Read Online The Virtuoso by Grace Burrowes - Free Book Online Page B

couldn’t lick spotless in a minute.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?” Val asked, not even questioning why Ellen would be alone on her porch after dark.
    â€œMarmalade. Not very original.”
    â€œBecause he’s orange?” Val bent to pick the cat up and lowered himself to the top porch step.
    â€œAnd sweet,” Ellen added, shifting from her porch swing to sit beside Val. “I take it you were too hot to sleep?”
    â€œToo bothered. You?”
    â€œRestless. You were right; change is unsettling to me.”
    â€œI am unsettled, as well,” Val said, humor in his voice. “I seem to have a penchant for it.”
    â€œSometimes we can’t help what befalls us. What has you unsettled?”
    Val was silent, realizing he was sitting beside one of very few people familiar with him who had never heard him play the piano. A woman who, in fact, didn’t even know he could play, much less that he was Moreland’s musical son.
    â€œMy hand hurts. It has been plaguing me for some time, and I’m out of patience with it.”
    â€œWhich hand?” Ellen asked, her voice conveying some surprise. Whatever trouble she might have expected Valentine Windham to admit, it apparently hadn’t been a simple physical ailment.
    â€œThis very hand here.” Val waved his left hand in the night air, going still when Ellen caught it in her own.
    â€œHave you seen a physician?” she asked, tracing the bones on the back of his hand with her fingers.
    â€œI did.” Val closed his eyes and gave himself up to the pleasure of her touch. Her fingers were cool and her exploration careful. “He assured me of nothing, save that I should treat it as an inflammation.”
    â€œWhich meant what?” Ellen’s fingers slipped over his palm. “That you should tote roofing slates about by the dozen? Carry buckets of mortar for your masons? I can feel some heat in it, now that you draw my attention to it.” She held his hand up to her cheek and cradled it against her jaw.
    â€œIt means I am to drink willow bark tea, which is vile stuff. I am to rest the hand, which I do by avoiding fine tasks with it. I am to use cold soaks, massage, and arnica, if it helps, and I am not to use laudanum, as that only masks symptoms, regardless of how much it still allows me to function.”
    â€œI have considerable stores of willow bark tea.” Ellen drew her fingers down each of Val’s in turn. “And it sounds to me as if you’re generally ignoring sound medical advice.”
    â€œI rub it. I rest it, compared to what I usually do with it. I don’t think it’s getting worse.”
    â€œStay here.” Ellen patted his hand and rose. She floated off into the cottage, leaving Val to marvel that if he weren’t mistaken, he was sitting in the darkness, more or less holding hands with a woman clad only in a summer nightgown and wrapper. Her hair was once again down, the single braid tidy for once where it hung along her spine.
    Summer, even in the surrounds of Little Weldon, even with a half-useless sore hand, had its charms.
    â€œGive me your hand,” Ellen said when she resumed her seat beside him. He passed over the requested appendage as he might have passed along a dish of overcooked asparagus. She rested the back of his hand against her thigh, and Val heard the sound of a tin being opened.
    â€œYou are going to quack me?”
    â€œI am going to use some comfrey salve to help you comply with doctor’s orders. There’s probably arnica in it too.”
    Val felt her spread something cool and moist over his hand, and then her fingers were working it into his skin. She was patient and thorough, smoothing her salve over his knuckles and fingers, into his palms, up over his wrist, and back down each finger. As she worked, he felt tension, frustration, and anger slipping down his arm and out the ends of his fingers, almost as if he