She shook her head, and Val saw the glint of fresh tears on her cheeks.
“Blazing hell.” He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m sorry I’ve made you cry, sorry I can’t be more patient, sorry you are so frightened. What can I do to make it better?”
She drew in a slow, shuddery breath. “Let me collect myself. The evening has been long, and we are both exhausted. You find Nick and Darius, and I’ll be along in a minute.”
Dismissed, Val thought darkly. It crossed his mind that the simple truth might be Ellen had tired of him, and out of misguided kindness was allowing him some dramatic fantasy of past bad deeds, skulking relations, and a cruel fate. What did he have to recommend himself, really? His title was a mere courtesy, his wealth garnered in that most unprepossessing of pursuits—trade—and his former abilities as a musician completely unknown to her.
By the time Val worked his way back to the green, he was relieved to see the party was moving into the Rooster. Children were still shrieking and larking about, the laughter and revelry around the punch bowl and keg were louder than ever, but near the musician’s corner, the violinists were packing up.
Bile rose in Val’s stomach as he took in the carnival that had been the summer assembly in Little Weldon. His world was ending, again, and The Almighty was seeing to it this misery befell him in the midst of a bloody party.
Movement by the doors to the stairs caught his eye, and when he discerned what was going on, he started over at a determined trot.
“For God’s sake, be careful!” It came out more loudly and more angrily than he’d intended, and Neal Bragdoll blinked at him in semidrunken consternation.
“We’re movin’ the pianna, guv.” Neal frowned. “Can’t leave it outside all night.” Neal’s brothers nodded agreeably, as if any damned fool could see what they were about.
“You nigh bumped the legs right off of her,” Val shot back. “If you can’t be any more careful than that, you might as well leave her out here for the rain and the dewfall to destroy her more gently.”
“Her?” Neal set his end of the piano down, and a moment later his brothers did likewise with their end. “This is a pianna, not a her.”
“For God’s sake,” Val nearly shouted, “I know that, but it doesn’t give you leave to wrestle it around like damned sack of oats. You neglect her year after year, and still you expect music when you come to do your drunken stomping about, and then you can’t be bothered to take the least care of an instrument old enough to be your grandmother. There’s music in here”—he smacked the lid of the piano. “There’s craftsmanship you can’t even conceive of, there’s… goodness and beauty.” He stopped, and his voice dropped considerably. “There’s… something of the divine, and you just can’t… you can’t take it for granted and endlessly bash it about. You can’t do that, much less again and again and again. You just… you can’t.”
An awkward, very unmerry quiet fell, underscored by the continued sounds of revelry coming from the Rooster. Val looked up from the little piano to see Neal’s slack-jawed confusion mirrored on faces all around him.
“Lads.” Sir Dewey appeared at Val’s side, Nick looming behind him. “Let’s try this again and treat this piano like it was your grannie’s coffin, shall we?” Neal exchanged a look with his brothers, one of whom shrugged and bent to pick up his corner. Nick took the fourth corner, and the procession carefully moved up the stairs.
“You’ll want to see her situated,” Sir Dewey said softly, his hand on Val’s arm.
What Val wanted was for the earth to swallow him up and end this miserable, unbearable day. No music, no Ellen, nothing to fight for but a battered old piano that had been knocked about long before the Bragdoll brothers’ drunken buffoonery.
Still, Sir Dewey was looking at Val with a kind of steadying, level gaze, and what else was there to do, really? Val nodded and followed Sir Dewey up the stairs.
“There’s an ale for each of you gentlemen,” Sir Dewey said when the piano was back in its place. “Tell Rafe to put it on my tab.”
“Thankee.” Neal tugged his forelock, shot a glance at the piano once again sitting on the stage, and left with only one puzzled look at Val.
“You’ll stay with him?” Sir Dewey directed the question at Nick, who nodded and began moving around the room, blowing out candles. “I must return to the Rooster or there will be hell to pay within the hour. Rafe’s special blends are mayhem waiting to happen.”
“My thanks,” Val got out.
“Sir Dewey.” Nick saluted in farewell and went on with his task. Val sank down on the piano bench where it sat along the far wall, facing out so he could watch Nick’s perambulations around the room.
“This looks like a metaphor for my life,” Val said.
“A bit in need of a tidying?” Nick asked as he picked up the last branch of candles and moved to set it on the piano.
“Not on the piano,” Val barked then shook his head. “I beg your pardon. Set it wherever you please.”
Nick put the candles on the floor and budged up next to Val on the bench. “So why is this room like your life?”
“The party is over, meaning Ellen will not have me.” To his own ears, he sounded utterly, absolutely defeated.
“This hurts,” Nick observed, a hankie appearing in his large, elegant hands.
“I thought…” Val looked away from that infernal handkerchief. “I thought losing Bart was the worst, and then Victor was worse yet. I am still mad at them for dying, for leaving. Bart especially, because it was so stupid.”
“You are grieving,” Nick said, folding the hankie into perfect quarters on his thigh. “It hasn’t been that long, and each loss reminds you of the others.”
“I miss them.” Three words, but they held universes of pain and bewilderment. And anger.
“I know, lovey.” Nick scrunched the handkerchief up in a tight ball. “I know.”
“I missed the piano,” Val said slowly, “but not as I thought I would.” He looked up enough to glance into the gloom where the little piano stood. “I saw myself as talented and having something to offer because I could conjure a few tunes on a keyboard.”
“You are talented,” Nick said staunchly. “You’re bloody brilliant.”
Val laughed shortly. “I’m so bloody brilliant I thought if I just played well enough, I might stop…”
“Stop?”
“Stop hurting. Stop missing them,” Val said slowly, then fell silent. “I am being pathetic, and you will please shoot me.”
“Valentine?”
Nick was a friend, a dear, true friend. He’d neither ridicule nor judge, and Val’s dignity had eloped the moment Ellen had made it plain she’d never really intended to confide in him.
What did that leave to lose?
“Being invisible to your father hurts,” Val said. He fell silent, wondering where the words had come from. Growing up, he’d been the runt, too young, too dreamy, too artistic to keep up with his brothers or their friends. As a younger man, he’d been disinclined to academic brilliance, social wit, or business acumen, and denied by ducal fiat from buying his colors. For the first time, he wondered if he’d chosen the piano or simply chained himself to it by default.
Nick shot him a curious glance. “Would it be so much better if you’d ended up like Bart and Victor? If Esther and Percy had to bury three sons instead of two, while you were spared the pains of living the life God gave you? I think the more important question now, Val, is are you invisible to yourself?”
“No, Nick.” A mirthless laugh. “I am not, but just when I realize what a pit I had fallen into with my slavish devotion to a simple manual skill, just when I can begin to hope there might be more to life than benumbing myself on a piano bench, I find a woman I can love, but she can’t love me back.”