The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

  She had assumed that her mother must be the child of her grandmother’s first husband. But no one had said anything to make her believe such a child existed. Mrs. Poole had believed them childless.

  And here, here was another child. Her grandfather’s child.

  It was a family commonplace that her mother had been Grandfather’s favorite, Uncle Archie her grandmother’s. But what if it was more than a question of temperament? What if her mother wasn’t her grandmother’s child?

  Would her grandmother have taken in another woman’s baby? The answer was immediate and unequivocal. Yes. Not merely because her grandfather had asked her to, but because her stern Calvinist conscience would accommodate nothing less. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

  Emily remembered the tension between her mother and grandmother. Young as she was, Emily had been old enough to mark the discord between them. But she had always taken their arguments at face value. Her grandmother had disapproved of her mother’s passionate pursuit of causes, adjuring her to be more circumspect; her mother had retorted that her grandmother ought to do more to serve her Lord than sing his praise. Ungoverned, said the one; hypocritical, said the other.

  But there had been affection in it too, hadn’t there?

  They had looked alike. Everyone said so. Or was it only her grandfather who said so?

  “Mind how you go there.” George took her bridle. Clearing his throat, he added, “It wasn’t uncommon, you know.”

  “What?” She had no idea what George was on about. “Did you say something?”

  “Your grandfather—many men back then had, well, outside children.” Emily looked at him in surprise, nearly causing her horse to stumble. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of him. It was really quite common.”

  “And does that make it right, that it was common?” Emily was too distracted to be tactful.

  “You know what they say, autres temps, autres moeurs.” When Emily only stared at him, George added hastily, “My grandmother’s never said, but I gather my grandfather kept a colored woman and her children in Bridgetown. They even call themselves Davenant.”

  He made it sound like a vast social faux pas. “It seems to me they’ve a right to the name, don’t you think? They’re your cousins.”

  “Not really. These other families, they, well.” George looked up with relief as they reached the end of the steep and winding path, the vista opening up before them to reveal a broad beach, edged with scrub and studded with crags. “Ah, here we are. They call this Bathsheba’s pool, from the Bible, you know. The story has it that Bathsheba bathed in milk to keep her skin fair. When you look at these waters, you can almost believe they’re milk, can’t you?”

  Emily was still feeling prickly and unsettled, but it was easier to let him change the subject than pick a fight on a subject on which they were clearly not going to come to an accord. She let Jonah take the bridle and slid down from the horse onto the rough grasses at the verge of the beach. Pebbles prickled through the soles of her boots. “Do you think it will do anything for my cousin’s freckles? My aunt used to blister his nose with lemon juice.”

  “People do bathe here,” said George, taking her pleasantry for a genuine inquiry. “But I’m not sure I would advise it. It’s rather rocky.”

  “Less so than Weston-super-Mare.” Taking pity, she said, “You needn’t worry. I’ve no intention of plunging into the surf. It is cooler here, isn’t it?” A wind from the sea seemed intent on disengaging her hair from its pins.

  “We’re on the windward side of the island,” said George apologetically. “If you don’t like it, we could—”

  “No, it’s fine.” The last thing Emily wanted was to prolong the outing. All she wanted was to go back to Beckles and—what? Adam knew as little as she. Whatever Mrs. Davenant knew, she wasn’t telling.

  For a mad moment, Emily wondered if Mrs. Davenant might have borne her grandfather a child. They did say that hate was first cousin to love—or some sort of relation, at any event. There were all those questions Mrs. Davenant had asked Adam about her mother and when her mother was born, the interest Mrs. Davenant showed in Emily . . .

  But Mrs. Davenant had been married. If she’d borne a child, she’d have had no need to smuggle it out to St. Andrew. She would simply claim it as her husband’s.

  One assumed?

  Emily used to feel quite comfortable assuming. But here, everything she thought she’d known had turned on its head, not once, but again and again. All of the assumptions that seemed sturdy as masonry one moment were revealed as hollow reeds the next.

  What had her grandfather been doing sending her here? That he had sent her, that he had intended this, she had no doubt. Why leave her Peverills, else? He must have known that, once in Barbados, she would see the discrepancy in the dates and realize that her mother couldn’t be the child of her grandparents’ marriage.

  But then who was she? And why hadn’t her grandfather simply told her? Emily felt a surge of rage and grief, for her difficult, domineering, puckish grandfather who liked to make everyone dance to his tune. She’d never minded it before, but that was most likely because they’d always played in harmony; he’d given her her head, encouraging her in hobbies her aunt found unladylike, egging her on at her most outspoken, most forthright. Adam might complain about her grandfather controlling him by pulling on the purse strings, but he’d never, ever tried to bend Emily to his will.

  Well, with the one exception. When he wanted her to marry Adam. But he hadn’t pressed her. When she’d demurred, he’d shrugged and accepted it, even if the light in his eye had told her he hadn’t given up the fight just yet. But it had become almost a joke over time. Or, at least, it had suited Emily to treat it as a joke. She wondered, now, uneasily, if her grandfather had felt the same. And what else he had kept from her.

  He needs you, he’d told Emily, of Adam. The boy’s a flibbertigibbet. He needs someone to keep him in line.

  I’ve no desire to be my cousin’s keeper, she’d told him, and he’d flicked her nose and told her not to be pert. I only want to see you settled.

  Everyone wanted to see her settled, it seemed. Mrs. Davenant, because she came with Peverills. Her grandfather—because he loved her? Or because he knew something about her past and felt the need to see her truly and legitimately a member of the Fenty family?

  But her legitimacy wouldn’t be in doubt if he hadn’t sent her here. If he hadn’t left her Peverills. If she’d stayed in Bristol, she might have been what she was, Jonathan and Winifred Fenty’s granddaughter, the child of that daughter, you know, the one who ran off with an impoverished minister and wrote all those tedious tracts about the rights of man and injustice of slavery and goodness only knows what else.

  There had to be other people in Barbados who had known her grandparents. The danger was, if she asked too many questions, she might start other people asking them too.

  Did she mind? Not for the sake of the Mrs. Davenants of the world. But she would mind Adam looking at her differently, as somehow less, less a cousin, less a member of the family.

  “Are you cold?”

  “What? No. I rather like it.” Emily dragged herself back to the present with an effort. Jonah had set out a rug on the scrub, weighting it down with porcelain and crystal and enough food to feed half of St. Andrew.

  “Would you prefer chicken or ham?”

  Looking at the piles of cold chicken and plates of dainties, Emily thought of that exhausted woman working her small field of arrowroot, her children barefoot and bony. “It seems rather obscene to have all this when the people in St. Andrew have so little.”

  “It’s the way of the world,” said George, helping himself to a slice of ham. “Was it so different in Bristol?”

  “No,” Emily had to admit. The gulf between Aunt Millicent’s table and her father’s parish had been hard to stomach. But there, at least, she had felt secure in her ability to do some good. Here, she felt at a loss, lost between worlds, neither
Redleg nor planter, neither native nor foreigner.

  Above them, the crags stretched high overheard, harsh and hilly. It seemed impossible that there were people living up there, on those cliffs, that her grandfather had been born there, eking out a living until he was able to snatch his opportunity and make his escape.

  “It is majestic, isn’t it?” said George, entirely misunderstanding what she was thinking. He toyed with the fringe of the rug. “I’m glad to have a chance to speak to you. I suppose you realize my grandmother would like to see us make a match of it?”

  “I gathered as much. She hasn’t precisely been subtle.” Why did he have to broach this now? Emily forced herself to focus on George, although the cliffs lurked above her, taunting her with secrets. “You needn’t mind it. I don’t.”

  “I don’t mind it either.” George attempted to muster a smile, but it came out wobbly. He tried again. “What I mean is, I wouldn’t mind it. Would it be so dreadful, to be married?”

  Oh no. Not now. Not here. Emily stared at him, trying, very hard, not to sound as irritated as she felt. “I think that would depend on the person, don’t you?” she said, with false brightness.

  George failed to take the hint. “I do like you, Emily. Quite a lot. I think we might rub on well together.”

  “You do, or your grandmother does?” said Emily, and then wished she hadn’t.

  “I do,” said George, not entirely convincingly. “Truly. I’ve enjoyed our rides together. We do get along, don’t we?”

  Yes, like brother and sister. Or really, more like distant cousins. But she couldn’t say that without hurting his feelings. “I’m truly sensible of the honor you do me,” said Emily, falling back on the phrase they had all practiced at Miss Blackwell’s, in anticipation of hordes of importunate suitors. “But I’m not sure I mean to marry.”

  “Now? Or ever?” He tried to make a joke of it, but he looked nervous, like a puppy waiting to be kicked.

  “I don’t know,” said Emily honestly. She thought of Adam and Laura, whose courtship had been so romantic, so passionate; they had scarcely two words to say to each other.

  She’d always thought her parents had been the epitome of romance. It had been a byword that her father had been lost without her mother. But if her mother was the great love of his life, why allow himself to be so entirely annexed by Hester? She’d begun to suspect that her parents’ marriage had been less a great love story and more the attraction of the stronger character for the weaker, her mother dragging her father along in her wake.

  She didn’t want to be someone’s prop. She didn’t want to run two plantations while George painted pretty pictures and read Sir Walter Scott.

  If she ever married, she wanted it to be someone who wanted her more than he needed her, someone who loved her because he was strong enough to appreciate her and not because he needed her strength.

  Like her grandparents, equal partners in everything, each balancing the other.

  But what did she really know of her grandparents, after all?

  “I don’t know,” she said again. George looked so worried, so distressed, that she reached out and squeezed his hand. “But I do know that you ought to marry someone who loves beauty as much as you do, not someone who can’t tell a sonnet from a sestina.”

  “I’d be happy to teach you,” offered George.

  “But I,” said Emily, withdrawing her hand, “have no interest in being taught.”

  George looked down at his gloved hands, then back at Emily. “Is that a no, then?”

  “If it would make you more comfortable,” said Emily, “you might tell your grandmother that I am deeply flattered but still too unsure of my circumstances to make any plans for my future.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you that I was asking for myself, not my grandmother?” he asked quietly.

  A moment ago, she would have said no, but the words stalled on Emily’s lips and she found herself uncertain, unsettled by his earnestness.

  “May we discuss this another time?” Emily said in desperation, grabbing at the hat that was trying its best to free itself from its pins.

  “Of course,” said George immediately, all solicitude. “I apologize if I’ve caused you any distress. Have you had enough to eat?”

  “Oh, more than enough.” This was the problem. He was so very good. She would never know what was genuine and what was politeness. She doubted he knew himself, so eager to please others that he fooled himself. Maybe he did truly think he cared for her?

  Emily pushed aside the tangle, falling back on the scenery, letting George lead the conversation back into more general terms as they took the smoother coast road back south, leaving the shadow of the hills behind them. They discussed the local pottery, the chalk industry, the fishermen dotted among the rocks in the water. It was all very pleasant.

  George was very pleasant. He’d doubtless make an entirely complaisant husband. For all of his comments about men keeping other families, she doubted he himself would stray. Not in body at any rate. It was far easier to imagine him writing lovelorn sonnet sequences to an unknown dark lady while coming meekly home for supper every night, treats for the children in his pockets. He would be a good father, she had no doubt, or, at least, a loving and indulgent one. Rather like her own father, who had always been more child than father.

  She didn’t want to have to be parent to her husband.

  Yes, George was very pleasant, but if she married him, she’d have poetry read to her in which she’d no interest, and watercolors painted of her that she’d no time to sit for. She’d grow impatient of his good nature and frustrated with his kindness. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

  And who would she be? She could see herself turning into Mrs. Davenant, bullying her offspring and organizing her workers, always meaning to make changes, to do the sort of work her mother would have approved of, but mired in traditions of someone else’s making. There was something about Beckles that sapped one’s will, bent one to its routines and expectations.

  It made one wonder if Mrs. Davenant had always been Mrs. Davenant or if she too had once been someone else, but found herself twisted into what she was now, her entire life bent to the service of her estate, husband dead, son fled, grandson too scared to voice an opinion.

  “Thank you for taking me all the way to St. Andrew,” said Emily, as they dismounted in the stable yard.

  George pressed her hand. “The pleasure was mine. As always.”

  Light glinted from the direction of Mrs. Davenant’s book room, sunlight on a telescope lens.

  Emily murmured something conventional and fled into the house. Looking back, she could see Jonah leading the horses away, to be rubbed down, fed, and watered after their long ride.

  Goodness only knew what Jonah had overheard, what stories he was telling now in the servants’ quarters. Emily rubbed her temples with a gloved hand that smelled strongly of horse. Aunt Millicent always did say that servants knew everything, and here more than most, especially a groom, who would know all of one’s comings and goings.

  What was it London Turner had said? He had been the boy who held her grandfather’s horse.

  His groom.

  If her grandfather had stashed a child in the hills of St. Andrew, who would have gone with him? His groom, of course.

  Emily felt her lethargy slough away like the dust of the road. How foolish not to think of it before. If anyone knew what had become of that child, her grandfather’s child, it would be London Turner.

  And then she would leave it, she promised herself. Once this mystery was solved, she would stop dwelling on the past and decide what to do about Peverills.

  She just needed to speak to London Turner first.

  Emily pounced on Adam as he was about to go down to supper. “Do you have more meetings in town?” she asked without preamble.

  “Why?” Adam fell into stride with her on the broad staircase.

  “I’d like to come with you. I need to see Mr.
Turner—about Peverills.” It was, after all, about Peverills, even if in a roundabout sort of way.

  Adam’s lip twisted. “One doesn’t just see Mr. Turner. One attempts to make an appointment and hopes for the best.”

  “I suspect he’ll see me,” said Emily thoughtfully. There was something between her grandfather and Mr. Turner. “If not, I’ll do some shopping.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m seeing Montefiore Tuesday week.” Adam scuffed the heel of his evening shoe against the polished treads of the stairs. “The man’s a nigger and a Jew but I’d work a deal with the devil if it meant not going home empty-handed.”

  “And you’re the grandson of a Redleg,” retorted Emily. Adam looked at her blankly. “Oh, never mind. I’ll send to Mr. Turner and see if he can see me Tuesday week.”

  “Don’t hold out hopes,” said Adam. “I’ve been banging on his door for weeks now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Christ Church, Barbados

  August 1814

  The banging on the door grew louder. “Let me in, damn you!”

  Jenny cradled Neddy closer, covering his ears with the crook of her arm, rocking and rocking. His body gave a startled jerk at another flurry of knocks, and Jenny began to sing to him, mindlessly, tunelessly, less of a song and more of a chant, to blot out the shouting and the clatter.

  “I saw a ship a-sailing, a-sailing on the sea . . .”

  “You can’t keep me out forever, Mary Anne!”

  “And it was deeply laden with pretty things for me . . .”

  Neddy yawned and burrowed closer, pushing with his legs against the side of the chair. He was getting big now, so big, too big to be held like this. He only resorted to the breast now late at night or very early in the morning, or when something scared him.

  “There were comfits in the cabin, and almonds in the hold . . .”

  “Don’t think this is an end to it!”

  A final rattle and the sound of booted feet pounding off down the corridor. Jenny felt the tension in her shoulders release but she kept rocking, rocking and singing, as she had night after night, month after month, as Robert and Mary Anne shouted and ornaments smashed and Neddy cried from confusion and rooted at her breast for comfort.