Venetia by Georgette Heyer Page A

baby!”
    “Oh, yes,” said Nurse bitterly. “Anything Marston or his lordship tells him he‟ll do, just as if it was them that had looked after him from the day he was born!. For all the use   I   am I might as well be back at home—not that I mean to leave this house until he does, nor ever did, so his lordship could have spared his breath!”
    “Why, did he try to send you away?” Venetia asked, surprised.
    “No, and I should hope he knew better than  to think he could! It was me saying to Master  Aubrey that if he preferred to have Marston to wait on him I‟d as lief pack up and go—well, miss, he was so twitty and troublesome last night that anyone might be excused for being put out! But as for meaning it, his lordship should have known better, and no need at all for him to remind me that it wouldn‟t do for your to visit here without I‟m in the house! I know that well enough, and better you shouldn‟t come at all, Miss Venetia! It‟s my belief Master Aubreywouldn‟t care if neither of us came next or nigh him, not while he can clutter up his bed with a lot of unchristian books, and lie there talking to his lordship about his nasty heathen gods!”
    “He would very soon wish for you if he were to be really ill,” Venetia said soothingly. “I think too that he is just at the age when he‟s not a child, but not quite a man either, and excessively jealous of his dignity. Do you remember how uncivil Conway was to you at very much the same age? But when he came home from Spain he didn‟t care how much you cosseted and scolded him!”
    Since Conway held the chief place in her heart Nurse would by no means admit that he had ever conducted himself in any way that fell short of perfection, but she disclosed that his lordship had said much the same thing as had Venetia about Master Aubrey. She added that no one understood better than she Master Aubrey‟s hatred of his disability, and his passionate desire to show himself as hearty and as independent as his more fortunate contemporaries: an unprecedented announcement which furnished Venetia with a pretty accurate notion of his lordship‟s skill in handling hostile and elderly females.
    There could be no doubt that he had succeeded in considerably mollifying Nurse. She might resent Aubrey‟s preference for his society, but she could not wholly condemn anyone who, besides showing so proper a regard for Aubrey‟s well-being, managed to keep him in cheerful spirits under conditions calculated to cast him into a state of irritable gloom.
    “I‟m not one to condone sin, Miss Venetia,” she said austerely, “but nor I‟m not one to deny anyone their due neither, and this I will say: he couldn‟t behave kinder to Master Aubrey, not if he was the Reverend himself.” She added, after an inward struggle: “And for all he‟d no need to tell me what my duty is to you, Miss Venetia, it was a sign of grace I didn‟t think to see in him, and there‟s no saying that the Lord „won‟t have mercy on him, if he was to forsake his way—not but what salvation is far from the wicked, as I‟ve told you often and often, miss.”
    This lapse into pessimism notwithstanding, Venetia, was encouraged to think that Nurse was fairly well reconciled to her sojourn under an unhallowed roof. Aubrey, when regaled with the passage, said that  her change of heart could only have arisen from Damerel‟s having ridden off to Thirsk for the express purpose of buying a roll of lint.
    “As a matter of fact, it was no such thing: he went on some business of his own, but when  Nurse started grumbling, about the lint—it‟s for my ankle, you know!—he said he would procure some, and she took it into her head he was going to Thirsk for no other reason. Up till then she wasn‟t talking about his kindness, I promise you! She said he roared in the congregation.”

    “She didn‟t!” Venetia exclaimed, awed.
    “Yes, she did. Do you know where it comes? We could not find it,