The Summer Country Read online

  “But if it was festering . . .”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I’m so sorry.” It was so painfully inadequate. “Why does Mrs. Davenant keep him on?”

  “Habit?” Turning away from her, Dr. Braithwaite began lining up his implements. “Power, perhaps. She does the real physicking at Beckles. Oh yes. If you want a wound bound, or a powder for a pain, you go to Mrs. Davenant.”

  “Is she—” Emily waved her hands around, looking for the right word.

  “Competent? Yes,” admitted Dr. Braithwaite, with the air of someone who would be fair if it killed him. “I doubt she’s reading the latest edition of The Lancet, but she can clean a cut without killing the patient. She’s used to having it her own way. It mightn’t suit her to have someone interfering. Or—”

  “Or?”

  Dr. Braithwaite turned away from her, using a pair of tongs to pass the needle he had been using through the fire. “MacAndrews knows something she doesn’t want told.”

  “You told me, before I came, that there was something wrong with Beckles.”

  Dr. Braithwaite dropped the red-hot bit of metal into a dish. It clattered against the ceramic. “As I recall, I told you nothing of the kind.”

  “Not in so many words, perhaps—but you implied it.”

  “You forget, I’ve been away these past twenty years. I was eight when I left—when my uncle freed me.” He looked up, his expression uncompromising. “I assume you know about that.”

  “Yes.” Emily didn’t know where to look or what to say.

  Dr. Braithwaite hung up the tongs on their hook. “As you can imagine, it isn’t a time I remember affectionately. And no, before you ask, I wasn’t hunted with dogs or beaten for sport. One doesn’t need to live in Uncle Tom’s cabin to resent being chattel.”

  Emily’s cheeks were bright red and not just from the fire. “How did you know I read that?”

  “An upstanding member of the Bristol and Clifton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society?”

  “It’s done a lot of good, that book.”

  “I don’t deny that. But I don’t want you pitying me. Or searching my back for scars.”

  Emily couldn’t help it; she looked at his back, a broad back, cased in linen and wool.

  “My point.” In a clipped voice, Dr. Braithwaite said, “I’ve spent most of my life in England. My memories of Beckles are, of necessity, limited. If you ask anyone, they’ll tell you that Mrs. Davenant was a good mistress—by the standards by which people judge their own.”

  Emily felt confused and wrong-footed, and also that she was missing something, something just under her nose. “That isn’t an answer.”

  Dr. Braithwaite sat down heavily on the chair. “That’s because I don’t have one to give you. Beckles was—is—a thriving place. The people here are fed and clothed as well or as poorly as anywhere else on the island. If I tell you that I found it an unhappy place—I had reason of my own to do so.”

  She could tell how much it cost him to admit it. He might not bear scars on his back, but that didn’t mean he had emerged unscathed.

  “No. It isn’t just your perception. It is an unhappy place, somehow.” The spyglasses, the strange tensions in the great house, the missing members of the family, the ruins of Peverills just visible in the distance. “George—Mr. Davenant, I mean—told me his father ran away.”

  “Perhaps you’ll change all that when you take your place as mistress.” Dr. Braithwaite rose from the chair, pushing it back with a screech. “When is the happy day?”

  “Happy day?”

  “Your impending nuptials.” Dr. Braithwaite was at his most clipped. “Two great estates, finally united.”

  “Oh, not you too,” said Emily without thinking. “That is—I have no intention of marrying anyone. If any estates are joined, it will be in exchange for pounds sterling, not my hand in marriage.”

  “That’s not the word among the house servants. An announcement is expected daily.”

  Emily shook her head and reached for the cloth, busying herself in wiping surfaces that had no need of wiping. “We’ve overstayed our time at Beckles, my cousins and I. I should have known it would cause talk. It’s past time we took our leave.”

  “If you scrub any more, there will be no table left,” said Dr. Braithwaite mildly. “Where do you intend to go?”

  Emily surrendered the scrubbing cloth. “Here, eventually. I had thought we might move into this house—or the overseer’s house.” She could imagine just how much Adam and Laura would approve of that course of action. They would have to be persuaded. Somehow. Emily put that aside to deal with later.

  “You’ll need furniture. And linens.”

  “And everything else. In the meantime, I suppose we’ll go back to Miss Lee’s hotel.”

  Dr. Braithwaite paused, looking at her as if she were a problem he needed to solve. “If I might give you a word of advice—”

  “Which you intend to give me anyway?”

  Dr. Braithwaite ignored the interruption. “Stay a while longer. Or if you go, remove to another plantation, not to Bridgetown.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the hot season. There’s been a drought. Water supplies are low and increasingly tainted. It’s the perfect breeding ground for disease. I don’t want to cause alarm, but . . . you’re safer in the countryside.”

  Emily wished she still had the cloth to occupy her hands. Instead, she closed her hand over the locket at her throat. “I’m concerned that my friend—my cousin now, I mean—may have contracted something already.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Dr. Braithwaite was immediately all professional.

  “Retching—to be fair, everyone was ill on the boat, but it hasn’t ended since we’ve been here. It’s been over two months now and there’s no sign of improvement. If anything, it’s worse.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Fatigue. Listlessness.”

  “No distemper of the bowels?”

  “None that I’ve observed. But I might not know—that is—”

  “You’re not privy to your cousin’s chamber pot.”

  “Yes.”

  “No headaches? Body aches? Chills? Fever?”

  “No, none of those. But she can’t eat. What she does eat, she casts up again. I thought, some variety of tropical distemper . . .”

  Dr. Braithwaite’s shoulders relaxed. He leaned back against the table. “She’s newly married, isn’t she?”

  Emily nodded. “Yes. But what does that have to do with it?”

  “I doubt we’re dealing with the beginnings of an epidemic. Not of that sort, at least.”

  “Do stop speaking in riddles,” Emily begged. “You haven’t seen her. She’s quite genuinely ill.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” said Dr. Braithwaite. “Without doing injury to your delicate sensibilities, have you ever considered that Mrs. Fenty might be increasing?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Christ Church, Barbados

  December 1812

  There was soon no doubt that Mary Anne was with child.

  Pregnancy didn’t suit Mary Anne. Her head ached and her ankles swelled; her stomach rebelled, not just in the mornings, but in the afternoons and the evenings too. Jenny found herself in constant service, called upon to massage Mary Anne’s temples with lavender water, to read to her from manuals on estate management, to be Mary Anne’s eyes and ears and holder of the slop bucket.

  Dr. MacAndrews prescribed champagne, on the theory that the bubbles would settle her stomach. The doctor Robert called in from Bridgetown recommended a reducing diet, which Mary Anne said was all very well, since she couldn’t manage to eat anyway, and what in the blazes were they bothering paying him for?

  “Only the best for the heir to Beckles,” retorted Robert, and Jenny wasn’t sure if he meant it as a jibe or not.

  Mary Anne took it as her due, and nodded, satisfied, better pleased with her husband than she had been since the marriage. She might
chafe at her enforced inactivity, at the weakness that restricted her movements, but she was fierce with pride at the prospect of an heir for Beckles, determined to bring the babe safely to term even if it meant giving up her rides, her walks, the supervision of her estates.

  “It might be a girl,” Jenny pointed out.

  “Don’t say that!” Mary Anne pressed her eyes shut, leaning back against her cushions. “Lord, I hope it’s not a girl.”

  “You inherited Beckles,” Jenny said soothingly.

  “Yes, and look at me.” The pink was coming back into her cheeks and lips as the wave of nausea passed. “What I wouldn’t give to have been a boy. Do you think I’d wish my situation on my child?”

  I can’t bring a child into this. That was what Jenny had told Mary Anne ten years ago, and Mary Anne had helped her, even though the loss of the child meant the loss of an asset.

  Whenever Mary Anne’s demands became too much, when she found herself missing Charles with an intensity that unsettled her, Jenny reminded herself of that. That Mary Anne had stood by her when she needed it, even though it meant the loss of a child for Beckles, a baby whose worth might have been reckoned in dollars and pence.

  “There’s a difference,” said Jenny quietly, easing her mistress back down. “Your child will have you to guide her.”

  “Yes, I suppose. . . .” said Mary Anne, but Jenny didn’t bring up the possibility of the child being a girl again.

  At dusk, Robert would stop by her room smelling of the stable and of cane, and Mary Anne would accost him with a battery of questions. What was he doing about the new machinery for the mill? Had he replaced the head driver?

  Jenny half expected Robert to shrug and advise Mary Anne to rest. But he didn’t. He sat by her bed and expatiated on his doings as day turned to night, like an agrarian Scheherazade. Jenny suspected it was less for Mary Anne’s benefit and more because he wanted an audience, someone to impress with his industry, but whatever the reason, the pair seemed better pleased with each other than they had been since the marriage, and Jenny began to cautiously wonder whether Charles might be right, whether the baby might be the making of them.

  If Mary Anne survived the process.

  If Mary Anne died . . . Jenny repressed the disloyal thought. She was tired, that was all. She felt sleepy and heavy from the long hours of attendance on her mistress, her limbs weighted, her mind prone to wander. Robert had removed to his own chamber, and Mary Anne liked to have Jenny sleep on a pallet by her bed, to be near in the night when she couldn’t sleep. In the day, Mary Anne insisted on keeping Jenny close, relinquishing her only for necessary errands.

  Mary Anne had always liked to have her with her; now Jenny felt as though she were chained to her. There had been no time to slip away to the Old Mill. Charles, Jenny suspected, had waited for her in vain, more than once. He had finally resorted to sending a gift of fruit to her mistress, a basket of oranges, and, at the bottom, a note bearing only two letters: OH.

  Overseer’s house.

  Doing her best to mask her impatience, Jenny read to Mary Anne and bathed her brow and settled her back against her cushions. “Do you think you can rest a bit? I’ll have Queenie sit by you.”

  Mary Anne cracked open an eye. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “To see Nanny Bell.” Nanny Bell was officially in charge of the laundry. In reality, she supplied a vast array of remedies and cures. The effectiveness of these, Jenny knew firsthand. Oil of oleander . . . It’s the safest way, Mary Anne had promised her, holding her hand as she drank. “She’s promised me a potion to ease your pain.”

  “Tell her there’s a new dress in it for her if she can stop me casting up my accounts every hour.” Mary Anne moved her head restlessly from side to side. “What I wouldn’t give to be on my feet right now!”

  “Don’t,” said Jenny. “Rest. I’ll be back soon.”

  Charles was waiting for her at the overseer’s house, reading a letter by the light that filtered through the window. He dropped it at the sound of her approach, wrapping her in his arms, holding her, just holding her, for several long minutes.

  “I’ve finally hired an overseer,” he said into her hair. “He’s to take up residence after Christmas.”

  Jenny was surprised at the sense of loss she felt. This place, even more than the Old Mill, had been where they had met while Robert and Mary Anne courted, where they could lie together in a proper bed and pretend that this was their home, that they might be together always. But now someone else, a stranger, would be here.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Charles hastened to add. “We won’t need this place anymore if all goes well.”

  “If all goes well,” Jenny echoed. She looked up at him, his golden hair, his London tailoring, a storybook hero wandered out of the page, too rich for everyday use. It baffled her still, that they should have come together like this, that when they were together, being with him should feel so simple, so right. It was mad and impossible, but there it was. When she was with him, she didn’t have to pretend; she felt as though she’d spent her life in tight lacing only to have the knot slashed open, leaving her to breathe free for the first time.

  It made it all the harder to face the prospect of returning to Beckles.

  “Robert’s invited me for Christmas dinner,” Charles said. “He seemed almost amiable. If he’s in good temper . . . perhaps he might be amenable to making me the sale of a domestic servant.”

  “They’re to have the Bolands too,” Jenny said. Christmas was traditionally a holiday for family, but the Bolands had no family on Barbados, and both Robert and Mary Anne were very eager to claim them as their own. “Master Robert will want to impress Mr. Boland.”

  “We can find a way to use that to our advantage, I’m sure.” Charles moved away from her, fussing with the fall of the drapes at the window. “If all else fails, we’ll get them foxed on Christmas punch and conjure Robert’s signature onto a bill of sale. He’ll never remember in the morning and he’ll feel too foolish to disown it.”

  He meant it, Jenny realized. He meant it and hated himself for it. “You would perjure yourself?”

  Charles looked over at her, his eyes very blue. “For you, yes. If that’s what it takes. I can’t bear—” His voice broke. He shook his head. “What am I doing, telling you what I can’t bear? It’s you who bears all. But not much longer. We’ll find a way to free you at Christmas.”

  “Don’t,” said Jenny, crossing the space between them and covering his lips with her fingers, “don’t hope too much.”

  Charles took her hand and pressed a kiss to the palm, a kiss she could feel all the way down to her toes. “If not Christmas, then New Year’s.”

  And Jenny, who had intended to tell him she couldn’t stay, found herself lifting up onto her toes to kiss him, wrapping her arms around him, letting him carry her to the old bed that had served them so well.

  “Christmas,” he promised her as she left, and although she told him not to hope, she couldn’t help hoping too.

  Somehow, when she was with Charles, all things felt possible. She found herself daydreaming as she never had before, imagining elaborate and impossible scenarios. Her mistress gifting her with freedom as a Christmas gift; her master freeing her to impress Mrs. Boland; proclamations from England freeing everyone.

  On Christmas morning, Jenny helped Mary Anne into a new dress, carefully altered to fit the new fullness of her breasts, and placed candied ginger sweetmeats in her reticule to ward off sickness.

  “Take them away. The smell makes me sick,” Mary Anne declared.

  “Nanny Bell said to chew one if you feel the sickness coming on.” Her mistress’s figure was fuller, but her face was haggard, the skin falling away under the cheeks and dark circles beneath her eyes. Nanny Bell assured her that a sick mother meant a healthy babe. Mary Anne had scowled and said, of course she would say that, but had seemed reassured all the same.

  Mary Anne reluctantly took the reticule. “I don’t
want to embarrass myself in front of the Bolands.”

  “You won’t,” Jenny assured her. She doubted the Bolands would care; Mr. Boland had the air of one who had seen it all, and found life, what was left of it, a great joke, and Mrs. Boland was too preoccupied with Mr. Boland’s flagging health to care that Mary Anne wasn’t in looks.

  Mary Anne dropped her reticule onto the dressing table. “It’s important that they sign the contract.”

  “I know,” said Jenny, easing Mary Anne into her pelisse, arm by arm. She couldn’t let her mistress decide to cry sickness and stay at home. Jenny needed this time, these few minutes of quiet. “They will.”

  “Not if I cast up my accounts on their shoes,” Mary Anne muttered, but she let Jenny clasp her necklace around her neck and thread earrings through her ears. “I hope there’s nothing amiss. Robert ought to have been here by now.”

  There had been a messenger come for the master that morning, and Jenny hadn’t seen him since.

  “He’s most likely waiting for you downstairs.” Jenny handed Mary Anne her prayer book. “There. You’ll do Beckles proud.”

  “Hmph,” said Mary Anne. And then, to Jenny’s surprise, she reached into the drawer of her dressing table and drew out a packet wrapped in brown paper. “Happy Christmas.”

  “Thank you,” said Jenny, trying not to show her surprise.

  Mary Anne bit her lip. “Don’t think I’m insensible of what you’ve done for me,” she said gruffly. “Go on. Take it. It’s yours now.”

  She didn’t wait for Jenny to answer, just thrust the parcel in her hand and left. Jenny didn’t follow; she wasn’t to accompany the family to church. Her father hadn’t believed that slaves ought to be baptized; they were children of Ham, denied salvation.

  Jenny looked down at the brown paper parcel Mary Anne had handed her, surprised and touched by the gesture, after the long, difficult weeks that had just passed. She would have her gift later that day with the rest of the servants. It was a tradition at Beckles to give the women a new dress, the men a new smock at Christmas, and a coin to each, with a special gift of money to women who had borne three or more children. Children for Beckles. Jenny’s stomach fluttered uneasily and she busied herself untying the wrapping of the package.