Carla Kelly by One Good Turn

Author:One Good Turn [Turn, One Good]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2012-11-13T13:20:15+00:00

Chapter Nine

“Audrey, I do believe you are correct,” Nez said out loud as he sank with a groan onto a bed in an inn near Lincoln that morning. “I will never be rehabilitated until I have become less impulsive.” He waited long minutes before bending over to remove his riding boots, vowing never to throw his leg over another horse without regarding the possible implication of most of the night in the saddle, courtesy of a full moon. He decided that a wiser man would have taken the family carriage, or at least gone post chaise, then reminded himself that a wiser man wouldn’t be so nosy about his servants.

Audrey had said as much that afternoon—it seemed so long ago now—as he sat in her parlour, sipping tea. He knew that his servants’ lives were none of his business. They were there to do his bidding and keep his estate running smoothly. He had been raised to regard them as little more than furniture, there to serve a purpose, but not to call attention to themselves.

Maybe it happened when he saw Amos Yore, late of his Waterloo brigade, begging on that London street corner, and took him home out of a guilty conscience. Maybe it was later, when Luster lay so ill in the inn, not a butler then, but a man who shared the planet with him and who was too sick to piss without assistance. And then there was kind Tony, who thought that everyone was as nice as he, treated them as though they were, and recommended that Nez do the same.

Bootless now, he stretched out on the bed and watched the sun come up through the open window. Tony, you’ve ruined me, he thought. Thanks to your meddling in my life, I care about the people who serve me. I found a job for Eliza, whose mother was so ill, and who needed the work, even though she was but eight years old. What did I care about that old armory, until I thought it might be just the place for Amos Yore, who probably saved my life fifty times during that long afternoon at Mont Saint Jean. Amos, why did it matter to me that you knew that Betty loved you, one leg or two? Do I really need all those gardeners to tend Mama’s flowers, except that I know times are hard and jobs scarce.

He knew that only an impulsive man would have offered a housekeeping job to a foreign woman with a bastard son. That the matter had been precisely right was equally obvious to him. I am a good judge of character, he decided, and the realization warmed him. I was right about Eliza, and right about Amos, right about my gardeners, right about Liria. I was right to send that money to Private Allenby in Pytch, disguised as a gift from a fictitious relative, even though my solicitor was so disapproving and snitched on me to Augusta. At least I think I am right about Allenby, he amended.

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