The Virtuoso

by Grace Burrowes

  Val scrubbed a hand over his face. “So many gardens as all that?”

  “And ornamental gardens, as well,” Belmont went on blithely. “Some scent gardens, cutting gardens for early spring through fall, color gardens. As it’s already nigh summer, you’d best get busy, or you’ll waste the entire season. You’ll take pity on him, won’t you, Mrs. Fitz? You can’t expect a city boy like Windham to comprehend the task involved.”

  “I suppose,” Darius spoke up as he got to his feet, “the boys could be set to work turning beds and transplanting seedlings. One should think the offspring of a botanist might have a few skills in that regard.”

  “They’ve both spent long hours with me in the conservatory and the propagation house,” Belmont assured them. “And I’ll be happy to send over seedlings, as will my wife. We’ve all manner of new varieties gleaned from her estates in Kent.” Belmont speared Val with a look. “If you’re to keep my savages here with you, I promise I’ll come back with a wagonload of seeds and sprouts for you and Mrs. FitzEngle.”

  Well done, Val wanted to shout, because the look of longing that crossed Ellen’s face let him know her assistance had just been bribed right into his lap. “Such generosity will be much appreciated, Professor.”

  “Well, I’m off then.” Belmont dusted off his breeches. “The leader is Nelson, and the off gelding is Wellie.”

  “Gelding?” Val asked.

  “I’m loaning you my wagon and team,” Belmont explained. “If all else fails, you can slaughter the horses and feed them to my sons. The boys can also ride these two, though we didn’t pack saddles for them. Their gaits are smooth enough, provided you don’t try to canter—or trot very far. My hay is in, and this is not my best pair, though they’re good fellows.”

  “Most generous of you,” Darius cut in, shooting Val a to-hell-with-your-pride look. “A wagon and team will save us a great deal of time and logistical complications, and the stables, at least, are sound and in good repair.”

  “Well, that’s settled,” Belmont looked around, his gaze traveling in the direction of noise most likely made by his children. “I will deliver a few paternal words of guidance, not because they will be heeded, but because Abby will expect it of me.”

  “I’ll see to your horse,” Darius volunteered.

  Val started after Belmont, only to find Ellen’s hand on his arm.

  “Leave them some privacy,” she suggested. “Good-byes are hard enough without an audience.”

  “And young men have surprising reserves of dignity.”

  “I was more concerned for their father,” Ellen rejoined, smiling. “Perhaps you might suggest a visit to Candlewick in the near future?”

  “I’d like to see the place. Belmont claimed it was in bad shape when he took it on.”

  “And I am sure Mrs. Belmont would like to see the boys,” Ellen said. “But if we’re to keep them busy, you must tell me what exactly you’d like them to accomplish.”

  They created a list, starting with the vegetable garden and including the transplanting of some young fruit trees from Ellen’s back yard to Valentine’s home farm. That property began with the meadow boasting the farm pond and ran along the lane toward more buildings and pastures in the direction of town. As he tried not to blatantly admire the curve of Ellen’s FitzEngle’s lips or the way her neck joined her shoulders, Val instead heard the melody of her voice.

  It would take woodwinds—strong, supple, and light, with low strings for balance—to convey the grace of that voice. Or possibly just the piano alone, a quiet, lyrical adagio.

  He pulled his thoughts back to the conversation. “Who works the home farm?” he asked as they watched Darius leading Belmont’s gelding from the stables.

  “The Bragdolls. Or they work the land. The vegetable gardens, chicken coop, dairy, and so forth are not used. The manor has been unoccupied since before the previous Baron Roxbury owned the place.”

  “I am not inclined to set all that to rights just yet. Your surplus is adequate for my present needs, and I won’t be hiring staff for months.” Assuming he even kept ownership of the place.

  “Get in as big a plot of vegetables as you can, anyway,” Ellen said. “Children can weed it for you cheaply, and you can sell the excess, if any there is. And if you hire staff even as late as next spring, you’ll still need a cellar full of food to feed them until next summer.”

  “Establishing a working manor with home farm is decidedly more complicated than I’d envisioned.”

  “You thought simply to restore the house,” Ellen reminded him. “That is a substantial project in itself.”

  Val shrugged self-consciously. “I liked the place when first I saw it. I still like it, and I like all the ideas I have for restoring it to health.” It reminded him in a curious way of creating… music. Part craft, part art; part discovery, part invention.

  “So what will you name your acquisition?” Ellen asked, looking past Val’s shoulder.

  “What?” Val followed her gaze to see Belmont shamelessly hugging his half-grown children. “He’ll miss them.”

  He wondered if his father ever missed him but dismissed the thought. Victor and Bart were dead, and Val had never heard His Grace admit to missing either son. A mere youngest son off to Oxfordshire was hardly going to cause the Duke of Moreland to fret or worry or pine for the lack of him—any more than Val was going to permit himself to pine for his piano.

  “It’s Monday.” Ellen leaned in to lower her voice. “Suggest you’ll bring them to visit at Candlewick on the weekend, and that way, you can dodge services in Little Weldon.” She sauntered off, pausing to bid Belmont good-bye. From where Val stood, it looked like a punctiliously polite leave-taking on both their parts. When Belmont crossed the yard to join him, Val was still watching Ellen’s retreat with a less than casual eye.

  After Belmont had taken his leave and a wagonload of goods from town had been properly stored, Val sat beside Darius in the afternoon shadows and listened and calculated and listened some more. In the back of his mind, he heard the slow movement to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, a sweet, lyrical little piece of musical comfort that had nothing to do with nails, lumber, sagging porches, and broken windows.

  Herr Beethoven, Val concluded, knew little of the realities of country life.

  “What say we round up the heathen and finish the day at the pond,” Val suggested, alighting from their perch on the lumber. “I don’t think they’ll last much past dark, and I’m not sure I will either.”

  “Swimming.” Darius affected an expression of concentration then hopped down beside Val. “That’s the business where you get wet and hope not to accommodate any leeches in the process. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  With the older males following at a sedate pace and the younger pair pelting through the wood, all four were soon shucking clothes and diving off the dock into the pond. To Val, the scene was reminiscent of many summer evenings spent with his brothers. He set himself to swimming laps around the pond, searching for a sense of peace in the soothing rhythm of water and mild exertion.

  “We’re heading back to start dinner,” Darius called from the dock. He was dressed only in breeches, his dark hair wet and slicked back, the boys similarly attired.

  “Leave me my soap. I’ll follow shortly.”

  “Soap?” Dayton hollered. “What about meat pie? What about cobbler? What about cold potato salad and biscuits with butter?” His brother lit out, leaving Dayton to give chase and Darius to smile and bring up the rear. When they’d left, Val swam over to the dock and pulled himself up onto it, content just to sit and appreciate the quiet as he dried off in the warm evening air.

  Who would ever have thought the absence of music could have any redeeming quality to it at all? God above, Belmont’s offspring were loud. Val couldn’t recall himself ever being that loud, but then, he’d been the baby boy. The youngest and then the musical artist, the one most likely to be watching and worrying while his older brothers leapt bellowing fr
om rope swings into swimming holes or tore off across frozen ponds heedless of weak ice or protruding rocks. They had yelled and carried on enough without Val adding to the din.

  And now the loudest of them—Victor and Bart—were dead. Val brought his knees up, wrapped his arms around his legs, and lowered his forehead to his knees. The night was growing beautiful as the air mellowed, the shadows lengthened, and soft, summery scents floated on gentle breezes.

  Grief was so tenacious a companion he wanted to scream it out into the silence. At least when he could play the piano, there had been a way to express such emotions, to air them audibly without something so ugly as a scream. He sat up, then stood, and dove off the dock into the water and washed every inch of his skin and scalp.

  When he was as clean as soap, water, and effort could make him, he sat naked on the dock for a long time watching the shadows lengthen. Evenings were difficult, and he’d frequently survived them only by playing his finger exercises for hours on end. Mindless, technically demanding, aurally homely, they’d soothed him in a way nothing else did.

  When darkness threatened to obscure the path home, Val rose and pulled on his breeches. It occurred to him as he gathered up shirt, socks, boots, and towel, that in his own way, he’d grown used to making every bit as much useless noise as the Belmont brothers.

  ***

  Mr. Valentine Windham had troubles.

  Ellen concluded this from her place in the shadowed woods and debated whether she should reveal herself or leave him to wander home in solitude. Coward that she was, she opted to guard her own privacy, lest he see from the look in her eyes she’d been spying for quite some time.

  He had troubles, as evidenced by the hunch of his back muscles when he dropped his face to his knees. Troubles, as demonstrated by the long, long silence he held while evening deepened around him and he sat naked and utterly still on the dock. Troubles, as outlined by the leanness of his flanks and belly, the way his ribs and hips were too clearly delineated under his skin.

  But God above, troubled or not, he was a breathtakingly beautiful man. Francis had been trim and capable of sitting a horse, but he’d never sported the kind of muscle Valentine Windham did. He’d also lacked Windham’s height and the sense of coiled, nimble power Windham’s body conveyed when it arched and dove cleanly into the water.

  Those images, of Valentine Windham naked and still, naked and hoisting himself out of the water, naked and gathering his clothes at the end of the dock… They made a hot night hotter and made Ellen’s clothes feel clingy and damp next to her skin. As full darkness fell, she stripped down and slipped into the water, circling the pond many times, just as Valentine had.

  And just as unable to find relief from the guilt and grief troubling her.

  ***

  “The boys will be all right in their tent?” Val asked as he poured two cups of tea from the pot on the stove while a few drops of rain spattered the roof of the carriage house.

  “They’re waterproof,” Darius replied, accepting his cup. “Rain or shine, this whole summer is a lark to them, as it should be.”

  “They’ve gotten a lot done this week. There’s not a sapling standing in the yard, the beds are dug and planted, the vegetables are in, and the drive is looking better.”

  Darius regarded Val by the flickering light of a single candle. “But you are not satisfied.”

  “With them? Of course I am. They’re good boys, and they work hard. I’m lucky to have them.”

  “With them, maybe, not with yourself.”

  “And you are such a paragon of self-satisfaction?” The last thing Val wanted at the end of yet another grueling day was Darius Lindsey peering into his soul.

  “You will take the boys and Mrs. Fitz to Candlewick tomorrow,” Darius replied. “Get some decent cooking into you, play Belmont’s grand piano for a few hours, and set yourself to rights.”

  Val was silent a long time, until he expelled a hard breath and set his mug down on the bricks under the stove. “I will not be playing Belmont’s piano or any other, and I will thank you not to raise the matter before others.” He crossed the room in two strides and sat on his bunk, hauling off his boots and tossing them hard against the opposite wall.

  “So that’s what all the gloves are about?” Darius asked, reclining on his cot. “Your left hand is still buggered up?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I have eyes, Valentine. It took me about two days to figure out you own the world’s largest collection of gloves, because you’ve bought them ready-made in two different sizes. From there, I observed your left hand is swollen, the thumb, index, and middle fingers noticeably red and painful-looking. You make every effort not to favor the hand for fine tasks but beat it to death on manual labor. One has to wonder if your actions are well advised.”

  “Fairly forbid me the piano,” Val bit out. “So I don’t play the bloody piano.”

  “And does your hand improve?”

  “Not much.” Val tried to match his companion’s casual tone. “At first, there was some improvement, but lately, it’s no better. I might as well use it for what I can, while I can.”

  “You say that like you are angry at your hand,” Darius mused, “though you do every kind of rough work there is to do with it, and you certainly make me look like I’m barely pulling my weight most days.”

  “I do every kind of work the common laborers do,” Val corrected him. He rose and crossed the room to where his boots lay against the far wall and set them tidily next to the door. “I just can’t do the kind of work I was born to do.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Play the piano. My art is how I go on, Darius, and the only thing I know how to do well enough to matter.”

  “Doing it a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” Darius crossed his arms behind his head and regarded Val where he once again sat on his cot.

  “No, I don’t think. Were I going to be dramatic, I’d slit my wrists, hang myself, or jump into the Thames when the tide was leaving.”

  “Valentine.” Darius sat up. “That is not funny.”

  “How funny do you think it feels not to be able to play the piano when it’s all I’ve done of worth in the past twenty-some years? I did not excel at school, and I can’t point to an illustrious career like my brother, the former cavalry officer. I haven’t Westhaven’s head for business. I wasn’t a jolly good time like Bart or a charmer like Vic. But, by God, I could play the piano.”

  “And you can build stone walls and referee between Day and Phil and keep an eye on Nick Haddonfield when he hares all over the Home Counties,” Darius retorted. “Do you think one activity defines you?”

  “I’m like a whore, Darius, in that, yes, the one activity, in my case playing the piano, defines me.” Val heard weariness in his own voice. “When Dev was driven mad by nightmares, I played for him so he couldn’t hear the battles anymore. When his little Winnie was scared witless by all the changes in her life, I played for her and taught her a few things to play for herself. When Victor was so sick, I’d play for him, and he’d stop coughing for a little while. It’s how I let people know they matter to me, Darius, and now…”

  Darius got up and crossed the room, then lowered himself to sit beside Val in the shifting candlelight. “Now all this playing for others has left you one-handed, angry, and beating yourself up.”

  Not beating himself up, precisely, but feeling beaten up. “The piano is the way I have a soul, Dare. It’s always there for me, always able to say the things I can’t, always worth somebody’s notice, even if they don’t know they notice. It has never let me down, never ridiculed me before others, never taken a sudden notion not to know who I am or what I want. As mistresses go, the piano has been loyal, predictable, and lovely.”

  “You talk about an instrument as if it’s animate,” Darius said, hunching forward. “I know you are grieving the inability to exercise a considerable talent, but you are too old—and far too dear a man—to be relying on an
imaginary friend. You deserve more than to think of yourself as merely the slave of your muse.”

  Val shot off the bed and crossed to the door, pausing only long enough to tug on his boots.

  “I’m sorry.” Darius rose and might have stopped him, but Val turned his back and got his hand on the door latch first. “I don’t like seeing you suffer, but were you really happy spending your entire life on the piano bench?”

  “You think I’m happy now?” Val asked without turning.

  He was down the stairs and out into the night without any sense of where he was headed or why movement might help. Darius was too damned perceptive by half, but really—an imaginary friend?

  It was the kind of devastating observation older brothers might make of a younger sibling and then laugh about. Maybe, Val thought as his steps took him along a bridle path in the moonlit woods, this was why the artistic temperament was so unsteady. People not afflicted with the need to create could not understand what frustration of the urge felt like.

  The weekend at Belmont’s loomed like an obstacle course in Val’s mind.

  No finger exercises, no visiting friendly old repertoire to limber up, no reading open score to keep abreast of the symphonic literature, no letting themes and melodies wander around in his hands just to see what became of them. No glancing up and realizing he’d spent three hours on a single musical question and still gotten no closer to a satisfactory answer.

  All of that, Val thought as he emerged from the darkened woods, was apparently never to be again. His hand was not getting better, though it wasn’t getting worse, either. It merely hurt and looked ugly and managed only activities requiring brute strength of the arm and not much real grip.

  He found himself at the foot of Ellen FitzEngle’s garden and wondered if he could have navigated his way there on purpose. Her cottage was dark, but her back yard was redolent with all manner of enticing floral scents in the dewy evening air. If her gardens were pretty to the eye by day, they were gorgeous to the nose at night. Silently, Val wandered the rows until his steps took him to the back porch, where a fat orange cat strolled down the moonlit steps to strop itself against Val’s legs.