Carla Kelly (5 page)

He could see another page of names through the thin paper. He didn’t want to turn the leaf in the book, because he knew it would be Quatre Bras and Mont Saint Jean, what good Englishmen far away from the distinction of each battle were now calling Waterloo. He thought a moment. No, it would be Quatre Bras alone, Quatre Bras and the death of the Nineteen. He turned the page anyway, compelled, and found nothing beyond the long list of Quatre Bras, but not all in Sergeant Carr’s handwriting. Never mind, the word “letter” followed each entry except the final one—Richard Carr 6-25-15. So you lived a week, sergeant? Then this is Liria Valencia’s handwriting, is it not, sir? She wrote the letters you couldn’t write.

The realization shook him because he knew what had happened to the Nineteen, how they had refused to pull back in the face of Ney’s advance, buying seconds, minutes, an hour or two for an army caught with its leaders at Lady Richmond’s ball in Brussels. You were there at Quatre Bras, weren’t you, Liria? he thought. And Juan, too, I imagine. My God, and I whine because I give up a bed to a butler. He flipped through the remaining pages, which contained some closely written words that were covered with Juan’s drawings now. He closed the ledger, and put it back on the floor, open to Juan’s rendering of His Grace of Knare’s carriage. The drawing made him smile. Sergeant Carr, you would be pleased to know how your son has used your ledger, he thought.

He lay awake a long time that night, thinking about war, but it was less painful than usual, as though Juan’s barely glimpsed drawings were soothing his own wounds, even as they covered an artillerist’s precise record of death.

Chapter Four

What followed were curious days for the Duke of Knare, so close to home, and yet too far to trundle anyone so spotted and miserable into a carriage. He knew that he could have insisted they go on, but he chose not to, for reasons he could not quite divine. There was something peaceful about cooling his heels where no one expected anything of him beyond sitting by one bedside or the other, looking appropriately sympathetic.

In low tones, Liria Valencia had warned him that his butler would be the sicker of the two, and she was right. Nez’s presence in the sickroom did not help, because ill as he was, Luster could not reconcile himself to the fact that he was taking His Grace’s bed and chamber. He could not offer his devastated butler any consolation, so he left him in the care of the Spanish woman, and devoted himself to his niece.

He did insist upon one homely office he could perform for his butler, and must have sounded firm enough, because Liria chose not to resist. Every morning, and through the day at her request, he carried the slops jar downstairs to the necessary. Luster would die if he knew, Nez thought, as he poured the contents down the hole. The absurdity of it all made him smile. Nice to know that someone even as starchy as Luster has to piss now and then.

Juan generally accompanied him into the yard, walking seriously beside him as though he needed an escort for this important duty. “You like to be outside, don’t you?” he asked finally one morning as, empty jar in hand, he stopped to contemplate the activity in the inn yard. “Is it the horses?”

Juan nodded. “I like horses,” he said in English.

To Nez’s delight, the boy leaned against him for a moment, then took the empty jar and continued across the yard, obviously remembering a duty pressed upon him by his mother. Do we all march to her quiet tune? Nez thought.

He enjoyed the evenings. After Sophie had resigned herself to sleep, he sat with Juan at the table in the sitting room. Juan would generally prop his chin up with his hands and struggle to stay awake because he knew that his mama would come. “You know, I could wake you up when she comes,” he told Juan in Spanish, but the little boy only shook his head.

He misses his mother, Nez thought. He can’t be more than five, and he surely has never been far from her side, but he soldiers on, alert for the moment when she will come to us . . . to him. He only smiled when Juan did doze, his cheek resting on his drawing.

Liria Valencia came when Luster slept, letting herself quietly into his niece’s chambers to sit at the table a moment in silence. He could see the exhaustion on her calm face, which generally revealed little emotion. She would sit as though regrouping herself, then rest her hand on her sleeping son’s head, which would always wake him. In another moment he was in her lap, and they were speaking to each other softly in Spanish. Nez tried not to listen, because it wasn’t his business. He focused his attention on the newspaper, surprised at himself because he was envying Juan his youth with a mother who obviously adored him. This is one for the books, Libby, he thought, I am envying the bastard son of a Spanish drab. I suppose life has its little lessons.

Liria would hardly do more than sit there, fingering her son’s hair, assessing him in the way that he supposed good mothers did, asking him if he was being helpful to the senor and his niece. Juan would look at him then, and Nez would nod and assure Liria that he was valuable in keeping Sophie distracted. “
Dama,
he even escorts me to the necessary when I go on Luster’s errands,” he said. “He would be an excellent aide-de-camp.”

His words always perked her up, as though a good report about her child was nourishment. “Sergeant Carr would be proud of you,” she told Juan in Spanish. He could not help overhearing, maybe because he was listening so hard, wondering about these two castaways.

That was it. Liria would sew, or look through Juan’s drawings, or sit with her hand gently fingering her son’s hair, her eyes on some middle distance beyond the wall of the room. He knew the view himself, and wanted to tell her so. He and his brother officers had sat like that after a battle or skirmish, wondering what the next day would bring. I am sharing sickroom duties with an old campaigner, he reflected.

After a few moments, Liria would sit up straight and shepherd Juan to the little sofa where he slept. She covered him with her cloak, stood a moment, then went to look at Sophie. He usually followed her, not so much out of concern, but because he liked to watch Liria touch Sophie’s hair, pat her cheek, and perform this loving assessment on a child she barely knew. It’s a nice touch, Libby, he thought. Reminds me rather of Tony and his treatment of the sick. No wonder you love him more than me.

He knew he waited for Liria’s approval of the way he was caring for Sophie, and she was generous in her praise. “Senor, she is doing splendidly,” Liria whispered, tugging up Sophie’s coverlet a fraction of an inch. “The credit is yours.”

Her words were so simple, but he felt himself basking in the glow of her commendation. At least I do not wriggle like a puppy, he told himself, after she bid him a quiet good night and returned to the other room.

He appreciated Sophie’s resilience. Three days of fretting discomfort constituted her bout of chicken pox. He reminded the Empress not to scratch, daubed on calamine lotion to ease the itch, provided copious amounts of lemonade, and read to her and Juan from a volume of children’s stories from the village’s lending library. Soon Liria’s son was drawing dragons and knights on quality paper that Nez had found in one of the village’s few shops. He calmed Liria’s wide-eyed alarm upon seeing the expensive paper. “My good woman, you worry about Luster and I will deal with the infantry,” he told her quite firmly. “And thank you for not arguing,” he said to the closed door after she let herself out quietly.

He had to amend that thought. Liria Valencia did not seem to argue at all. She did not raise her voice, or make demands on anyone, but she had such a way about her of command. No, that was unfair, too. She did not command like the brigade major he had been, but she had a way of raising one eyebrow to Juan that never failed to get him to his feet promptly when she needed him. Maybe it was because she was tall, he thought at first, then dispatched that notion because she was not tall, probably not an inch or two beyond Libby’s small height. She acts tall, he decided, rather like a good duchess should, even though the idea of Liria as a duchess made him chuckle to himself.

In an unspoken arrangement, he took the cot in his niece’s dressing room, and Liria moved into the dressing room close to Luster. Nez knew he could have requested another chamber, and the landlord even suggested it, but he chose to remain where he was. These people are beginning to interest me, he told himself the second night, after bidding Sophie good night, seeing that Juan—long asleep on the sofa—was covered, and then lying down on his cot. That is it; for some odd reason, I am not bored.

Granted, Liria was a fine-looking woman, but nothing intrigued him more about her than her serene way of watching over them all, her hands clasped in front of her. She could stand so still, gaze at his fretful niece, and as he watched, Sophie would become calm before his eyes. It was not intimidation, but a deep compassion that he could only envy, and wonder about. I have seen women like this before, he thought. It came to him finally after she reported to him after dinner on the third day that Luster was much improved. “Excellent news, Miss Valencia,” he said, offering her a seat at the table.

She shook her head. “I should return to Senor Luster,” she said, and with the slightest incline of her head, glided from the room.

Then he knew. Well, damn me, he thought in sudden surprise as the notion took hold. You either were a nun yourself, or you are convent educated, Liria Valencia. He remembered evacuating an orphanage that happened to command the choicest view of Soult’s army on the flank. At his sharp command, the sisters had shepherded their charges from the building. Their calmness was contagious; he had never forgotten it, or the memorable way they walked, seeming to glide over the stones in a manner that was utterly composed and fluid. They also stood as she did, hands clasped at waist level, some of the sisters fingering rosaries through that tense time, the sole evidence of their fear.

He imagined that Liria had been raised in such an orphanage because he could not fathom that she was a nun herself. He decided she probably was a lady’s maid, after all. It seemed likely, but he couldn’t make the leap from lady’s maid to Sergeant Carr and the Nineteen. War does change things he knew, thinking of the long retreat from Burgos, and recalling—odd what one remembers!—a cat loping along purposefully beside his exhausted horse, carrying a kitten in her mouth. All of Spain was on the move, courtesy of Boney’s appetite for others’ real estate, so why not Liria and her boy?

The next morning, Sophie declared herself well enough to sit at the table and take some cheerfully rendered advice from Juan about drawing horses. Nez took the hint and went to see his butler. Luster tried to raise himself up onto one elbow.

“Heavens, Luster, you’re ill,” he murmured. “Pray don’t exert yourself.” He couldn’t help a certain glee in looking at Luster in a nightshirt, his face unshaven and liberally spotted with calamine lotion. So this is the dragon who intimidated me and a whole generation of servants? Good to know that you’re mortal, Luster.

“You shouldn’t see me like this, Your Grace,” Luster said, and Nez felt immediately chastened because the comment was so heartfelt.

“Oh, bother it, Luster. You’ve certainly seen me in worse straits,” he replied, not even trying to hide the brusqueness in his voice because intuition told him that the last thing any butler wanted was sympathy from his duke. “Miss Valencia, I have never been a paragon. When I think of the scrapes that Luster glossed over with my departed father . . . Ah, well.”

Liria nodded. “I had brothers,” she replied in such a droll tone that he had to laugh.

“I rest my case, Luster.” So you had brothers in the past tense, Miss Liria Valencia, he thought. And where are they now? “Luster, my chiefest desire is for your recovery, so I can continue to plague your life.” He came closer, wondering when it was that this ageless man finally got himself so old. He decided on a light touch, even as his heart turned over to see the exhaustion in his eyes. “I suppose I must scold you for continuing to go to my dratted sister’s house after I went to see the Cooks, mustn’t I? I am no physic, but even I know it takes a while for chicken pox to manifest itself.”

“Your Grace, you know how rackety Lady Augusta’s household is,” Luster said. “I only sought to help her staff.”

Liria vacated the chair she sat in, and indicated that he sit there. He knew better than to argue. “I know. What a shame that Augusta staffs her house with drooling idiots! Do get well, and do so by not worrying about me! I know you do not believe it, but years of vague unrest in Spain, Portugal, and Belgium taught me to manage myself. Well, never as successfully as you can manage me, but I got by from time to time, and I can do so now until you are better.”

He hoped that was the right tone, and glanced at Liria. She nodded. “Your master is right, Senor Luster,” she said. “Allow him to sit with you while I check on Sophie, please.” She left the room before Luster could argue.

Luster lay so still, his eyes boring into the ceiling. Nez could almost read his thoughts, this strange reversal of position for a man accustomed to serve. “Your Grace,” he murmured. “You cannot fathom my distress.”

“Perhaps I can,” he said gently. “Can I tell you that I am genuinely fond of you and genuinely concerned, without causing you further distress? I have many faults, Luster, and you know them all, but lying is not one of them. Now, sir, may I hand you a urinal?”

“Never, Your Grace!”

“Never is a long time to hold water, butler or duke. You’d prefer to hand the landlady wet sheets?”

There was a long pause. “Perhaps just this once, then, Your Grace. Oh, God, forgive me! It is behind you on the table.”

He spent the next two days caring for his butler. Liria did not so much abdicate her sickroom duties, as share them. She did not know him, and none of the circumstances of his life, but some gift for discernment led her to do the absolute right things, or so he told himself as he tended his butler’s needs.

Beyond a propensity to lie at attention as though he were still on duty, Luster was a model patient. He required no cajoling to eat his gruel and toast. Nez thought he would be mulish when he lifted him from his bed so Liría could change sheets. “Your Grace, I am too heavy to be lifted,” he protested, but it was a feeble protest, as though he knew he would be overruled.

“That is fustian, Luster, and you know it,” Nez said in his most rallying tone. “I outweigh you by at least two stone, and I stand a head taller. I intend to humor the landlady and this kind Spanish woman who has decided that we are not past redemption. If they say you are to have clean bedding, I would never presume to argue; nor should you.”

Luster did not argue, and raised no more objections to his care. As a consequence, he was better within two days, which Liria informed Nez that night as they sat together. “I think that one more day will see your servant fit to continue travel, if we have not too far to go,” she said.

“Knare is close enough, no more than a long day’s drive.”

“So close,” she murmured. “You could have sent servants to tend Luster, and gone on your way.”

“I suppose I could have,” he agreed. “Sophie needed me, and I suppose I will imagine that Luster did.”

For the first time, Liria seemed to lose some of her self-possession. “I did not mean to imply that your presence was not required, sir.”

He looked at her, enjoying the sight of her face, so unlike that of an Englishwoman. I have missed the people of Spain, he thought with a pang. “I know you did not imply any such thing, Miss Valencia. I can only be grateful that you did not answer the summons of the coachman’s horn—heavens, is it five days ago now?—and leave me to the fate I probably deserved.” He hesitated, then plunged on. “But for Luster, I would have left you and Juan beside the road in the rain. I suppose you know it, but I feel a need for confession.”