Carla Kelly (15 page)

“Indeed it does, and the army was eager to see my back, I vow!” the major agreed. “I am now involved in foul commerce in London, and fair bidding to be richer than you are, in one or two thousand years!”

They all laughed, and Nez remembered Morton Harcourt after all, whose high-pitched giggle had caused no end of ribald amusement among the men of the Twentieth. “What an odd collection we were, gentlemen,” he murmured, and indicated that they come with him. “In thirty or forty years, we can sit around on our thin shanks—you will be the obvious exception, Geddes—gum our porridge, and bore our grandchildren with Busaco, Salamanca, and Toulouse!”

It gave him great pleasure to escort his friends through the armory, and even more pleasure to watch Amos Yore, fitted now with a better wooden leg, answer their questions with the authoritative power that came from mastering the collection. If I cannot get everything right, I am a good judge of character, he thought. Amos was a wise decision. He smiled at Jim Geddes, who grinned at him over the row of longbows.

Jim came to his side and they stood a little apart from the others. “Nez, I heard a rumor that you married Captain Ames’s pretty daughter.”

“Just a rumor,” he replied. “I had a chance there and muffed it.”

“It happens. I also heard that you gave away your entire wine cellar.” He smiled. “That
has
to be a rumor.”

“No, actually, I did just that. You see before you a man on the verge of rehabilitation.”

“That’s dismal,” Geddes teased. “Well, I shouldn’t talk out of school. Anne has made me swear off backgammon and limit my cheroots.”

“I wish you had brought her with you.”

Geddes made a face. “She’s increasing again so I have ample leisure to roam the countryside with low company.” He looked at his comrades. “It hasn’t been so long since we all soldiered together, but already we have less and less to talk about. John Leakey there will tell you more than you want to know about the canal business. Adam Dowling has a new bride, and we could hardly pry him away. Morton Harcourt?” He shrugged. “He happened to be at the whist table.”

“And you, Jim?”

Geddes patted his ample waist. “It appears that I am increasing, too!” He touched Nez’s arm. “I am content. Shall I bring Anne and the children to see you next spring?”

“Come in June, when the flowers begin to bloom. Anne will like that.”

“So will I, Nez.” He looked around the armory, and shook his head. “I’m through with war. Maybe your gardeners can give me some advice on growing roses.”

“They can, and will.”

Leaving the others, who were asking questions of Amos, Nez strolled down the stairs with his friend, then out into the gardens, where Geddes admired the roses up close. He glanced at the terrace to see Liria and Juan standing there. “You said you weren’t married, Nez, didn’t you?” his friend inquired. “And she has a little boy.”

“She is my housekeeper, and that is her son,” Nez replied, suddenly shy to say more.

“Well, you may have to let her go when you get a wife, my friend! What a beautiful woman,” Geddes said.

“I suppose she is,” he replied. “She’s the best housekeeper Knare ever had.”

“I’ll take your word,” Geddes said with a laugh. “I thought all housekeepers were born fifty years old with a permanent sneer!”

“Not mine,” Nez said quietly. Geddes seemed to sense that the discussion was over. In a few minutes he was deep in conversation with the head gardener. Nez left them arguing the merits of mulch.

They all met again for dinner, which began with a magnificent soup à la jardiniére, followed by trout in butter, lamb and goslings (he could only be grateful that Sophie and Juan ate belowstairs and did not have to see the crispy little birds). The dinner concluded with meringues and cherry tartlets, brought in with a flourish by Betty and Eliza. Liria supervised the removes and serving, and he could tell that she enjoyed the exclamations of delight from Jim Geddes, who knew good food when he ate it. He winked at her when the maids and footmen removed the dinner plates, and smiled to himself when she pinked up like a come-out miss.

“Wonderful!” Jim exclaimed with a look around the table to his fellow travelers. “We could always get a good one in Nez’s tent, couldn’t we, gentlemen?”

“Hear, hear!” said Captain Dowling.

“Un más,”
Liria said, and left the room.

Geddes leaned closer to Nez. “I was wondering if she was Spanish,” he said in a low voice that had a distinct question in it.

“Long story, Jim. I’ll tell you later,” Nez replied.

In a moment Liria returned with a covered tray. She set it in front of him and whisked off the lid. Steam poured out, and he looked down with a grin.

“‘Pon my word, Nez, I believe it’s plum duff!” Geddes exclaimed. “Your housekeeper is a right one! M’dear, you know old soldiers, don’t you?”

Liria smiled at him. “
Claro, señor,
” she said. His other friends at the table stopped their conversation and looked at the dessert. Dowling nudged Leakey, who cleared his throat, and began a particularly ribald version of “The British Grenadier.” Morton Harcourt, his eyes bright, looked from one to the other and burst into laughter, which set Nez off, hearing that odd girl’s giggle again after all these years.

He heard Liria gasp from her position against the wall behind his chair. Before he could turn around, Jim Geddes had leaped to his feet, knocking his chair over backward. He reached Liria just as Haverly, his eyes wide, grabbed her when she dropped to the floor in a dead faint. Nez squeezed out of his chair, careful not to bump the men behind him, who had all crowded around his housekeeper. “I say, give her a little room,” he exclaimed as he fanned her with his napkin.

When she did not come around immediately, he dipped his napkin in the finger bowl and dabbed at her pale face. “I never saw anyone go so white so fast,” Geddes declared. “Should I undo her buttons?”

“Let me,” Nez said, and came closer. He watched as her eyes flickered open. She stared at the circle of men crowded close around her, and her eyes rolled back in her head again. “No. No. I won’t, and neither will any of you,” he said as it dawned on him what had just happened. “Haverly, carry her downstairs. I don’t think she needs to see a doctor, but keep her down there, please. Gentlemen, I am certain she just fainted from the heat,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could. “It is a rather warm July this year, wouldn’t you say? Jim and I were remarking this afternoon that the roses seem to be drooping.”

It was the smallest of small talk, but doggedly he kept it up for the rest of the evening, sitting with his friends around the table. Geddes smoked the one cheroot his wife would allow, Morton laughed over one of Leakey’s stories about requisitioning pigs on the hungry march from Burgos back to Salamanca, and Dowling swirled his brandy around and around in the snifter and stared at it. Now and then he looked at Nez and frowned.

Geddes suggested whist in the sitting room, so Nez watched as they played their usual hard game, the one he remembered from campfire after campfire. The staccato slap of cards and the laugher did nothing to lift the stone from his chest. He wanted to order them to go away, but he gritted his teeth instead and as the perfect host, even took Leakey’s place when the major declared he had lost enough for one evening. If I play enough rubbers poorly, surely they will quit the table, he thought, but he was partnered with Jim, his whist companion of old, and Jim seldom lost, even in a bad pair.

They didn’t break up the table until midnight. Haverly showed them all to their rooms, and they went upstairs laughing and Dowling stumbling a bit, because he had finally gotten around to the brandy he couldn’t drink at the dinner table. Nez immediately went belowstairs, where Luster waited for him. He didn’t have to say anything, but he sank heavily into a chair at the servants’ table and stared at Liria’s closed door.

“She does not wish to be disturbed,” Luster told him, his voice low. “Your Grace, the look in her eyes!”

“I know. I know,” he replied. “Oh, Luster, I have vowed not to meddle in La Duquesa’s life, but . . .”

“La Duquesa?” his butler interrupted, puzzled. “Is Miss Valencia truly royalty?”

“She is, indeed, Luster. That’s what I learned at the Spanish embassy in London.” He got up from the table. I have not felt this old since Waterloo, he thought. Sergeant Carr, how on earth can I help her? He climbed the stairs much more slowly than he went down them. By the time he reached the top, he knew just how much he loved Liria Valencia.

Chapter Twelve

He spent a beastly night, walking the floor as the clock chimed in the hall and wondering when he had last enjoyed a good night’s sleep. So many times he wanted to go belowstairs and plead with Liria to speak to him, but some odd sixth sense told him that he would only find her gone. She has no money, he thought, and that will keep her here. His next thought told him how foolish the first one was. Face it, Nez—Liria is a veteran at fleeing the British. Liria had probably fled Badajoz with nothing, so leaving his house would hardly faze her. Was it Harcourt Morton’s odd laugh that set her off in the dining room? Where does all this figure? He paced the floor, and willed the dawn to come.

It came and brought with it Eliza, with her can of hot water and eyes red-rimmed from weeping. “She’s gone, isn’t she?” Nez asked. His question brought another tempest of tears from his ’tween stairs maid. Wearily, he gave her one of his handkerchiefs, which brought on more tears. By the time he sent her on her way, the hot water was only tepid; he hadn’t the heart to shave anyway.

He went directly belowstairs. It was still early, and the servants sat quietly at their table. No one could look at him except Luster, who rose and gestured toward the butler’s parlor. He closed the door quietly behind him.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” Nez asked.

“Your Grace, none of us heard her go,” Luster said. “What happened upstairs? She would not say a thing.”

“I’m not entirely sure, Luster, but I have a good idea,” he replied. He leaned closer, even though no one else was in the little room. “I think one of my dinner guests raped her at Badajoz.”

He hated to say that to his butler. He took in the pale face and shocked eyes of his old retainer, and realized all over again how naive Luster was, in many ways.

“She would have been safe with us, Your Grace,” Luster said finally when he could speak. “You do not think she feared him.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything,” he said, and his voice rose in spite of himself. “I fear that her experiences may have put her to flight out of blind panic men can’t understand.” He managed a chuckle, and hated the sound of it. “I crawled into a bottle and pulled the cork after me when the war was over, Luster. Who knows what other people do when they are broken right down to little bleeding nubs? I can’t explain it any better.”

He went to Liria’s room next, knowing it would be empty, but unable to go up the stairs again without a look around. It pained him to see two dresses hanging neatly on their hooks and know that she had fled with just the clothes on her back. His heart turned over when he saw under Juan’s cot the shoes from Sergeant Carr he had had repaired. He pulled them out, clutched him to his chest, kicked the door shut with a bang that he knew could probably be heard all over the servant’s hall, and just stood there in shock. Liria, you couldn’t have meant to leave them. What will Juan do? He could see it all. She must have waited until the servants’ hall was quiet, then snatched up her son and fled.

“You foolish woman, you have no money,” he said. “It’s not even the first quarter of your employment, and I have paid you nothing. Why are women so irrational?” Still holding the shoes, he lay down on her bed and tried to think. He breathed deep of the fragrance from her pillow, but it did not steady him.

Luster knocked at the door and Nez got up quickly. “What, Luster?”

“Your Grace, look here.”

He followed his butler into the servants’ hall. Haverly held out the little strongbox where the household funds were kept. It was open and empty, and there was a note addressed to him. He took it, embarrassed that his hand shook. He glanced down the row of careful lines denoting each household purchase that week to the bottom, where she had written: “I took the ten shillings remaining. I will repay you with interest when I earn it. Thank you for all that you have done for me. Please do not follow me. Your obedient servant, Liria Valencia.” He looked closer. She had lightly crossed out “your obedient servant,” and penciled in “your friend.”

He held out the note to Luster. “What have I ever done for her that was good? I took her in, picked her up, and threw her down. Goddamn me, Luster.”

He stepped back in surprise as his butler snatched the note, crumpled it before his eyes, and threw it on the table, his eyes blazing. “You did nothing wrong in all this! Nothing! Don’t be so ready to blame yourself! I won’t have it!”

Nez blinked. The servants were absolutely still, the underfootman frozen with his hand in the silver polish, the scullery maid stopped in mid-scrape on a carrot.

Luster looked him in the eyes, his face full of compassion so extraordinary that Nez could feel his knees go numb. “Your Grace, there was always something greater here than we knew. We are only beginning to find it out.” Luster looked at the box, “I only wish there had been more money in there.”

“So do I.”

“We know where she is,” Luster said.

“We do, but we are going to leave her alone now.”

“For good?”

“For now, Luster.”

He nodded to the other servants, who started to move again, as though he had kissed a princess and broken a spell. I have to face my guests now, he thought. I don’t want to, but I have to. He took a last glance into Liria’s room, and stopped to see something farther back under Juan’s cot. Quickly he went back into the room, got onto his knees, and retrieved Carr’s ledger. He carried the shoes and ledger book upstairs and left them on his desk in the book room. He stood a moment, glanced at the clock, then went to the breakfast room, hoping that he remembered his friends’ habits.

He did. Only Jim Geddes sat at the table, tucking away ham and eggs. He looked up with a smile, and then a frown. “Bad night?” he asked.

“The worst.” Nez poured a cup of coffee for himself, then shook his head at the underfootman, who left the room and closed the door without a sound. “What do you think happened last night?” he asked.

Geddes looked him in the eye. “I saw her ears. She was at Badajoz wasn’t she? And there we were, all crowded around her like a wolf pack. You have to give her credit. I think my Anne would have died of fright on the spot.” He paused, and Nez knew he was taking in his unshaven face and bloodshot eyes. “She’s gone, isn’t she? And by damn, you really care.”

“She is and I do.” He pushed aside his coffee, and it slopped on his hand. “Jim, were you the only one in that room last night with clean hands?”

Geddes was silent a moment. “No, I don’t think so. If I remember, the good major was on quartermaster forage detail when we finally took Badajoz. No, you, Dowling, and Morton turned your men loose, but not Leakey, and by God, not me.”

“Damn you, Geddes, why didn’t you?”

It came from his heart, and he knew that Jim understood him. Geddes put his hand on Nez’s arm and kept it there while he looked deep into his eyes. “God knows I wanted to. I led my men past those
glacís
with all those impaled soldiers, the same as you! I pulled dead men off the piles who were still warm because they were packed so tight together! I was so angry at that cursed town and those stubborn people, and the French, damn them still!” He was silent a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Blame Anne, Nez. I thought about her, and what would happen to her if twenty or thirty soldiers suddenly burst into our house.” He turned pale from the thought, got to his feet, and went to the window. “I couldn’t do that, not even to the enemy.”

“Then, you’re a better man than I’ll ever be.”

Geddes shook his head. “That’s your biggest problem, Nez; you have to borrow everyone’s badness. Stop it, will you? Stop it now. You’re a good man, maybe not a great one yet, but you have some years to go. Quit flogging yourself.” He walked back to the table and took a sip of Nez’s coffee. “It was Harcourt Morton, wasn’t it? She was standing behind your chair when he laughed, so you couldn’t see her face.” His confidence gave way then, and he set down the cup with a splash. “If ever I saw a wounded soul, it was last night. You’d better find her.”

“Should I call him out?”

“And prove what? She’s gone, and he’ll deny anything you say. It was war, Nez, and we can’t change that.” He pulled out his timepiece. “What I can do is get up the others and get on the way. I’ll make your excuses for you. Too much to drink last night.”

“I don’t drink anymore, Jim,” he reminded his friend.

“Leakey and Dowling won’t remember, and I’ll wager that Morton wants to get out of here, too.” He went around the table and did a surprising thing. He kissed Nez’s cheek. “Let me know how it comes out. We’ll come back to see your gardens next year, unless I hear otherwise.” He let himself out of the room as quietly as the underfootman.

Nez stayed in the breakfast room until he knew the barouche must be gone, and then went out on the terrace, sitting there all day, watching Mama’s gardens and shaking his head when anyone offered him food. He went to bed that night and stayed awake again. Then it was back to the terrace and no food and no sleep, until Lester must have called the surgeon. His stomach was too jumpy to keep down the powders the doctor forced him to drink. He ordered the man out of the house, and reeled back to the terrace, where he sat and stared at the flowers for another day until he finally fell out of his chair. The only thing he remembered before he hit the terrace was that Luster was there.

When he woke, his head pounded and his stomach gnawed on his backbone. The light was so bright that he put his hand across his eyes. The light dimmed then, and he felt a soft hand on his arm. “Liria,” he whispered, but he was too tired to look. He slept again, and when he woke this time he was so hungry he had to stay awake. “I could use some water, if anyone is there,” he said into the gloom of his bedroom.

“‘Pon my word, of course someone is here, you idiot. Now, let me sit you up, and you drink this before I astound everyone by getting testy. Don’t think I won’t, Benedict.”

He knew the voice, but it puzzled him. Without a protest he allowed a strong arm to lift him up as he gratefully drank water that had been liberally laced with sugar. He opened his eyes and gazed at Lord Wogan, his brother-in-law. “Well, Fred” was all he could think to say. Then, “You must be a good nurse, old boy, because I’m still alive.”

His brother-in-law sat back, his face wreathed in a smile. “Not me, you ungrateful whelp! I just got here. Your sister has been here ever since Luster summoned her.”

“My God, Gussie?” he asked.

“Yes, my God Gussie, her very self,” Fred told him. “I’m not much at this,” he apologized as he fluffed the pillow up behind Nez’s head. “There, now. Gussie is better at it, but the surgeon insisted that she get some sleep.”

“H’mm,” he said. It seemed remarkably intelligent to him, but Lord Wogan only snorted and told him to go back to sleep. “I promise to have some nourishing gruel here when you awaken.”

Oh, no, Nez thought, and remembered a time when he had thrown a bowl of gruel at the door in Libby Ames’s house. If that is all I am ever offered when I am ill, then I had better rise up and walk.

He was too tired to walk, but he was sitting up and finishing a baked egg on toast when his sister came into his room. “Lo, Gussie,” he said. “I’m sorry I was trouble to you.” He sighed. “I suppose you want to scold me about something, but please don’t.”

Gussie amazed him by pulling the chair up closer to his bed and taking his hand in hers. He flinched against the ferocious scold he knew must be coming, then gradually relaxed when she merely sat there holding his hand, her face so serious, and looking remarkably like Mama’s. You do resemble her, he thought. Too bad that all I have heard from you for the last ten years is one long scold.

“Would you open the draperies, Gussie?” he asked at last. “And is the window up? A person ought to be able to smell Mama’s roses from here.”

He hadn’t noticed Luster standing there, but his butler crossed to the window and pulled back the drapery. A breeze ruffled the fabric, and in another moment the scent of roses reached his nostrils. “Could I have some more food?” he asked.

“Immediately, Your Grace.”

He came back soon enough with soup, a lamb chop, little potatoes cooked in butter with chives, and a pear. The tray on his lap, Nez ate slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Gussie and Fred watched him and said nothing. When he finished, he nodded to Luster. “Just put it on the table there,” he said, “then I want the three of you to pull up your chairs and listen to what I have to tell you.”

While they listened he told them about the terrible third siege of Badajoz, and the sacking of the town, the victories and retreats in the Peninsula, Waterloo, his drinking, Libby Ames, Tony Cook, his fierce regrets, his resolutions to do better, Liria and Juan Valencia, Mama’s flowers, Audrey’s expectations, the Allenby Candy Company, his visit to the Spanish embassy. His recitation went on all afternoon, with no interruptions except an occasional low-voiced question from Lord Wogan. Luster got up once to light the lamp, but they were undisturbed through the early evening hours. Gussie held his hand through most of his narration. When he described his desperate afternoon’s work at Waterloo, she held it tighter.

Then he could think of nothing more to say. “You want me to change, and I have tried to oblige you all. Audrey can’t wait to rehabilitate me.” He twined his fingers through his sister’s. “My dear, I know how much you want me to marry her and become someone you can be proud of, but I just can’t do it. I’m so sorry to disappoint you all.”

He leaned back then, exhausted from his efforts. Lord Wogan got up from his chair and came closer to sit on the bed. He took Nez’s other hand in his. “My dear boy, perhaps I speak for all of us when I say that we are proud of you. Don’t look at me that way! Do you have any idea how pleasant it is to drop by White’s and always be certain that someone is going to ask after my brother-in-law, the Duke of Knare? Someone will say, ‘I was with him at Busaco, or Vimiero.’ Someone else will say, ‘Did you see him and the Twentieth at Waterloo?’ Someone else will mention an eagle—Good Lord, Benedict, did you capture an eagle in Spain? You never told us! Two or three men have told me about a remarkable hospital in Kent that you have named in your mother’s honor.”