The Summer Country Read online

  “It’s for anyone who can’t afford a doctor’s fee.”

  “Redlegs, you mean. Like my grandfather.”

  Dr. Braithwaite looked at her sideways. “I doubt anyone would call him that now.”

  Mrs. Davenant had. Emily remembered Mr. Davenant’s embarrassment. “I take it the term is not complimentary?”

  “No,” said Dr. Braithwaite.

  When her grandfather had told her he was poor, she had imagined a familiar poverty, the slums of Bristol. It had never occurred to her that this poverty might be viewed as an ancestral stain, less a matter of wealth than of birth.

  Dr. Braithwaite seemed disinclined to elaborate, so Emily took a breath and focused her mind on the matter at hand. “How many doctors are in residence?”

  “Six. Five junior surgeons and one senior surgeon. I,” he said, “am one of the junior staff.”

  He was also, as far as she could tell, the only one of color, but he hadn’t commented on that. “Are you resident?”

  “The hospital provides lodgings.” He had not, Emily realized, answered the question. She wondered if he lived with his uncle and was ashamed of it. To be in luxury while seeing such poverty every day. Unlike his patients, Dr. Braithwaite had all his own teeth, and very nice ones they were. He gestured at the beds as they passed. “Scurvy, dysentery, exhaustion, malnutrition. As you can see, we treat a wide variety of complaints.”

  “What of infectious diseases?”

  “Not permitted,” said Dr. Braithwaite succinctly. “Only the curable sick are admitted.”

  Emily stopped short in a swish of petticoats, nearly tripping her companion. “But surely you can’t mean that! Mightn’t those patients be cured if they had proper care? To leave them to die—”

  “Do you think I like it? Don’t speak to me; speak to the Board of Governors. It was their determination.” At the horrified expression on her face, he softened. “They’re not entirely wrong. If we admitted one person with yellow fever, it would cut through the whole within days. Most of these people are already weak from disease and malnutrition. Admitting a fever case would be to sign their death warrants.”

  “But think of all the others exposed!” Her mother, the red flush on her chest, white fuzz on her tongue. Just feeling a bit tired, she had said. “If there were a ward devoted specially to infectious diseases—”

  “Built with whose money?” Dr. Braithwaite asked bluntly. “The hospital operates at a deficit as it is. We’ve been forced to go hat in hand to the council for a grant of four thousand dollars a year.”

  “With a little economy . . .”

  “I’m not paid for my work. None of the doctors are. What are we meant to skimp on? The patients’ meals? Most of them come here primarily to be fed. They’re poor and starving. On our implements? This may seem provincial to you, Miss Dawson, but I’ve performed at least a dozen major surgeries since I began at the hospital. I refuse to compromise the care of those in my charge.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that you should,” said Emily.

  “No, merely that we should be attempting a dozen other things besides.” Dr. Braithwaite gestured down the row of beds. “You won’t see many women here, or children. Half the children born in Barbados die before the age of ten. Their parents don’t even bother to bring them to us; they know it’s hopeless.”

  “But that’s—” Emily clamped her lips shut at a look from Dr. Braithwaite.

  “Can you tell me truly that it’s better in Bristol?” Remembering the families her father had served, the children dying of cold, of hunger, of diseases a stronger constitution might have weathered, Emily could only remain silent. “We need a children’s ward. We need a ward for infectious diseases. We need twice the number of beds merely for the curable sick. We haven’t the funds or the staff. I’m at the hospital only three days a week. The rest of my time is devoted to private practice.”

  “And charity work?” she said, remembering the discussion at Beckles. “Perhaps your uncle . . .”

  “Who do you think paid for this building?” Dr. Braithwaite pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “I beg your pardon. I had no call to bite your head off.”

  “You needn’t apologize to me. It’s very hard seeing people die when one feels that one might have done . . . something.” Dipping a cloth into tepid water, mopping a brow, wishing she knew what to do, praying and praying until the words lost all meaning. She’d promised herself, after her mother died, that she would study, that she would learn, that next time she would outwit death. But all she’d learned was that even the most learned were powerless before the diseases that cut through Bristol’s poorer quarters. She looked up at Dr. Braithwaite, her eyes meeting his. “With cuts and burns, one knows what to do. But with fevers . . .”

  “Someday,” said Dr. Braithwaite fervently. “Someday. We already have inoculations for smallpox. Snow and Budd are making great progress on the causes of cholera. . . .”

  “Yes, I know,” said Emily. “Dr. Budd speaks very eloquently on the topic.”

  The expression on Dr. Braithwaite’s face made the whole visit, the smell and the sweat, entirely worthwhile. “You know Dr. Budd?”

  “I had the privilege of working with him at the Royal Infirmary.” Admittedly, working with him meant sponging patients’ brows while Dr. Budd spoke to his colleagues, entirely unaware of her presence.

  “His piece on the mode of propagation of cholera and its prevention . . . If he’s correct, we have the chance of not curing the disease but eradicating it.”

  “Please, God.” She had seen cholera. It had cut through Bristol five years before, while her father delivered sermons of hope to a church nearly empty of worshippers, those who dared to come the desperate and devout, everyone else too afraid of the tainted air.

  She had thought her heart would break with the helplessness of it, spooning drops of soup into mouths that couldn’t swallow, singing lullabies to children too ill to hear.

  “God and the Board of Health,” said Dr. Braithwaite. “We had two physicians come from England three years ago to set up a Board of Heath and take action, but . . . to call it a drop in the bucket would be to assume a bucket the size of the ocean. People are meant to throw waste in the sea, but half the time they simply fling it outside their door. And why should they bother to do otherwise? The well water here in Bridgetown is all tainted.”

  “All?” said Emily, thinking of Laura’s lethargy, the fits of nausea that seemed to strike with no warning. “What of Miss Lee’s hotel?”

  Dr. Braithwaite blinked, and then sketched a dismissive gesture. “Oh, you needn’t worry. The water you drink doesn’t come from here. It’s drawn from Beckles’s spring.”

  “Beckles? As in the plantation?”

  “It’s a common enough name in these parts.” Dr. Braithwaite shrugged. “It’s peddled for half a cent a gallon. Few can afford to buy enough for drinking, much less washing, not unless you want to spend all your earnings on enough water for a sponge bath. We’re ripe for an epidemic and every physician here knows it.”

  Emily could feel sweat pooling at the back of her neck. Her lips felt dry. “What can we do?”

  “We?” He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time, then took a step back. “You needn’t concern yourself. You’ll be long back in Bristol by then.”

  “What makes you think I won’t stay?” It felt as though a door had been slammed in her face.

  “Your cousin said you sail back to England in June.”

  Trust Adam to say what pleased him in the assumption that time would make it true. “He sails back to England in June. I have a plantation to see to.”

  Dr. Braithwaite raised a brow. “Don’t you mean you have a plantation to sell?”

  He wasn’t being sarcastic; he seemed genuinely baffled by the notion she would stay. Emily rounded on Dr. Braithwaite, venting all of her frustration in the direction of his cravat pin. “Why does everyone assume I mean to sell? Is it so inconceivable
that a woman could run a plantation?”

  “A woman, yes,” said Dr. Braithwaite, and then ruined it by adding, “but one bred to it.”

  “I should think you of all people would realize that . . . that horticulture is hardly something that runs in the blood!”

  “Agriculture,” murmured Dr. Braithwaite.

  “Agriculture, horticulture, anything can be learned with enough study.” Emily flung up her hands in frustration. “You trained as a doctor. Why can’t I train to grow sugar?”

  Dr. Braithwaite went very still. “My training as a doctor was that unlikely, was it?”

  “No! That’s not what I meant at all.” At least, she didn’t think it had been.

  “Isn’t it? There were a number of my colleagues in Edinburgh who shared that view.” Dr. Braithwaite smiled without humor. “Medical students aren’t noted for their subtlety.”

  “Don’t you think I heard the same at the infirmary? As if to be a woman were to be a simpleton!” Emily gave her skirts an agitated shake. “I can’t change my sex any more than you can the color of your skin.”

  “Some women do,” said Dr. Braithwaite. Emily detected a thaw.

  “Yes,” she said wrathfully, “in Shakespeare comedies, and very unconvincing it is too. Can you imagine me in breeches and a cravat, with a mustache drawn in charcoal on my lip?”

  Dr. Braithwaite lost the battle with his lips. He grinned at her. “Now that you mention it, yes.” Gravely, he added, “And I see your point.”

  There was something in the way he was looking at her that made the color rise to Emily’s cheeks. “Well, then,” she said, resolutely turning back to the matter at hand and away from the disquieting light in Dr. Braithwaite’s eyes. “I only meant that one needn’t be bred to something to master it. If that were so, shouldn’t you be in business like your uncle? But you could be taught a new trade and so can I. Mrs. Davenant has invited me to stay at Beckles to learn the running of a plantation.”

  “Has she?” Dr. Braithwaite looked at her sharply. For a moment, he seemed about to say something. But then he shrugged and said only, “I’m sure you can learn a great deal from her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dr. Braithwaite turned away, walking back the way they had come. “Precisely what I said. If you want to learn about the cultivation of sugar, there’s little they can’t tell you at Beckles.”

  And he would know. Emily bit down the urge to say that, asking instead, as she hurried along after him, “Is there anything I should know about Beckles? Or Peverills?”

  Dr. Braithwaite glanced down at her. “You should ask George Davenant. I’m sure he would be more than delighted to tell you stories.”

  “Yes, fairy stories,” said Emily impatiently, remembering Mrs. Davenant’s term. “Cavaliers and Roundheads and elopements and romances.”

  Dr. Braithwaite stopped at the front door. A nurse regarded them with frank curiosity over her wash bucket before Dr. Braithwaite gestured her away.

  “What more is there to know? Mrs. Davenant is a respected member of the parish. There have been Beckles at Beckleses since Barbados was Barbados. I’m just a humble surgeon. I wouldn’t presume to comment on my betters.” For a moment, they stared at each other, the terse words hovering in the air. In a very different voice, Dr. Braithwaite asked, “Do you mean to accept the invitation?”

  She should go, she knew. There was no reason not to. She ought to be exceedingly grateful for the opportunity to see the workings of a plantation firsthand. It was pure foolishness to stall and dither, and all because there was something, something about Beckles that had made her feel unsettled. Vulnerable.

  Nonsense, she told herself. If she meant to make a go of Peverills, she would have to learn to love the country. That was all it was, acculturation. With time, the sounds of the cane in the wind would become as familiar as the shouts and rattles of a city street. And it would certainly smell sweeter.

  As for Mrs. Davenant—no, she must have imagined the rancor when her grandfather’s name was mentioned. Mrs. Davenant had been nothing but kind after. Well, not kind, precisely, but helpful. Sometimes helpful was better than kind. It was an idiom Emily understood.

  And it would do Laura good to get away, away from Bridgetown and its tainted water.

  “Of course,” she said lightly. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Chapter Ten

  Christ Church, Barbados

  June 1812

  “You might try to look as though you’re enjoying yourself,” muttered Robert. “Crop Over is a celebration. It’s meant to be enjoyed.”

  “I am,” lied Charles.

  Outside, the sun glared, but inside, the louvres had been drawn shut and candlelight, expensive, wasteful candlelight glimmered off embroidered waistcoats and opal stickpins. Men dipped their glasses into vast bowls of rum punch, while women in long gloves held glasses of French champagne, regardless of the war with France. Here, in this room, one would never know that battles were being fought across Spain and Portugal, or that people were starving just outside their doors.

  In front of them, the vast mahogany table was entirely hidden by platters of food. Never mind that drought had blighted the Guinea corn, that the people in the quarters had gone from subsistence rations to something that barely blunted the edge of hunger. The harvest festival at Beckles boasted jellied quince and haunches of ham, roasted fowl and French pie. Trifle rich with cream and sherry, candied sweetmeats, and platters overflowing with fruit.

  “It seems such a waste,” Charles burst out. “All of this when our people are hungry.”

  The ham was sweating on the table, slices beginning to curl. A stray grape lolled next to a platter, bruised edges turning brown.

  “Not so loud,” said Robert, fixing a fake smile and bowing to an acquaintance. “Do you want people to think we’re up the River Tick?”

  But they were. So far, they were drowning in it. Disaster had succeeded disaster. In May, dust had poured from the sky, turning the day to night. Cinders fell like the devil’s own snowflakes, until the fields were black with ash, choking new shoots of plantain and Guinea corn. Drought followed, killing whatever survived.

  Charles had sold his mother’s jewels. He hadn’t sold them himself; he had sent Fenty to do it, discreetly, so that their name might not be attached. He’d never asked how the man managed it, just taken the money and bought provisions, dear, so very dear, three times their price, but how could he haggle when his people were starving?

  Charles had always thought himself a deist, but over the past few months, he had begun to feel as though he were being dogged by a vengeful Old Testament God, the sort who tossed prophets into the mouth of a whale and sent frogs pattering down like rain.

  “They would only think the truth,” said Charles. “We’re in a bad way.”

  “For the love of God, don’t let anyone hear you say so! Ah, Lascelles! How was your harvest?” Lowering his voice, Robert said viciously, “There’s an easy solution. Hadn’t you better go speak to the heiress?”

  “You go,” said Charles. “I’ll join you presently.”

  Robert raised a brow. “You’d best make up your mind. Drink or pass, brother.”

  And then he was gone, pushing through the crowd, greeting and greeted, laughter and good fellowship following wherever he went. Miss Beckles stood with an older man and a dark-haired woman who wore her modest dress as though it belonged to her and her ruby-and-gold parure as though it didn’t.

  Miss Beckles’s cheeks were flushed with heat. Her chestnut hair had been twisted into a knot at the back and teased into curls on either side of her face. She was, in short, in very good looks, with the sort of buxom prettiness that made one think of shepherdesses and milkmaids, earthy and inviting.

  But Charles’s eyes went past her.

  There she was. Jenny. Standing quietly behind her mistress, garbed in a plain muslin dress and white lawn smock. The only hint of frivolity was a narrow band of lace, an indicato
r of her status and the festival day.

  Standing so still, watching, waiting, always waiting.

  It had become a passion of his to try to discover what she was thinking beneath that closed expression. Miss Beckles’s every opinion emerged from her lips, but with Jenny it was a question of reading small signals, a tightening of the mouth, a lift of the brow. It was like learning to read a new language, finding pages and pages of text suddenly rich with meaning that might once have been blank. Every look spoke volumes; her carefully considered words sang like a choir by candlelight.

  He called on Miss Beckles more often than he ought, but not, he had to admit, for the sake of Miss Beckles. It was her maid he came to see, although their communication was limited to a word and a look.

  Oh, Lord. Was this what his father had felt for Nan? This pull like the moon to the sea, calling him like the tides, drawing him to her despite the knowledge that it was wrong, that there could be nothing between them. How could there when she was in no position to refuse?

  That hadn’t stopped his father.

  But he wasn’t his father. He wouldn’t be.

  Jenny’s eyes met his across the room. Just a momentary glance, but he felt the hairs on his neck prickle, his cravat suddenly too tight, like a callow youth at his first assembly, sweating through his gloves at the embarrassment of making his bow to a young lady.

  Miss Beckles spotted him over Robert’s shoulder and her face lit. Charles’s heart sank at the eagerness in her face, the way she raised herself half onto her toes as she lifted a hand in greeting.

  He bowed, but ignored the implied invitation, turning away instead so he wouldn’t see the disappointment on her face. It was his own fault. He had raised expectations. He needed, he knew, to make a decision. Either marry Miss Beckles or cease his calls. Everyone was watching, he knew, waiting to see if he would come up to scratch. If he didn’t, it would be embarrassing for Miss Beckles. No, worse than embarrassing, a confirmation of the rumors that Robert had taken pains to share, and that others only dared hint at.

  But if he did marry her . . .