Venetia by Georgette Heyer

“When  it took me half-an-hour to find   Guy Mannering,   and I brought   all   your Horace, because I
    couldn‟t remember which volume you wanted!”
    “Stoopid!” he said, smiling up at her. “I‟ll keep   Guy Mannering,   though, in case I want  something to read in the night.”
    She withdrew it from the pile Fingle was still holding, nodded dismissal to him, a twinkle  in her eyes which caused him to cast up his own expressively, and ventured to ask Aubrey how  he had slept.
    “Oh—tolerably well!” he replied.
    “There is no truth in you, love. I collect that you spurned the syrup of poppies Nurse was  so careful to bring with her?”
    “After the laudanum Damerel gave me! I should rather think I did! He agreed I should be  better without it, too, so Nurse went off to bed in a miff, which I was heartily glad of. Damerel  brought up a chess-board, and we had a game or two. He‟s an excellent player: I won only once.  Then we fell to talking—oh, till past midnight! Did you know he had read classics? He went to  Oxford—says he has forgotten all he ever knew, but that‟s humbug! I should think he had been a  pretty good scholar. He has visited Greece, too, and was able to describe things to me—things  worth describing! Not like that fellow who stayed with the Appersetts last year, and had nothing  more to say of Greece than that he couldn‟t drink the wine because of the resin in it, and had  been eaten alive by bed-bugs!”
    “So you enjoyed your evening?”
    “Yes—but for my curst leg! However, if I hadn‟t taken a toss I daresay I might never  have met Damerel, so I don‟t regret it.”
    “It must be very agreeable to be able to talk with someone who enters into the things you care for most,” she agreed,
    “It is,” he said frankly. “What‟s more, he knows better than to ask me, a dozen times in  an hour, how I feel, or if I wouldn‟t like another pillow! I don‟t mean that   you   do so, but Nurse is  enough to throw a saint into a pelter! I wish you had not brought her: Marston can do all I
    need—and without putting me in a bad skin!” he added, with his rueful, twisted smile.
    “My dear, I couldn‟t have kept her away from you! Tell me   once   how you find yourself  this morning, and then I promise—word of a Lanyon!—I won‟t ask you again!”
    “Oh, I‟m well enough!” he replied shortly. She said nothing, and after a moment he  relented, and grinned at her. “If you   must   know, I feel devilish—as though I had dislocated every  joint in my body! But Bentworth assures me it‟s no such thing, so my aches are of no  consequence, and will soon go off, I daresay. Let us play piquet—that is, if you mean to stay for  a while? You‟ll find some cards somewhere—on that table, I think.”
    She was 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