“Sometimes.” Ellen peered at him, her expression guarded.
“Then I will comfort you. I’ll cuddle you up and bring you tisanes and rub your back and your feet. I’ll read to you and beat you at cards and bring you hot-water bottles for your aches.”
Ellen’s brows knit. “I truly am poor company at such times and usually before such times, as well.”
“You are poor company for people who expect you to play on without missing a note, perhaps,” Val replied, holding her gaze. “May we sit a moment?”
She nodded but had gone too shy even to meet his eyes.
“My Uncle Tony’s wife,” Val said, wrapping an arm around Ellen’s shoulders, “is blunt to a fault. She told me relations with Tony were the best way to ease her cramps.”
“Valentine!” Ellen hid her face against his shoulder. “Surely you wouldn’t want to…?”
“What I want makes little difference. If you wanted, though, I’d be pleased to be with you. My point is I enjoy your company, Ellen. You are more than a willing and lovely body to me, and just because I appear on your back porch, that doesn’t mean I expect you to be sexually available to me.”
Ellen lifted her face to regard him closely. “But what is a dalliance if not… physically intimate?”
“It’s what we make of it. I likely have less experience with these things than you think I do, but I will not engage in a liaison with you that is not first and last a friendship. If your priorities are different, you had best tell me now before matters progress.”
Ellen peered at him, frowning, and he could positively hear her gears whizzing. “If matters between us… proceed”—she looked at their hands—“if they do, I will not trifle with you. I will not share my affections with you and then offer them to others while we are yet intimate. I will not betray your confidences.”
“You honor me,” Val said softly, his hand cradling her cheek. “I will try to be worthy of that honor, though I know I don’t deserve it. And since you have been so brave as to put into words the promises I would never, ever seek aloud, I will screw up my courage and give them back to you. I will not trifle with you, Ellen FitzEngle Markham, Baroness Roxbury. I will not share my affections with you then offer them to others while we are yet intimate. I will do my best not to betray your confidences or your trust.”
When Val rose, kissed her cheek, and slipped away through the trees, Ellen remained on the bench, recalling as many precious details of this first, new happy memory as she could. Hope notwithstanding, the memory might have to last her a long, long time.
Her peace was destroyed not ten minutes later when Val’s warning shout sliced through the woods like a rifle shot, followed by the unmistakable sound of something very heavy shattering into a thousand pieces.
Six
“Dare! Above you!”
Darius barely had time to glance up in reaction to Val’s warning bellow before grabbing each Belmont brother by the collar and hauling them back beneath the overhang of the eaves.
Four heavy pieces of slate hit the terrace, followed by a rain of fieldstone plummeting four stories from the roof. An eerie silence followed, broken by Val’s voice raised in alarm.
“Bloody, blazing Jesus!” He was across the terrace in four strides. “Tell me you’re unharmed, the lot of you.” He grabbed first Day then Phillip, perusing them frantically for signs of injury.
“They’re all right, Val,” Darius said, gaze trained upward.
“Whoever’s on the roof,” Val called, “secure your tools and get yourselves down here, now!”
“You saw the slates coming down?” Darius asked, still glancing up warily.
“I did. Talk to me, lads. Now is no time to stop your infernal chatter.”
“We’re fine,” Day said, though his complexion had gone sheet white, while Phillip was flushing a bright red. “Phil?”
“Right as rain.” Phillip nodded just before sinking to the ground. “A bit woozy, though.” Day’s gaze strayed to the terrace a few feet from the eaves, where the slates had broken into myriad small pieces, and fieldstone lay scattered about.
“Believe I’ll join you,” Day muttered, sliding down the wall beside his brother. “That was perilously close.”
“Too close,” Darius muttered, eyes narrowing. “Let’s take note of who is coming down that ladder, shall we?” In response to Val’s command, the roof crew was making its way to the ground and crossing the yard to peer at Day and Phillip.
“Be the lads a’right?” Hancock, the foreman asked.
“They’re fine,” Val said. “A bit shook up. Hancock, who built that scaffolding?”
“The scaffold what holds the chimbly stone?” Hancock asked. “Built it m’self, just afore we broke on Saturday past. Spent this morning piling up that old chimbly onto it so it could be rebuilt proper.”
“You built it on loose slates,” Val said between clenched teeth.
“Beg pardon.” Hancock widened his stance and met Val’s gaze. “I did not.”
“Explain yourself.”
“I been working high masonry for nigh thirty years, Mr. Windham.” Hancock put massive fists on his hips and leaned forward to make his point. “If the chimbly is in poor shape, the whole roof is suspect. I checked them slates and they were solid tight to the roof on Friday.”
“I seen him do it, Mr. Windham,” another man volunteered. “Nobody wants to work on a rotten roof, particularly not with heavy stone. The slate on the north side is coming loose, but the south side is tight as a tick.”
Val blew out a breath and exchanged a look with Darius. “Then I spoke in haste and apologize, which leaves us with a mystery.”
Hancock nodded, his expression grim. “We had no wind nor rain atween Friday and today, and yet the slates is got somehow loose.”
“They did. Nobody up on the roof until I’ve checked it over. Your crew can finish out the day cleaning up the terrace and laying slate down here. Boys, I need to borrow Darius for a moment, but you’re free to take a swim, or repair to your tent, if you’d rather.”
“Swim,” Day said. “But we’d best check the pond for monsters first.”
Val and Darius found nothing to indicate the damage went beyond the four loose slates, but before descending, Val sat on the peak of the roof and frowned at Little Weldon visible on the horizon.
“The only logical conclusion is somebody was here over the weekend and thought it might be fun to loosen a few roof tiles,” Val said. “That is a level of mischief bordering on criminal.”
“Not bordering.” Darius’s voice held banked violence. “That’s trespassing, at least; malicious mischief, destruction of property, certainly; attempted murder, possibly. If this is what the local boys consider fun, then you might not want to move in. And I am almost certain you had trespassers here while you were at Belmont’s.”
“How can you know that?”
Darius explained about his gelding’s water bucket, and Val’s expression became thoughtful. “What would a bunch of boys want with a water bucket? And how would they have the expertise to loosen slate tiles?”
“You have a half-dozen masons working on your roof. All it would take is a son or cousin or nephew of one of those men, and the boy would undoubtedly know enough to loosen tiles.”
“But why? Somebody—you, Day, Phil—could have been killed, and I would have been responsible, and it’s not as if most of the local families aren’t benefiting from our work here.”
“You’re right. Who would want to sabotage this project?”