The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

  Here, Jenny willed her daughter. I’m here.

  But it was to Charles their child looked for approval as she cast the diabolo into the air, with such a look of satisfaction that Jenny had to stop herself from reaching out. She was, she realized, holding Mary Anne’s Kashmir shawl so tightly that she’d practically caused a rent in the fabric.

  “Where’s your shadow?” Mary Anne asked Charles, wearying of nursery matters.

  “Jonathan? He’s discussing some matter of business with Mrs. Boland. She’s made rather a good thing of her husband’s business, I understand.”

  “She’s not the only one to take up the reins,” pointed out Mary Anne, with some asperity. “Has she seen the child?”

  “Not yet,” said Charles mildly. “I’d thought you might like to be the first to officially greet her. As an honorary aunt of sorts.”

  Jenny felt as though she’d swallowed a mouthful of pebbles. What was he playing at? Or was she merely distressed because everyone but she was entitled to stake a claim to her child?

  Losing interest, Carlota abandoned the diabolo to Neddy, skipping away with one of the tops. She moved with the uncoordinated energy that came with being not quite a baby anymore, but not yet a child, limbs and face still rounded with baby fat, ready to conquer the world and occasionally fall on one’s bottom.

  “Jenny, Jenny, Jenny!” Neddy rattled the diabolo at her. “Jenny, Jenny, look, look, look!”

  Bless him, she’d been staring and she shouldn’t. At least Mary Anne would assume all the wrong things, as she always did. Jenny smiled at Neddy, trying to hide her pain. All those nights she’d held him and pretended he was her daughter, and now her daughter was here and didn’t know her.

  What had she expected? A magical pull of like to like?

  Not to be outdone, Carlota waved, her gold bracelet glinting in the sunshine, shouting out, “Unker, Unker, Unker!”

  Charles waved back. “I told her to call me ‘Uncle,’” he explained. “It seemed simplest, under the circumstances. ‘Mr. Davenant’ is such a mouthful. And ‘Papa’ . . .”

  “You don’t want to raise expectations,” said Mary Anne, regarding Carlota with a critical eye. “You’ll need to find her a good nursery governess. Goodness only knows what she was accustomed to in Portugal.”

  “I had wondered . . .” Charles’s eyes were on the children, but Jenny noticed how he shifted from foot to foot, the movement of the fingers of his right hand, as though he were mimicking holding a pen. He did that when he was nervous, as though the act of writing brought him ease. “Mine is a bachelor establishment. You have a nursery, with nursery maids who know what they’re about. Carlota and Edward are of an age. Might you consider having Carlota at Beckles for a time? If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  Jenny was grateful she was standing behind them, as a good servant should. All she could see was the back of Charles’s head, but she knew him, knew exactly what he was doing, foolish, honorable Charles. He was trying, the only way he knew how, to give her her daughter back.

  It was a noble gesture, but it was far, so far from what he had promised her all those years ago. Oh, she knew he’d meant it, every word of it, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to scream and rage.

  “It would be that much trouble,” said Mary Anne sharply. “I’m not in the habit of taking in unknown orphans.”

  “I’d pay for her keep, of course,” Charles said hastily. “I’m not trying to shirk my responsibilities. But it’s lonely for a child in a house without other children.”

  “I didn’t mind it,” said Mary Anne. She stopped to consider the problem, having decided, now that she’d made her point, that she could be generous with her advice, if not her home. “But then, I had my Jenny. Have you thought of acquiring a young girl to bear your Carlota company?”

  Charles shook his head. “It never occurred to me. I haven’t the first notion of how to get on. Which is why I had hoped you might—”

  “I’m happy to advise, of course,” said Mary Anne firmly, “but it would hardly be right to take on the rearing of a strange child. What if she and Edward didn’t get on? No. She’s welcome to come visit at Beckles whenever she likes, but I have more than enough on my hands.”

  “I know it’s been hard for you, with Robert gone,” said Charles sympathetically.

  Mary Anne looked over her shoulder, a quick, furtive glance at Jenny. “It’s terribly hot today, isn’t it? I’m perishing for something cool.”

  “I’ll have someone bring you a drink,” said Charles quickly.

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I know you’ve a bachelor establishment. Jenny can go. Jenny!” Turning back to Charles, she said, “Yes, it has been terribly hard, but I don’t know that I would want to hire an estate agent. One can’t trust them, can one?”

  Dismissed, Jenny made her way toward the kitchen house, not permitting herself to look back at the children at play, at Neddy and Carlota. Carlota. Not her daughter. A stranger named Carlota. Her eyes stung and she blinked back stupid, inconvenient tears.

  Fool, she told herself. Didn’t she know by now that crying did nothing? She’d cried for her mother and look what that had got her.

  Her nails were digging holes in her palms; bile rose in her throat.

  “Jenny!” Nanny Grigg was outside the kitchen, drinking blackstrap with Charles’s cook. She folded Jenny into an embrace that smelled of soap and sunshine. Jenny breathed in that comforting smell, trying to compose herself. “You look like you lost a dollar and found a penny.”

  “I forgot.” Jenny mustered a smile. “Master Charles said Mrs. Boland was visiting. It’s good to see you.”

  “You haven’t visited in months,” said Nanny Grigg, putting a companionable arm around Jenny and leading her away toward the chicken coop.

  “My mistress was in mourning,” Jenny prevaricated. She’d wanted to see Nanny Grigg, she had. She’d missed those evenings at Harrow, Jackey the head driver puffing away on his pipe, Nanny reading aloud from the papers from England. But Mary Anne had been leery of letting Jenny out of her sight, as if afraid she might betray her at any moment. It had been all she could do to get away to Peverills to see Charles. The thought of Charles made her chest clench. Charles, who had brought Carlota home, but not to her. “My mistress needed me.”

  “Is that what’s making you look so low?” asked Nanny Grigg, pausing to throw a bit of corn to the chickens. “Or is it the master here?”

  “Why would it be? What has he to do with anything?”

  Nanny chuckled. “Don’t fret yourself. No one’s said anything. It’s just I know you. I remember that first day I met you, at Christmas, and you looking out the window like you were waiting for the king himself to walk through the door. Nearly three years ago that was.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Back then she’d still believed Charles when he promised he’d see her free and with him. Castles in the air, all. Nanny Grigg was watching her, her head cocked expectantly.

  “You’re telling me it’s over, then?”

  It was easier to tell a half-truth. Jenny turned away with a shrug. “All right. It’s true. But you can’t tell anyone. My mistress wouldn’t like it. He’d thought he might persuade Master Robert to sell me, but . . .”

  “If you were free, do you think he’d keep you?”

  “Yes,” said Jenny, without hesitation. “But my mistress will never part with me.”

  Nanny Grigg glanced back over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “She might have to. Have you heard talk of the registry bill?”

  “The what?” said Jenny.

  Charles hadn’t said anything. Or rather, Charles was always saying things, so many things that she had ceased to listen. She had grown impatient of his promises of the world that was to come—when? When all men were good and virtuous? His dreams were pretty, but they were all ink on paper, sound without substance.

  “It’s early days yet,” said Nanny Grigg, keeping her eyes on the chickens as
they fought for the grain. “But it’s that Wilberforce man, the one who ended the slave trade. He wants every slave owner in the Indies to make a list of all their slaves—and why would that be, do you think? So that we might be freed. That’s what the English papers say.”

  “Papers say all sorts of things.” Jenny looked at her friend, not wanting to get her hopes up. “They could say that day was night, but that doesn’t mean we’d believe it.”

  Nanny grinned at her. “You should see what a clucking there is! Letters from plantation owners protesting that we ought to be grateful for a bed, but you can tell they’re scared. It’s the beginning of the end for them.”

  “If it is . . .” The words trailed away.

  Never to have to answer to Mary Anne again. To be able to live, openly, with her child.

  And with Charles, she reminded herself. But Charles faded into the background in her imaginings. Her love for Charles had long since ceased to be a fiery, all-consuming thing. It was a soft blanket she wrapped around herself, somewhat frayed around the edges. She loved him, yes, but it was her child who consumed her thoughts, for whom she planned and schemed.

  Her child, who had seen her today and never known her for who she was.

  Jenny made a face at the chickens. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Come to Harrow of an evening. . . . I forget. We’re called Simmons now. The new master likes the sound of his own name. It’s all one, whatever it’s called.” Nanny Grigg gave Jenny’s arm a squeeze. “Come to Simmons and I’ll show you and you can read it for yourself. Seeing as you can.”

  “Thank you,” said Jenny slowly. “I think I shall.”

  “The new master, he doesn’t like us reading the papers, but we get them all the same. Those of us who can read have been spreading the news to those who can’t.” Nanny Grigg’s cheerful face turned serious. “You might think of doing the same here. I wouldn’t trust any of them not to try to cheat us out of our freedom.”

  “Not Charles,” said Jenny automatically. Had he said anything about the registry bill? She couldn’t recall. She’d stopped listening.

  “Eh,” said Nanny Grigg, and then looked at Jenny, struck by a thought. “We’ve only the papers, but your Master Charles—he’ll have better news, wouldn’t he? With his place on the council? And with all his fine friends in London?”

  “He’s always writing,” said Jenny carefully.

  “If you hear anything, you’ll tell us? We’ve missed you for your own sake—but it would be good to have news. As you say, you can only trust the papers so far.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” promised Jenny.

  “There,” said Nanny Grigg. “That’s put the color back in your cheeks. We’ll wait for the word.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bridgetown, Barbados

  June 1854

  Emily dreaded the thought of sending word of Adam’s death to Laura. And to Uncle Archie and Aunt Millicent.

  “There has to have been some mistake.” They had retreated to the hallway, away from the specter of death. Emily craned to see over Nathaniel’s arm. “Check again. Maybe he was breathing. Maybe you missed it.”

  “Emily.” Nathaniel took her by the shoulders. “Emily, there’s nothing to be done.”

  “He took a little broth this morning. He sat up against the pillows!”

  “It takes people like that sometimes,” said Nathaniel soberly. “We don’t know enough yet about the course of the disease.”

  “But he was getting better.”

  Even as she said it, she knew Nathaniel was right. Hadn’t she seen it herself? People who seemed perfectly well, dead two hours later. Horrible cases recovering, unexpectedly. The supposedly convalescent suddenly struck down. They didn’t know. There were times when she wondered if it wasn’t natural at all, but God’s retribution, smiting as he saw fit.

  Her father, she knew, wouldn’t appreciate such thoughts. Her father’s God was a God of love, a God of patience and kindness. She had seen the strength of her father’s faith during the affliction of ’49 and knew her own to be a pale thing in comparison.

  Emily lowered her head, staring at Nathaniel’s waistcoat buttons. They were very nice waistcoat buttons, brass, incised with a fleur-de-lis. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell them. And the baby—” Emily drew in a deep, shuddering breath. She had to take control of herself. There were practicalities to be dealt with. A funeral. The idea of burying Adam, so full of life, of mischief, seemed insane, obscene. “There’s no question of sending the body home to England.”

  “No.” Nathaniel left it at that. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

  Emily blinked, hard. “Thank you,” she said, in as steady a voice as she could muster. “I think—I think I shall go to bed now.”

  There wasn’t any reason to stay up, no Adam to check on in the night.

  Nathaniel looked at her with concern. “Can I give you something to help you sleep?”

  “No! No, thank you. I don’t—I don’t like to blur my wits.” The helplessness of it terrified her, the idea of lying there in a stupor as death flew over the rooftops.

  Nathaniel looked for a moment as though he might argue, but said only, “If you need me, I’ll leave my door open. Don’t worry about waking me.”

  The house had a curious emptiness to it as Emily walked down the hall to the room she had claimed as her own. Everything looked strange and unfamiliar, the bed with its netting tucked to the sides, the brush and combs on the dresser. She had lived here for seven days now, but it felt as though she had never been here at all. The silence pressed around her, unnatural silence, and Emily clutched her knees to her chest in the great bed and lowered her cheek to her knee and allowed herself to imagine that it had all been a dream, that Adam was still there in the next room, stirring restlessly against the pillow, about to demand why she was feeding him invalid food when what he wanted was meat.

  But the bed in the next room was empty.

  She was alone in the house with Nathaniel. The thought struck her like a blow. She couldn’t stay here. It had been bad enough with only a sick male cousin for chaperone, but now—she would have to go back to Beckles. Her entire being recoiled at the thought of going back to Laura and confessing how she’d failed.

  Emily woke twice in the night and found herself by Adam’s bedside before she realized where she was. The bed was empty, the sheets stripped, all trace of Adam gone.

  The second time, she saw a figure silhouetted in a doorway and knew Nathaniel was there, watching over her.

  “I’m all right,” she said to the shadows, and shut the bedroom door.

  He was gone when she woke in the morning, after a restless sleep haunted with dreams. There was a note left in the drawing room, informing her that he would be at the hospital, but would be back by early afternoon.

  Of Adam, there was no sign, and it struck Emily like a knife in the chest that Adam had been carted away to be buried alone, with no one to mourn him, no service, no words beside the grave, no widow in black. Nathaniel would have done it properly, she knew. Between his conscientiousness and Mr. Turner’s influence, a coffin would have been secured, no matter how scarce coffins might be. There would be a place in a graveyard for Adam, a shallow one, perhaps, but still a grave.

  This wasn’t where his bones were meant to be. He was meant to be buried in Bristol, by the hideous memorial of a weeping angel that marked their grandfather’s grave. He was meant to grow old and sport ludicrous whiskers and develop a paunch and a taste for tartan waistcoats and tease his children with stories of his youth. Not this, bleached bones in a mass grave on an island far, far away.

  Emily took up pen and paper, but she couldn’t write.

  Dearest Laura . . .

  She tried again.

  My dear Aunt Millicent . . .

  She couldn’t do it. Part of her, the cowardly part, said it would be kinder so. Kinder to let them believe Adam was alive a little longe
r, his red hair shining under a tropical sun, grinning that rogue’s grin, scheming and plotting for the greater glory of the House of Fenty.

  He had so wanted to make a success of this trip.

  Emily flung the pen aside. Good, vigorous, mindless physical exercise, that was what she needed. There was nothing left in the house to scrub. She would go for a walk. Walking always cleared her mind.

  It felt strange to struggle into a walking dress, to tie the ribbon of a bonnet. She had worn nothing for days but the oversized gown she had borrowed from Mr. Turner’s housekeeper. Mrs. Turner’s gowns were too fine for her, but she had no other choice. Her own dress, the dress in which she had come into Bridgetown over a week ago, had long since been burned.

  Her shoes, at least, were her own.

  Emily squinted, her eyes dazzled by the light as she let herself out the door she had entered eight days before. How long had it been since she had last been farther than the yard? Emily lifted a hand to shade her eyes, thought of going back for a parasol, and decided better of it. Adam might twit her about burning brown, but . . .

  No. Adam wouldn’t twit her about her complexion. Ever again.

  Emily bit down hard on her lip and plowed forward, not caring where she was going, so long as it was away. Her borrowed bodice was damp with sweat, her hair sticking in curls to the back of her neck where it had escaped the knot in which she’d bound it. One foot, then another. One foot, then another.

  He had been getting better. He had. What had she been thinking, having sherry in the parlor with Nathaniel? If she’d been by his side . . . might she have done something? Called for help? Or would death have come all the same? What had she missed? What symptom, what sign? It takes them that way, Nathaniel had said, but it was easy for him to say, it wasn’t his family, his cousin. She knew she was being unfair, but she didn’t care.

  Why hadn’t she taken more care? If she had sponged his head again . . . If she hadn’t fed him soup that morning . . . Maybe the act of digestion had overtaxed his system? If she had given him a larger dose of laudanum . . . If, if, if, a thousand ifs. If they had never come to Barbados, if she had never heard of Peverills, if their grandfather had left well enough alone, if Uncle Archie had come to Barbados instead of Adam, and always, always, at the end of it, if she had been more vigilant, more careful, more competent. All those years ago, she had been too young to nurse her mother properly, but she had worked and worked and learned and learned, and had thought, now, at last, she might change the ending. She would bring Adam triumphantly home, weak but on the mend.