Page 107 of The Summer Country

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.