The Summer Country Page 17

  It was a lowering thought. Emily rather liked Mrs. Davenant, because of—not despite—her toughness, and she thought Mrs. Davenant felt the same. But she should know, after all those years with her grandfather, how little weight liking held when there was money at issue.

  Adam folded his arms across his chest, leaning back against an old mahogany chest. “Why do that when she can get it for free?”

  Emily wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. “What are you on about, Adam?”

  “Surely you can’t be that naive.”

  “Apparently I am,” said Emily in frustration. “Do stop speaking in riddles.”

  “It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Inspecting the family tree . . . trotting you out in front of all the local worthies . . . tête-à-têtes on horseback . . .”

  Emily had an unpleasant sense that she knew where this was tending. “Oh no—” she began, but Adam was faster.

  “Oh yes,” he said triumphantly, as pleased with himself as if he’d marched her down the aisle himself. “She means you to marry her grandson, of course.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Christ Church, Barbados

  June 1812

  “Marry your mistress,” Mr. Davenant repeated.

  “It would be a very good match,” Jenny said, and winced at how strident her voice sounded. Honey, not vinegar. But she was desperate and it was very hard to be honeyed when the devil rode at her heels.

  “As the world accounts such things,” said Mr. Davenant quietly, and Jenny knew she was losing him.

  No, she had lost him before she had come, she had seen it, that moment when he saw her mistress, checked, and turned away. Her father had seen it too, and there had been no mistaking the triumph on his face.

  Through the dust and the drought, her father had bided his time, but now, now that harvest was in, the blow would fall soon, she was sure. She wasn’t sure what her father had planned for her, but whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. At best, she would be sold. At worst . . .

  “Please,” Jenny said, the word scraped from the back of her throat, raw and hoarse. “Please, before you say anything, there is something you should know. It touches on my mistress. And the colonel.”

  “The stories he tells about her?” Mr. Davenant was quick, she would grant him that. “I don’t believe them, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

  “That is only the smallest part of it.”

  The loamy atmosphere of the Old Mill pressed hard around her. She looked up at Mr. Davenant, a charcoal sketch of a man in the gloaming, threatening in the abstract. One word from him and she would find herself flogged. Or worse. But she clutched to her the memory of that afternoon, the way he had spoken out against the breaking of Nature’s laws. This wasn’t a man to throw her over to the courts, to see her stripped and flogged.

  She hoped.

  Over the months, she had searched relentlessly for a crack in his facade, a sign that his civility was a ploy. But there had been nothing, nothing to show he was other than he seemed. Jenny, expecting hypocrisy, had been first skeptical, and then baffled, and, finally, reluctantly intrigued. She had never met anyone like that before, a man who wore his heart on his sleeve as Mr. Davenant did.

  What would marriage to Mary Anne do to him?

  She couldn’t allow herself to think of that. Pity was the privilege of the powerful; she could afford none.

  Jenny took a step toward Mr. Davenant, her palms sweaty against the fabric of her skirt. “I—I know I have no right to ask you for anything, but may I ask that what I tell you remain in confidence? It is more than my life is worth should any of it be known.”

  Mr. Davenant straightened, looking very solemn. “On my honor.”

  Honor. A word men used among themselves, but never to her. “You say that now. When you hear—you may think otherwise.”

  “Whatever you say to me here stays between us. No other will hear. You have my word.”

  Words, only words, Jenny knew, but they rang out like the trumpets of an avenging army, and she found herself, strangely, reassured. Reassured and unsure.

  “I hardly know where to begin,” she confessed.

  “At the beginning,” suggested Mr. Davenant.

  And so Jenny did.

  “When I was five years old, Miss Mary Anne’s father died.” Jenny took a deep breath, striving to keep her narrative simple. “The colonel sold his holdings in Jamaica and came here, to Beckles, to manage the plantation for his sister. I believe—I believe the colonel’s properties were heavily mortgaged. The luck had run against him.”

  “He plays deep, I understand.”

  “You know?”

  “One hears. It isn’t considered a demerit in a gentleman, any more than drinking deep.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “No. I don’t. Whether that makes me virtuous or merely dull, I can’t tell you. But I’ve never had much sympathy for rakehells. It’s shameful that we call manly in the wealthy what we would account beastly in the poor.” He checked himself. “But you didn’t summon me to hear a homily. So the colonel sought to recoup his fortunes at his sister’s expense?”

  Jenny nodded. “Yes, but nothing so clumsy. My fath—the colonel made a pet of Miss Mary Anne. He lavished her with gifts. He bought her gold bracelets and French dolls and—and me.”

  He had dressed Jenny to match the doll, in cambric and lawn, with a gold necklace like a chain about her neck, her hair scraped back and hidden beneath a lace-edged cap.

  This is your maid Jenny. I brought her from Jamaica especially for you. She’s yours now. I’ve deeded her to you.

  You can do with her what you like.

  She could remember the day the letter came from Barbados; how her father had come for her in the quarters, telling her that she was his best girl, his very favorite girl, and she was to accompany him on a grand adventure, and if she was very good, there would be a new dress in it for her. A new dress and gold locket.

  It wasn’t until they were leaving Jamaica that the reality of it had hit her, that they were leaving her mother behind and her little brother. Couldn’t they come too? she’d begged her father.

  And for what? He’d sold them, her father told her, indifferent.

  When she’d asked where, he’d told her to mind her manners or he’d do the same to her, sell her somewhere they’d throw her into a black pit of a mine to grub for gold. Or would she prefer the fields? he’d inquired with mock civility. He could set her to hoeing sugar, out in the fields until her skin burned black and her back was bent and she looked an old crone at eighteen. There’d be no fine dresses for her, oh no, and no gold lockets either. She was nothing—except insomuch as he chose to distinguish her with his regard, and she should be bloody grateful he had.

  She had cried that night into the sleeve of her new dress, bought so dear, too dear, feeling, somehow, obscurely guilty, as though she were responsible for the loss of her mother and half brother.

  The locket had been taken from her upon arrival, gifted to Mary Anne. Jenny’s neck had been nothing more than the case for the carrying, a method of display, like a dog with a message in its mouth. More fool she, to have been tempted and believed, if only for a moment, that such things might be for her.

  She still dreamed of her mother sometimes, of the feeling of arms around her, a hand stroking her forehead, a soft voice singing her a lullaby. She dreamed of her, and woke with tears on her cheeks, longing for something she barely remembered she’d had.

  “Jenny?” said Mr. Davenant.

  “Dust in my throat,” said Jenny huskily, grateful for the darkness. “I was to stay beside Miss Mary Anne in all things, to brush her hair and listen to her confidences and do her lessons. But what I didn’t realize was that my father—the colonel—had other tasks in mind.”

  Mr. Davenant leaned forward intently. “Does he acknowledge himself your father?”

  “Yes. When he wants something of me, he reminds me of th
e blood that binds us. Other times . . .” She wouldn’t think of that now. Only the story she had to tell. “Miss Mary Anne adored her uncle. She was his darling. But the year she turned twelve, accidents began happening. Little things at first. The horse she was riding bolted. There was glass in her stew. A kitchen maid confessed to having dropped the glass and was sold as punishment.”

  Mr. Davenant lifted his head, looking at her sharply. “You said ‘at first.’ What happened after?”

  “The colonel began to be away a great deal, for business. At least, that was what he said. Whenever he was away, something would happen. Not every time, but often enough. There was a spider in her bed. Sarah Bess got bitten changing the linen.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died.” Jenny’s throat tightened at the memory. Sarah Bess’s arm had swollen and festered, and nothing they had done, no poultice they put on it, did any good. She had died shivering and crying out, so hideously swollen that not even her closest family could bear to be near her. “The colonel—he joked that Miss Mary Anne must have a guardian angel looking after her.”

  Mr. Davenant shifted, leaning back, away from her. She couldn’t see his face for the shadows, couldn’t tell whether he believed her or not. “I see.”

  “We didn’t see, not then. We didn’t even see when the colonel started asking after her health. Miss Mary Anne had headaches, from the time she was a girl. They came on during the rains. He made it sound like—oh, like there was something wrong with her mind. But you know that already.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not true, any of it,” Jenny said fiercely. “If she’s become hard, it’s since then, because she’s had to be. Miss Mary Anne, she never got on with the other ladies, but all the boys used to call—Will Alleyne and Johnny Clarke and—”

  “My brother,” finished Mr. Davenant for her.

  “Yes,” said Jenny gratefully. “He more than any. They climbed trees together and threw rocks and scrambled down in the gully. . . .”

  “Yes, I remember it.” Mr. Davenant seemed very distant, worlds away. “I was a child here too, once.”

  “He stole a kiss once.” Slightly more than a kiss. Jenny twisted her hands together. Mary Anne had laughed and told her not to fuss. “There was nothing in it, they were only children together, but—well. But they, all of them, started staying away. We know why now, but we didn’t then.” All those afternoons, looking out the window for carriages that never came. Calling at other houses to a frosty, formal reception. “But that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to discredit her. A man might be desperate enough to marry a madwoman for her fortune.”

  “Like me?” said Mr. Davenant wryly.

  “No!” said Jenny, and was surprised by her own vehemence. “A fortune hunter. There are enough of them who come to the island. If they can’t make a fortune, they won’t scruple to marry it. He couldn’t risk that, not when he’d come so far.”

  “What did he do?”

  “My father”—oh, he had been her father then, had insisted on it—“came to me. He told me I was his good girl and if I did what he said, he’d see me set for life. He had—he had made a paste from the manchineel. The death apple. I was to put it in her morning chocolate. To hide the taste.”

  Oh, he had been clever, so clever. The chocolate was bitter, mixed with quantities of sugar to take away the bite. Mary Anne drank her chocolate every morning, from her very own porcelain chocolate pot, that had been her mother’s before her. No one else used it. Only Mary Anne.

  “And you told him no?” Mr. Davenant asked carefully.

  “I told him yes.” Jenny looked him straight in the eye, daring him to judge her. “And then I went to my mistress and told her all. She didn’t believe me at first. She didn’t want to believe me. She loved him, you see.”

  Mr. Davenant shook his head. “And who could believe that such things could happen now? It’s positively Gothic. Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe . . .”

  “My mistress doesn’t read novels.”

  “But you do. Or how would you know the names? But never mind. You convinced her, I take it?”

  “Do you think I’m making it up out of a book?” Jenny felt a creeping horror that all of this might have been for naught, the risk, the pain.

  “No!” He started forward and then checked himself, yanking off his hat and plunging a hand through his hair. “I wish I did. It’s . . . horrific. Unthinkable. How old were you?”

  “Fifteen.” It had hurt all the more because she had loved her father too. She had known that he wasn’t perfect, that he used people, that he was careless in his affections, but when that careless affection had fallen on her it had felt like a holiday, like Crop Over, fiddles playing and feasting for all.

  Mr. Davenant stared at the hat he held in his hands. “When I was fifteen I was at Eton, with nothing more worrisome than construing Horace. Not decisions of life and death. . . . What did you do with the chocolate?”

  “We broke the chocolate pot.” Jenny pressed her eyes shut, remembering the sound as it shattered, the viscous liquid seeping across the floor.

  “You were very brave.”

  “Or foolish.” His sympathy unnerved her. Jenny dug her fingernails into her palm. “We pretended it had fallen. But my father knew. He knew.”

  They had planned it so carefully, timing it to look like an accident, making sure a maid was there to witness it, Mary Anne shrilly berating Jenny for clumsiness, Jenny weeping and protesting that it was Mary Anne’s arm that had knocked her hand, that she would never . . . They had made a great show, and all for naught.

  Mr. Davenant made a movement, his eyes seeking hers in the darkness. “Did he hurt you?”

  “That’s not important.” A lie. He’d chosen his revenge with diabolical accuracy, making her see just how vulnerable she could be, how little her mistress could protect her. Jenny mustered a shrug. “After that—he knew we knew. He had to be careful. But he also knew we couldn’t say.”

  “Why didn’t you go to someone? The constable? The council? Surely, with your mistress’s lineage . . .”

  “Against my father’s word? The colonel is a member of the militia, a good fellow.” She couldn’t stop the bitterness that dripped from her words. “Miss Mary Anne would have been sent straight to the madhouse. Poor thing, her mind is disordered. And I— Who would believe a woman and a slave?”

  “I do.” Mr. Davenant seized her hands, pressing them in his. His hat fell to the floor, rolling to one side. “I believe you. Who else knows?”

  “Only you.” Jenny looked up at him uncertainly, her hands still in his. She didn’t want to offend him by pulling away, she told herself, but it was more than that. How long had it been since anyone had touched her in anything other than anger? He had removed his gloves and his skin was warm against hers, his touch soft, gentle. It made her want to lean toward him, to rest against him. Which was madness, of course. Jenny pulled back. “Miss Mary Anne and I—we’ve carried this alone.”

  Mr. Davenant looked earnestly into her face. “You’re not alone anymore. We’ll see justice done. I swear it.”

  It wasn’t justice she wanted, only safety. Jenny rubbed her hands against her sides as if she could make the print of his touch go away and, with it, the craving for more. “Then you’ll do it? You’ll marry her?”

  “I— There must be another way.”

  “But you called on her,” Jenny protested. “You called again and again.”

  “It was wrong, I know. I called, but not to see her. I came to see you.” Mr. Davenant took a step back, away from her, speaking rapidly. “If there were any way I could, in honor, say yes, I would. But I cannot. Bad enough to be thought a fortune hunter. Worse to be like my father and be always looking over my wife’s shoulder at—at her maid.”

  Jenny’s fingers were ice-cold; her cheeks burning hot. She felt frozen in place, unable to move or look away. “There are some who would think that a boon.”

  “D
o you truly think that of me?” Their eyes met and Jenny could feel the force of his longing like a physical thing. Or maybe it wasn’t his longing but hers, a desire that took her by surprise, as strong as the craving for water after drought. To be cared for. To be loved.

  “Would you have married her—otherwise?” Jenny asked hoarsely.

  “If I had, I would have done both of us a disservice.”

  The silence resounded between them. Jenny could practically feel the warmth of him through the well-tailored layers of wool and linen he wore, not the master of a plantation, not her mistress’s suitor, but a man, laying his heart bare to her.

  Mr. Davenant cleared his throat, locking his hands behind his back. “My brother has feelings for her, I think. I’m not sure he knew he did until I returned home, but he’s been like a dog in a manger these past few months. If he were to come up to scratch . . .”

  “She cared for him once. Before.”

  “There’s a play, Much Ado About Nothing. The hero and heroine refuse to admit their feelings for each other, so their friends make a plot. Each is told that the other is sick with love.”

  “I know,” said Jenny, and then realized how rude she sounded. “I attended my mistress’s lessons with her.”

  Mr. Davenant looked at her in a way that made her feel warm through. “And profited more from them, I’ll wager.”

  “My mistress was always more at home with numbers than words.” Jenny wasn’t quite sure why she felt the need to defend her. “She can add a line of numbers faster than any man in the parish.”

  Mr. Davenant nodded. “If I were to speak to Robert, and you to Miss Beckles . . . I could tell him that she refused me on his account.”

  Jenny turned the notion over in her mind, testing it. “And I could tell her that you refused her on account of your brother’s feelings.”

  “It even has the benefit of being true!” Mr. Davenant beamed at her, his golden hair rumpled across his brow, looking to her for approval.