a little old dowager, forgotten in the corner, her lace cap askew, her fichu stained, and the light in her eye growing vague.

It took hours. She’d forgotten where most of her pitches were and wasn’t inclined to be reminded too sternly all at once. Val had to compromise with her on more than one occasion, for he could break a wire, strip a screw, or even—heaven help him—crack the sound board if he demanded too much too abruptly. So he coaxed and wheedled and badgered and begged, and eventually, she began to boast something close to a well-tempered tuning. Her tone quality was as gracious and merry as Val had suspected it would be, and he was pleased for her, that she could once again demonstrate her competence as she deserved.

“You’ve some music left in you yet.” Val patted the piano before putting away his tools. It was tempting—so terribly tempting—to try just a few tunes and see how she liked them, but he resisted. The entire village would hear him playing this piano, and it was bad enough they knew he could tune such an instrument.

So he put away the rags he’d used to clean it, the felt and tools he’d used to tune it, and carefully closed the lid over the keys. As he left the assembly rooms, he looked back and saw the little piano on the empty stage. No longer dusty, no longer quite so shopworn. It was the least he could do for a friend.

And to his surprise, leaving the piano to rejoin Ellen at his home was no more effort than that.

***

“Valentine?” Ellen’s sleepy voice called from her bedroom.

“Of course it’s Valentine,” he replied, not lighting a lamp. In the past week, he’d learned to navigate her little cottage in pitch darkness, because, while Ellen would not share the manor house with him, he would share the cottage with her. “And as soon as I get this damned thing unknotted, I will be there in that bed with you. I’ve missed you the livelong day,” Val went on as he made quick use of the wash water, “and not just at lunch. God spare me from London solicitors.”

“Were they here on your commercial business?”

“There’s always plenty of that. I gain more sympathy for my father as I age. Neither he nor I have any patience for the hours of meetings solicitors seem to think make civilization progress.”

“Francis abhorred that, as well,” Ellen observed on a yawn. “Are you ever coming to bed?”

“I am here.” Val climbed into the bed. “So what are you doing over there?” His arms came around her and drew her close. “I love you, Ellen Markham.” He kissed her cheek. “When are you going to tell me you love me?”

“How can you be sure I do?”

Val hiked a leg across her thighs. “First, you are sending me away. This is proof positive you love me, for you are trying to protect me from some sort of grave peril only you can perceive.”

Ellen’s breathing hitched, and Val knew his guess had been right. Gratified by that success, he marched forward.

“Second”—he slipped a hand over her breast—“you make love with me, Ellen. You hold nothing back, ever, and are so passionate I am nigh mindless with the pleasure of our intimacy.” He punctuated this sentiment by dipping his head and suckling gently on her nipple. She groaned and arched up toward him.

“I make my point.” Val smiled in the dark and raised his head. “Third, there is the way I make love with you.”

“And how is that?” She sounded more breathless than curious.

Val shifted his body over hers. “As if I trust you. I know you are human, and you will do what you think best, but you do it with my interests in mind, Ellen. I don’t have to watch myself with you, because you love me, truly. I know it. It isn’t the way my siblings love me, though they are dear. It isn’t how my parents love me, which is more instinct than insight. It isn’t the way my friends love me, though they are both dear and insightful.”

“So how is it?” Ellen asked, slipping her legs apart to cradle him intimately.

“It’s the way I want and need to be loved,” Val said quietly, resting his weight against the soft, curving length of her. “It’s perfect.”

“But I am sending you away,” Ellen reminded him, her fingers at his nape.

Val levered up on his forearms and began to nudge lazily at her sex with his erection. “So you’re running out of time to tell me the things that matter, aren’t you?”

If she was going to use words to answer, Val forestalled her reply by kissing her within an inch of her soul. Her response was made with her body, and to Val’s mind she told him, as emphatically as any woman ever told her man, she did, indeed, unequivocally love him.

And always would.

“What has you sighing?” Val asked as his hand stroked over her hair when they were both sated. “Missing me already?”

“Of course I’m missing you.” Ellen hitched herself more closely to him. “I will always miss you.”

“You might trust me instead,” Val said softly.

She remained silent, and for the hundredth time that day, his heart broke, and he battled back despair. “Ellen?” He kissed her crown. “The assembly is this Saturday. I’ll be leaving the next day, as will Dare and Nick.”

She nodded, offering neither protest nor argument.

Lying beside her in the darkness, Val heard a slow, mournful dirge in his head. It soared, keened, regretted and lamented, a soul-rending, grief-stricken blend of tenderness, discord, resolution, and heartache. It went on and on, hauntingly sad, and still, neither his musical skill nor his artistic imagination nor all his ducal determination was adequate to bring it to a peaceful, final cadence.

“Whose idea was it,” Val groused as Nick knotted his cravat for him, “to leave this benighted place the day after the local version of a party?”

“Some duke’s son devised the notion,” Nick replied. “An otherwise fairly steady fellow, but one must make allowances. He’s dealing with a lot at present. Stickpin?” Val produced the requisite finishing accessory, and Nick frowned in concentration as he shoved gold through linen and lace. He patted the knot approvingly. “You’ll do.”

When Val merely grimaced, Nick offered him a crooked smile. “Dare and I will get you drunk, and there will be all manner of eager little heifers panting to take a spin with the duke’s son. Shoulders back, chin up, duty and honor call, and all that. Darius is also waiting for us in the library, guarding the decanter.”

“Suppose we must relieve him.” Val sighed, and met Nick’s eyes. “Heifers don’t pant.”

Nick’s smile was mischievous. “Maybe not after a duke’s youngest son. After a fine new earl like yours truly, turned out in his country finest and sadly lacking his dear countess at his side, they will be panting, or my name isn’t Wee Nick.”

They collected Ellen, who was looking pretty indeed, in a summery short-sleeved blue muslin dress patterned with little roses in a darker blue. She’d tucked her hair back in a chignon and woven some kind of bright blue flowers into her bun. A white woven shawl and white gloves completed her ensemble, and Val was reminded she was, by any standards, still a young woman.

A beautiful young woman.

And she was nervous. Even as a baroness, she’d likely never had quite the escort she had to the Little Weldon summer assembly, with the son of a duke at her side, an earl’s spare, and an earl in train, as well.

Nick handed Ellen into Val’s traveling coach—the only one he’d brought out from Town—and rocked the vehicle soundly when he climbed in and lowered himself beside Darius on the backward-facing seat.

Between Nick and Darius, the conversation stayed light, flirtatious, and even humorous, but as far as Val was concerned, they might have been in a hearse, so low were his spirits. He heard again the dirge, violins over cellos, the mournful bassoon adding its misery to the mix.

He looked up to find Ellen watching him as the coach rolled into the village and Sean brought the team to a halt.

“If you give your supper waltz to anyone else, Ellen,” Val murmured as he handed her out, “I will spank you on the steps of the church.”

“Likewise,” she replied, her smile sweet and wistful. “But look, they’ve set up the dancing outside.”

Sure enough, half the green was roped off, the trees hung with lanterns, and a podium set up for the musicians. Val’s little dowager friend sat in the center of the podium, three stools behind her. Two violin cases rested on the piano’s lid, and a guitar case leaned against one of the stools.

Flowers sat in pots every few feet around the dancing area, and children were shrieking with glee as they darted between adults. Tilden manned a tapped keg across the street outside the Rooster, and young men congregated around him in whatever passed for their evening finery. A punch bowl was set up under a tree, and ladies were gathering there like a bouquet of summer blossoms.

“The assembly itself will be upstairs,” Ellen explained. “There will be food there, and a place to stow hats, shawls, canes, and so forth.”

“Just like a London ball,” Darius quipped. “But with considerably more fresh air.”

As the evening progressed, the good humor and energy of the dancers seem to increase. Rafe’s generously distributed summer ale likely had a great deal to do with the level of merriment, and Val was just about to find Ellen and suggest a discreet and early departure, when the musicians announced that the next dance would be a waltz. A buffet at the long tables set up on the other side of the green would follow the waltz, and the party would then move into the Rooster for the annual summer darts tournament.

A cheer went up, and Val ducked through the crowd to find Ellen standing near the stairs leading up to the assembly rooms.

“May I have the honor of this dance?” He bowed to her as formally as he might have bowed to any duchess, and Ellen dipped an elegant curtsey.

“The pleasure is entirely mine,” she recited, laying her hand on his knuckles and following him across the street.

He didn’t lead her to the dancing area, though, but to the side yard of the livery, which was quiet and heavily shadowed. As the introductory measures drifted out across the summer night, Val was relieved to find it would be an English waltz, the slower, sweeter version of the Viennese dance.

He drew her closer than custom allowed; she tucked against him and rested her cheek against his shoulder.

The little group of musicians made a good job of it, the violins lilting along in close harmony, the piano and guitar accompanying with more sensitivity than Val would have expected. But for once, when there was music played, he didn’t focus exclusively on the sounds in his ears, but rather, spent his attention on the woman in his arms.

“Talk to me, Ellen,” Val whispered as he turned her slowly around the darkened yard. “I leave tomorrow, you promised me answers, and we’re out of time.”

“Not now, Valentine, please. We’re not out of time yet, and all I want in this moment is to have this dance with you.”

He wasn’t going to argue with her, but tucked her more closely to him and wished the dance would never end. When the last notes died away, she stayed right where she was, both arms around his waist, her forehead pressed to his chest.

“Ah, damn.” Val stroked her hair and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Shall I simply take you home, Ellen? I can send the coach back for Nick and Dare.”

She shook her head. “Everybody would remark our departure, and while you leave tomorrow, I have to live with these people.”

Val rested his chin on her crown. “It should reassure me you’re not planning on haring off somewhere and not telling me.”

“Oh, Val…” Ellen’s voice held weary reproach.

“Let me take you home,” Val tried again. “It will give us a chance to talk, and I think we need that.” She
owed
him that was closer to the truth, in Val’s mind.

She stepped back then, and Val felt a cold, sinking sensation coil in his gut. “Ellen?”

“I know I told you I would explain,” she said, turning her back to him, “but does it have to be now?”

“For God’s sake.” Val ran a hand through his hair. “If not now, then tell me when, please? I will be on my horse leaving for London at first light, and the sun set an hour ago. We are down to hours, Ellen, and bloody few of those.”

“I know, but I don’t want to see your eyes when you learn what I have to tell you. I don’t want to see what you think of me writ plain on your face.”

Val stepped closer to her. “You are being cowardly and asking the impossible of me. You are not a cowardly woman, Ellen Markham.”

“Cowardly.” Ellen winced and crossed her arms. “I am merely asking you for patience. We’re at the local assembly, for pity’s sake.”

“You’ve had weeks, Ellen,” Val shot back, his temper rising through his frustration and bewilderment. “You want to send me off for what amounts to no reason.”

“I can write to you.”

“You won’t, though. Why in the name of all that’s holy can’t you just, in the smallest, least significant way, trust me? There’s nothing you can say or do or think or imagine that will make me stop loving you. It isn’t in me to do that.”

She shook her head, and Val saw the glint of fresh tears on her cheeks.

“Blazing hell.” He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m sorry I’ve made you cry, sorry I can’t be more patient, sorry you are so frightened. What can I do to make it better?”

She drew in a slow, shuddery breath. “Let me collect myself. The evening has been long, and we are both exhausted. You find Nick and Darius, and I’ll be along in a minute.”

Dismissed, Val thought darkly. It crossed his mind that the simple truth might be Ellen had tired of him, and out of misguided kindness was allowing him some dramatic fantasy of past bad deeds, skulking relations, and a cruel fate. What did he have to recommend himself, really? His title was a mere courtesy, his wealth garnered in that most unprepossessing of pursuits—
trade
—and his former abilities as a musician completely unknown to her.

By the time Val worked his way back to the green, he was relieved to see the party was moving into the Rooster. Children were still shrieking and larking about, the laughter and revelry around the punch bowl and keg were louder than ever, but near the musician’s corner, the violinists were packing up.

Bile rose in Val’s stomach as he took in the carnival that had been the summer assembly in Little Weldon. His world was ending,
again
, and The Almighty was seeing to it this misery befell him in the midst of a bloody party.

Movement by the doors to the stairs caught his eye, and when he discerned what was going on, he started over at a determined trot.

“For God’s sake, be careful!” It came out more loudly and more angrily than he’d intended, and Neal Bragdoll blinked at him in semidrunken consternation.

“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.