“Why if it isn’t my dearest cousin-in-law,” Freddy declaimed, his attempt at a sneer distorted by his split lip.

“Leave her alone.” Val’s voice rang out decisively, silencing the crowd gathering at the sight of such a conveyance. “Put your whip to that team, Roxbury, and don’t ever show your face here again.”

Ellen’s head slewed around at his tone and his words. “Valentine?”

“Lord Valentine,” Freddy corrected her, “but don’t get any ideas, Lady Roxbury, he’s far above your touch, just as my cousin was. Still, your secrets are safe with me, as I account myself a gentleman, unlike some.”

He had the sense to depart on that note, leaving the crowd to buzz and murmur until Rafe came out, barking they’d best be coming inside to eat or clearing the street so his customers could see his front door. As the onlookers began to disperse, Rafe speared Val with a look.

“I knew it,” Rafe muttered. “I told Tilden, I did. Said you was a lord. Always figured Mrs. Fitz for a lady.”

As people began to eddy and swirl around them again, Val turned to the boys. “Fetch the team and my horse, if you please.” They scampered off, leaving Val seething with a need to do violence—further violence—to Freddy Markham.

“Lord Valentine?” Ellen’s voice was low, insistent, and unhappy.

“Not here, though we need to talk.”

“Yes, I suppose we do.”

The trip home passed in silence, with Val on Ezekiel and the boys dozing in the back of the wagon. They took both Zeke and the wagon when Val helped Ellen down, leaving Val and Ellen regarding each other in wary solitude on the front steps.

“I don’t want to have this discussion where we can be overheard,” Val said, taking Ellen by the wrist. She’d been so silent, and without a word, Val felt her withdrawing, curling into herself, seeking the only safe place she’d found.

“Where, then?”

“Your cottage.”

“It will be private,” Ellen allowed, but she didn’t seem pleased.

Val chose to walk her home through the wood, which had been gradually cleaned up as time from other tasks allowed. As it had the afternoon he’d met her, sunlight slanted enchantingly through the trees, birds sang, and a breeze sent the sturdy, spicy fragrance of the woods into the nose and the imagination.

“I want to kiss you,” Val said, tugging Ellen to a sudden stop. They’d reached the place where he’d kissed her more than a year ago. He wanted to trap her in their woods, shut out the world, shut out the march of time, shut out the impact of the truths bearing down on their future.

To his great relief, Ellen stepped into his arms when he turned to face her.

“You will listen?” Val asked, breathing in the scent of her.

Ellen nodded against his neck. “I promise I will listen.”

They completed their journey with their arms around each other’s waists, and Val had the impression Ellen didn’t relish this truth-telling any more than he did. When they reached her cottage, she sat him on the swing and brought them each a mug of cider.

“I love you,” Val began, wondering where in the nine circles of hell that had come from. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry; that came out… wrong. Still…” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “It’s the truth.”

Ellen’s fingers settled on his nape, massaging in the small, soothing circles Val had come to expect when her hands were on him.

“If you love me,” she said after a long, fraught silence, “you’ll tell me the truth.”

Val tried to see that response as positive—she hadn’t stomped off, railed at him, or tossed his words back in his face. Yet. But neither had she reciprocated.

“My name is Valentine Windham,” he said slowly, “but you’ve asked about my family, and in that regard—and that regard only—I have not been entirely forthcoming.”

“Come forth now,” she commanded softly, her hand going still.

“My father is the Duke of Moreland. That’s all. I’m a commoner, my title only a courtesy, and I’m not even technically the spare anymore, a situation that should improve further, because my brother Gayle is deeply enamored of his wife.”

“Improve?” Ellen’s voice was soft, preoccupied.

“I don’t want the title, Ellen.” Val sat up, needing to see her eyes. “I don’t ever want it, not for me, not for my son or grandson. I make pianos, and it’s a good income. I can provide well for you, if you’ll let me.”

“As your mistress?”

“Bloody, blazing… no!” Val rose and paced across the porch, turning to face her when he could go no farther. “As my wife, as my beloved, dearest wife.”

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.