The Virtuoso

The duchess leaned close to whisper, “But I think Valentine has your heart, hmm?” She straightened and took her husband’s arm. “Shall we be seated, Percy? One doesn’t want to disappoint the crowds.”

Westhaven stepped back, so it happened Ellen was seated between the duke and duchess, feeling nervous, excited, and thoroughly off balance. Where was Val? And why had he summoned her? Was this simply an outing for her? Was it a demonstration to Freddy that the Moreland consequence was being put in Ellen’s corner?

The first half of the program started off in a blur as Ellen’s mind continued to race and whirl from one thought to the next. She tried, in the dim lighting, to look around and see if Val might be watching her from a different box. Gradually, though, the music seeped into her fevered brain, and she began to calm. Maybe Val just wanted her to hear this music. The orchestra was in fine form, and Val’s family was treating her with great cordiality.

Westhaven took her arm at the interval and informed her they would be strolling in the corridor. They barely escaped the confines of the ducal box when Ellen heard a familiar baritone rumbling behind her.

“If it isn’t my favorite little gardener,” Nick Haddonfield pronounced. “Give a lonely fellow a kiss, my lady, and I won’t complain when you pinch me.”

“Nick…” She smiled up at him, not realizing how much she’d missed him too, until that moment. When he wrapped his arms around her, there in the theatre corridor with half of polite society looking on, Ellen felt tears welling. “I’ve missed you.”

“As well you should.” Nick nodded approvingly. “Women of discernment always miss me, though I’ve missed you, as well, lovey. You did not answer my letters.”

“A lady does not correspond with a gentleman, your lordship,” Ellen chided him, though her smile was still radiant.

Westhaven cast an assessing glance at Nick. “He’s no gentleman. He writes a very charming letter, nonetheless. Next time, Bellefonte, you do as David and Letty do with Val. Val writes a two-sentence letter to David and then a four-page postscript to Letty.”

“Strategy is always so tedious.” Nick sighed. “Here comes one of my two favorite brothers-in-law.” Ellen was hugged again as Darius Lindsey greeted her, looking strikingly handsome in his evening finery.

“I believe Her Grace will want to see you two,” Westhaven decided. “Why don’t you escort Lady Roxbury back to the box while I check on something backstage?”

A look passed between the gentlemen, something of male significance that had Ellen concluding Westhaven needed the retiring room. She let Nick and Darius each take an arm and was more than pleased when Her Grace invited them to stay for the second half. Westhaven slipped into the back of the box just as the ushers were dousing the candles.

“So this is the good part?” Nick asked from beside her.

“The party piece is always saved for the second half,” Ellen explained, though it occurred to her belatedly, Nick had been to far more entertainments than she. “That way all the latecomers won’t miss it.”

“One wouldn’t want to miss this,” Nick murmured, only to be thumped on the arm by Darius.

She looked around one last time for Val, and then she spied him, his progress being marked by the growing hush of the audience as he strode across the stage.

Oh, he looked so handsome, so distinguished. He was too lean, maybe, though it was hard to tell when he was so far away, but how fortunate the lights caught his dark hair, his elegant, muscled form as he approached the conductor’s podium.

What on earth?

He tapped a baton on the music stand and signaled to the oboist, who offered the pitch. When the squeaks, toots, and honks of tuning up were silenced, Val turned to face the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice carried straight into the darkest corners of the hall and straight into Ellen’s heart. “There is a slight misprint on tonight’s program. We offer for our finale tonight my own debut effort, which is listed on the program as Little Summer Symphony. It should read, Little Weldon Summer Symphony, and the dedication was left out, as well, so I offer it to you now.

“Ellen, I know you are with me tonight, seated with my parents and our friends, though I ca

He turned in the ensuing beats of silence, raised his baton, and let the music begin.

Ellen was in tears before the first movement concluded. The piece began modestly, like an old-fashioned sonata di chiesa, the long slow introduction standing alone as its own movement. Two flutes began it, playing about each other like two butterflies on a sunbeam, but then broadening, the melody shifting from sweet to tender to sorrowful. She heard in it grief and such unbearable, unresolved longing, she wanted to grab Val’s arm to make the notes stop bombarding her aching heart.

But the second movement marched up right behind that opening, full of lovely, laughing melodies, like flowers bobbing in a summer breeze. This movement was full of song and sunshine; it got the toes tapping and left all ma

My gardens, Ellen thought. My beautiful su

The third movement was tranquil, like the sunshine on the still surface of the pond, like the peace after lovemaking. The third movement was napping entwined in the hammock, and strolling home hand in hand in the moonlight. She loved the third movement the best so far, until it romped into a little drinking song, that soon got away from itself and became a fourth movement full of the ebullient joy of creation at its most abundant and beautiful.

The joy of falling in love, Ellen thought, clutching her handkerchief hard. The joy of being in love and being loved the way you need to be.

Ah, it was too much, and it was just perfect as the music came to a stu

The little drinking song served wonderfully as an encore, and the orchestra had to play through it yet again before the audience let the musicians and their conductor go.

In the ducal box, Ellen sat dazed and so pleased for Valentine she could not stop laughing and crying and being glad she had been there to see it. Her exile was now worthwhile. Through years and even decades of gardening in solitude, she would recall this night and those lovely sentiments tossed to her before all of London as if she were the prima do

And she would not—she would not—let herself worry that Freddy would get wind of this and pitch another tantrum.

“Come along.” Nick took her arm when they left the box, and with his superior height, navigated her deftly through the crowds.

“Where are we going?” Ellen asked, for she did not recognize the path they were traveling.