The Summer Country Page 8

  The maid holding the tray stood impassive.

  Mr. Davenant smiled at her. “Thank you, Polly. Will you tell Mrs. Davenant that we have company?” To Emily, he added, “It’s a formality, of course. She’ll know already.”

  “How convenient,” murmured Emily, but she couldn’t help glancing back over her shoulder at the spyglass sitting so innocuously on its stand.

  Was that how Mr. Davenant had seen them, all the way by the ruins? Could he see all the way to Peverills? It was disconcerting, knowing one was being watched.

  “I think it’s ingenious,” said Adam. “I’ll have ten of them put in at Great George Street, so that we can pretend not to be at home when my sisters call. Are you coming, Emily?”

  “What? Yes,” said Emily, and followed Mr. Davenant and her cousins through the front door of Beckles.

  Chapter Six

  Beckles

  March 1812

  “What is she doing riding out with Davenant?”

  Jenny’s father caught her behind the washhouse, her arms full of linens. That he’d lain in wait for her, she had no doubt. He’d have seen her from the glass he kept by his window and marked his time until she emerged. Jenny schooled herself to show no reaction. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d startled her.

  “Riding,” said Jenny, and then, when her father’s face darkened, she added, “If there were anything more, don’t you think I’d have told you?”

  “Would you?” The colonel gripped her chin in his hand, forcing her to stare up into the face that was so like hers. She’d gotten her looks from him, the long lines of her cheekbones, the deep-set gray eyes. Nobody dared comment upon it, yet everybody knew.

  She wasn’t the only one of her father’s bastards at Beckles, but she was the only one he had honored with his attention.

  Jenny forced herself to stand still, even though her heart was going like a blacksmith’s hammer beneath the pile of linens. “I know which side my bread is buttered.”

  Her father released her, so abruptly that her head snapped back. “See that you do.” There was no need to add an or else. He’d made the consequences clear enough. He might not own her anymore, not on paper, but what he wanted to do with her, he could. He had proved that well enough. But she wasn’t going to think about that. Not now. “I don’t want her seeing Davenant again.”

  “Stranger if she doesn’t. Being neighbors and all.” Jenny balanced her basket on her hip, trying to look as if the idea had just come to her. “They say familiarity breeds contempt.”

  Her father gave a short bark of a laugh. “Give her enough rope and she’ll hang herself? There are times when you almost show sense.”

  “Sir.” Jenny bowed her head, the picture of submission. As long as he couldn’t see her eyes.

  The colonel’s booted foot tapped against the dirt path. She could see him working over the idea, turning it over in his mind.

  “All right. Let her have her amusement. It will all be over soon enough.” As if by chance, he added, “I’ve asked Dr. MacAndrews for dinner. These headaches my niece has been having . . . I don’t like them. I don’t like them at all.”

  “No, sir,” said Jenny.

  Her father didn’t say anything else, just nodded abruptly and strode away, confident that his message had been received. Which it had. First the stick, then the carrot. That obscene pantomime with Davenant, followed, now, by this pretense of complicity. She could work with her father to destroy her mistress—or suffer the consequences.

  It might, Jenny thought, making her way back to the house, have been more effective as a tactic if she’d had the least faith her father would stand by her. But she knew, knew from experience, knew from years of watching him, that as soon as her usefulness was done, so would she be. There would be no manumission, no tidy house in Bridgetown or advantageous marriage, the various plums he had dangled in front of her as his fancy took him. Instead, she was just as likely to be sold, an inconvenient reminder of an unfortunate interlude.

  At least Mary Anne could be trusted to keep her promises—most of the time.

  And that was just the crux of it, wasn’t it? Mary Anne needed Jenny; she might even love her. But that didn’t mean she was to be trusted. None of them were. And Jenny would do well to remember that.

  Mary Anne had no such reserve. She came running down the steps to meet Jenny, in a welter of impatience.

  “Well? Do you have my sprig muslin?” Lowering her voice, she added, “I saw you from the window. What did my uncle want with you?”

  “The front breadth is spoiled.” Jenny made a show of adjusting her burden. “He’s asked Dr. MacAndrews to dine.”

  “Doctor MacAndrews.” Mary Anne didn’t bother to hide her contempt. Jenny cast her a warning look. The maid dusting the brasses, the boy sweeping the steps: any of them might be her father’s spy. Any of them probably were. “What? He’s no more been to the university in Edinburgh than I have. The only study he’s done is of the bottom of a bottle.”

  Jenny kept her eyes down, her voice neutral. “The master wishes the doctor to alleviate the pain of your headaches.”

  “By removing my head?” Mary Anne muttered as they crossed the threshold into her rooms. The chambermaid didn’t stop her sweeping, but her head moved slightly, listening. Mary Anne bared her teeth in a smile. “My uncle is all kindness, but he is mistaken. You can go now, Esther. Tell Cook there’ll be one more at table.”

  Never mind that Cook already knew, probably had known long before her mistress. Mary Anne fought fiercely for the illusion that she had any say in the ordering of her own household.

  The door had barely closed behind the maid before Mary Anne turned back to Jenny. “Is that his plan, do you think? To drug me into insensibility?”

  Jenny busied herself laying out the linens, smoothing imaginary creases out of an impeccably pressed chemise. “He didn’t say.”

  “You must have some idea.” When Jenny didn’t answer, Mary Anne turned on her heel, pacing her usual track from window to bed. “He means to put me in the madhouse, doesn’t he?”

  “He might do,” said Jenny neutrally.

  Or an accident, carefully staged. Poor girl, her mind was unbalanced. She never noticed that open window. . . .

  “Might do,” Mary Anne mocked. “What did he tell you?”

  “Only what I’ve told you.” Jenny held her mistress’s gaze. “I’m not privy to his plans. Not anymore.”

  Mary Anne’s eyes dropped first. She knew the reason for it as well as Jenny and the cost exacted for it.

  She sat down among Jenny’s carefully folded linens, never minding the mess she was making. “He’s grown bolder.”

  Bolder wasn’t exactly the word Jenny would have used. Her father was still playing a careful game, nothing that could redound discredit upon him. But he was enacting his moves with a grim determination that boded ill for Jenny’s mistress. He was done playing a waiting game.

  And Mary Anne . . . Mary Anne wasn’t suited to subtlety.

  “You might try to pay him off.” Even as she said it, Jenny knew it was futile. Once, perhaps, it might have served. But not anymore. Her father would never settle for less than the whole. And Mary Anne would never willingly part with a penny of what was hers, even if she wrote her own death warrant in the process, and Jenny’s with it.

  Mary Anne shrugged the suggestion away. “And have him come back for more? No. But MacAndrews, now . . . How much do you think it would take to buy him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jenny honestly.

  “Not much, I imagine.” Mary Anne fingered the locket that hung from a ribbon around her neck. “The price of a bottle of brandy.”

  “You get what you pay for,” Jenny cautioned.

  “Meaning he’ll be too foxed to remember he’s been bought? In that case, we’ll remind him.” Mary Anne was already thumbing through the small box in which she kept her trinkets, the small ornaments her guardian had considered suitab
le to pass on to her. “My mother’s pearl brooch. I never wear it.”

  “Would you offer it to MacAndrews?”

  “No. You will.”

  Jenny’s hands went cold. Her lips felt numb. “He’ll think I stole it. If he goes to the master . . .”

  Mary Anne looked as though she were about to argue, but something in Jenny’s face made her reconsider. With a shrug, she said, “The filigree combs, then. They’ve never become me. I can gift them to you. I’ll do it tonight, in front of my uncle.”

  Mary Anne looked dangerously pleased with herself at the notion.

  “Don’t tweak his tail too hard,” Jenny warned. Those combs had been the colonel’s birthday gift to his niece.

  “Oh, hardly,” said Mary Anne airily. “But I can’t help it if he wastes his coin on bagatelles fit only for the servants. You can sell them—in Oistins. Or Bridgetown. Bridgetown would be best. You’ll get a better price, I imagine. Don’t worry. I’ll give you a pass in case anyone questions you.”

  It was no use arguing with Mary Anne when she had the bit between her teeth; one could only hope that she might be distracted or forget. Once challenged, she would only dig in her heels. “What if someone follows me?”

  “There’s no harm to your selling something I’ve given you, is there? Whatever Uncle John suspects, he can’t know.” Having resolved the matter to her satisfaction, Mary Anne said, “Once I marry, he’ll have no power over me. I can have him banned from the grounds if I like.”

  If her husband allowed it. But they would face that trouble when they came to it.

  Against her better judgment, Jenny produced a folded piece of paper with a red seal from under her apron. “The Tremaines of Rosehall are giving a dance for Mr. Davenant.”

  Mary Anne frowned at the paper. “This is my uncle’s seal.”

  “The master’s reply. He regrets that you’re indisposed.”

  There was a dangerous glitter in Mary Anne’s eye. “Oh, am I? On the contrary, I am quite disposed to attend. Get me paper and ink. He’ll never dare challenge my attendance once this is sent.”

  Unless he drugged her into insensibility first. Jenny watched as Mary Anne wrote her reply with such ferocity that the nib left a gash in the paper. “Go softly, Miss Mary.”

  “Softly won’t serve.” Mary Anne doused the paper in sand, setting up a shower of small grains as she shook the note in the air. “Here. See this delivered. No. Deliver it yourself. I won’t take a chance on this.”

  “Yes, mistress.”

  Belatedly, Mary Anne glanced up at her, catching something in her voice or posture. “Will there be trouble for you? Will he know you took it?”

  After a pause, Jenny shook her head. “Not this time.”

  Not if she went to him first, with the information that she’d delivered a sealed paper to Rosehall, professed ignorance when he raged, as he surely would, that she ought to have brought it to him first. He would be frustrated, yes, but he wouldn’t punish her, not this time. He would see it as clumsiness, not treachery.

  There were benefits to being underestimated.

  “Good,” said Mary Anne, dismissing the matter. “I’ll wear the new jonquil silk. And my mother’s diamonds. Let Mr. Davenant see just what he stands to gain.”

  Jenny paused, Mary Anne’s letter in her hand. “Are you sure he wishes to be reminded?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Jenny bit her lip, weighing her words. “Mr. Davenant has . . . romantic tendencies.” She could picture the two of them under the boughs of a tamarind tree, talking past each other, Mr. Davenant speaking of principles and Mary Anne of crops, Mr. Davenant of philosophy and Mary Anne of accounts; Mary Anne cited Lascelles’s Instructions for the Management of a Plantation in Barbadoes and for the Treatment of Negroes, Mr. Davenant quoted a Frenchman named Rousseau. “He might not want to think himself a fortune hunter.”

  Mary Anne drew back her head and looked narrowly at Jenny. “You know him so well?”

  “I listen. As you instructed me.”

  “He can be as romantic as he likes. That doesn’t change the fact that the roof at Peverills needs repairing.”

  “You can’t stand in the road and see the leak in somebody else’s house,” said Jenny softly. It was a proverb she’d heard in the quarters. Not in speech with her, of course. No one ever stopped and gossiped with her. It was all yes and no and averted eyes, as befitted her station as the voice of her mistress, the foreign by-blow of the master.

  Mary Anne was not impressed. “You can when it’s Peverills. They’ve lost half their leading. One hurricane and the house will come crashing down about them. I’ll wear the diamonds.”

  “Yes, Miss Mary,” said Jenny, and took the letter and her counsel away.

  “Away so soon?” said Mrs. Tremaine, bustling over to Charles. Diamonds bounced in the deep V of her bosom. “If you find yourself in want of a partner . . .”

  “Only of lemonade. The heat, after London . . .”

  “It’s very cool of an evening,” said Mrs. Tremaine defensively, admitting no defect to her island. “Now, if you need a partner for the quadrille, my Becky—”

  Charles wasn’t sure which one of the Tremaine daughters Becky might be, but he was entirely sure he didn’t want to dance the quadrille with any of them. The room was watching and waiting for him to choose a bride and sire an heir, preferably within the evening.

  “I believe Colonel Lyons is looking for you,” said Charles.

  He took advantage of his hostess’s distraction to escape, not toward refreshments, but onto the balcony, where he took several deep breaths of the warm evening air. The combination of hothouse flowers, candle smoke, and French scent was beginning to make his head ache.

  But not the punch. Charles wasn’t making that mistake again. He’d silently abandoned the many glasses pressed upon him, pretending to drink when necessary, trying not to choke on the fumes. From the smell of it, the punch was nine-tenths rum, with a hint of lemon and a generous scoop of sugar, fruits of the local bounty in their headiest form. Everyone expected him to toast and be toasted. He was the guest of honor. This party was, ostensibly, to welcome him home.

  Nostos. That was the Greek word for it. Homecoming.

  Had Odysseus felt thus when he sighted Ithaca after all those many years away? The pinch of expectation, like a suit of clothes tailored for another man, too heavy, too tight, choking him. This was his home, that place turned half myth by memory, and yet he had never felt more out of place or more alone.

  It wasn’t that people had been unwelcoming. Quite the contrary. He was overwhelmed with invitations and advice. He should join the militia, join the council, hire a new bookkeeper, try this or that with his crops. It seemed that every unmarried young lady in the district had been conscripted to play on the pianoforte or the harp for him; their mothers shared reminiscences of Charles’s mother and demanded news of the latest fashions from London. Everyone wanted the pleasure of his company; he need never dine alone unless he so chose.

  And yet. He was a novelty, an outsider. Charles didn’t miss the way his neighbors’ voices changed when they spoke to him, the rolling rhythms of the local accent clipped and strangled into something more like his own diction. Even Mary Anne Beckles, so forthright in her way, adopted what she fondly believed to be ladylike airs in his presence, never knowing that he preferred her as she was when she forgot herself, blunt and businesslike.

  Everyone was kind, everyone had advice to give, but they weren’t at ease with him as they were with Robert. Conversations stopped when Charles entered a room; fans were retrieved and cravats straightened.

  The best thing he could do for everyone would be to depart, forthwith. Or would it? Robert might know more than he about practical management, but he would never further their father’s schemes or keep his promises.

  He had pledged his father. Not just his father but all the souls in his care, the men and women of Peverills. He couldn’t shrug
off that burden just because he found it didn’t suit him to shoulder it.

  But duty was poor company of an evening, and very lonely after the fellowship he had left behind in London.

  “Master Charles?” A woman stood at the far end of the veranda, her white apron ghostlike in the darkness. She approached him warily, as one might a dangerous animal. “Are you ill?”

  “No, not ill.” Not in any way that might be physicked. Charles shook his head, feeling thoroughly sick of himself. He squinted at the figure in the shadows. “It’s . . . Jenny, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.” She held herself very still, as if poised for flight.

  Don’t, Charles wanted to tell her. You have nothing to fear from me. But didn’t she? He couldn’t blame her for shying from him.

  “Shouldn’t you be enjoying the festivities?” said Charles, with false bonhomie. “My brother tells me the servants have their own dance.”

  Charles winced at himself. Servants. Not servants; slaves. It was too easy to fall into the local custom, mincing about with euphemisms, sidling past uncomfortable realities with half-truths.

  “They do.” The silence stretched between them. Charles could hear the scrape of the violin, the whine of the flute, the thumping tread of the dance, as she weighed her answer. “I wasn’t invited.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “I’m a foreigner.”

  “A foreigner?” Charles didn’t quite manage to hide his confusion.

  The maid was betrayed into something that might almost have been a smile, a barely perceptible movement of her closed lips. “Colonel Lyons brought me with him from Jamaica. That makes me a foreigner.”

  “Jamaica isn’t so very far.” Not to him, maybe, he realized. But to a woman who couldn’t leave the parish, much less the island, it must seem as far as the moon. “How old were you?”

  “A little more than five, or so I’m told.” She shifted and the light from the windows fell across her face, highlighting the long bones of her cheeks, the shape of her face beneath her plain white cap.