The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

  “I— This is, what do they call it? Cupboard love.” Jenny yanked at her shift, pulling it back over her head. “It will fade in time.”

  “Not for me.” Charles struggled up to a sitting position, propping his back against the headboard. “Does that scare you so? I’ll leave you be if that’s what you would like.”

  “No.” Jenny moved to sit beside him, her skirts drifting around her as she took his face in her hands. “Don’t swear to anything you’ll regret later. This—this has been—”

  “Yes?” Charles couldn’t help but smirk a little.

  Jenny swatted him lightly on the shoulder. “You know what this has been. But anything more . . . You have your future to think of.”

  “Is it so mad that I want my future to be with you?” Charles could feel himself weighing his words very carefully. Go lightly over rough country, his father always used to say, his father, who was so wrong about some things and so right about others. He looked at Jenny, at the familiar lines of her face, the curves of her lips, the tension in her shoulders. “They never loved who loved not at first sight, the poet says, but I never believed it. I still don’t. It’s not first sight that made me love you, but everything that came after. Getting to know you, getting to know your mind . . .”

  “My mind?” repeated Jenny.

  Charles wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted. “Yes, your mind. Your clever, wary, honest mind. You have a presence of mind I can only envy. If I had half your strength of character . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I would tell the world be damned and ask you to run away with me.”

  She had drawn into herself again, as she always did. She smiled down at him, amused and remote. “And be hunted as a felon? You would be, you know, for defrauding my mistress of her lawful property.”

  “By Nature’s law, you’re no more her property than you are mine.”

  Jenny touched his cheek, very lightly. “That may be, but it’s the council’s law that rules in Barbados, not Nature’s.”

  Charles refused to be deterred. “Robert and Mary Anne seem well pleased with each other. When they return from their wedding journey . . .”

  “Do you think Mary Anne would truly let me go?”

  “I have high hopes for the honeymoon,” said Charles seriously. “No, don’t laugh at me. . . . Or do. I like to hear you laugh.”

  “You might be right, at that.” Jenny looked up at him thoughtfully. “There’s a powerful attraction between them. I’ve seen the state of her linen when they come back from their walks.”

  “Her linen? Oh. I’m not sure I want to know the details. But don’t you see? If they’re content—what need does Mary Anne have for you? You stood by her. You saved her life. But the threat is gone now. Almost gone,” he amended, as Jenny opened her mouth to protest. “As soon as the vows are said, your father will be away to Jamaica. Mary Anne will be married, mistress of her own house in truth. Would it be so strange for her to free you?”

  “Not if you were to argue my case,” said Jenny, lifting her brows at him. She paused a moment, and then said, in a very different voice, “And if she were to do so?”

  “Then you could come to Peverills and live with me and be my love. Not that you aren’t my love either way. You’re my love whether you live with me or not. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Jenny.

  Just that one word, yes. But Charles knew how much it cost her and how much it meant, and in the weeks that followed, the long weeks without Jenny, when Mary Anne and Robert swept off to Antigua on their wedding journey, and Jenny with them, he would remember that yes and hold it to him.

  It was six weeks before Jenny returned from Antigua, six long weeks, in which Charles applied himself to his neglected duties, interviewed overseers, and attempted to make sense of the accounts Jonathan Fenty set before him.

  Charles called at Beckles as soon as was permissible upon his brother’s return, and found Mary Anne in the great room, with Jenny behind her.

  “Sister,” said Charles warmly, doing his best not to look past her, at Jenny. Something was wrong, he could tell. He could read it in the tension in Jenny’s shoulders, the closed expression on her face. He pressed a dutiful kiss to Mary Anne’s cheek. “Welcome home. You are well, I trust?”

  Mary Anne disentangled herself from Charles’s embrace. Without preamble, she said, “Your brother has made my uncle a gift of my money.” Snapping her fingers, she said, “Jenny! See tea and cakes are brought for Master Charles.”

  “Yes, Miss Mary Anne.” Jenny turned away without meeting Charles’s eyes.

  “Did you have a pleasant journey?” Charles attempted. This was not at all how he had imagined this meeting.

  “Oh, well enough,” said Mary Anne. Instead of sitting, she paced back and forth, forcing Charles, out of politeness, to stand as well. “Until your brother decided to make himself free of my money.”

  “His money now,” said Charles, and found himself on the receiving end of a basilisk glare. “As a matter of law, when you married—”

  “Yes, I know all that. I asked him to have the money conveyed so that it might remain separate for my use but he said there’d be no need of that, as we were of one mind. . . . One mind, indeed!”

  “One body under the law,” suggested Charles helpfully. He held up his hands at her frown. “And you do have one object. To make Beckles prosper.”

  “Oh, I have no objection to Robert using my money to make improvements on my land. His ideas are sound. But how, pray tell, does making my uncle a gift of my money improve our situation?”

  Charles was spared the task of replying by the arrival of the cakes. A procession arrived from the kitchen, bearing platters of iced dainties, comfits in sugar, and the tea things, the silver slop bowl polished to a sheen that hurt his eyes. Mary Anne, it seemed, had taken up housekeeping with a vengeance.

  Jenny quietly directed the disposition of the tea things, making no sign to Charles.

  “You might as well sit down,” said Mary Anne ungraciously. “Sugar?”

  “Please.” He didn’t like sweet tea, but it bought him time. When Mary Anne had plunked the cup onto the saucer and sloshed tea into it, thrusting the whole into his hand, Charles asked, “Has your uncle gone, then?”

  “Oh yes, back to Jamaica, with enough in his pocket to make this a very profitable interlude, indeed.”

  “I should think you would be glad to see the back of him,” Charles ventured. The tension between them was hardly a secret; that had been there for anyone to see.

  “I want to see him poor and starving,” said Mary Anne crossly. “I want to see his clothes in tatters and his face covered with sores. Not wealthy and happy in Jamaica!”

  “He did make a good job of running Beckles.”

  “He was stealing from me for years,” said Mary Anne flatly.

  “Was he?” Despite his best efforts, Charles found himself looking to Jenny, standing like a statue behind her mistress’s chair.

  “You can say anything in front of Jenny, you know that,” said Mary Anne impatiently. “Jenny is my other self. I have no secrets from her.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Charles. He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for her misapprehension or alarmed at the sentiment. “Are you certain? About the money, I mean.”

  “I can add two and two. I tried to show your brother the books, but he refused to listen. He told me not to enact him a Cheltenham tragedy.”

  “Perhaps if I have Jonathan look at them . . .”

  “Your pet Redleg?”

  “He’s a very good bookkeeper.” Charles didn’t want to argue with her. “Can’t you talk to Robert about it? I’m sure, once he sees the evidence with his own eyes . . .”

  “You talk to him,” flung back Mary Anne. “I’ve talked and talked until I’m short of breath. And when I ask him about my lands—mine!—he tells me not to trouble myself. Does he expect me to sit on a cushion and drink ratafia al
l day?”

  “Er . . .” That was, Charles suspected, exactly what Robert expected of a wife.

  “He wants me out of the way. Oh, not like that,” she said impatiently, as Charles stared. “He wants me to be a proper Creole wife and stay indoors, with servants to thread my needle and fan my feet. Beckles is my home. Mine.”

  “What’s yours?” Robert appeared in the door, fresh from the fields, his stock limp with sweat and his crop still in his hand.

  “Nothing, apparently,” said Mary Anne, looking crossly at Charles. He wasn’t sure what she had expected of him. The law was quite clear on the subject of marital property.

  Robert frowned at Charles. “Here so soon, brother?”

  “I came to welcome you back home,” said Charles, since some sort of explanation seemed to be required. “My new sister kindly entertained me in your absence.”

  “I’m sure she did.” Robert’s tone was so acid that Charles had to resist the urge to glance behind him, to see if he’d suddenly grown horns or a tail.

  “If you will pardon me? Charles.” Mary Anne nodded graciously at him and glared at her husband before sweeping from the room, Jenny following behind her.

  Charles felt as bewildered as though he’d been too much in the sun. What the blazes had happened in Antigua?

  “Did you have a pleasant wedding journey?” Charles ventured.

  “What, are you thinking it ought to have been you?” Robert demanded. “My wife does.”

  “You’re mistaken,” said Charles, unsettled by the unexpected attack. “Her heart was always yours.”

  Robert flicked the tip of his crop against his boot. “A strange way she has of showing it. All I get are complaints.”

  “She has a blunt tongue.”

  “What do you know of her tongue?”

  Charles winced. “Nothing like that. I hold your wife in the greatest respect.”

  “As she does you. She throws you up to me. Did you know that?” Robert adopted a piercing falsetto. “‘If I’d married Charles . . .’ I’m sick of it. I wish she’d married you and had done.”

  “No, you don’t. Not truly.” Charles looked at his brother in confusion, wondering how they had come to this in just over a month. They’d seemed well enough pleased with each other when they married; more than pleased, if Jenny was right. “Besides, she wouldn’t have had me. She only does it to goad you.”

  “And how would you know? Oh yes, all those cozy picnics together. She’s been cutting up rough because I had the gall to make a gift of money to her uncle. Her own uncle!”

  Charles looked closely at Robert. “I understand they don’t get on.”

  “Ingratitude, I call it. He ran this estate for her for well over a decade. Why shouldn’t I back him in a little venture? He’s a warm man; we’ll see the money back. And even if we don’t, he’s earned it, that’s what I say.”

  “Have you ever asked her why she dislikes her uncle so?”

  “No, but you clearly know all about it.” Robert looked at his brother with raw dislike.

  “Only what I’ve heard from others,” said Charles, which was true as far as it went. Everything he knew came from Jenny’s lips, not Mary Anne’s. “Think of it. How would you feel if I went about telling people you weren’t right in the head?”

  “Who’s to say that he was lying?” As if realizing he had gone too far, Robert shrugged, dropping the crop on the floor and kicking it away. “She’s deuced difficult. She seems to think I should apply to her for permission to use my money. What do you say to that?”

  “Legally, it certainly is your money. But hadn’t you thought . . .” At the expression on Robert’s face, Charles gave up the effort.

  “If I wanted your advice,” said Robert, “I would ask you for it.”

  There was nothing for Charles to do but take his leave. Jenny met him at the door with his hat and gloves.

  “Not exactly billing and cooing,” he said softly.

  “The Old Mill?” said Jenny in an undertone, as she held his gloves out to him, one by one.

  Charles forced himself to concentrate on pulling on the gloves, finger by finger. “I’ll be there.”

  Jenny offered him his hat, head bowed. “Sir.”

  Behind her, Charles could see Robert, watching.

  He rode to Peverills before setting back again to the Old Mill. Just in case anyone might be watching.

  The Old Mill was as they’d left it. A little damper, perhaps, after a season of rains, a little greener about the edges, but with the same smells of dirt and loam, bringing back a host of memories. Jenny kissing him for the first time. Lying together. Talking together. That strange pull of flesh to flesh, mind to mind.

  She’d been so distant today at Beckles. Charles had a moment’s fear that time had dampened her ardor, that she might no longer feel as he did.

  But any doubts were quelled when she appeared in the doorway of the mill.

  Charles opened his mouth to say something, he wasn’t even quite sure what, but he never got the words out. He wasn’t sure who moved first, or if they both moved at once, but they came together like raindrops on a windowsill, running together so they blended into one, indistinguishable. She held his face in her hands and kissed him until his lips were raw and the air whistled in his ears. Their clothing only got in the way; piece by piece, rapidly, clumsily, they struggled out of their clothes, pulling each other closer, coming together with more passion than finesse, her cry and his shout echoing together in the damp, dark space.

  They made a nest of their discarded garments, snuggling together beneath the breadths of Jenny’s chemise. A button from Charles’s waistcoat was biting into his back. He shifted, bringing Jenny with him, saying ruefully, “I’d meant to welcome you back in a better way than that.”

  “I’m not complaining,” she said, and rested her head against his chest, just beneath his chin. So softly that he could barely hear it, she said, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” he murmured into her hair. Relief and joy washed through him and he hugged her close, as close as he dared. “I missed you so.”

  Jenny’s fingers traced a pattern in the fine, fair hair on his chest. “When I was away . . . I wondered if I had imagined it all. This.”

  “No,” said Charles fervently. He had no more words for it than that. “No.”

  “All the time we were in Antigua,” she said, not looking at him, “I told myself it was over. That I would come back and you would be a stranger again. That I would see you and feel—nothing.”

  “If this was nothing, it was a very fine nothing, indeed. Jenny?” All he could see was the parting of her hair. Charles touched her cheek with his finger, trying to think how to put into words what he felt, needing her to know it meant more than that. “I’ve lain with women before. I’ve even fancied myself in love. But none of them were anything to this. It’s like trying to compare the light of a candle to the strength of the sun. There’s no comparison. The one might warm one’s hands awhile, but this—this could burn down cities.”

  Jenny lifted her head to look at him, her eyes troubled. “Isn’t that sort of fire dangerous?”

  “Some light the fields to make the crops grow,” said Charles, running his fingers lightly down her arm. “And there’s always the phoenix, emerging triumphant from the flames, born anew with every blaze.”

  Jenny gave him one of her skeptical looks. He had missed those looks. “The phoenix is a myth.”

  The little room was very still. Quietly, Charles said, “But this isn’t. Is it?”

  “No,” Jenny admitted. “But how are we to go on like this? Sooner or later, someone will discover us. And Mary Anne—she’ll mind. She’ll mind badly. She thinks—she thinks if you’d married her, it would all have been better.”

  “If I had married her, we would have made each other miserable.” Scooting up a bit, using the wall as a headboard, Charles asked, “What happened in Antigua?”

  Jenny sighed and le
aned her head back against the rough stuff of the wall. “It was the colonel. We ought to have known he wouldn’t go away without finding some way to spoil things. He went up to Master Robert at the wedding breakfast and told him he’d seen you and Miss Mary Anne together. Intimately together. He said that was why she was so eager to wed.”

  “But then wouldn’t she have wed me? If that had been the case, one imagines the lady’s guardian would have something to say about it,” said Charles. “Those are the occasions that call for a special license and a hastily planned wedding breakfast.”

  “The colonel will have found a way to explain it,” said Jenny wearily. “That you had a previous commitment or something of that sort.”

  “I do, as it happens,” said Charles, taking her hand. “But that’s beside the point.”

  Jenny cast him a reproving look. “When Master Robert saw us talking at the door, he probably thought I was arranging an assignation for my mistress.”

  “But wait,” said Charles, trying to figure out how they’d got from the promise of the rainy months to this. “Didn’t you say the two of them had been—er, anticipating the wedding night?”

  “With vigor,” said Jenny, smiling a little at Charles’s discomfiture. “Oh, he enjoys her appetites well enough. And she enjoys his. But once my father got at him, he started wondering who else might be sharing in those appetites. He threw all those old rumors back at her.”

  “The ones about her insatiable appetites?” Charles recalled a long-ago discussion with his brother on the balcony at Rosehall. “That’s why she wouldn’t ride with a groom, only with you.”

  Jenny nodded. “It’s my father’s work. It has his signature on it. Poor Mistress Mary. Every time they fight, they end up in bed. And every time they end up in bed, Master Robert invariably ends by accusing her of sharing her charms with others. Mostly you,” she added.

  “My charms are yours alone,” said Charles. “We’ll find a way to make it right. If only we can draw your father’s poison. Now he’s gone . . .”

  “Mary Anne can’t forgive Master Robert for paying him off,” said Jenny flatly. “They’ve been at each other like cat and dog and it’s only getting worse.”