The Summer Country Read online

  Dedication

  To Oliver

  Epigraph

  The novelty of everything here, Plants, vegetables, seasons, slaves, Brutality of my species, the endeavours of our infant Society to open the Eyes of the people of Capacity & Feeling to amend many things that are amiss and the attention I give to model the government of my own Estates, so as to add to the happiness of my Slaves, without injury to myself, have so completely amused me, by finding constant occupation for me, that 5 years have passed over, in this eternal Summer Country, like only one.

  —Joshua Steele, writing from Barbados to the London Society for the Arts, 24 May 1785

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lauren Willig

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Bridgetown, Barbados

  February 1854

  “Emily!” Adam shouted.

  Her cousin was standing by a barouche, a barouche so shiny and new that the black lacquer dazzled the eyes.

  To be fair, Emily’s eyes were dazzled already, sun-blind, rainbows dancing everywhere; she felt dizzy with wonder and delight.

  When they anchored in Carlisle Bay just after noon, the island had seemed a fairyland drawn in pastels, houses bleached by the sunlight rising in tiers on the hills that circled the town, broad-leaved trees swaying on delicate trunks, the fronds casting their shadows over the blue waters, an illustration from a picture book, beautiful and remote.

  But now they were here, unmistakably here, the brilliant sunshine like nothing Emily had ever seen, the heat baking through the heavy fabric of her dress and making the hair at the nape of her neck curl. The houses weren’t pastels at all, but vibrant orange and yellow, blue and green and pink. The illusion of space had been just that, an illusion; people pressed close about, dressed in brightly colored kerchiefs, carrying baskets, chickens and donkeys getting underfoot, everyone talking, laughing, arguing, crying their wares.

  Emily wanted to see it all, to peer into the baskets of fruit for which she had no name, to figure out whether the patterns on the handkerchiefs being shoved beneath her nose and waved about were seeds or beads or something else entirely.

  But her cousin was waiting, his fair-skinned face flushed with heat and agitation. They were to dine at the house of her grandfather’s oldest business associate, and Adam had worked himself into a pelter about it, chivvying them from ship to hotel and into evening dress, in a horror that they might be late.

  “Emily!” Adam called again, jiggling from one foot to the other. His wife, Laura, was already in the barouche. “Are you coming?”

  Emily made a face at him through the throng. Never mind that a new world pressed around them, strange and wonderful. A business contract was waiting. “I’m trying!”

  The liveried coachman shouted, and the hawkers fell away, parting like the Red Sea. Emily gathered her skirts and made her way through the gap before it could close, glancing back over her shoulder as the crowd formed again, the hawkers descending on one of their fellow passengers from the Renown, who looked like she was destined to buy some fancywork whether she intended to or not.

  “Do take your time, Emily.” Adam shoved her up into the carriage with more vigor than finesse. “Is there anyone you’d like to stop and talk to before we go? A cold collation, perhaps?”

  “Adam . . .” Laura moved aside to make room for Emily on the forward-facing seat. “Come, sit by me.”

  Emily squeezed her own modest skirts into the space beside Laura’s flounces, as Adam tripped on the hem of her skirt and dropped, red-faced, into the seat opposite.

  “It wouldn’t do to be late. Not after Mr. Turner sent his own coach.” Lowering his voice, Adam leaned forward. “They say he’s the richest man in Barbados—the richest man in the West Indies. His fortune makes Grandfather seem like a pauper.”

  “Grandfather wouldn’t like to hear you say that,” pointed out Emily as the coach paused to let two women cross the road, large jugs balanced on their heads.

  “No, he wouldn’t, would he?” said Adam, and there was a catch in his voice that was audible even over the cries of the street vendors. “I keep thinking he’s still there. That we’ll go back and he’ll be there in the house at Queen Street, barking orders to his clerks.”

  Emily felt an ache in her chest. She could picture it too, too well. Her autocratic, rough-mannered tyrant of a grandfather, who had loved her more than anyone in the world. He had been a self-made man, Jonathan Fenty, who had raised himself from poverty to riches through pure strength of will.

  Well, will and an advantageous marriage. But mostly will.

  No one, including their grandfather, had ever thought he might succumb to anything so mundane as death.

  But he had, and there was a stylized angel in the churchyard to prove it, the carving raw and new, the chisel marks fresh on the stone, as the rain wept down, seeping into the newly turned earth. He was gone and they were here, in the land of their grandfather’s birth, where the sun shone in February and strange birds sang. The heat and colors pressed around her, the women with their bright kerchiefs and the baskets balanced on top of their heads, the lilting voices and bright colors, a world away from the winter city they had left.

  “Grandfather would be glad to see you carrying on,” said Emily quietly. “It was what he wanted.”

  It shouldn’t have stung to know that Fenty and Company would be Adam’s. It was what she had always known. He was a boy, and a Fenty. Never mind that her grandfather had always said she was the most like him. That didn’t extend to commerce. But he had left her a legacy of her own, one she had never expected.

  “If he did, why didn’t he bother to train me?” asked Adam.

  “Perhaps because you didn’t want to be trained? You were too busy stealing jam tarts.”

  “It was just the once,” Adam protested. “You’ll have Laura thinking she’s married a ne’er-do-well. Laura?”

  Laura shook her head as if to wake herself from a dream. She had always, thought Emily, had a talent for absenting herself. It had made the other girls at Miss Blackwell’s Academy for Young Leaders declare her haughty and cold, although Emily knew it was quite otherwise: a combination of crippling shyness and an ability to escape into her own mind whenever something worried her.

  “Is it the heat?” Adam asked, all concern.

  “No. I’m quite all right.” Laura’s lace parasol cast dappled shadows across her face. “I was—I was admiring the flowers.”

  Emily rather suspected it had more to do w
ith the topic; Grandfather hadn’t approved of Laura and Laura couldn’t bear criticism.

  But she quickly said, “Flowers in February, can you imagine? Grandfather said it was always summer in Barbados.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t like summer. He said it made the streets smell.” Adam craned to look around as the barouche slowed. They came to a stop before a house fronted with yellow stucco, a gallery encircling the upper story. “Could this be the place?”

  He sounded as if he hoped it weren’t. The house and the galleries were freshly painted, the flowers carefully trimmed, but it looked nothing like the mansions of Bristol’s burghers. A hen pecked at the dirt in the street. A small bird darted past, wings bright.

  “It must be,” said Emily. They were near enough to the wharves that Emily could hear the slap of the waves, the shouts and bustle of the dock hands. “Mr. Turner must like to live close to his investments.”

  “It isn’t at all what I expected. I had thought it would look . . . different. Grander.” Adam turned to Laura. “Is my cravat crooked?”

  “Here,” Laura said, and gave it a tweak, patting the edges into place where the starched folds had wilted in the heat.

  Emily sat quietly back in her seat, feeling like an interloper. Of course she was delighted that her best friend and her favorite cousin had married; it was just that she didn’t quite know how to behave with them now that they had a world she didn’t share.

  Adam displayed Laura’s handiwork to Emily. “All right?”

  “Nanny would be proud. . . . Thank you,” she said to the coachman, who had held up a hand to help her down.

  “You look very nice too,” said Laura loyally.

  Emily looked down at her own modest toilette. Her skirts were narrower than Laura’s, her neckline higher, as befitted an unmarried woman on the verge of spinsterhood. “I’m tidy and respectable, at least.”

  Aunt Millicent would have been delighted to trick Emily out in her cousins’ discarded dresses, to lace away her breath and trip her with flounces, never understanding, no matter how many times Emily told her, that she had no desire to play Cinderella with a borrowed slipper. She was comfortable in her poplins and twills, much happier to be busy and useful in her father’s parish than she would ever have been sitting in Aunt Millicent’s drawing room, pouring tea for the ladies on her aunt’s myriad of charitable committees, most of which seemed to consist of vying to arrive with the newest hat or the most shocking on-dit.

  Proceeding behind Adam and Laura down the walk, Emily felt out of place in her own skin, self-conscious in a way she had never been before, too aware of the hair escaping its net, the dress that had never been fashionable in England and was too heavy and hot for the West Indies. She had never thought of herself, in England, as a spinster. She was Miss Dawson, the vicar’s daughter, always busy with soup or salves; Miss Dawson, Mr. Fenty’s granddaughter, with the run of his house and warehouses; Miss Dawson, Miss Laura’s practical friend.

  Here, she was none of those, simply Mr. and Mrs. Fenty’s companion, the spinster cousin in the outmoded gown.

  They passed through a door hidden beneath the shade of a balcony. A maidservant stood aside to allow them to enter, leaving them blinking in the sudden gloom of the hall. It might have been England again, but for the fact that there were no doors to be seen; instead, arches separated a dining room and parlor from the hall. The impression was one of endless riches, the gleam of marble and wood, crystal and porcelain, spreading on as far as the eye could see.

  A staircase rose before them, a smooth curve of mahogany. Emily heard a giggle and saw a whisper of white cambric, the bounce of a curl: two schoolgirls peering down through the banisters at the guests.

  A man stepped through the arch on their right. He wore a well-cut suit, his face very dark against the starched white linen of his cravat. He must, thought Emily, be a superior sort of servant. “Mr. Fenty?”

  “Ah. Yes,” said Adam, and thrust his hat and gloves at the other man. “I believe your master is expecting us. If you would inform Mr. Turner—”

  “My uncle,” said the other man, enunciating very clearly, in a voice that spoke of Oxbridge and private tutors, “regrets that he was not here to receive you. He should be here presently.”

  “Your—” Adam stood frozen, his top hat vibrating in the air.

  “If you will follow me?” said the other man curtly, and, without waiting for an answer, he strode back through the arch into the dining room.

  Quietly, the maid took the hat and gloves from Adam’s hand.

  “Uncle?” murmured Laura.

  “A charity child,” whispered Adam. “It must be. It’s been known to happen. A servant’s child adopted into the family . . .”

  Mr. Turner’s nephew was waiting. Emily poked Adam in the arm. “Shall we?”

  “Er, yes.” Adam scrambled after their host, half dragging Laura with him, leaving Emily to follow along behind. “We must be—that is, we made very good time. The carriage—so well sprung. The road—so scenic. Your, er, uncle was very kind to send his own carriage.”

  “My uncle,” said the other man flatly, “has several carriages.”

  “Naturally. That is . . . May I present to you my wife, Mrs. Fenty?” Adam said in desperation. He dug his elbow into Laura’s ribs until she belatedly remembered to bow. “And this is my cousin Miss Dawson. Mr., er, Turner?”

  “Braithwaite.” Mr. Braithwaite bowed to Laura and to Emily, his movements as clipped as his speech. “My apologies. My aunt and uncle will be with you presently. If you would be seated?”

  The settee was made of mahogany, upholstered in silk brocade that blended beautifully with the muted shades of the Aubusson rug. Bookshelves lined one side of the room, the leather bindings well-worn: natural history, history, poetry, religious works that Emily recognized from her father’s shelves. Brilliant birds, stuffed and set on stands, peered down at them from above a curio cabinet. A pier glass above the mantelpiece reflected the landscapes on the wall, the rich drapes on the windows, the flushed and uncomfortable faces of the visitors.

  Emily hastily took the indicated seat. Mr. Braithwaite stood by the mantel, his very presence quelling any conversation. He had, Emily noticed, a very thin mustache above his lip. It gave him a sardonic air. Or perhaps that was just his silence, pressing down on her, reducing the proportions of the room to the size of a nutshell. A very well-appointed nutshell, but a nutshell nonetheless.

  Emily popped out of her seat, bustling across the room to a curio cabinet by the mantel. “Are those fossils? My father had one, but none so fine as these.”

  Mr. Braithwaite silently indicated the contents of the curio cabinet. In addition to the fossils, there was a fine collection of minerals, split to show their interiors, and shells far more beautiful than any Emily had seen when her aunt had dutifully taken them to bathe in the freezing waters of Weston-super-Mare.

  Emily cleared her throat. “It is rather daunting, isn’t it? It does make one feel very small to encounter a piece of rock that has been here since before the birth of our Savior.”

  “Does it?” Mr. Braithwaite’s precise inflection made Emily very aware of her own West Country accent. It had never felt so thick as it did now.

  “Well, very recent, at least,” said Emily, resisting the urge to chivvy her cousin out of his seat. He could try to contribute to the conversation instead of sitting there gawking. “Were these collected on the island?”

  “Yes.”

  Emily was spared making further attempts by the sound of footsteps, as a man strode into the room. “Welcome, welcome.”

  Mr. Turner’s deep voice resonated through the room, and for a moment, Emily felt her breath catch at the familiarity of it, the rhythm of his speech so like her grandfather’s. It wasn’t just the accent, the accent to which her grandfather had so stubbornly held all those years, throwing his island origins in the face of Bristol’s elite; it was the air of command, the assurance that others would leap t
o obey, as Adam was leaping to his feet now, desperately trying to hide his chagrin as he looked anywhere but at Mr. Turner’s face.

  “I—it is an honor to meet you, sir, ma’am,” Adam stammered. “May I—may I present my wife and my cousin Miss Dawson?”

  Mrs. Turner murmured her own words of welcome, the rote greeting of the polished hostess. Her rose silk gown with its scalloped tiers of fabric, each edged in an intricate pattern of matching lace, was at least a season more recent than Laura’s, so beautifully tailored it had to be from Paris. Her necklace, bracelet, and earrings were of rubies set with diamonds, elegant without being gaudy. Her black hair had been dressed in a series of rolls over her ears, elegantly arranged in a chignon at the back. She looked, in fact, like one of the ladies in the fashion plates Emily’s cousins loved to study, but for one detail: the color of her skin.

  Mr. Turner bowed to Laura and to Emily before turning again to Adam. “You needn’t tell me who you are. Your face is your passport in these parts. You’re the spit of your grandfather as a young man.”

  “You knew my grandfather?” blurted out Adam. “I mean—that is . . .”

  Mr. Turner raised his brow. “That you hadn’t thought your grandfather would do business with one of my complexion?”

  Adam flushed. “No, certainly not. That is—”

  “We’d never thought to meet anyone who knew him still,” Emily jumped in, before Adam could embarrass himself further. “Grandfather was adamant about never leaving Bristol. He hated the sea. He always thought it was a great joke that he owned a fleet of ships on which he declined to sail.” She was painfully aware that she was babbling. Mr. Braithwaite was watching her as though she were the dancing bear in a carnival, and a rather mangy one at that. “We had no idea he still had friends on Barbados. After so many years.”

  Mr. Turner regarded her with amused tolerance. “I was just a child when your grandfather left the island. But he was a memorable man.”

  “He was that,” said Adam, a little too heartily. “How did you, er, come to meet?”