Fear was an old, familiar enemy, and since Francis’s death, she’d never really been free of it. It ebbed and flowed, sometimes bad, sometimes worse, and now it had shifted, expanded to include fear for the man she was about to confront. Bad enough she had made such a conscienceless enemy, but at least she could protect this very decent man from harm before he gained an enemy, as well.
“Hello.” She greeted Val and waited for his acknowledgement. He’d been affectionate company when they were private, but almost as if he sensed she’d withheld information from him, he’d also shown her a certain indefinable reserve.
“Hello.” He took her wrist in his hand to tug her down beside him on the bench under Belmont’s spreading oaks. “You are playing truant?”
“It was too hot to nap and I have much on my mind.” Two truths. Ellen told herself it was a good start.
“You look burdened with weighty thoughts, perhaps.” A neutral enough greeting, but Ellen heard reservations in it. Best get the discussion over with.
“You are going to be disappointed in me.”
“Why is that?” He did not slip an arm around her shoulders.
“I have not been… forthcoming,” Ellen said, wishing she had the courage to take his left hand between her two as she had many times in the past.
“I have never raised my hand to a woman, Ellen,” Val said, allaying her fears not at all. Of course he wouldn’t strike her. “I can’t recall even raising my voice to a woman, not even to my sisters, and there are five of them.”
It was as much reassurance as he’d give her, and Ellen realized that somehow Val must have indeed suspected she’d been prevaricating.
He reached for her hand, and all she could do was watch as he held it between both of his. “I know you’ve been troubled by something in recent days, and I am vain enough to believe it’s not my intimate attentions about which you’re having second thoughts, at least not directly. But if there’s something you need to tell me, Ellen, just say it. We’re rather at a standstill otherwise.”
She risked a glance at him and saw no censure, but rather, a grave, resolved seriousness. He had warned her he wanted more than a romp and a fond farewell, warned her they would be friends if they were to be lovers.
“How is your hand?” she asked, apropos of nothing, but she could hardly think over the pounding of her heart.
“It hurts,” he said simply. “Constantly, but not as badly it did in the spring. Talk to me, Ellen. Please.”
Please.
She was going to miss him, miss him with a sharp, low-down ache that might never fade, and she’d never really had him.
“It’s my fault your estate is in such disgrace.” She stared straight ahead as she spoke. “It was neglected five years ago but salvageable, then we had some big storms and… I let it go.”
Val nodded as if he’d expected this. “And how were you supposed to pay for repairs when you were not the owner and you have no portion, no dower property?”
“It is my dower property,” Ellen said, the words bringing an inconvenient lump to her throat. “Francis knew I liked it because it was quiet and unpretentious and the farms were in better shape than the house. It isn’t entailed, but I hold the life estate, while Freddy had the title in fee simple. He’s younger than me, so it likely would have reverted to the Markham estate if I never remarried.”
“You chose not to put it to rights,” Val summarized. “But what have you done with the rents, Ellen?”
His voice wasn’t angry; it was gentle, almost resigned.
“The rents go in the bank,” Ellen said, reaching the limit of the half truth she was willing to disclose. “If there’s something critical on one of the farms, I’ve told myself I’ll see to it, but I don’t know enough about farming to understand what matters and what is just the tenants’ endless grousing.”
“I see,” Val said, holding her hand passively between his. “Well.”
Beside him, Ellen was still and quiet, as if waiting for him to rain down contumely and criticism upon her.
What Val felt was a vast, sad relief that she’d confessed her mismanagement of the funds. He couldn’t blame her for not putting her fate in Freddy’s hands or for being ignorant of proper land management.
“Well?” Ellen glanced over, and the way she veiled emotion from her eyes tore at him. He dropped her hand, and she bowed her head until he slid his arm around her shoulders.
“Well,” Val said, kissing her temple. “You are being honest and I have to appreciate that. The question becomes, where do we go from here?”
“How can you want to spend time with a woman who has lied to you?” she bit out miserably. “I hate myself for it, and you must hate me too.”
“Must I?” He rubbed his chin on her crown. “Because your trust has been abused by the present baron and you were slow to confide in a stranger trying to get into your bed?”
“You’re not like that.”
Val snorted softly. “All men are like that. I haven’t been exactly honest either, Ellen.” The words were out, a little surprisingly and a little relieving too.
“You haven’t?” She raised her head to peer at him. “Can you be now?”
He could; he wasn’t going to be, not entirely.
“I did see Cheatham. He told me you had kept the rents, and the deed itself cites your life estate in the property. I didn’t really study the deed until I met with him, though he wasn’t willing to tell me much more than I could have inferred from the document itself if I’d only read it carefully.”
“I see.” Ellen’s head returned to his shoulder. “Would you have been… intimate with me, knowing I wasn’t being honest?”
Val was silent for a long, thoughtful moment. “I don’t know. Maybe, eventually. I desire you profoundly and had already divined your reasoning. I haven’t offered you marriage except as a last resort and can’t blame you for looking to yourself and your own interests.”
“I don’t think you would have pursued our dealings with this between us.”
“Why not?”
“Because you didn’t.” Her voice was very quiet. “On that blanket under the willow, you could have. I wouldn’t have stopped you. In the hammock, I wouldn’t have stopped you had you been determined. You are very… persuasive.”
Persuasive.
“We have a larger problem,” he said, hauling back hard on the lust thumping through his vitals like a chorus of timpani.
“What sort of problem?” Ellen lifted her head to regard him again. “I will understand if you are done… flirting with me. We will be neighbors when you complete your renovations, at least until you sell the place.”
“Flirting.” Val frowned. “I am very persuasive, and yet you consider my best efforts at seduction to be worth only the label flirting.”
Ellen’s gaze dropped to her lap. “In any case, I will understand.”
“Good of you.” Val’s frown intensified as he tried to puzzle out what exactly was bothering him. “And am I to understand if you’ve lost interest in me? If you decide a man who seeks some honesty with his lover is a little too much work? If you prefer weeding your daisies to sharing passion in my arms?”
Ellen’s gaze swiveled to meet his.
“I have not lost interest, Valentine. I wish I had, because I don’t understand how you can tolerate the sight of me, and yet I still crave your embrace. I crave the simple scent of you, all cedar and whatever else it is you wear. I crave the texture of your hair against my fingers and the taste of you on my tongue…” She stopped herself, maybe shocked at her own words and the vehemence of them.