Venetia Read online

  ‘Oh! Thank you! You didn’t tell her anything to alarm her, did you?’

  ‘No, why should I? I told her precisely what I told you, and merely requested her to put up what you need in the way of nightshirts and tooth-brushes for the boy to bring back with him.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Aubrey said, relieved. ‘They can’t fly into a pucker over that!’

  Four

  The letter which reached Venetia had been written in the most elegant of formal terms, and in a spirit of unholy amusement. Damerel took pains over it, wondering what its effect on her would be. He addressed her as a stranger, but she was unlikely to be deceived into thinking that he did not remember very well who she was. Though he was careful not to pen a word that might betray to her his enjoyment of the situation, she would certainly perceive how maliciously fate had played into his hands. That might bring her to the Priory in a mood of seething resentment, but he did not think it would keep her away from a delicate young brother who seemed to be in her sole charge; and he did not doubt his ability to gentle her into laying her ruffled plumage. He ended his letter with a prim Yours etc, and wished, as he sealed it with a wafer, that he could watch her face when she read it.

  In point of fact not one of the thoughts he had imagined for her so much as crossed her mind. By the time the letter reached Undershaw she was much more anxious than she cared to betray to Nurse, who had been prophesying disaster ever since the discovery that Aubrey had not come home to share a nuncheon with his sister. That circumstance had not alarmed her; he had not told her where he was going, and for anything she knew it might have been to Thirsk, or even to York, where there was a bookshop that enjoyed his patronage. But by four o’clock she had reached the nerve-racking stage of wondering whether to send out all the menservants to scour the countryside, or whether in so doing she would be indulging a fit of extravagant folly which would infuriate Aubrey. So when Ribble brought the letter to her, with Nurse wringing her hands in his wake, and declaring that she had known it all along, and there was her sainted lamb, picked up for dead, and lying at the Priory with every bone in his body broken, there was no room in her head for any thought of Damerel. Her fingers trembled as she broke open the letter; she felt quite sick with dread; and in her anxiety to learn the worst never even noticed the ironic formality over which such pains had been spent. Running her eyes rapidly down the single sheet she exclaimed thankfully: ‘No, no, he’s not badly hurt! Rufus came down with him, but there are no bones broken. A sprained ankle – considerable bruising – in case of any injury to the left hip – oh, how very kind of him! Listen, Nurse! Lord Damerel has sent to York already to fetch Dr Bentworth to Aubrey! He writes however that although Aubrey believes himself to have fallen on that leg, he thinks, from the spraining of his right ankle, that it was not so and he has done no more than jar the weak joint. I do pray he may be right! He thought it better to convey Aubrey to the Priory than to subject him to the torment of the longer journey to his own home – indeed it was! And if I will be so good as to put up Aubrey’s necessities the bearer will carry them back to the Priory. As though I shouldn’t go to Aubrey myself!’

  ‘That you will not!’ declared Nurse. ‘The Lord may see fit to turn an old woman over into the hands of the wicked, but it says in the Good Book that many are the afflictions of the righteous, and, what’s more, that they shall be upheld, which I do trust I shall be, though never did I think to be forced to stand in the way of sinners! But as for letting you set foot in that ungodly mansion, Miss Venetia, never!’

  Recognising from the sudden Biblical turn of the conversation that her guardian was strongly moved, Venetia applied herself for the next twenty minutes to the task of soothing her agitation, pointing out to her that they had more reason to liken Damerel to the Good Samaritan than to the wicked, and coaxing her to accept her own determination to go to Aubrey as something as harmless as it was inevitable. In all of this she was only partially successful, for although Nurse knew that once Miss Venetia had made up her mind she was powerless to prevent her doing whatever she liked, and was obliged to admit some faint resemblance in Damerel to the Good Samaritan, she persisted in referring to him as The Ungodly, and in ascribing his charitable behaviour to some obscure but evil motive.

  She came closer to the truth than she knew, or could have brought Venetia to believe. Venetia had no guile, and no affectations; she knew the world only by the books she had read; experience had never taught her to doubt the sincerity of anyone who did her a kindness. So when Damerel, seeing the approach of a carriage round a bend in the avenue, strolled out to meet his guest it was neither a wrathful goddess nor a young lady on her dignity who sprang down from the vehicle and gave him both her hands, but a beautiful, ingenuous creature with no consciousness in her frank eyes, but only a glow of warm gratitude. She exclaimed, as he took her hands: ‘I am so much obliged to you! I wish I could tell you, but there seems to be nothing to say but thank you.’ She added, shyly smiling: ‘You wrote me such a comfortable letter, too! That was so very kind: did you guess I must be quite sick with apprehension? Oh, pray tell me that it was true, and he didn’t injure himself badly?’

  It was several moments before he answered her or released her hands. In a faded old gown, with her hair untidy under a sunbonnet, and her countenance flushed with indignation he had thought her an uncommonly pretty girl; she was dressed now simply but charmingly in jonquil muslin, with a hat of unbleached straw whose high-poke front made a frame for a lovely face that was neither flushed nor indignant, but smiling up at him with unshadowed friendliness, and she took his breath away. Hardly aware that he was still holding her hands, and in far too strong a grasp, he stood staring down at her until Nurse recalled him to his senses by clearing her throat in a marked and an intimidating manner. He recovered himself quickly then, saying: ‘Why, yes, Miss Lanyon! To the best of my belief it was perfectly true, but although I have some experience of broken bones I know nothing of the trouble that makes your brother lame, and so thought it imperative to send for his doctor. I hope it may not be long before he arrives. Meanwhile, you must, I’m persuaded, be impatient to see the boy. I’ll take you to him at once.’

  ‘Thank you! I’ve brought our Nurse, as you see, and she means to stay to look after him, if she may do so?’

  ‘Oh, that’s capital!’ he said, smiling in appreciative amusement as he encountered a glare from that rigid moralist’s hostile eyes. ‘You will know just what to do for him, and to have you will make him feel very much more at home.’

  ‘Is it paining him very badly?’ Venetia asked anxiously, as Damerel led her into the house.

  ‘No, not now. I gave him some laudanum, and he seems tolerably comfortable – but I fear you’ll find him pretty drowsy.’

  ‘Gave him laudanum?’ Venetia exclaimed. ‘Oh, if he would swallow that he must have been suffering dreadfully! He will never take drugs – not even the mildest opiate, only to make him sleep when his hip has been aching!’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t swallow it at all willingly, I promise you!’ he replied, taking her across the flagged hall to the staircase. ‘I respect his reluctance, but to be allowing him to play the Spartan youth, when he was suffering (unless I mistake the matter) as much from fear that he may have crippled himself as from his bruised bones, would have been folly. Or so I thought!’

  ‘You were very right!’ she agreed. ‘But unless you forced it down his throat, which I do hope you didn’t, I can’t imagine how you persuaded him to take it, for I never knew anyone so obstinate!’

  He laughed. ‘No, no, I wasn’t obliged to resort to violence!’ He opened the door into Aubrey’s room as he spoke, and stood aside for her to go in.

  Aubrey, lying in the middle of a big four-poster bed and wearing a nightshirt many sizes too large for him, looked the merest wisp of a boy, but he had recovered his complexion a little. Roused by his sister’s fingers laid over his wrist he opened his eyes, smi