Carla Kelly (9 page)

“Have you brought me a proper baked egg and hot tea this time?” Augusta asked.

“Yes, Lady Wogan. May I serve you?”

Augusta ignored her and glared at Nez. “I see a housekeeper who has no idea of her own duties! I sent the maid, and what do I get but a Spanish drab, dressed in rags, dignifying herself with a lace cap, who claims to be a housekeeper!”

God, he thought, I cannot allow this. He started to rise, but Liria Valencia drilled him to his chair with a look. “When the food is inadequate, I wish to know,” she said, her voice low. “Marcel has prepared another baked egg. I brought it to you because my maid was in tears.”

“
Your
maid?” Gussie said elaborately.

“She is a member of my staff and I have her best interest in my heart, Lady Wogan. I would never send her where I would not go myself.”

“
Her
best interest?” Augusta shouted. “What about
my
best interest?”

With a graceful motion, Liria indicated the covered dish on the sideboard. “There is your baked egg, Lady Wogan, and the tea, as well. We here would never be remiss in our duties to His Grace’s guests.”

“I am his sister, you simpleton, not his guest!” Augusta declared, her voice rising to unpleasant heights. “I can do what I like here!”

She stopped. I wonder if Gussie realizes how childish she sounds, Nez thought. Liria, you’re right. This
is
my estate. He looked at Haverly, standing uncomfortably against the wall. “Really, Gussie,” Nez said. “Your egg is getting cold. Take it down a peg before you frighten away my help. I believe Liria is right. You are my sister, but it doesn’t follow that you can do what you like here. I am the only one who can do that, and I have hired a housekeeper who has a strong notion of what she owes her staff.”

Lady Wogan gasped. “You have hired a brazen, inappropriate housekeeper who will run this household into the ground. I hope that Audrey dismisses this baggage as her first duty as the Duchess of Knare!”

He looked at Liria, who did not even flinch, but continued to regard his sister with a gaze so steady that he felt his admiration growing. He got up and went to the sideboard, where he removed the egg from the dish and took it to his own plate. “It’s a little cold now, Gussie, so I’ll eat it for you. I like ’um this way, and besides that, I don’t think the egg was the issue anyway. Sister, I’d like a little peace and quiet to court Lady Audrey. May I recommend your own place in the country? Thank you, Miss Valencia.” He got up and held open the door for his housekeeper, who left the room. He leaned into the hall after her. “Tell Lady Wogan’s dresser to start packing, will you?”

He ate the egg in a room filled with awful silence. It didn’t want to go pass the lump in his throat, but he was damned if he would let Augusta know that she still had the power to chill him. If my housekeeper in a faded dress and old shoes can face her so bravely, surely I can, he told himself. “Haverly, you may remove these dishes now.”

The footman couldn’t leave fast enough. Nez watched him go, content. He knew that Haverly would tell the other servants how brave Liria was to face the dragon. Touché, Benedict. He turned to his sister. “Augusta, I mean what I said. You’re welcome to leave Sophie here for the summer, but your presence is no longer required.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” she began.

“I can,” he replied. “What would Fred say if I told him how consistently you apply to me each quarter to cover gambling debts you’d rather he didn’t know about?”

She stared at him. “You promised you would never tell,” she hissed. “On your word as a gentleman.”

“I was drunk and puking when I made that promise. I am no gentleman, a fact that you have been drilling into me for years. What I am is sober now and destined to remain that way.” He hauled out his watch. “One o’clock, Gussie, and then no more until I actually invite you here.”

After Augusta left the room, he contemplated the Ming vase that shivered on the mantelpiece and wondered if he should call an architect to check the building for soundness. What an arm, Gussie, he thought. I did not know that anyone outside of a dockworker could slam a door so hard. He felt only the tiniest twinge, knowing that Tony Cook would probably say that he had taken several steps backward in his attempt to mend the family fences. “What of it, Tony?” he said at last. “I am a duke, and I can do what I like. Liria Valencia says so.”

The thought satisfied him, and he left the room smiling. If I cannot be good in large measure, perhaps I can atone in a small one, he thought. As he strolled toward the door, he was pleased to notice Haverly engaged in intense, if subdued conversation in the library, where several maids had gathered. He heard another door slam overhead, and figured that Gussie had reached her own bedchamber. Pack swiftly, dear sis, he thought. Surely you can blight someone else’s life. I mean, what’s a husband for?

He left his house. He walked past drying laundry toward the stables, and found himself grinning up at Juan Valencia, who had seated himself in the crook of an apple tree. “You’re a little early for picking,” he teased. “Are you drawing the blossoms?”

Juan held up his tablet, the same one Nez had found for him in the village, where the invalids convalesced. He was drawing sideways now across the pages he had already filled. “It appears that you need some more paper,” Nez said, and made a mental note.

“I can keep crossing these lines,” Juan replied. “Mama told me to be thrifty.”

“Well, perhaps, but it does turn drawings into jumbles. Hop down, now. I have a assignment for you.”

The boy did as he said. “Mama said I was to be useful, too.”

“Tell your mother she is to meet me at the side door in fifteen minutes with some of Mrs. Burlew’s petticoats and shifts.” Nez repeated his instructions in Spanish, then continued toward the stables while Juan ran in the other direction, stopping several times to replace his shoes when they flopped off. Nez made another mental note.

From the expression on the ostler’s face when he asked him to hitch up the gig, Nez decided that this must be everyone’s day for surprises from the duke. “Yes, the gig,” he repeated. “My horse only seats me, and the barouche would make me appear more vulgar than I really am. We’ll save it for Lady Wogan.”

Clothing over her arm, Liria was waiting for him when he reached the side entrance. “You, too, Juan,” he said, and pointed behind him. “I need you to open the gates for me.” He helped Liria into the gig. “I see you found Mrs. Burlew’s clothing,” he said, after looking behind to see Juan sitting in the box. “You know my little water girl?”

She nodded. “Eliza. Senor, with your permission, I am going to have her work with Betty, your pastry cook. Did you know that Betty loves your armorer?”

He looked at her in surprise. “My dear Miss Valencia, for someone who has only been here a day, you have an amazing grasp on the complexities of life on my estate.”

“I told you that I listen, senor,” she replied, her eyes merry. “When I asked her, Eliza told me that she wants to be a cook like Betty, but only if she can continue to deliver your shaving water and sweep your hearth.”

“
Claro.
I depend upon her. Did she tell you about her mother?”

“Is she quite ill?”

“I believe she is, but Eliza tells me that she chafes even more from knowing that she is the recipient of my charity. Miss Valencia, I mean to ask Mrs. Tucker to hem those petticoats and take in the shifts so you can wear them.”

“Won’t it tire her?”

“It will.” He halted the gig and called over his shoulder. “First gate, Juan. Open it, then close it after us. Tell me, Miss Valencia, is it worse to feel useless or tired?”

She looked at him. “Senor, Libby would be proud of you.”

He shrugged and spoke to the horse when Juan was seated. “That is just small stuff anyone would do. I didn’t come off too well this morning with my sister. I am certain the Cooks mean that my good turns should be large, the kind that matter.”

“If you say so, senor.”

“Of course I do,” he retorted. “I should know the monumental effort that goes into reformation of character, Miss Valencia! I intend to become an expert! These are little things that anyone would do. And speaking of little things, Luster tells me that you have been doing servants’ work. Miss Valencia, this is an odd way, indeed, to command respect.”

“That was what Sergeant Carr did,” she replied quietly. “He let his men know that there was nothing he wouldn’t do along with them. Did the Nineteen ever fail the army?”

“Quite the contrary,” he said after a moment’s thought. “So you are going to practice his army management on my servants?”

“I think I am,” she replied.

Tell me more about the sergeant, he thought, then dismissed the idea as supremely silly. “I thought you were rather brave this morning with my sister,” he said. “Most people I know are terrified of her. I’m one of them,” he concluded, hoping to get a laugh from her. “Or perhaps you are not afraid of anything, Miss Valencia?”

“Not anymore, senor,” she replied.

Mrs. Tucker was sitting up in bed when her neighbor let them in. It required the effort of only a few minutes to explain what he expected of her. “I’ll pay you five shillings for the lot of them,” he said. “I wouldn’t trouble you with it, except that my seamstress is overburdened, and she suggested you.” He came closer to the bed. “Mrs. Tucker, you should know that Eliza is doing a wonderful job. I don’t know when I’ve had a better ’tween stairs maid.”

The woman in the bed beamed at him, and beckoned Liria closer. “You’re a long way from Mrs. Burlew’s size, but I believe we can do this.” She sat up straighter, her face showing the effort. When she could speak, she addressed him. “Your Grace, you and the little boy will have to leave so Miss Valencia can put on this petticoat for me to measure.”

He bowed and she giggled. “Very well, madam. Come, Juan, and let us admire the view elsewhere.” He strolled into the nearby field to watch his sowers; Juan trailed after him. He didn’t quite know how it happened, but soon the boy was holding his hand. “Do you miss Sergeant Carr?” he asked, when they stopped at the edge of the field.

Juan nodded and leaned against his leg. “He made Mama laugh.” He looked at Nez. “Could you make her laugh, senor?”

Nez felt his face go red. My God I am thirty years old, and I am blushing, he thought. He pointed to the sowers. “Soon it will be a field of barley. And that is rye in the other field.” He thought about what Tony had said, and what Libby expected. I wish I would not always come up against such small events, he told himself, matters that anyone could deal with. How can I possibly become a better man if the larger challenges of life continue to elude me? I am ripe for a major effort, and what does the Lord Omnipotent deal me but a Spanish woman of a distinctly low class and her illegitimate son?

“Make her laugh? I can try, Juan,” he said finally.

He dined that night with Audrey and Sir Michael, but what he remembered about the day was Liria doing the work of the maids, staring down his sister, and then riding beside him in the gig, so composed and calm. I can try, he thought.

Chapter Seven

Nez decided that there were worse things than courting Audrey St. John. The effort involved little exertion on his part, beyond strolling across his park to Ash Grove. He was pretty certain that Sir Michael had communicated his intentions to Audrey. It flattered him that even with such a daunting prospect before her, Audrey did not seem to mind.

Long acquaintance rendered the formality of calling her Miss St. John unnecessary. She had always been Audrey. It was an easy matter to pay his respects to Sir Michael, then walk to the sitting room and plop down on the sofa he already knew was comfortable. Audrey was there with some handwork, ready to ply him with—depending on the hour—tea or lemonade. She never offered sherry, or spoke about his former bad habit, as the vicar did occasionally, proving to him that the Church of England didn’t entirely trust the doctrine of repentance. She listened to a report of his day, offered suitable commentary, and made the duty of courtship as unexceptionable as she was.

It was just as easy to sit and say nothing, or read through the newspaper, while she did her needlework or knotted a fringe. He could lean back in the sofa, half close his eyes to feign an afternoon nap, and she would not cough politely to waken him, or appear in any way disturbed at his inattention. It gave him ample opportunity to observe her.

Her figure was tidier than Liria’s, to be sure, but the occasional creak as she leaned into her work suggested a corset on duty under her well-made frocks. He couldn’t decide if her ankles were any trimmer than those of his housekeeper, but he could admire the rose hue of her handsome English complexion; it looked like the kind of skin all the ladies of his acquaintance aspired to, so it did not strike him as remarkable. Her hair was light brown and cut short in fashionable curls, so he knew he would never have to wonder what it looked like spread out long across a pillow. His mind did not need to wander much with Audrey.

Now, that face. True, it was long, but Audrey was clever enough to hide the defect of a high forehead with a row of wonderful curls. Her eyes were blue, and quite easily her best feature, but they didn’t have the depth of Liria’s brown eyes. She had an honest English nose, straight and not too long. He considered the matter, and decided, as he observed Audrey, that Liria’s deep-lidded eyes fit her face. Oh, the complexion, too, a creamy color with an olive cast that would have sent an English lady rushing to the apothecary in the hopes of remedy, but which had never been known to cause him any disgust in Spain.

He must have been staring too hard. Audrey put down her needle, cut another length of wool thread, and made a face at him. He laughed, and she picked up her needle to thread it. “Really, Benedict, you hardly need to memorize my face!” she said in her usual quizzing tone. “If you don’t know it after all these years, then I will think your wits have quite dribbled out of your head.”

To try to fool her with a compliment was folly, but he reminded himself that he was courting. “I was thinking how well you look, Audrey.”

“Then, why the frown?”

Why, indeed, he asked himself as he walked back across the park that evening after dinner was long done, the dutiful cigar smoked, the vicar ignored, his host complimented. He had hung around to rejoin the ladies in the sitting room and play a hand of whist at one of three tables set up. Their whole country society seemed to be assembled, the families and faces he had known since early childhood. No one had anything new to say, and he struggled to keep awake. He watched as Audrey circulated throughout the room, the perfect hostess. She moved quickly on her feet like Libby, but for some reason, her tireless activity wearied him.

He amused himself by thinking of his own servants then, and the amazing way that the females among them had already begun to imitate Liria’s gliding walk. The effect served to render them a little foolish at first, but as they settled into the cadence of her graceful movement, the tone in his entire house seemed to change. While he could not attest that the days drew out any longer, there seemed to be more time, less anxiety, even. The pace was slower in his house now, and he found it restful.

He never played whist well, mainly because he hadn’t the patience for cards. He would have been happy enough to transport himself home, where he would kick off his shoes, stretch out on his sofa in the library, and listen while Sophie read to him. Juan was usually nearby at the table. He looked down at his cards and smiled, thinking of the boy’s wide eyes this afternoon when he brought home two tablets of drawing paper and French-made crayons. Juan was probably drawing now, he thought, then flinched when the vicar scolded him for a careless discard.

“Really, Your Grace, that was—pardon me—a graceless move,” the man teased, hugely pleased with himself. “Everyone knows that whist is the accomplishment of gentlemen!”

“No wonder I do not excel,” he murmured. “I am fast finding it a total bore.”

The sitting room became so silent. My Lord, is everyone listening? he thought in panic. Whatever will Audrey think of me?

And then she was there, her hand light on his shoulder for the briefest moment. “I think, Mr. Potter, that the duke has spent enough years in heavier waters than we know, to call whist slow, if he chooses,” she said, somehow making that simple sentence droll beyond belief. The vicar smiled, and the conversation resumed. Nez winked at her, and she blushed.

He kissed her that night when he left Ash Grove, pulling her aside into the shadows into the end of the rose arbor, where she usually walked with him. She leaned into his embrace far enough to let him know that she must have thought it was a good idea, but not enough to convince him to repeat the event. So far, so good, he thought as he released her, then kissed her again.

“The vicar is correct,” she said. “You are no gentleman.”

She said it with the right amount of teasing, which told him volumes about her careful upbringing, but precious little about her heart. He smiled, nodded to her, and started toward Knare.

The house was quiet when he let himself in by the side entrance. I should get a dog, he thought, someone to greet me with unalloyed affection. One can hardly expect that of a footman, or even a butler, no matter how well he is paid. He looked at his watch, grateful that it was not too late to go belowstairs. He knew the cobbler had delivered Juan’s shoes that afternoon, and he wanted to know if they fit. Liria’s had come last week, at the same time her dresses were finished. Mrs. Tucker had sent several petticoats, as well, so now Liria swished pleasantly when she walked.

Luster met him in the hall. “Your Grace, if you would, there is a situation belowstairs that perhaps you can ameliorate.”

“A situation, Luster? I thought I paid you and Liria Valencia to handle situations belowstairs,” he said, amused.

“This crisis seems to be beyond us, and knowing how Juan likes to please you . . .”

Without a word, Nez hurried belowstairs. Juan sat at the main table, the shoes in front of him. “Don’t they fit, Juan?” he asked, sitting down beside the boy and putting a hand on his arm. To his alarm, Juan burst into tears.

He looked at Liria, who sat across the table from her son. “They fit,” she assured him, “but he will not tell me why that is troubling him. I have asked every way I know how.” She stretched out her hand impulsively, and touched his. “It is probably such a small thing, but can you help?”

“I can try.” Oh, when did I say that before, he thought. Juan asked me to make his mama laugh, and now one is in tears, and the other nearly so. He thought a moment. “Juan, I think they are nice-looking shoes,” he began, “the kind that will be good for long walks. Will you tell me what is the difficulty?”

Juan accepted the handkerchief that his mother handed him, blew his nose, and shook his head. “He told me not to make my mama sad,” he whispered in Nez’s ear.

“Let us go in the little sitting room, and you can tell me. In fact, I insist upon it,” Nez said. “Juan, I am employing you this summer to open gates for me, and to keep Sophie safe when she climbs trees. As my gate opener, you owe me an explanation.”

He went into the housekeeper’s sitting room, closed the door, and gestured to a chair, but Juan looked so distressed that he sat down and pulled the child onto his lap. “Now, what is so terrible about shoes that fit?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“They won’t last very long.”

Nez tightened his grip on the boy. “Probably not. Boys your age do grow fast.”

Juan burrowed in close to him. “Sergeant Carr always said it was better to grow into things.” He looked down at the old shoes he wore. “He gave me these before that place where all the cannons roared and it rained.”

Oh, God, he is talking of Quatre Bras, Nez thought, and held him closer. “And he probably told you to take good care of them, didn’t he?”

Juan burst into tears again. And you have probably not cried enough for him, have you? he thought. Well, cry away, little one. As he held Juan close and rocked him in his arms, he thought of his own little corner in hell at Mont Saint Jean. I was twenty-seven and not three, he considered, and it sucked me right into a bottle. How is it that you’re so much braver? Could it be you had a better teacher?

“I wish I had known your Sergeant Carr,” he said. “I really do.” He held Juan tight, and was gratified when Juan put his arms around him. When Liria opened the door, he motioned her to come inside. Her eyes wide as he had never seen them, she sat on the edge of a chair by the table. “Don’t worry,” he told her softly.

In a few more minutes, he handed the boy his handkerchief and helped him wipe his eyes. When he was quiet, Nez kissed his head. “Juan, I’m glad that your shoes fit and that you live in a place where you can get new ones when you need them. Do you see any of my servants wearing shoes that do not fit?”

Juan shook his head.

“Do I?”

To his relief, the boy chuckled. Nez felt his own spirits rise. He spoke in careful Spanish. “Things are different now, and I am certain that Sergeant Carr would be pleased. What would you say if I take those shoes he gave you, and have them repaired by the man who made your new shoes? You can try them on every few months, and when they do fit, you can wear them all you want.”

“When they are too small, may I still keep them?”

“I will insist upon it. You might even want to loan them to Amos Yore to put in the armory. I am thinking about adding a collection of uniforms. These would be Juan Valencia’s army shoes from Boney’s Spanish War. We could write on a small card that they were given to you by Sergeant Carr.”

“We could do that?” the boy asked. “I could draw a picture of him.”

“I was hoping you would suggest that very thing.”

Juan sat still a moment more, then leaned forward to remove his shoes. “They’re muddy,” he said. “Sophie and I went to the pond behind the stable today.”

“Did you enjoy it? I used to play there.” Nez laughed at Juan’s expression. “I was your age once! Cross my heart, I was!” He looked at Liria then, happy to see a smile on her face. “Juan, I think you should go to bed now. Did Sophie tell me before I went to Ash Grove that you two are to accompany the goose girl tomorrow? She will be up early.” He took the shoes from Juan and set him on the floor.

He stayed where he was when Liria led Juan into the bedchamber beyond. He heard their low voices for a few minutes, then the cot creaked. In another moment Liria rejoined him in the sitting room. “Thank you, senor,” she said. “I do not think he ever cried for Sergeant Carr.” Her own eyes filled with tears.

“Did you?” he asked softly.

She nodded. “When I could. We were so busy, even though so few of them lived. Most of the surgeons had gone ahead to Mont Saint Jean, and there we were at Quatre Bras.” She sighed, and looked toward the bedchamber. “Even Juan had to carry water. He saw things no child should see, but we needed his help.” She glanced down at her hands. “I did not know that they would never come clean.”

“How long did your sergeant live after the battle?” She doesn’t have to answer this, he thought, and I should have never asked it.

“A week,” she said, speaking Spanish to him, like Juan. “His intestines were full of canister shot—the French were that close with their guns!—and we knew he could not live. All he wanted was water, and I could find none that was not red.”

“We closed our eyes and drank, too.”

She nodded and hugged herself. “He wrote letters to his relatives the first day. The second day he wrote letters to the families of his men. The third day he was hot, the fourth day he was cold. I put Juan in the cot to warm him, and he died on the sixth day.”

“You were there?”

“Could I have left?”

I have a kinship with you,
dama,
he thought. You know what war feels like. “Did you ever see anyone celebrate after a battle,
dama?
” he asked. “I never did.”

“Then, you were not at Badajoz, senor,” she said after a long pause. The words seemed to be wrung out of her, and he looked at her in surprise.

As soon as he looked, the moment passed. She visibly gathered herself together, something he had watched her do before, but just before she became again his dignified housekeeper, there was an expression in her eyes that made him wonder if she was as old as he thought. He could have sworn a very young girl looked at him, and he shivered again.

“I was at Badajoz,
dama.
”

He waited for her to speak, but she did not; in fact, she did not even seem to be breathing. Impulsively, he took a deep breath himself, and let it out, as if trying to cue her. I have hit such a nerve, he thought. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, far beyond the soldier’s stare that he was so familiar with. This was something worse, and he could imagine nothing worse.

“You weren’t very old at Badajoz, were you?” he asked, almost afraid for her answer.

“I was fourteen, senor.”

“Gracious, are you even . . .”

“I will be twenty in November.” She touched the muddy shoes on the table, her face a study in composure that he could only marvel at. “Does this mean I am too young to be your housekeeper?”