Venetia Read online

  ‘I promise you I should not! It sounds very disagreeable – and quite as boring as the life I’ve known! You refer, I collect, to Lady Hester: did you ever meet her?’

  ‘Yes, at Palmyra, in – oh, I forget! – ’13? ’14? It doesn’t signify.’

  ‘Have you visited Greece, as well as the Levant?’ she interrupted.

  ‘I have. Why? Can it be that you are a classical scholar?’

  ‘No, I am not, but Aubrey is. Do, pray, tell him about the things you must have seen in Athens! He has only Mr Appersett to talk to about what he most cares for, and although Mr Appersett – he is the Vicar, you know! – is a fine scholar he has not seen, with his own eyes, as you have!’

  ‘I’ll tell Aubrey anything he may want to know – if you, mysterious Miss Lanyon, will tell me what I want to know!’

  ‘Well, I will,’ she replied handsomely. ‘Though what there is to tell you, or why you should call me mysterious has me in a puzzle!’

  ‘I call you mysterious because –’ he paused, amused by the look of innocent expectancy in her eyes – ‘Oh, because you are five-and twenty, unwed, and, so far as I can discover, unsought!’

  ‘On the contrary!’ retorted Venetia, entering into the spirit of this. ‘I have two admirers! One of them is excessively romantic, and the other is –’

  ‘Well?’ he prompted, as she hesitated.

  ‘Worthy!’ she produced, and went into a peal of mirth as he dropped his head into his hands.

  ‘And you a nonpareil!’

  ‘No, am I? The truth is that there is no mystery at all: my father was a recluse.’

  ‘That sounds to me like a non sequitur.’

  ‘No, it’s the very hub of the matter.’

  ‘But, good God, did he shut you up as well as himself?’

  ‘Not precisely, though I have frequently suspected that he would have liked to have done so. My mother died, you see. He must have loved her quite desperately, I suppose, for he fell into the most deplorable lethargy, and became exactly like Henry I: never smiled again! I can’t tell how it was, because he would never have her name mentioned; and, besides that, I was only ten years old at the time, and not at all acquainted with either of them. In fact, I can scarcely remember what she looked like, except that I am sure she was pretty, and wore beautiful dresses. At all events, Papa was utterly thrown into gloom by her death, and until I was seventeen I think I never exchanged a word with anyone beyond our own household.’

  ‘Good God! Was he mad?’

  ‘Oh no! Merely eccentric!’ she replied. ‘I never knew him to care for anyone’s comfort but his own, but I fancy eccentrics don’t. However, when I grew up he permitted Lady Denny and Mrs Yardley to take me now and then to the Assemblies in York; and once he actually consented to my spending a week in Harrogate, with my Aunt Hendred! I did hope that he would consent also to let me visit her in London, so that she might bring me out in the regular way. She offered to do so, but he wouldn’t have it, and I daresay she didn’t very much wish to do it, for she didn’t press it.’

  ‘Poor Venetia!’

  If she noticed his use of her name she gave no sign of having done so, only smiling, and saying: ‘I own I was sadly dashed down at the time, but after all, you know, I don’t think I could have gone, even had Papa been willing, for Aubrey was still tied to a sofa, and I couldn’t have left him.’

  ‘So you have never been farther afield than Harrogate! No wonder you dream of travel! How have you endured such intolerable tyranny?’

  ‘Oh, it was only on that one subject Papa was adamant! For the rest I might do as I chose. I wasn’t unhappy – did you think I had been? Not a bit! I might now and then be bored, but in general I have had enough to keep me occupied, with the house to manage, and Aubrey to take care of.’

  ‘When did your father die? Surely some years ago? Why do you stay here? Is habit so strong?’

  ‘No, but circumstance is! My elder brother is a member of Lord Hill’s staff, you see, and until he chooses to sell out someone must look after Undershaw. There’s Aubrey, too. I don’t think he would consent to go away, because that would mean he could not read with Mr Appersett any more; and it wouldn’t do to leave him alone.’

  ‘I can well believe that he would miss you, but –’

  She laughed. ‘Aubrey? Oh, no! Aubrey likes books more than people. The thing is that I am afraid Nurse would drive him crazy, trying to wrap him in cotton wool, which is a thing he can’t bear.’ Her brow creased. ‘I only wish she may not vex him to death while he is here! I was obliged to bring her, because if I had not she would have trudged all the way. Then, too, she does know what to do when he is ailing, and I couldn’t leave him quite on your hands. Perhaps Dr Bentworth will say he may come home.’

  But when the doctor arrived, although he was able to allay any fears that Aubrey had seriously injured his hip he returned a flat negative to Nurse’s suggestion that he would be better in his own home. The quieter he was kept, said Dr Bentworth, the more quickly would the torn ligaments heal. This verdict was accepted reluctantly by Nurse, and by Aubrey, whose endurance had been tried pretty high by the doctor’s examination, with profound relief.

  With a tact born of experience Venetia had not accompanied the doctor to the sickroom. She had asked Damerel to go with him in her stead, and he had nodded, and had said in his curt way: ‘Yes, I’ll go. Don’t worry!’ It was several minutes before it occurred to her that she had turned to him as to a friend of many years’ standing. Then, a little wonderingly, she thought over that protracted dinner, and of how they had sat talking long after Imber had removed the covers, Damerel leaning back in his carved chair, a glass of port held between his long fingers, she with her elbows on the table and a half-eaten apple in one hand; and the dusk creeping into the room unheeded, until Imber brought in candles, in tall, tarnished chandeliers, and set them on the table, furnishing a pool of light in which they sat while the shadows darkened beyond it. Trying to recall what they had talked of during that comfortable hour, it seemed to Venetia that they had talked of everything, or perhaps of nothing: she did not know which, but only that she had found a friend.

  When the doctor told her that he could not advise her to remove Aubrey from the Priory he seemed to be both surprised and relieved by her tranquil acceptance of his verdict. The note of apology in his voice at first puzzled her, but after she had thought it over she saw what he must have meant when he spoke of embarrassment and awkward situations; and when Damerel came back into the room, after escorting the doctor to his carriage, she looked rather anxiously up at him, and said with a little difficulty: ‘I am afraid – I hadn’t thought – Will it be troublesome to you to keep Aubrey until he is better?’

  ‘Not a bit!’ he replied, with reassuring alacrity. ‘What put such a daffish notion as that into your head?’

  ‘Well, it was Dr Bentworth’s saying how sorry he was to be obliged to put me in an awkward situation,’ she disclosed. ‘He meant, of course, that it is quite shocking to foist poor Aubrey on to you, and he was perfectly right! I can’t think why it should not have occurred to me before, but I daresay –’

  ‘He meant nothing of the sort,’ Damerel interrupted ruthlessly. ‘His solicitude is not on my behalf, but on yours. He perceived the impropriety of thrusting you into acquaintanceship with a man of libertine propensities. Morals and medicine warred within his breast, and medicine won the day – but I daresay morals may give him a sleepless night!’

  ‘Is that all?’ she exclaimed, her brow clearing.

  ‘That’s all,’ he answered gravely. ‘Unless, of course, he fears I may corrupt Aubrey. Evil communications, you know!’

  ‘I shouldn’t think you could,’ she said, dispassionately considering the matter. She saw his lips quiver, and her own gravity vanished. ‘Oh, I don’t mean that you would make the attempt! You know very well I don’t! The thing is t