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Venetia
Georgette Heyer
Copyright © 1958 by Georgette Heyer
Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover photo © Ernest Walbourn/Fine Art Photographic Library
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks,
Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage
and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its
publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used
fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coin-
cidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heyer, Georgette.
Venetia / by Georgette Heyer.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Heinemann, 1958.
1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Country life—Fiction. 3. Family secrets—
Fiction. 4. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6015.E795V44 2011
823’.912--dc22
2011004631
Printed and bound in the United States of America
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
One
A
fox got in amongst the hens last night, and
ravished our best layer,’ remarked Miss Lanyon. ‘A
great-grandmother, too! You’d think he would be ashamed!’
Receiving no answer, she continued, in an altered voice:
‘Indeed, you would! It is a great deal too bad. What is to
be done?’
His attention caught, her companion raised his eyes from the
book which lay open beside him on the table and directed them
upon her in a look of aloof enquiry. ‘What’s that? Did you say
something to me, Venetia?’
‘Yes, love,’ responded his sister cheerfully, ‘but it wasn’t of
the least consequence, and in any event I answered for you. You
would be astonished, I daresay, if you knew what interesting
conversations I enjoy with myself.’
‘I was reading.’
‘So you were – and have let your coffee grow cold, besides
abandoning that slice of bread-and-butter. Do eat it up! I’m
persuaded I ought not to permit you to read at table.’
‘Oh, the
breakfast-table!’
he said disparagingly. ‘Try if you can
stop me!’
‘I can’t, of course. What is it?’ she returned, glancing at the
volume. ‘Ah, Greek! Some improving tale, I don’t doubt.’
Georgette Heyer
‘The
Medea,’
he said repressively. ‘Porson’s edition, which
Mr Appersett lent to me.’
‘I know! She was the delightful creature who cut up her
brother, and cast the pieces in her papa’s way, wasn’t she? I daresay
perfectly amiable when one came to know her.’
He hunched an impatient shoulder, and replied contemptu-
ously: ‘You don’t understand, and it’s a waste of time to try to
make you.’
Her eyes twinkled at him. ‘But I promise you I do! Yes,
and sympathise with her, besides wishing I had her resolution!
Though I think I should rather have buried
your
remains tidily
in the garden, my dear!’
This sally drew a grin from him, but he merely said, before
turning back to his book, that to order her to do so would certainly
have been all the heed their parent would have paid.
Inured to his habits, his sister made no further attempt to
engage his attention. The slice of bread-and-butter, which was
all the food he would accept that morning, lay half-eaten on
his plate, but to expostulate would be a waste of time, and to
venture on an enquiry about the state of his health would serve
only to set up his hackles.
He was a thin boy, rather undersized, by no means ill-looking,
but with a countenance sharpened and lined beyond his years.
A stranger would have found these hard to compute, his body’s
immaturity being oddly belied by his face and his manners.
In point of fact he had not long entered on his seventeenth year,
but physical suffering had dug the lines in his face, and associa-
tion with none but his seniors, coupled with an intellect at once
scholarly and powerful, had made him precocious. A disease of
the hip-joint had kept him away from Eton, where his brother
Conway, his senior by six years, had been educated, and this (or,
as his sister sometimes thought, the various treatments to which
he had been subjected) had resulted in a shortening of one leg.
2

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