“All day today,” Val said as he wrapped his arms around her, “I watched you being so brisk, efficient, and businesslike. You have the knack of the friendly transaction, and you part with your produce willingly enough. But your flowers.” He paused to kiss the side of her neck, a spot she seemed to particularly enjoy. “When you sold your posies,” Val went on, kissing his way out to her shoulder, “each time, you didn’t want to let them go. Your heart broke a little, sending them off that way, for coin.”
“Hush. Flowers aren’t kisses to be given away…” She buried her face against his shoulder.
“What?” He slid a hand to her nape and began massaging gently. “Your moods are hard to read today, love.”
“I’m just tired,” Ellen said, offering him a smile. “And cranky and probably in need of my bed.”
“I can understand fatigue.” He stepped back and took her hand as they started toward her gardens. “It has been a long and challenging day.”
“You made progress, though. You met with Sir Dewey, whom Phil says is standing in for Squire Rutland as magistrate, and you met with your tenants. You were also a considerable help to me, so I expect you to behave with docile submission when I declare it time to treat your hand again.”
“Docile submission?” Val shot her a puzzled look. “You’ll have to explain this term to me, or better still, demonstrate its meaning.”
She gave him an amused smile that put Val in mind of the smiles Her Grace often bestowed on Val’s father, then disappeared into her cottage. When she emerged, she handed him a tall glass of cider and took a seat on her swing. Val lowered himself beside her, setting the thing to swaying gently with his foot. While Ellen worked salve into Val’s hand, they discussed Sir Dewey Fanning and Val’s physician friend, Viscount Fairly, and his good friend Lord Nick—Darius’s brother-in-law—who was also a mutual friend of the Belmonts.
“You did not do this hand any favors today.” Ellen frowned at the offending appendage. “But you did let me drive out from town.”
“I rested my hand as well as I could.”
“But you tormented the poor thing yesterday and the day before,” Ellen chided as she spread salve over his knuckles. “You are not going to heal quickly at this rate.”
“I’m not getting worse,” Val replied, closing his eyes. “And if you’ll attend me like this, I have an incentive for making only the slowest of recoveries. With respect to the estate, though, I feel daunted. It feels like a quagmire, one that will consume every resource I throw at it and still demand more.”
“Like a jealous mistress,” Ellen murmured, kissing his knuckles.
“Yes, though I can’t say I’ve experienced one of those in person—at least not recently. The farms are nearing disgrace, the house is a ruin, somebody is bent on criminal mischief, and my own health isn’t one hundred percent.”
“Your hand will get better if you rest it.”
“You’re going to send me off now,” Val predicted. “We visit and we hold hands and we even cuddle, Ellen, but you’re still shy of me, and I can’t tell whether I should be flattered or frustrated.”
“Valentine.” She set his hand on his thigh. “I am not… I am indisposed.”
“Ah, well.” Val brushed his hand down her braid. “That explains it, then. As I myself am never indisposed, except perhaps when my seed is all over my belly and chest, I’m sweating with spent lust on a blanket beneath the willow, and my wits are abegging too.”
“You are shameless.” A blush rose up her neck and suffused her cheeks.
Val looped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side. “And you are very dear. Shall we go swimming tonight?”
“You are being outrageous. Trying to shock me.”
“Trying to seduce you,” Val corrected her, pulling her in so he could kiss her temple. “Without apparent success, but I’m the patient sort and you won’t be indisposed much longer, will you?”
She shook her head.
He stayed with her for a long while after that, rocking the swing gently, holding her, and watching darkness fall over the garden. When she began to doze against him, he carried her through the darkened cottage to her bed and tucked her in.
Leaving Ellen to wonder as she drifted off to sleep how it was her furniture-merchant neighbor rubbed elbows with not one title but several, and, were she a different kind of widow in a different life, if he’d be courting her—and if she’d be allowing him to.
Val retrieved his horse from the Great Weldon livery, feeling as if his interview with Cheatham had been just the kick in the arse he needed to be completely out of charity with life. He was still disgruntled and puzzled when he returned to the estate at midday.
Darius greeted him on the driveway. “Just in time for lunch.”
Val quirked an eyebrow at his friend, who had foregone cravat and waistcoat in deference to the building heat. “You’re in dishabille.”
“And soon I’ll be romping the day away at the pond in all my naked glory, like our pet savages. What did you learn in that beehive of commercial activity known as Great Weldon?”
“Nothing positive,” Val said, leading Ezekiel to the stables. “The lane looks good.”
“The Ostrogoths about bloodied their paws getting the shells raked out for you. Make it a point to compliment them.”
“I take it they’ve had their meal?” Val put his horse in the cross ties and heaved the saddle off its back. He ignored the familiar pain shooting up his left arm and put the saddle down on its customary rack.
Darius took a seat on the only bench in the barn aisle. “Hand bothering you?”
“Hurts like blazes,” Val said easily, but what he’d learned in town hurt worse. “It was pointed out to me today by the estimable William Cheatham, Esquire, that Ellen FitzEngle has a life estate on that property known as, et cetera, until such time as she dies, remarries, or loses privileges of citizenship, whichever shall first occur, et cetera.”
Darius frowned. “A life estate?”
“Life estate, as in the right to dwell unmolested and undisturbed, free of any interference and so forth, right here, for the rest of her life, with all the blessings attendant thereto.”
“All the blessings?” Darius asked as Val groomed his horse briskly, the brush held firmly in his right hand. “As in the rents?”
“Rents, crops, and benefits not including the right to sell fixtures. This was to be her dower property, Dare. I don’t understand it.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Ellen has been collecting the rents here through Cheatham for the past five years, but she has Cheatham put the money into one of the Markham accounts in a London bank. Not a penny of it has gone into the estate.”
“That doesn’t seem in character with a woman who dotes on her own land. Your horse is about to pass out with the pleasure of your efforts.”
Val glanced at Ezekiel, who was indeed giving a heavy-lidded, horsey impression of bliss.
“Hopeless.” Val scratched the horse behind the ears with his right hand. “At least Zeke doesn’t prevaricate on estate matters.”
“Did you ever ask the lady where the money is going?”
“I did not,” Val said, tucking Zeke into a stall. “But you put your finger on the contradiction I couldn’t quite name: Ellen treasures her ground and takes better care of it than some women do their newborn children. It doesn’t make sense she’d let the rest of the estate go to ruin.”
“No sense at all. Maybe she doesn’t have a choice.”