They traveled the rest of the way in silence, but when they trotted up the lane, Val saw an order of crushed shells had been delivered and the back terrace all but finished.

“Day and Phil can put the horses up,” Val told Darius. “I’ll walk Ellen back to her cottage, then I can update you on our exciting day in town.”

“Looks like a tiring day in town,” Darius remarked as Day and Phillip yawned and stretched. He swung Ellen down from her perch on the bench and eyed her critically. “Even the indomitable Mrs. Fitz is looking done in, Val. You’ve taken your slave driving a little too seriously today.”

“Have a piece of the raspberry pie I brought home; then pass judgment on me. Ellen?” Val offered her his arm, which she took without protest, and headed with her toward the woods.

“You really ought to be cleaning this wood up,” Ellen observed as they gained the shade of the bridle path.

“I don’t want to.” Val matched his steps to her leisurely pace. “I’m afraid I’ll offend the piskies.”

“It is beautiful, but if you don’t at least cut up some deadwood, these paths will become useless, and the piskies will be the only ones keeping warm in winter. Then too, there are a couple of old pensioners in here who need to be cut down before they topple, and they’re big enough to land on your outbuildings or mine.”

Val stopped and regarded her in the late afternoon light. “I don’t want to disturb the wood because it’s the first place I kissed you. It’s… magical for me, and I don’t want it to change.”

It was an unplanned disclosure, a truth Val himself hadn’t been aware of until he heard the words coming out of his own mouth.

“Magical.” Ellen’s expression shifted between amusement, sadness, and… wistfulness?

“Silly.” Val glanced around self-consciously. “But there it is.” He could still see in his mind’s eye the way two butterflies had danced around in a sunbeam the day he’d first kissed her, not far from where they stood now. At the time, he’d thought the butterflies absurd.

Ellen shook her head. “Not silly. Sentimental, though.”

“I’m going to kiss you again.” He took her hand in his. “Now, in fact.”

He settled his lips over hers gently, just as he’d done a year ago. And now, as then, he took his time deepening the kiss, tasting her, breathing in her fragrance, letting his hands wander over her arms and shoulders and neck, until she was leaning into him and kissing him back.

“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.