Venetia by Georgette Heyer

fairly well satisfied, although upon first entering the room she had thought he looked pale and drawn. It was not to be expected, however, that a boy of such frail physique should not have been badly shaken by his fall; that he was not in one of his testy, unapproachable moods encouraged her to hope that he not suffered any very serious set-back. When Nurse presently came in, to put a fresh compress round his swollen ankle, Venetia saw, at a glance, that she too was taking an optimistic view of his situation, and was still more cheered. Nurse might show a lamentable want of tact in her management of Aubrey, but she knew his constitution better than anyone, and if she, with years of experience at her back, saw more cause for scolding than for solicitude an anxious sister could banish foreboding.
    Upon Marston’s coming into the room with a glass of milk for the invalid Venetia drew Nurse into the adjoining dressing-room, saying, as she shut the door: “You know what he is! If he thought we cared whether he drank it or no he would refuse to touch it, just to teach us not to treat him as though he were 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 Aubrey wouldn’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,