Read Online Carla Kelly by One Good Turn - Free Book Online

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