Carla Kelly (7 page)

She shook her head. “No, sir. I believe the matter is well in hand. The airing of opinion is a good thing, no?”

He looked around at the familiar faces, and noticed the red eyes of the women and the men’s serious expressions. “I know it has been a difficult week with the unexpected passing of Mrs. Burlew, but please remember: we will continue as usual here at Knare. Miss Valencia, I have been invited to dine at Ash Grove this evening—it’s the neighboring estate. You needn’t worry about seeing to me.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Liria said. “I will have a report for you this evening.”

“That will be fine,” he replied, wishing that she did not have to sound so formal, but knowing that it was probably necessary. “Miss Valencia, a word with you, please.” He indicated the late Mrs. Burlew’s sitting room, and she rose gracefully and followed him, shutting the door quietly behind her.

He almost felt tongue-tied as he stood there. “Miss Valencia, thank you for not betraying me in front of Augusta . . . Lady Wogan. I . . . I just couldn’t face so much female management all at once.”

She smiled at that. “Surely you have been managed before, sir.”

“Of course I have!” he retorted, amused more than irritated. “Probably from the cradle! I just wish that Augusta would be more discreet in arranging my life.”

“What sister can resist?” she murmured, and he was pleased to notice a lively light in her eyes.

“I can see I am taking my troubles to someone who has obviously meddled in her siblings’ lives,” he teased, then noticed with dismay that her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, I didn’t mean to cause you distress, Miss Valencia, honestly I didn’t.” My God, what did I say? he asked himself.

She turned away for a moment in an obvious effort to collect herself. All her brothers must be dead on Spanish battlefields, he thought in horror. And what has become of her sisters? He stood there, not knowing whether to go or to stay, to keep silent or to speak. The moment was brief. He heard her take one deep breath, and then another, and she turned around to face him again.

“I have meddled,” she said quietly. He could sense her struggle more than see it, because she was magnificently in control of herself again. “I will say this, sir, even if you think me bold: it is nice to know that she is concerned about your welfare. Perhaps that is the light in which she chooses to manage you.”

He thought not, but his own discomfort certainly made him willing to consider it. And why am I engaged in so serious a discussion with a shabby woman I found in the rain only a week ago? he asked himself. “I know her pretty well,” he said at last, “but you are correct; this is not what I came to ask you.” He paused, wondering again at his impulsive suggestion in the driveway, then forged ahead. “Miss Valencia, I do hope you will seriously consider the position of housekeeper here.”

“You know nothing of me or my skill in managing a household such as yours” was her quiet reply, and he felt his heart sink.

“All you know of me is that I am a care for nobody—yes, I overheard that—and a man who leaves women to walk in the rain,” he said. “The plain fact is that I need a housekeeper right now, and you need employment that will keep you from a workhouse, and Juan from a life not, I think, of your choosing.”

She waited a long time to speak, and again he was struck by her ability to master a situation when all reason would suggest that she had no control. “You are right. I do accept your offer of employment. I have only one question: why are you doing this? I must confess that I do not think that you really care who is housekeeper here.”

She was right, of course. He knew he could choose not to answer, or make a joke of the whole thing. “Perhaps it is because I promised a friend not too long ago that I would make every effort to become kinder.” This was more plain speaking than he had ever indulged in, and in front of a woman of inferior circumstances.

“This was the lady you lost?” she asked.

“If I must be honest, I do not think I ever really had Libby to lose her! And that,
dama,
is enough from me. I will take dinner next door. Have a report tonight.”

“
Pues bien, señor,
” she said.

“One moment.” He took her arm suddenly, and the gesture startled her. She pulled away quickly. “Beg pardon, Miss Valencia. Just tell me: what were you doing in there when I came in?”

She regained her composure quickly. “Something I learned from Sergeant Carr,
señor.
When matters were in confusion, he would call his men together and let them talk. They always suggested solutions to problems . . .”

“. . . which my sister surely is,” he interrupted.

“I am thinking your servants need to talk.”

“I talk to them when I pay them!” he declared. “I ask them how they are doing.”

“What do they always tell you?”

“That they are doing fine, Miss Valencia!” Benedict, you are a dimwit, he thought as his words sank in. He sighed at his own stupidity. “Let them talk, Miss Valencia.”

“Claro, señor,”
she said, and went back into the hall, pausing long enough to tell him that she had already sent a servant with soup and toast to Sophie and to Luster. “Bravo, Miss Valencia,” he declared. “You would probably not credit this, considering that I am a confirmed care for nobody, but that is precisely the errand I came on.”

“I knew it was,” she replied agreeably, and he thought she meant it.

When they came into the hall again, the chef had added his considerable presence to the congregation of servants. Without waiting for an introduction, he poured out a mouthful of rapid-fire French. By listening carefully, Nez could discern something about Lady Wogan. He sighed. Gussie, you can drive people into the boughs in two languages. That is surely an achievement, he thought. I suppose I must translate, even if my French is rusty beyond belief.

To his astonishment, Liria Valencia listened to his tirade calmly, and made more notations on her tablet. When the chef exhausted his argument finally, and paused to gather his breath for another assault, she replied in French as impeccable as his own. Well, what have we here? Nez thought as the chef sat down with a thump, surprised by Liria’s fluent response.

“Miss Valencia, will you never cease to amaze me?” he asked.

“It is unlikely, sir,” she replied calmly, with no hint that she was quizzing him.

She gave him a Libby answer, and he loved it. “Bravo, Miss Valencia,” he said. “Do carry on, my dear housekeeper, in whatever language you choose! Shall I send the Bavarian stable boy ’round?”

“Jawohl, Herr Oberst,”
she said, and turned back to the openmouthed servants.

So it was that he went to dinner in perfect charity with himself. Audrey would know better than to place him next to his sister. And if it happened to be the deaf Miss Adams, with her infernal ear trumpet, on one side and the pontificating Mr. Potter on the other, he could tolerate it.

Audrey met him at the door. “Benedict, I have placated Augusta into a mood three or four shades from choler. Do try to act like the good brother, for the sake of my diplomacy, and Father’s digestion.”

He took her hand and kissed it with a loud smack. “Audrey, my concern for Sir Michael’s large and small guts will overrule any low conversation on my part. And you know how devoted I am to his liver.”

She laughed and snatched her hand away. “Benedict, the only liver you care about is pâté from ducks!”

“Geese, my dear,” he murmured. “Are you still avoiding the kitchen?”

“Devoutly, Benedict,” she replied. “Come, now, and face the lions.”

Dinner went far better than he could have dreamed, and he gave Audrey the credit. He sat next to Sir Michael, who was never happier than when listening to stories from Spain. His only competition was Mr. Potter, who was compelled to shout down Miss Adams’s ear trumpet.

“I think he concocts his scriptures from whole cloth,” Sir Michael whispered to him while the fish was removed.

“I agree,” Nez said. “What a good thing that Christ rose, else He would be spinning in his grave. It’s the very, ah, devil, to be misquoted.” Sir Michael turned purple and laughed so hard behind his napkin that Nez was forced to administer a hard thump between his shoulder blades. He scrupulously avoided looking at Audrey.

But he did look at her when Sir Michael was dutifully conversing with Miss Adams’s only slightly younger sister, seated on his other side. Audrey will certainly never be a beauty, he thought. Her figure is not as tidy as it should be, and she needs a hairdresser younger than Methuselah’s aunt. Her eyes are too prominent, and her forehead too high. All in all, though, he had to conclude that there was nothing disgusting about her. She was probably smarter than he was, and certainly a better conversationalist. She suffered no pangs when she had to order people about, and seemed unconcerned at being a year shy of thirty and unmarried. I see before me a woman who would never give me a moment’s trouble.

He considered the matter during the next course, and did not object when the younger Miss Adams continued to monopolize Sir Michael. He concluded that if he could not have Libby—and he surely could not—then just about anyone else would do. I need an heir. Audrey knows how to set a good table, and she would probably prove proficient with children. I doubt any woman yearns to be an antique virgin.

He had settled the matter in his own mind by the time the sweets arrived, and Miss Adams directed her attention to a pudding and liberated Sir Michael. “Lad, are you still there?” his host asked in a whisper.

“Indeed I am,” Nez replied. He looked down at the pudding, suddenly less sure of himself. But on I go, he thought. “Sir Michael, I have been thinking that it is high time I courted your daughter.”

He knew his host was a hard man to startle, but he had to smile at the way Sir Michael took a sudden jab at the dessert before him.

“Well, sir?” Nez asked.

“Last year, I would have said no.” Sir Michael gave his dessert his entire attention, finishing it before continuing, as though he feared the eccentric Miss Adams would snatch it away. “But this year? Benedict, you are a year farther away from the bottle, and Audrey is a year closer to thirty. You may court her. I cannot guess at the outcome, however.” He looked at Nez’s pudding. “If you’re not going to eat that, do slide it my way. If it is returned belowstairs uneaten, my cook will tear his clothes and sit among the ashes. Benedict, have you any idea how hard it is to find a good cook?”

I suppose it’s almost as hard to find a good housekeeper, Nez thought as he crossed the park between the two great houses later that night. To his relief, Augusta had chosen to continue her pique at him and elected to spend the night at Ash Grove. “I do apologize, m’dear,” he told Audrey when he found a private moment with her before leaving. “But you know how ramshackle we can be at Knare, sometimes.”

“I know nothing of the sort, Benedict,” she replied. “While you have always been our district’s most, ah, colorful resident, you have never mistreated your estate. I cannot imagine that you hired someone unqualified to run your house.”

“Never, Audrey,” he said. “Do come reassure her that I am an excellent fellow.”

She twinkled her eyes at him, and he had to smile, if only because Audrey was beyond the age of coquetry, and the effect bordered on caricature. “‘Excellent fellow?’ I know nothing of the sort! You have been a rascal for ages.” She laughed and then her eyes became solemn in her lively face. “But didn’t you give away your wine cellar to your best friend, and engage a competent fellow to run your armory? What other surprises await me?”

Oh, Audrey, he thought. Oh, my dear.

He nearly didn’t go belowstairs when he returned to Knare. A footman greeted him, blinking awake from his seat by the front door. “You know you needn’t wait up for me, Haverly.”

The young man turned shocked eyes upon him. “Your Grace, I could never abandon my post! What would Luster do?”

“My butler puts more fear into you than I do?” he asked mildly, pleased down to his toes that Luster was feeling more argumentative now.

Haverly was young. He gulped. “He does, Your Grace,” he replied simply.

“Go to bed, Haverly! I am going belowstairs to see if I still have a housekeeper.”

“She is there, Your Grace.”

“What do you think of her?” he asked suddenly.

Haverly did not search around for what would be the correct answer, one for a duke. “Your Grace, she listens to us.” He leaned closer. “Rather like you do.”

The footman straightened up quickly, and Nez could tell that the disclosure embarrassed him. Do I listen? he asked himself. Well, damn me, perhaps I do, and didn’t realize it. “Thank you, Haverly. That will be all.”

Liria Valencia was sitting at the table in the servants’ hall, her head propped against her palm. He could not tell if she was asleep, so he hesitated at the door, unwilling to disturb her. The soft light from the overhead lamp made her seem absurdly young. For a moment, he wondered if she was even beyond her teen years yet. Now, who is being absurd, Benedict, he told himself. She has a son who must be five.

He cleared his throat, and Liria opened her eyes, then rose to her feet.

“Sit down, my dear,” he said, taking a seat. “Did you find a bed for Juan?”

“He can share mine tonight. Haverly says he will find a cot tomorrow.” She indicated the sheaf of papers before her. “I have been getting to know your servants.”

“Then, you will stay?”

She answered his question with her own. “Do you always take a chance on people?”

He mulled over the question, and thought of Libby and Tony Cook, who had taken such a chance on a London merchant when he crashed his curricle in front of the Ames estate. “I don’t know that I do, Miss Valencia,” he replied, “but perhaps it is high time I did, since others have taken a chance on me. Does fifty pounds a year seem fair to you? That includes room and board, of course. I will provide your uniforms, and it will be a small matter to enroll Juan in the vicar’s school this fall. Will you shake on that?”

She did not hesitate to extend her hand to him, and he was touched by her willingness. “One thing more, Miss Valencia,” he said before he released her hand. “Do your best to make me look good here at Knare. I have decided to court my neighbor’s daughter. I should be married.” Almost before the words were out of his mouth, he wondered why he said that.