Page 100 of The Summer Country

“The midwife,” said Jenny. “I don’t trust Nanny Bell not to betray us.”

Fenty looked to Charles, who shook his head. “I can’t vouch for our people at Peverills. They’re accustomed to answering to Robert, even if he is master of Beckles now.”

“Well, that’s soon enough mended. My sisters have more than enough experience between them.” His accent grew thicker, Jenny noticed, when he spoke of his family. “Who do you think delivered their trildren? Becky’s brought a dozen trildren into the world. Some of them have even lived past infancy.”

Charles looked a little uneasy at his gallows humor. “If she would . . .”

“But wait,” said Jenny. “How is she to be brought to me? Or am I to be brought to her? Won’t someone question her presence at Beckles?”

“To bring Becky to you is no great obstacle. I’m assuming you wouldn’t mind if I were to offer my widowed sister the hospitality of this house for, oh, a fortnight or thereabouts?” Without waiting for Charles to answer, he went on, briskly taking charge. “You can’t have the child here. There are too many people about. And it’s too far for you to come in your condition. You’ll have to send a message for Becky to come to you. A prearranged phrase, something that will seem innocent to anyone else.”

“Have you silk floss to spare?” Jenny suggested ironically.

“That will do well enough. Have it sent to me by my groom London. He’s a likely lad. He won’t ask questions.” Fenty moved quickly on. “You can’t have the child at Beckles. If they see the baby, they’ll want a body. Develop a habit of taking walks or visiting elsewhere. Do you have friends on other plantations?”

Jenny was about to say no when she remembered Nanny Grigg. “Yes, at Harrow. I’ve been invited to stop there of a Sunday evening.”

Fenty grinned. “Better and better. And you’ll give my respects to Mrs. Boland while you’re there?”

“It’s true,” said Charles thoughtfully. “Even if Robert were to notice, he’d never stop you going to Harrow. He needs Mrs. Boland.”

Mrs. Boland had been widowed in the spring. While she stayed close to home in her hired house, mourning her husband, Robert had grown increasingly anxious over whether the widow would honor the promises made by her husband.

“Go two or three times, perhaps,” suggested Charles. “Enough to establish a pattern. That way, if you’re not at hand, everyone will assume you’ve gone to Harrow.”

“If the baby has the consideration to come on a Sunday,” pointed out Jenny with some asperity. “And where am I to go in truth?”

For once it was Charles who took the lead and not Fenty. “The Old Mill,” he said decidedly. “It’s close enough for you to walk and far enough that we won’t be overheard.”

The baby, in the way of babies, didn’t oblige by coming on a Sunday.

The first pain struck on a Tuesday afternoon in early August, while Jenny was reading to her mistress from an old book of poetry.

It didn’t matter much what she read; Mary Anne wasn’t listening, not really. There were times she was almost herself again, frustrated at her own weakness, and other times when she turned her face to the wall and demanded her medicine, refusing to look at or hold her child, her longed-for heir.

So Jenny picked the books herself. Her father, whatever his other sins, had been an educated man. The library at Beckles was well stocked with volumes with his signature on the flyleaf. She had chosen poetry because it made her feel closer to Charles, Charles who so earnestly believed that the world could be made beautiful.

She found it an unexpected consolation as she sat in the unnatural twilight of the shuttered room, her body heavy and slow, letting the words wash over her. This was her gift to her child too, that he should be learned like his father. She wanted to wince away from the reality of what they planned to do, but that wasn’t in her nature: so she forced herself to face it head-on. That if they were lucky, if they were clever, she would give her child up so that he could have this: calf-bound volumes and tutors in Greek and Latin, all that careless erudition that Charles took so for granted but was so much a part of him, and a hallmark of his world, where even the most indifferently educated could quote Latin tags in his cups.

“Sweetest love, I do not go, / For weariness of thee,” she read softly, and knew she was speaking to her child, not to Mary Anne, inert in her bed. “Nor in the hope the world can show / A fitter love for me.”

She felt it then, a cramping pain. But she’d had pains before, in her hips, her belly, her back, so she stayed where she was and kept on reading.

“Let not thy divining heart / Forethink me any ill. . . .”

It came again, harder now. Jenny sat very still, half-afraid to move. All these months, fretting, planning. Now that the moment was here, she found herself frozen like an animal caught out in the open.

Breathe. Breathe. She finished the poem. “They who one another keep alive ne’er parted be.”

Silently, she closed the book and set it down on the bedside table. Mary Anne’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow but regular.

Another pain took her, stronger now, as though her child were growing impatient with her.

“All right, baby,” Jenny murmured, and shook off the thought that this might be her last chance to talk to her child.

She knew what she needed to do; the men might assume the baby would come obligingly on a Sunday, but she’d prepared her own contingency.

The clock on the mantel said it was gone five. Jenny closed the door of Mary Anne’s room behind her and hailed Queenie, who was coming up to sit with Mary Anne. “She’s sleeping. But she’s asked me to mend her Pomona gown and I can’t find the green floss. Will you send to the seamstress?”