Grace Burrowes - The Virtuoso

It didn’t seem like enough. Not with her.

“Just let me hold you,” he murmured, leaving his hand on the firm muscle of her calf. She relaxed against him, and he felt her lips against his neck. He shifted, enjoying the rub of his cock against her weight but for some reason not repeating the movement. His hand settled on her back, and she relaxed further.

For long moments, she stayed draped over him, letting him rub her back, smooth his hand over her hair, and just pet her. His erection subsided some, but the desire to hold her and touch her did not.

It occurred to him the weakness in his hand might be spreading to his cock, but it was just a passing, insecure thought. It felt right to hold her, and while it didn’t feel wrong to desire her, it didn’t feel desperately necessary to have her sexually, either.

Not just yet.

“Let me have the reins,” Ellen said quietly. They’d made their good-byes to the Belmonts, the savages were asleep in the back of the wagon, and yet she’d waited only until to the foot of Candlewick lane to state her demand.

Val glanced over at her in consternation. “You?”

“Me.” She reached for the reins, and Val saw she was wearing riding gloves. They weren’t as heavy as the driving gloves he sported, but they’d do.

He passed her the reins. “Why?”

“Because these are very sweet beasts and well trained,” Ellen said, shifting a little closer to Val, “and yet they are big fellows and will pull on that hand of yours.”

Amusement fled, leaving Val to frown at his gloved hand then at his companion.

“Did resting it and taking care of it this weekend help?” she asked.

“Maybe. A little. It certainly didn’t hurt.”

“Well, then.” Ellen nodded, apparently feeling her point had been made.

“Ellen, I’ve been resting it for weeks now, and sometimes it’s better and sometimes it’s worse, but it never heals.”

“Take off your glove.” She gestured with her chin. “The left one.”

He complied and inspected his hand. He tried not to look at it, usually—the results were invariably disappointing. Besides, he could feel the differences, between the good days and the other days. Friday had been a bad day.

“See.” Ellen nodded at his hand. “Your third finger is losing its redness, and even your thumb and first finger look a little better. Rest helps, Valentine, real rest.”

“How am I to rebuild an entire estate and rest my hand, Ellen?” Even to his own ears, Val’s voice was petulant. He was surprised she answered him.

“You admit you need to, for starters,” she chided softly. “Of course you will have to use it some, but you hardly give yourself any consideration at all. I see you, sir, up on that roof, tossing slates, or on the lane hacking at the weeds, or hefting stones the size of a five-gallon bucket. Even were you completely hale, you’d be sorely trying that hand.”

She didn’t know the half of it, so Val kept his silence, feeling resentment and frustration build in the soft morning air.

“I didn’t play a single note this weekend,” he said at length, but he said it so quietly, Ellen cocked her head and leaned a little closer.

“On the piano,” Val clarified. “I peeked, though, and it’s a lovely instrument. Belmont plays the violin, and Abby is a passable pianist, or she must be. She has a deal of Beethoven, and you don’t merely dabble, if he’s to your taste.”

“You are musical?”

Val exhaled a world of loss. “Until this summer, I was nothing but musical. Now I am forbidden to play.”

Ellen glanced at his hand. “So you work?”

“So I work.” He scowled at his hand, wanting to hide it. “I keep hoping that one day I’ll wake up and it will be better.”

“Like I used to hope I’d wake up one day and realize my husband was alive and I’d merely dreamed his death. Bloody unfair, but I’m not dreaming.”

Val smiled at her language, finding commiseration in it from an unlikely source. “Bloody unfair. You drive well.”

“And you rebuild estates like you were born to it. But it’s still bloody unfair, isn’t it?”

“Bloody blazingly unfair.”

He hadn’t kissed her again after their interlude in the gazebo, and when she had dragooned him onto a bench with her tin of salve twice on Sunday, they’d stayed more or less in plain sight while she worked on his hand. It meant somebody might see his infirmity, but that was a price Val had been willing to pay for the corresponding assistance with his self-control.

That kiss had taken him aback, the intensity of it and the rightness. More disconcerting still was the way Ellen had felt in his arms, the way he’d been content to hold her and caress her and she’d been content to be held.

Whatever was growing between them, Val sensed it wasn’t just a sexual itch that wanted scratching and then forgetting. It wasn’t just about his cock, but about his hands, and his mouth, and so much more. He hadn’t thought it through to his satisfaction and wasn’t sure he even could.

“What does this week hold for you?” he asked his driver.

Ellen’s smile was knowing, as if she realized he was taking refuge in small talk. “Weeding, of course, and some transplanting. We have to get the professor’s little plants taken care of too, though, so you’ll need to tell me where you want them.”

“You must take your pick first. And you cannot keep donating your time and effort to me, Ellen.”

“I will not allow you to pay me,” she shot back, spine straightening. “The boys do most of the labor, anyway, and I just order them around.”

“Order them—and me—to do something for you,” Val insisted. “Wouldn’t you like a glass house, for example, a place to start your seedlings early or conserve your tender plants over the winter?”

Ellen’s brows rose. “I’ve never considered such a thing.”

“I could build a little conservatory onto that cottage of yours,” Val said, his imagination getting hold of the project. “You already have a window on your southern exposure, and we could simply cut that into a door.”

“Cottages do not sport conservatories.”

Val waved a hand and used one of his father’s favorite expressions. “Bah. If I made you a separate hothouse, you’d have to go outside in the winter months to tend it, and it would need a separate fire and so on. Your cottage will already have some heat to lend it, and we could elevate it a few steps, or I could make the addition the same height as your cottage and put the glass in the roof.”

“A skylight,” Ellen murmured. “They’re called skylights.”

“Pretty name. I’m going to ask Dare to come up with some sketches, and you are going to let me do this.”

“It will bring in the damp.”

Val rolled his eyes. “This is England. The damp comes in, but we’ll bring in the sun too, and ventilate the thing properly.”

“You mustn’t.”

“Ellen, I went the entire weekend without playing a single note.”

“And the significance of this?”

“I don’t know how many more such weekends I can bear.” He wasn’t complaining now, he was being brutally, unbecomingly honest. “The only thing that helps is staying busy, and a little addition to your cottage will keep me busy.”

“You are busy enough.”

“I am not.” He met her eyes and let her see the misery in them. She wouldn’t understand all of it, but she’d see it. “I need to be busier.” So busy he dropped from exhaustion even if he had to ruin his hand to do it, which made no sense at all.

“All right.” Ellen’s gaze shifted to the broad rumps of the horses. “But you will allow me to tend your hand, and you will keep the boys occupied with your house and your grounds.”

“Under your supervision.”

“I won’t stand over them every minute.”

“Certainly not.” Val grinned at her, wondering when he’d developed a penchant for arguing with ladies. “They require frequent dunking in the pond to retain any semblance of cleanliness, and your modesty would be offended.”

“As would theirs.”

He let her have the last word, content to conjure up plans for her addition as the wagon rolled toward the old… His estate.

“What?” Darius approached the stall where his piebald gelding stood, a mulish expression on the beast’s long face. “I groomed your hairy arse and scratched your withers. I picked out your feet and scratched your withers again. Go play.”

Skunk, for that was the horse’s name, sniffed along the wall of his stall then glared at Darius. As Darius eyed his horse, the vague sense of something being out of place grew until he stepped closer and surveyed the stall.

No water bucket.

“My apologies,” Darius muttered to his horse. Of course the animal would be thirsty, but when Darius had left Saturday morning, he distinctly recalled there being a full bucket of water in Skunk’s stall. Val had taken the draft horses to Axel’s, leaving Ezekiel to fend for himself in a grassy paddock that boasted shade and a running stream.

So where had the water bucket walked off to?

He found it out in the stable yard, empty and tossed on its side. When Skunk had had his fill, Darius topped off the bucket at the cistern and hung it in the horse’s stall.

Resolved to find sustenance now that he’d tended to his horse, Darius left the stables, intent on raiding the stores in the springhouse.

“What ho!” Val sang out from the back terrace. “It’s our Darius, wandered back from Londontowne.” He hopped to his feet and extended a hand in welcome. Darius shook it, regarding him curiously.

“You thought I’d abandon you just when the place is actually becoming habitable?”