Free Venetia by Georgette Heyer

neither a wrathful goddess nor a young lady on her dignity who sprang down  from the vehicle and gave him both her hands, but a beautiful, ingenuous creature with no  consciousness in her frank eyes, but only a glow of warm gratitude. She exclaimed, as he took  her hands: “I am so much obliged to you! I   wish   I could tell you, but there seems to be nothing to  say but   thank you. ” She added, shyly smiling: “You wrote me such a comfortable letter, too!
    That was so very kind: did you guess I must be quite sick with apprehension? Oh, pray tell me  that it was true, and he didn‟t injure himself badly?”
    It was several moments before he answered her or released her hands. In a faded old  gown, with her hair untidy under : a sunbonnet, and her countenance flushed with indignation he  had thought her an uncommonly pretty girl; she was dressed now simply but charmingly in
    jonquil muslin, with a hat of unbleached straw whose high-poke front made a frame for a lovely  face that was neither flushed nor indignant, but smiling up at him with unshadowed friendliness,  and she took his breath away. Hardly aware that he was still holding her hands, and in far too  strong a grasp, he stood staring down at her until Nurse recalled him to his senses by clearing her

    throat in a marked and an intimidating manner. He recovered himself quickly then, saying:
    “Why, yes. Miss Lanyon! to the best of my belief it was perfectly true, but although I have some  experience of broken bones I know nothing of the trouble that makes your brother lame, and so  thought it imperative to send for his doctor. I hope it may not be long before he arrives.  Meanwhile, you must, I‟m persuaded, be impatient to see the boy. I‟ll take you to him at once.”
    “Thank you! I‟ve brought our Nurse, as you see, and she means to stay to look after him,  if she may do so?”
    “Oh, that‟s capital!” he said, smiling in appreciative amusement as he encountered a glare  from that rigid moralist‟s hostile eyes. “You will know just what to do for him, and to have you  will make him feel very much more at home.”
    “Is it paining him very badly?” Venetia asked anxiously, as Damerel led her into the
    house.
    “No, not now. I gave him some laudanum, and he seems tolerably comfortable—but I  fear you‟ll find him pretty drowsy.”
    “Gave him laudanum?” Venetia exclaimed. “Oh, if he would swallow   that   he must have  been suffering dreadfully!
    He will never take  drugs—not even the mildest opiate, only to make him sleep when his  hip has been aching!”
    “Oh, he didn‟t swallow it at all willingly, I promise you!” he replied, taking her across  the flagged hall to the staircase. “I respect his reluctance, but to be allowing him to play the  Spartan youth, when he was suffering (unless I mistake the matter) as much from fear that he  may have crippled himself as from his bruised bones, would have been folly. Or so I thought!”
    “You were very right!” she agreed. “But unless  you forced it down his throat, which I do  hope you didn‟t, I can‟t imagine how you persuaded him to take it, for I never knew anyone so  obstinate!”
    He laughed. “No, no, I wasn‟t obliged to resort to violence!” He opened the door into  Aubrey‟s room as he spoke, and stood aside for her to go in.
    Aubrey, lying in the middle of a big four-poster bed and wearing a .nightshirt many sizes  too large for him, looked the merest wisp of a boy, but he had recovered his complexion a little.  Roused by his sister‟s fingers laid over his wrist he opened his eyes, smiled sleepily at her, and  murmured: “Stoopid! I‟ve only bruised myself, m‟dear: nothing to signify! I think I crammed  him. Rufus, I mean.”
    “Cawker!” she said lovingly.
    “I know. Damerel said, more bottom than  sense.” His gaze focused itself on Nurse, who,  having set down a bulging portmanteau, was divesting herself of her