The Summer Country Read online

  Jenny frowned at him. “But the colonel—Master Robert—”

  “Is in his pocket? I know. But I think Robert will want Beckles more. And Miss Mary Anne, of course,” Mr. Davenant hastily corrected himself.

  Jenny rather thought he had the right of it the first time, that Master Robert would want Beckles first and Mary Anne second. But, then, Mary Anne felt the same way about Peverills. She was not a romantic. Not like Mr. Davenant.

  “It will do Robert good to come first in something,” said Mr. Davenant seriously. “He minds not having Peverills. If he marries Miss Beckles . . . it will give him something to do. I doubt the colonel will have much hold over him once he has a purpose of his own.”

  “It might serve,” Jenny said cautiously.

  “It will serve,” said Mr. Davenant, as though saying it could make it so. “They seem to me to be well suited. I think they might make each other very happy. So you see, we won’t just be averting a tragedy, we’ll be doing both of them a good turn.”

  There was something about the eagerness in his face that made her chest twist. “Do you always believe the best?”

  “I try to.” He grimaced. “There’s a ridiculous character in a Voltaire satire, a Dr. Pangloss, who’s always insisting that all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds, no matter what horrors befall him. I like to think I’m not so naive as that, but I do believe that one can create the good by working toward it. God gave us reason so that we might raise ourselves above our baser natures. There is no ill we cannot cure if we set our minds and our wills to it.”

  “No ill?”

  “Well, the man-made ones. I’m not sure what we can do about tempests and plagues, but I can promise that I will do all in my power to help you.”

  Jenny twisted her hands in her skirt to keep from reaching for him. “To help Miss Mary Anne, you mean.”

  Mr. Davenant winced. “Er, yes. That is—I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” In the distance, Jenny could hear the sound of music. Crop Over was being celebrated with drums and dance and song in all its joyful glory, but in here the sounds were muffled, softened. She felt miles away from everything and everyone, in this dark, safe place, forgotten by the world.

  “For putting you in an awkward position. Of course I’ll do all I can to help your mistress. I only—I only wanted you to know why I felt that it would be wrong of me to marry her. I wouldn’t want you to feel in any way constrained, or put upon, or—”

  Outside, far away, people were drinking rum and blackstrap; they were dancing to the sound of the drum and the fiddle. Men and women were kissing and coupling, not because they were constrained to do so, but because the rum and music coursed through and around them, and what did they have but the pleasure of the hour?

  Jenny had never had that. Between the house and the quarters, belonging to neither place, her father’s weapon, Mary Anne’s tool. She had never kissed a man from desire. Her skin had tingled at a touch, yes, but with loathing, not lust.

  Defiantly, Jenny stepped forward and put a hand on Mr. Davenant’s shoulder and pressed her lips to his, stopping his mouth with a kiss.

  He was tall, even without his high hat; she had to stand on her toes to kiss him. She could feel his quick, indrawn breath, the way his muscles tensed beneath her palm. But he didn’t grab at her, didn’t reach for her, didn’t move. He just stood, frozen, as she brushed his lips with hers.

  She had expected that kissing him would prove its own antidote, that disgust would quell desire. But it wasn’t. It didn’t. They were soft, his lips, not hard, not wet and slobbery like the last man who had presumed to make free of her.

  Gently, so gently, his hand brushed against her side, not yanking, not grabbing, a feather touch, but something about it made her lean closer, into him, the kiss deepening as he kissed her back, kissed her as though she were the most precious thing in the world, slowly and with infinite care.

  She slid her hands across his back and felt the muscles quiver at her touch.

  “I—” Mr. Davenant stumbled back, swallowing hard. He touched his fingers to his lips, looking dazed. “We can’t do this.”

  She hadn’t intended to, but to be told no made her, contrarily, want him all the more. “I thought you said . . .”

  “What I shouldn’t.” Mr. Davenant held up his hands as though to keep her away, or to keep himself away from her, his face raw with regret. “If we were other than we are, I would court you with poetry and apples. I would take you walking in the gardens, and if you chose to steal a kiss, I would hardly say you nay. But we are what we are. I will not take advantage of a woman who cannot refuse.”

  “You aren’t my master.”

  “Yes, but under the law—” At her look, Mr. Davenant checked himself. “All right, I won’t make a brief of it. You aren’t free.”

  “Because I’m not free, does that mean that I don’t feel?” Anger seared through her, anger for everything she had lost, everything that had been stripped from her simply by the circumstances of her birth, the tint of her skin. Something less than human, lower than an animal. “Even the beasts in the fields are allowed to mate as they wish. Would you deny me even that?”

  “And if there were a child?”

  The words were a knife in her gut. “There won’t be,” she said flatly. “I cannot bear children.”

  It had been her father’s revenge for the chocolate. He’d tossed her to a visitor, just another amenity of the house, a middle-aged man, a stranger.

  The potion Mary Anne had procured for her had made her so ill, so very ill. But she wouldn’t, she couldn’t bear a child to be another weapon for her father to use against her. An asset to be worked or sold, taken from her without a word. Better for it to end in cramps and blood than be a person to toil and suffer, a person with a claim on her heart. She’d made her choice when she was fifteen, a choice made in desperation and fear.

  “You need have no fear of consequences. There won’t be a child with your face living in the quarters at Beckles.” Jenny looked at him defiantly, glaring down his pity. “It’s a blessing. Do you think I would want to bear a child to live as I’ve lived?”

  It would have been more impressive if her voice hadn’t broken. She hated herself for giving her father that power over her, still.

  “Oh, Jenny,” said Mr. Davenant, and put his arms around her, not pushing, not grabbing, just holding her, so that her head fit into the curve of his shoulder, the fine wool of his jacket smooth against her cheek. “What did he do to you?”

  Jenny shook her head, feeling the warmth of him through the fabric. She wouldn’t let her father ruin this too. “That’s past.” She looked up at him, leaning forward so that her chest pressed against his, and felt a tremendous surge of power as he trembled at her touch. “It’s nothing to do with this. With us. If you don’t want me, just say so and I’ll go.”

  “But—” Mr. Davenant started to speak and then stopped, struggling for the right words. “How could I know—if it were not of your own free will—that is—I shouldn’t wish—”

  “If you won’t take my word on it, then . . . will this do?”

  Jenny took his face in her hands and kissed him, pouring all her anger and frustration into the kiss, all her feelings of loss and yearning, all those years without touch, without affection, sleeping on the floor by her mistress’s bed, fearing for her life, guarding her emotions.

  Just once. Just once, something to burn away the pain and loss and fear. Just once, something for herself, and her father and Mary Anne be damned.

  “Well?” she asked breathlessly, when their lips parted.

  Mr. Davenant’s lips were swollen, his cheeks flushed. He blinked at her, looking thoroughly dazed, and Jenny felt a savage delight at having deprived him of his eloquence, this man who always had something to say.

  “We should—we should meet again,” he said. His arms were still around her, holding her loosely. “To plot to bring your mistress and my brother tog
ether.”

  “Only for that?” There was a strange power in demanding what she wanted, only because she wanted it. Never mind that she had come to beg him to marry her mistress; this was her moment now, just hers. Let her go to him because she wanted to, not because her father gave her as a gift or Mary Anne dangled her as a bribe. This was hers and hers only, and she would have it.

  “Is that what you wish?” he asked, his voice hoarse and raw.

  “No,” said Jenny, and reached for his cravat, yanking it free, so that she could see the pulse that beat in his throat. She set her lips to the spot and felt him tremble.

  “No,” she said again, and freed a button on his jacket, and then another, finding the linen shirt beneath, tugging it free of his breeches, sliding a hand underneath, the skin warm to her touch.

  Mr. Davenant stood still as a statue, scarcely breathing. She could hear the rasp of his breath and feel the struggle it took for him to stand so still.

  Jenny looked up at him, both hands pressed against his chest. “This. This is what I wish.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Christ Church, Barbados

  May 1854

  “That,” said Emily, “is pure nonsense. Marry her grandson, indeed!”

  “Nonsense, is it?” Adam clasped his hands behind his back, sauntering beside her down the hallway.

  “Don’t be absurd.” Emily picked up her pace. “I’m not nearly aristocratic enough to be a suitable bride for Beckles. You’ve seen the way Mrs. Davenant talks about Grandfather. And being a parson’s daughter seems to be nearly as bad!”

  “If you say so,” said Adam, undeterred. “As your nearest available male relation, I assume I’ll have the honor of walking you down the aisle in the absence of your father?”

  “There will be no—oh, never mind. I need to change. Mrs. Davenant has guests for tea.”

  Adam raised his brows. “Does she? And I assume you’re to pour? No, no, you needn’t say anything.”

  And off he went, whistling, leaving Emily wishing she didn’t feel the need to be the more mature party. But then, with Adam, she had always had to be the more mature party. Don’t mind Adam. That had been the refrain throughout her childhood. It’s only Adam.

  It was only Adam, Emily told herself firmly, as she slammed into her own room, submitting to the ministrations of the maid, Katy, who had appeared, as if by magic, to help her out of her habit. Only Adam making trouble, most likely because he was worried about Laura but didn’t want to admit it, because heaven forbid he reveal any warmer emotion or human concern.

  Yes, that was all. Adam was guilty and cross and making up for it by making trouble. Perhaps he was just a bit offended that he wasn’t included in those endless visits by the neighbors. At home, it was Adam, as heir, who was the center of every occasion, while Emily, the poor cousin, sat at the corner of the room in a mended frock.

  Here, she was the owner of Peverills, a person of consequence, where Adam was merely a junior partner in a shipping concern. The landowners she had met, Emily had observed, viewed the world very differently. Ships and shares were all very well, but they accounted worth in land, in acres cultivated and crops harvested. Anything else was mere flimflam, and all the Fentys’ ships and all the Fentys’ ventures couldn’t make them gentlemen.

  There. Emily splashed water over her face, blotting it with a towel. That disposed of Adam and his insinuations. The idea that Mrs. Davenant was grooming her to marry her grandson . . . It was positively medieval.

  Emily stepped into the dress Katy had put out for her, holding out her arms so that the maid could slide the sleeves on. She’d resisted at first, but Mrs. Davenant had remonstrated with her. It unsettled the staff to have her doing for herself what they were meant to do for her. So Emily let herself be dressed like a doll rather than offend Katy or any of the others who accomplished tasks she might easily have done herself.

  Katy pressed Emily into a chair and she sat so that the maid might do her hair, twisting it out of all recognition, into a hairstyle far from the simple Psyche knot she would have preferred. Her front hair was bunched into curls on either side of her face, the back elaborately looped and braided and secured by an enameled comb that hadn’t come from her own jewelry box.

  The dress on her back, the comb in her hair. Neither hers.

  Emily looked at herself in the mirror and scarcely knew herself. The dress was of brightly flowered cotton, the wide pagoda sleeves and each tier of the skirt edged with lace to match the fichu that crossed her shoulders, everything flounced and frilled, the material itself painfully impractical, a world away from the sensible, dark stuffs she favored.

  More practical for the climate, Emily told herself. That was all. She would swelter in gray twill or black bombazine. It was very kind of Mrs. Davenant to have discovered some old stuffs and made them over for her. All part of the tradition of Creole hospitality, she had been assured; anything for one’s guests.

  The woman in the mirror wasn’t beautiful: her nose was snub and her chin was too strong. But the curls and flowered flounces leant her a sort of determined prettiness.

  She looked, in fact, rather like a younger version of Mrs. Davenant.

  “Ouch.” Emily had, without realizing it, pulled back, leaving a lock of her hair still twisted around Katy’s finger. Wincing, she rubbed her aching scalp. “No, it wasn’t your fault. It’s quite all right, Katy, I’ve prinked enough.”

  She smiled reassuringly at the maid, toying for a moment with the idea of ripping out the comb, shimmying out of the dress, and going downstairs as herself, in her own clothes, with her hair pulled into a knot at the back. But what would that accomplish? Katy would only be hurt by it and Mrs. Davenant would have words for her—not for Emily but for Katy.

  She closed her hand around the gold of her locket, the one item on her person that was hers, truly hers. It looked wrong on the woman in the mirror, out of place. Which was silly. She was the woman in the mirror. A bit of fabric and a few curls couldn’t change the essence of herself.

  Not immediately, at any rate. But over time . . .

  Emily breathed in deeply, feeling the press of the stays against her ribs. Her own stays, at least. She wasn’t going to be cinched into nothingness, even if she was laden down with lace and petticoats. The dress that looked so deceptively light and airy was heavy with the layers of horsehair that held out the skirt, holding her to a slow and stately gait.

  I assume I’ll have the honor of walking you down the aisle . . .

  Emily ignored the gold earrings Katy had set out for her. She wouldn’t be decked like a hog for the feast. She wasn’t going to the slaughter, thank you very much, whatever Adam might say. Or to the altar.

  But it was curious that Mrs. Davenant hadn’t once said a word to her about selling Peverills.

  “There you are.” Mrs. Davenant was already ensconced in her favorite chair in the great room, beneath the portrait of her younger self. Another chair, notably shorter in the seat, was occupied by a woman of late middle age in a truly alarming cap. “Bertha, this is our guest, the new owner of Peverills. Miss Dawson, make your curtsy to my cousin Mrs. Poole. Miss Dawson, you’ll pour.”

  Emily made her curtsy as directed and took up her place beside the tea table. She knew the contours of the teapot by now, the shape of the sugar tongs in her hand. Mrs. Davenant had made a practice of asking her to pour.

  Emily wasn’t unaccustomed to it; Aunt Millicent liked her to pour at parties, a task given to the least important. But here, in this intimate setting, it was the sort of task that might be taken by the daughter of the house.

  Or the granddaughter.

  Oh, bother Adam. Emily leaned forward, twitching the lace on her sleeves out of the way. “Do you take sugar, Mrs. Poole?”

  Mrs. Poole tittered. “That’s not a question you want to ask here, Miss Dawson! We all live by sugar.”

  “We live by it. That doesn’t mean we need to be preserved in it,” retorted Mrs. Davenant.
“Plenty of sugar for Mrs. Poole. She can’t abide anything that isn’t sweet as sin.”

  “Don’t be silly, Mary Anne,” said Mrs. Poole with dignity. “Just a tiny bit. Well—a tiny bit more than that. So. You’re the mistress of Peverills.”

  She stared at Emily as though trying to read her heritage in her face. Her own was as wrinkled as a windfall apple, and alive with frank curiosity.

  “My grandfather left it to me,” said Emily, as she had said a dozen times before. “Perhaps you knew him? His name was Jonathan Fenty.”

  Mrs. Poole didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Emily had no doubt everyone in the vicinity knew not only her parentage but the width of her bust and the mole on her left shoulder.

  Mrs. Poole nodded vigorously, setting her ribbons bobbing. “Oh yes, I remember your grandfather. It was the talk of the parish when he married that widow.”

  “My grandmother,” Emily reminded her.

  “Yes, yes. She’d been married to an Irishman. Not a papist. Goodness, but that man could talk. Old, though. When she took up with—well.” Mrs. Poole took refuge in a coughing fit as Mrs. Davenant delivered a sharp kick to her ankle.

  “Really, Bertha,” said Mrs. Davenant. “Haven’t you more recent scandals to savor?”

  “Was it a scandal, then?” asked Emily doubtfully. Her grandfather she could see having a wild past; her grandmother . . . no.

  “Not a scandal precisely,” admitted Mrs. Poole reluctantly. “But there was such a short time between the old man dying and their marriage.”

  “Three years. Mr. Boland died just before my Edward was born. They were with us that Christmas before Mr. Boland died. . . .” Mrs. Davenant’s diamond earrings swayed as she set her cup down abruptly. “They hardly married over the funeral meats.”

  Mrs. Poole took a gulp of her tea. “But weren’t they married during the hurricane in the summer of thirteen?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Davenant with exaggerated patience. “That was that Weekes boy.”

  “Goodness, it was, wasn’t it? Such a horror, the windows smashing during the ceremony. We all thought the roof was going to come off right over our heads.” Mrs. Poole shivered with delighted horror. “But it was something dramatic. . . . I remember now. Fenty was wed right after the troubles. Sixteen. That was it.”