The Summer Country Page 9

  Charles peered at her through the dim light, caught by an odd sense of familiarity, a resemblance he couldn’t quite place. “Surely, by now . . .”

  “I wasn’t born here. It isn’t something anyone forgets.”

  “Being born here doesn’t seem to have done me much good,” said Charles ruefully. “Do you miss Jamaica?”

  “I don’t remember it.” But there was something about the way she glanced away from him, her eyes glinting silver in the light, that made him suspect she remembered more than she said. The maid dropped a curtsy, bowing her head. “Beg pardon, sir. My mistress will miss me. Do you have any message for her?”

  Charles could feel his cheeks heat. What would anyone think to see him standing here, talking to his neighbor’s maid? One of two things, neither of them to his credit.

  “Only that I trust she will save me a dance,” said Charles. In the ballroom, the set had finished. He could see Miss Beckles curtsy to his brother. And he could see his brother’s eyes settle on him. “Will you tell her so for me?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the maid, and Charles was caught again by that tug of recognition. He had been standing on another balcony, another night. “I shall be glad to be of any honest service.”

  Another pair of pale eyes in a fine-boned face.

  The girls at Beckles . . .

  “Thank you . . . Jenny.” But she was already gone, leaving Charles staring after her, fighting with the evidence of his own eyes.

  “Trying to ingratiate yourself with the lady’s maid?” Robert strolled over to join him, leaning an elbow on the rail.

  Charles felt as though he’d bitten into something rancid. “That only works in the theater. And generally turns to farce. Are they cousins?”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Beckles and her maid,” said Charles urgently. He didn’t know why he was asking, when he was already sure of the answer. But if so . . . if so . . . it made what had already been gross, grotesque. “The colonel—is he the maid’s father?”

  Robert shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised. He’d have to be a monk to refuse what’s offered.”

  “What’s offered?”

  Robert folded his arms across his chest, looking narrowly at Charles. “What were you plotting with Miss Beckles’s maid?”

  “Not what you think,” said Charles. Whatever the colonel might have offered. His own daughter. He had offered his own daughter. “We merely happened to be on the balcony at the same time.”

  “Are you planning to propose to Mar—Miss Beckles?”

  “I’m not planning to propose to anybody! I’ve only just made the acquaintance of Miss Beckles.”

  Robert turned abruptly away from the rail. He wore his militia uniform and the gold braid winked in the light. “Have you heard what they say about her?”

  “No, and I don’t care to.” The last thing Charles wanted to do was think about Beckles or its inhabitants. “Are we old women to gossip over our tatting?”

  Robert wasn’t deterred. “They say she has intemperate appetites. Why do you think she goes nowhere without that maid of hers? Her uncle doesn’t trust her with a groom. . . .”

  Charles cut him off. “Sour grapes, no doubt. She’s not in the common way, certainly, but there’s nothing the least intemperate about her.” If anything, there was an innocence to her. No, not innocence. That wasn’t the right word. A lack of coyness. Her attempts at flirtation were unstudied and awkward, alien to her forthright nature. “She lacks polish, but that’s not surprising.”

  “I forget,” said Robert. “We’re all provincials to you. This must seem very flat to you after London.”

  “I dined out once a fortnight in London. This is an excess of gaiety in comparison.” Robert made no effort to hide his disbelief. “I was a student, not a pink of the ton. Most of my evenings were spent with my Blackstone and a cold pork pie.”

  Or with his fellows, sprawled in someone’s rooms, drinking cheap claret out of mismatched glasses. The circles in which he’d moved in London wouldn’t have interested Robert, but Charles missed them, desperately. He missed the gray fog and coal smoke, the murky backdrop against which ideas blazed out with such clarity, words more real than objects.

  Not like here, where the world of the flesh pressed around him, everything too hot, too earthy, too real.

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” said Charles shortly, “that Miss Beckles’s uncle might have spread those rumors to ward off the fortune hunters?”

  Robert’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. “Like me?”

  “Or me,” said Charles. “You aren’t burdened by expensive obligations.”

  “No, I’m not, am I? I haven’t anything.”

  Charles cursed himself for imprudence. “I misspoke.” He cast about for something, anything else to say. “Did you know someone’s been stealing at Peverills?”

  “Would you like me to turn out my pockets?”

  “I wasn’t accusing you.” Charles felt suddenly deeply weary. It was no use. There was nothing he could say that Robert wouldn’t interpret to his discredit. “Fenty said he showed you the books.”

  “What does a Redleg know about the running of a great estate?”

  “Enough to add a column of numbers and find it wanting,” said Charles. “You know the estate better than anyone. Is there anyone who would steal from us?”

  “You might ask if there’s anyone who wouldn’t,” said Robert savagely. “Including that Redleg of yours.”

  “He’s taken nothing we haven’t given him,” said Charles. He’d worked closely with Fenty these past few weeks. Every shilling the man earned went back to his family in St. Andrew. For himself, Fenty lived a Spartan existence, his entire being focused on his work. Charles had invited him to avail himself of the table at the great house, but Fenty seemed to prefer to dine on whatever came to hand, gnawing a crust as he continued at his labors. His one indulgence was candles, burning late through the night. “I would vouch for his honesty.”

  “What do you know of him? He could be robbing you blind if he’s as clever with numbers as that.”

  “He could,” Charles admitted. The best way to blunt rage wasn’t to fight it but to let it wear itself out. “But I don’t believe he has. Not yet, at any rate. I can account for every candle he’s taken, all burnt in our service.”

  Robert took a turn around the veranda, his boots clicking on the boards. “All right. If you must know. It’s Old Doll. And I told her she might.”

  “You told her she might?” Old Doll had been the housekeeper at Peverills for as long as Charles could remember, her various relations filling the house as seamstresses, housemaids, nursemaids, the very upper echelon of service. She had her pick of the family’s castoffs; she dined well on the leavings from table. Of all people, she would, Charles have thought, have had the least need to steal. “I don’t understand.”

  Robert slouched away. “It’s not as if I gambled away the family silver. Who’s to miss a bit of tea and candles?”

  “Hundreds of pounds of tea and candles,” said Charles slowly.

  Fenty had painstakingly reconstructed years of jumbled accounts, revealing a steady drain on the household. Old Doll must have made a pretty penny reselling the family’s goods in Bridgetown. With Robert’s connivance.

  “You mean dollars.” Robert glowered at him. It was, apparently, yet another betrayal on Charles’s part that after all his years in England he thought in pounds rather than dollars; both might be used on the island, but the planters preferred their dollars. “Don’t look at me like that! It’s not like I was pocketing the money. I did it for the family. I did it to spare Mama.”

  He looked so young, his brother. So young and defiant and scared. In the place of the man in his militia uniform, Charles could see a little boy, still in skirts, holding a broken wooden soldier half behind his back.

  Od’s blood, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Not any of it. Charles rubbed his aching temples with two fingers. “
What did you do, Robin? If Doll has something over you . . .”

  “Me?” Robert choked on a wild laugh, and Charles realized his brother was more than a little drunk. “That’s rich. Not me. Father. Our sainted father. God rest his soul. Do you remember Nan? Doll’s daughter Nan?”

  “Nan? Of course.” Doll’s youngest daughter had been their nursemaid. Charles still remembered bringing her posies of wilted flowers; the wrench of being moved from the nursery to the schoolroom. She had, he knew, been made their mother’s maid, her closest servant and confidante. “What has she to do with anything?”

  “Father was tupping her.” Robert glared at him, daring him to deny it. “We have—had—an arrangement, Doll and I. I turn a blind eye and she wouldn’t shout the truth to the world. It seemed fair enough.”

  “No,” Charles said. That was all. “No.”

  “What do you know? You weren’t here.” Robert’s rage and frustration poured out like acid. “Mama was sick in bed and Father was rutting with her maid. I saw them. I saw them holding hands, making eyes at each other. . . .”

  “Robin. Robin. I don’t know what you saw, but it can’t have been what you think. Father wouldn’t.” Not with their mother’s own maid. Not at all. “He wouldn’t do that to Mother, much less take advantage of a woman in his power. You know Father’s views. . . .”

  “Oh yes, fine words on a piece of paper!”

  “What did Doll tell you?” He couldn’t, he supposed, be surprised that Doll might take the chance to feather her own nest. With their mother so ill, a change of regime was sure to come sooner or later. And Robert, eager to protect their mother’s feelings—he would have been an easy mark.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Robert’s hands clenched in fists at his sides. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been an honest bastard. But Mama—it would have killed her if she’d known. I had to do what I could. I had to.”

  “Robert, I’m sure you thought you acted for the best. But whatever it was Doll told you—”

  “He installed her in a house in Bridgetown. Nan. The minute Mama died.” Robert shook off Charles’s hand, catching at the veranda rail to steady himself. “They’ve a bastard there. A girl.”

  “I—” Charles’s tongue tangled in his lips. “We have a sister?”

  “No. Father has a by-blow. It’s common enough. Why d’you think Father freed Nan and her child before Mother was cold in her grave? The brat was his. The fee damn near beggared us.”

  Charles felt on firmer ground. “He freed Nan and her child because he promised Mother he would. For her good service.” The manumission fee had been steep, but it had been the right thing to do, a first step in the project of freeing all their people.

  “Is that what he told you?” Robert gave a shout of laughter. “Trust Father to turn vice to virtue. He could roll in a pigsty and come out smelling of roses. At least in his own account.”

  “Robert.” Charles’s heart ached for his brother, left alone, coping with an ailing mother, a preoccupied father—oh yes, Charles had admired and loved their father, but Father was always busy, always away, wrapped up in his societies for improvement of this and that, his correspondence, his charities—left to stew in his own fears and suspicions. “I don’t care about the tea and candles. It’s past time Doll retired. We’ll give her a nice little house of her own and forget about all of this. I’ll tell Fenty it was all a misunderstanding.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you believe it,” said Charles tactfully. And little wonder. If the colonel was any example of what went on, it wasn’t surprising that Robert should leap to the worst sort of conclusions. Perhaps he would benefit from some time away, some time in England. “I believe you meant it for the best. I’m sorry, Robert. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry you were left to care for Mother alone.”

  “Christ.” Robert slammed a palm against the rail. “Do you really think I’m that green? I’ll give you their direction. Take one look at the brat and then tell me who was mistaken.”

  “All right,” said Charles. In the ballroom, people were beginning to turn and stare. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, steering him back toward the ballroom. “Shall we have some lemonade?”

  “I’m not foxed.”

  “Of course you’re not,” said Charles. Robert’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes glassy. “But it is very warm.”

  Robert shook out from under his arm.

  “Only for those unaccustomed to the heat. You’ll see, Charles. Go to Bridgetown and bloody well see for yourself.”

  Chapter Seven

  Christ Church, Barbados

  February 1854

  Emily had never seen a room quite so large as the front room at Beckles.

  It stretched the length of the house in either direction, furniture perched at intervals along the walls, enough to stock a shop, and still the room seemed half-empty. A broad arch opened onto a second great room, this one fitted with a large mahogany table. Servants bustled about, laying out porcelain and silver. The spare elegance made her grandfather’s drawing room seem stuffy and overwrought.

  Emily wasn’t used to feeling small, but she felt small, small and distinctly shabby, here in the center of this vast, elegant room.

  “Goodness,” she said. “Have you considered letting it out for assemblies?”

  Mr. Davenant handed his hat and gloves to a waiting servant. “You’re being kind. Beckles is modest compared to Peverills.”

  “As it was, you mean.” The only household of which she’d had the managing had consisted of one cook/housekeeper and one scullery maid. Emily was accustomed to rolling up her sleeves and polishing whatever might need polish. At that, it might be for the best that Peverills was no longer standing; Emily would have been lost in it.

  How many servants did it take to keep a house of this size running? Emily had already counted a dozen, at least.

  “We make do,” said Mr. Davenant. “Beckles isn’t what it once was, or so my grandmother tells me. But we muddle along.”

  They muddled very nicely. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the French porcelain arranged on top of the mahogany wainscoting or on the ornate gilded frames of the portraits that hung on either side of the arch.

  “Is this your father?” Emily asked, indicating a man with fair hair who posed before an idealized landscape of cane fields, his arm resting on an improbably placed pillar.

  Mr. Davenant joined Emily before the portrait. “My grandfather. I’m told I’m very like him.”

  “Are you?” Emily looked doubtfully at the picture.

  The portrait failed utterly to capture anything of the subject beyond the fact that his hair was fair. Even that was debatable, given the muddy quality of the paint. He might have been in a uniform or a richly hued coat; his stock was a pale blur at his throat. Fields rolled up and down behind him, culminating in a house drawn alarmingly out of perspective. He had been painted with a horse standing behind him and a dog at his feet.

  Mr. Davenant laughed. “It’s a dreadful picture, isn’t it?”

  “The frame is very nice,” said Emily. She peered at the gray-and-coral blur in the upper right corner. “Is that meant to be this house?”

  Mr. Davenant hesitated for a moment. “No,” he said. “It’s your house.”

  “Peverills?” If one stood to one side and squinted, one could just make out the stylized outlines of the roof, so different from the long and low silhouette of the house in which they stood.

  “It was painted before the fire, of course.”

  “The rising, you mean?” said Emily, remembering what Dr. Braithwaite had told her. The memory of her tactlessness made her squirm.

  “Yes, that,” said Mr. Davenant. “The portraits were a wedding gift from my grandmother to my grandfather. You’ll see that she’s standing in front of Beckles.”

  Emily obediently moved with him to the other side of the arch. The white of the house blended into the white
gauze of the woman’s Empire-waisted dress, making her look slightly hunchbacked. A woman stood behind her, her dark skin blending into the shadows, head lowered so that one couldn’t quite see her face.

  “Who is that with her?”

  “Just a maid,” said Mr. Davenant. “I’m not sure if she’s a real person or just an idea the painter had, like the dog with my grandfather. My grandfather never kept dogs—not in the house—but the painter liked the idea of a dog.”

  Emily looked again at the woman in the background. For an imaginary person, she had a surprising amount of presence. Emily could feel the tension straight through the choppy paint, the sense of the woman watching and waiting. Waiting for what?

  “My grandfather was a Peverill, you see.” Mr. Davenant was still talking. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Well, really, he was a Davenant, but his mother had been a Peverill. When he married my grandmother . . . you might say there was a bit of Montague and Capulet in it. The properties had always marched side by side, but there was bad blood between the families dating back nearly to the very settling of the island.”

  “It sounds very romantic,” said Laura, with genuine interest. The lemonade had done wonders for her. She had lost the sickly look and gained some color in her cheeks.

  “It was,” said Mr. Davenant gratefully. “The Peverills were Cavaliers; the Beckleses Roundheads. The Peverills supported the royal governor. The Beckleses championed Cromwell’s man. There’s a story that Sir Marmaduke Peverill personally trussed Praise God Beckles to prevent him sending word to Cromwell’s fleet. Of course, the Beckleses were mad as fire and retaliated by lording it over the Peverills while Cromwell remained in power. And so it went.”

  “Until your grandparents?” Laura was clearly charmed by the story. “Did they meet much opposition?”

  Mr. Davenant looked a bit sheepish. “By then the rivalry was more legend than fact. My grandmother’s guardian made some objection, I gather, but it had to do more with finance than tradition.”