The Summer Country Read online

  To be free. She stared at Charles, seeing her own wonder and delight mirrored in his face.

  But only for a moment.

  When something sounded too good to be true, Jenny knew, it generally was.

  “Once we set foot in England, I would be free. But what of you?” She put a hand to his lips, forestalling his answer. “I would be free, but you would be branded a felon. Everything you had would be forfeit.”

  “Not forfeit, precisely,” began Charles, and broke off at Jenny’s look. “I’d be charged a fine, most likely.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to come back.” He didn’t deny it. “You would be a criminal and, worse than a criminal, a traitor.”

  “But I would have you and our child.” He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself.

  “And Peverills?”

  Charles looked away, and Jenny knew, with a sinking feeling, that they wouldn’t be going anywhere, least of all to England.

  “Perhaps I should just sell it all to Robert,” said Charles, with an attempt at lightness. “He has the blunt to hear him tell it. We could take the money and sail away.”

  “If you sold it to your brother, he would abandon all your plans. Everything you’ve worked for would be torn up within a fortnight.”

  “It might take him slightly longer than that. A month, at the least.” When she didn’t return his smile, he abandoned the pretense. “Yes.”

  It hurt more than anything she had ever done, to give up that dream of England and freedom. But how could she be the cause of Charles’s misery? “You have people who depend on you.”

  “Would you force me to be honorable at your expense?”

  Jenny gave a strangled laugh. “I can’t force you to be honorable. You are. It’s in your bones. You would hate me, by and by, if you gave it all up for my sake alone.”

  “Not for your sake alone.”

  “And if I were to miscarry or our child were stillborn? Such things have been known to happen. There would be no going back.” Every part of her being recoiled from the words, but she forced herself to say them anyway. “Wait a while yet. England will still be there if it comes to that.”

  The relief on his face cut through her like a knife. Eagerly, too eagerly, Charles said, “I’ve been corresponding with Henry Brougham—he was a member of Parliament, although he’s out of office at the moment. He says sentiment in England is changing. Emancipation is coming—he’s willing to stake his career on it.”

  “Is it?” She didn’t want to ruin his dreams, but, from where she was standing, it sounded like so many empty words. “Mary Anne thinks it’s all nonsense.”

  “Trust me,” said Charles. “No one thought they’d abolish the slave trade, and yet that happened.”

  Jenny rested her hand on her stomach, still flat beneath the thin fabric of her dress and chemise. “And how long did that take?”

  Charles looked slightly abashed. “You’re right. We need action, not dreams.”

  “I like your dreams,” said Jenny softly. And she did. She loved him for dreaming them. Attempting to cheer him, she said, “Who knows? If my mistress makes the master angry enough, he might sell me just to get back at her.”

  “Will you tell her about the child?”

  “I’ll have to. If she discovers it without hearing first from me, she won’t like it.” Jenny put a hand on his arm, trying to sound as reassuring as she could. “Don’t worry. I know how to manage my mistress.”

  Or she had once.

  Mary Anne’s moods were erratic, her temper uncertain. Jenny weathered the storms and bided her time, knowing that, sooner or later, someone would comment on her lack of bloody cloths, and Mary Anne’s temper would be touched by her silence. It wasn’t enough for Mary Anne to own her body, these days, she needed to own her mind and heart as well, channeling all her fear and discomfort into a fierce possessiveness, clinging to Jenny as she hadn’t since those first, horrible days after the incident of the poisoned chocolate, when their world had collapsed around them.

  It was in March that Jenny finally broached the subject with her mistress, as she massaged what had, at one point, been Mary Anne’s ankles. Mary Anne wasn’t quite six months gone, but her feet and ankles had all but disappeared in swollen flesh; it hurt her to walk, so she was carried about on a palanquin laden with cushions, squinting against the light. Jenny had smuggled her the accounts to try to cheer her up, but she complained the words shifted and blurred on the page.

  Jenny had consulted Nanny Bell, who told her only that it took women that way sometimes and brewed a pot of dandelion tea for the swelling.

  Mary Anne drank it without seeming to notice what it was, and looked for more. “Is there any water left in the jug? I’ll have to use the chamber pot again, but I don’t care. I feel I could drink an ocean and still be thirsty.”

  “Here.” Jenny poured her a glass of well water and watched as her mistress guzzled it down, drops falling on her dress. When Mary Anne had finished, Jenny said, “I’ve something to tell you. I think—I’m fairly sure—I’m with child.”

  Mary Anne set down the empty glass very, very slowly. “How?”

  “The usual way.” She knew what Mary Anne was really asking. “There was a man I met in Antigua. Do you remember the dance at Fairview? The one the Bolands gave in your honor? He was a guest.”

  “A white man?” Jenny nodded, trying to read Mary Anne’s thoughts beneath her hooded lids. Mary Anne turned her head restlessly against the cushions. “Did he force you?”

  “No! He was . . . very charming. And I—I was lonely.” The words spilled out, half truth, half lie. “I’m happy for your marriage, Mistress Mary, don’t think I’m not, but it’s always been us together, the two of us. And now you have Master Robert and the baby and I . . . He was kind.”

  As she said it, she could almost believe it, the handsome stranger at the dance, sweet words in the garden, a moment’s lapse.

  Whether Mary Anne believed it was another matter. “What was his name?”

  “Henry.” It was the first to pop into Jenny’s head. “He never told me his last name. He was visiting, from the Carolinas, I think he said.”

  Mary Anne pushed herself up against the pillows, looking a bit more like her old self as she calculated. “If it was the dance at Fairview, then you’ll be due in . . . late July.”

  “First babies sometimes come late, that’s what Nanny Bell always says.”

  “This one had better not,” said Mary Anne grimly, looking at the curve of her stomach. “I’ve had enough of him already. Ah, well. That’s one good thing to your condition. He’ll be a companion for my boy.”

  Jenny knew better than to point out that one or both might be girls. Mary Anne was determined to bear a male child, and if she said it, so must it be.

  Mary Anne’s face was gray with fatigue and pain. “Your child and mine. History repeats itself.”

  “But not in all ways,” Jenny said hastily.

  “I hope not.” There was an abstracted expression on Mary Anne’s face, as though she were working out a particularly knotty sum, and one whose result didn’t please her. “Bring me my writing desk. And call Queenie. I want to send a letter.”

  “Shall I carry it for you?”

  “No.” Mary Anne softened the harsh negative by saying roughly, “Bearing a child is miserable. I need you to take care of yourself.”

  This, for Mary Anne, Jenny knew, was an effusive expression of concern.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, her expression calm, her emotions in turmoil, resentment and affection, all jumbled together. She would leave Mary Anne for England in a moment if the chance arose. But she would also feel guilty for it, as absurd as she knew that to be.

  Mary Anne turned her face away, uncomfortable at being caught out in a kindness. “How will you attend me if you don’t? Weren’t you meant to be fetching Queenie?”

  Jenny never did see what Mary Anne wrote, but Charles did. The letter came to him
as he was in conference with the head driver, mapping out a new constellation of tenant farms. Making his apologies, he traded his stained buckskins for pantaloons, hastily tied a fresh cravat, and took horse to Beckles.

  Mary Anne received him in the garden, where a special chair had been arranged for her in the shade of the arbor, well supplied with cushions.

  It had been some months since he had seen her—four to be precise—and the change in her was as alarming as it was sudden. Her face was puffy, her hands and fingers so swollen that her wedding ring was all but lost in the reddened swell of flesh. She looked like a caricature of herself drawn by Gillray, the greedy Creole swollen with sugar proceeds, lolling on cushions and being served iced drinks by a waiting slave.

  Charles dropped to his knees beside her chair, horrified. “Miss Be—Mary Anne. I had no idea it was so bad.”

  “There’s no need to wring your hands over me,” she said irritably. “I’m with child. It’s hardly an unusual condition.”

  “No, but—” Charles felt entirely at a loss. His knowledge of pregnancy was hardly extensive, but he’d had enough friends with sisters and wives to know that this was something out of the ordinary. He seized on a vague memory from a drawing-room discussion in London. “Has Robert called for an accoucheur? It’s quite commonplace now in London, to have a specialist for childbirth.”

  “As if any man could know more than Nanny Bell. Who do you think delivers your slaves’ children?” Charles was caught wrong-footed. He knew, of course, that there were children who were born and midwives who cared for them, but other than ratifying the distribution of extra provisions and monetary gifts to the new mothers, he had little to do with it. Mary Anne took advantage of his confusion to say, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. No, not my child. My maid’s. Jenny’s.”

  Charles sat down abruptly on his heels. “Oh? Is your maid with child? If you need a new maid, I’m the last person to be of assistance.”

  “It’s not that.” Mary Anne drank deeply from her water glass, then held it up for the slave standing behind her to refill it, never once looking back as the water magically poured into the glass. “She claims the father was a Henry from the Carolinas.”

  There was a slave behind her with a water jug, another with a palmetto fan. Mary Anne seemed entirely unaware of either. Charles glanced nervously from them to his sister-in-law. “Do you have reason to doubt it?”

  Mary Anne thrust out the cup for the boy behind her to take. “I thought—Robert.”

  “Robert.” Charles didn’t have to feign his surprise. Relief gagged him, making him gape at her. “Robert?”

  Mary Anne scowled at him. “Yes, Robert. Well?”

  “You know I’m not in Robert’s confidence,” Charles said carefully. “I haven’t noticed any signs of partiality.”

  “No. Not partiality. Revenge.” Mary Anne looked up, and Charles thought that he’d never seen her look so vulnerable. He was accustomed to thinking of his sister-in-law as indomitable, but now she looked very lost and very young. “If he wanted to hurt me . . . Jenny is the one person in the world who is completely mine.”

  It gave Charles a sick feeling, to hear Jenny spoken of so, like a jewel one might put in a case and lock away. “Have you ever thought of freeing her? In reward for her service to you.”

  “Why would I do that?” Mary Anne looked at him as though he were mad. “Did Robert put you up to this? He wants me to give her up. He thinks she keeps secrets for me.”

  “I haven’t spoken to Robert since Christmas.” Charles pressed his eyes briefly shut. Jenny had been right and he had been wrong, all along. “Are things so bad, then, between you and Robert?”

  “He thinks I cuckolded him with you. But you know that.”

  “Yes.” He had caused this, without intending to. All of it. “I don’t know how to convince him otherwise.”

  “Find a wife,” said Mary Anne. She made to rise, but stopped, her face contorting with pain, her hand going to her stomach.

  “Mary Anne?” Charles grasped her by the elbow.

  She shook him aside, her back hunched, her breathing ragged. “It’s nothing. It happens—just a pain.”

  “Let me take you inside.” For a moment, all Charles’s other worries were submerged beneath the immediate emergency. Whatever she claimed, Mary Anne wasn’t well. He nodded to her attendants to bring her palanquin. “And don’t worry about your maid’s child. I’m sure Robert has nothing to do with it.”

  “He’s keeping a woman in Bridgetown. A mulatto girl. He thinks I don’t know, but . . .” She lifted her hand to her temples, pressing hard. “She’s welcome to him.”

  Charles held her arm to steady her as she lowered herself onto the sedan chair her attendants had brought for her. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” As they lifted her in the air, Mary Anne looked down at him, chin jutting out. “I should have married you.”

  “You don’t mean that.” To the nearest slave, Charles said, “Please give my compliments to your master and tell him to call on me if I can be of any assistance at all.”

  He watched, with concern, as Mary Anne was carried back along the path into the house, looking strangely small slumped in her litter. He thought he caught a glimpse of Jenny, standing by the veranda, but he couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to risk coming closer to the house. The risks were too high for them all.

  Instead, he went home and wrote letters to friends in London, to Brougham, to Wilberforce, to Lord Grenville. He wrote to Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, and to Lord Castlereagh, the secretary of state for foreign affairs. He wrote to Lord Bathurst, the secretary of state for the colonies, and to Henry Bunbury, his undersecretary. He had little sway with them, he knew; they were Tories and his father had been a vocal Whig, and they were preoccupied with the war with France besides, but someone, someone had to care, to be struck by the injustices being perpetrated under the aegis of the Union Jack.

  Charles threw himself into the work of the estate and his letter-writing campaign, permitting himself to wait at the Old Mill not more than once in a week. It was a pointless indulgence, he knew. With Mary Anne as she was, Jenny couldn’t get away, and to walk that far, in her own delicate condition—Charles grimaced himself. He’d seen his own slaves in the field holing the ground and chopping cane while carrying a baby to term. Jenny wouldn’t balk at the walk. It was he who worried for her. It was torture being unable to see her, being forced to rely on the odd glimpse as he rode past on trumped-up errands.

  He forced himself to go hat in hand to his brother, under pretense of asking for advice about Peverills in light of Robert’s greater experience, praying for a glimpse, at least, of his Jenny.

  Robert was gratified but suspicious. Charles dragged out the meeting as long as he could, accepting the punch Robert offered reluctantly, because hospitality demanded it, trying to give Jenny time to hear and find a way to visit.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about my wife?” Robert demanded, as Charles finally took his leave.

  “You must think me rag-mannered,” said Charles with a forced smile. “How does Mrs. Davenant?”

  “Well,” said Robert, in a tone that forbade further questions, just as Jenny slipped into the room. Charles’s heart twisted at the sight of her. Her face was thinner, her features more defined, but she didn’t look like Mary Anne, he saw with a surge of relief that nearly unmanned him, only like a more tired version of herself.

  “Master Robert?” She didn’t look at Charles, but Charles couldn’t quite stop himself from looking at her, at the curve of her belly beneath her apron where their child grew. “My mistress was asking for you.”

  “Shall I pay my respects?” Charles inquired carefully. Anything to draw out this moment, to drink in the sight of Jenny and his child.

  “No need,” said Robert. “I’ll let her know you were inquiring after her.”

  Reluctantly, Charles took his leave. His last sight of Jenny was the sway of
her skirt as she climbed the stairs behind Robert.

  Charles went home and tried to begin another letter, but his pen stalled and stuttered, spilling blots on the page. What use was the pen? It was nothing here. All his hopes, all his beliefs were mere airy nothing, powerless against the force of law and custom that kept his lover and child from him.

  He rested his head against his desk, despair making him weak. What in the devil were they to do? Wait a while, Jenny had urged him, and that was all very well, but what happened when the time passed and he had no better plan than before? And every moment, their child’s birth drew closer. If he failed to free Jenny, he failed their child as well. His own child, who would be born his brother’s slave.

  Mad ideas chased around Charles’s head. Kidnapping, deception. The stuff of Monk Lewis’s novels.

  Shaking his head at himself, Charles did the only thing he could do. He crumpled up the soiled sheet of paper and began again.

  My dear sir . . .

  When the letter came from England in May, Charles knew it was too soon to be a reply to his petitions. He knew, but he tore it open eagerly anyway, cursing himself for disappointment when he saw that it was in Septimus’s hand, his old schoolfellow and one of his closest friends. It was a long letter, two sheets closely written and crossed.

  Situated as you are, you won’t have heard about Hal. He died bravely, they say. . . .

  Harold St. Aubyn. The heat and sounds of the plantation receded, jalousies gave way to shutters, the barking of the dogs to the cries of small boys. Hal had been his first friend at Eton, his champion, the one to stand against the bullies all too eager to debag the little West Indian whelp. Are his balls made of gold? they’d jeered. But Hal had come out of nowhere, taking Charles’s part.