Page 110 of The Summer Country

“Would it, perhaps, be less trouble to be seen to accede?” Jenny suggested. She found the pot of lip rouge, massaged a bit into her mistress’s lips.

“I’m not having another child,” Mary Anne said indistinctly. She smacked her lips together to equally distribute the rouge, looking up at Jenny in the mirror. “I won’t go through that again. I’ll die if I do, and then who will look after all this?”

There was no answer to that. If her mistress would only tell the master her fears—it probably wouldn’t do any good, thought Jenny wryly. They’d come too far down this road for there to be either understanding or compromise. Nothing short of total conquest would suit either.

“What I meant,” said Jenny, “was that perhaps if you were to give the impression of eagerness, he might be less insistent? Men do tend to want what they’re told they can’t have.”

“Perhaps that was my mistake,” said Mary Anne grimly. She was silent, and Jenny could see she was chewing the problem over. “No. No. I can’t. If he gets me with child again . . . I won’t. I can’t. Get me my diamonds, Jenny. No, not the diamonds. Mrs. Boland is always so plain. The cameo set.”

Obediently, Jenny fetched the cameos, fastening them around Mary Anne’s throat, in her ears, around her wrists.

“Is the dinner for Mrs. Boland?” She knew already, of course. She and Charles met when they could, complicated by Jenny’s obligations to both Neddy and her mistress. Mary Anne had clawed her way back to lucidity, but with that had come an anxious possessiveness; Mary Anne needed to know that her allies were around her at all times. It was hard, at times, especially when Jenny had been up half the night with Neddy and her wits were slow, to remember what she was meant to know, and where she was meant to have been.

“She’s out of mourning and taking up her late husband’s business.” Mary Anne made no effort to hide her jealousy. She adjusted the cameo necklace, making faces at herself in the mirror. “Perhaps Robert will come up sweeter if our business prospers. He can buy his whore another bauble.”

Robert greeted his wife with exaggerated politeness, as though he hadn’t been threatening to break her door down less than half an hour before. The strong smell of smuggled French brandy made clear what had occupied him in the interim.

Jenny sat on the box with the coachman, her mistress’s belongings clasped in her lap, her hands cold despite the heat of the day. Jonathan Fenty would be there tonight—Mrs. Boland, she knew, had requested it specially. She knew, because Charles had told her, that Fenty went to St. Andrew once a month to visit his sister and her children.

Yes, she had accounts from Charles, but they were secondhand. She craved word of her child the way she had once thirsted after Charles’s embrace.

Was she well, was she happy, was there someone who cradled her in the night?

From the box, she could see Fenty, dressed in his best suit of clothes, a tall hat jammed on his old-fashioned queue, crossing through the lime hedge to the house. Jenny followed after Mary Anne and Robert toward the house, but, as the carriage began to rattle away to the coach house, she made a moue of distress.

“I’ve forgot the pins,” she whispered to Robert’s man Derry. “I’d best fetch them.”

She hurried down the path, making sure to collide with Mr. Fenty, dropping her mistress’s fan in the process.

“I beg pardon,” she said anxiously, and then, in an undertone, “Is she well?”

She shouldn’t be doing this, she knew. It wasn’t that Charles had explicitly forbade it, but they both knew it was safest if there was no connection between her and Jonathan. But today was her baby’s birthday, and, with each day, her child felt further and further away, a dream she had once had.

“You’ve dropped something.” Fenty leaned over, his hat tipping. “She’s the cleverest puss in Christendom. And her smile! She could make a saint do her bidding. She knows it too, the minx. She’ll grin at you, so, and hold up her arms to be picked up. She’s got everyone running circles around her.”

Jenny blinked back sudden tears, the affection and fondness in his voice making her feel even more bereft.

“Thank you,” she said hoarsely, taking the fan from him. She wanted to ask him more, whether she ever laughed, if she called Rachel Fenty “Ma-Ma,” if she looked like Charles or Jenny or neither, did she like to sleep with the covers or did she kick them off at night. But the yard was swarming with servants and anything more would be noted. “When next you go, will you kiss her for me?”

Fenty took a moment to straighten his hat, squinting into the sun, away from Jenny, as though he weren’t aware of her presence. “Don’t you fret yourself. You’ll be able to kiss her yourself soon enough.”

He walked briskly away, toward the house, limping slightly in his smart new evening shoes with buckles, leaving Jenny scrambling to gather her wits about her, hurrying off to the coach house to discover the pins that were tucked safely in her pocket.

The party was seated at table by the time Jenny returned, sweaty and breathless. Mary Anne frowned at her and Jenny held up the packet of pins, rolling her eyes in silent apology. Jenny hurried to pick up the shawl her mistress had allowed to fall to the floor, and drape it over her mistress’s arms.

Charles was seated at the head of the table, Mrs. Boland on his right. He didn’t lift his head or look at Jenny, but she knew, without being told, that he was aware of her presence, was watching her without looking, just as she watched him.

With a smile, he disengaged himself from whatever conversation he had been having with Mrs. Boland and looked down the table. It was a small group by local standards: Mr. and Mrs. Poole were there; a florid-faced captain from the militia and his skinny wife; someone’s maiden cousin, visiting from England.

Charles held up his glass to a footman, who filled it with claret, deep red in the candlelight.

“Oy,” said Robert, clicking his fingers and holding up his own glass.

Charles cast a look at his brother but didn’t comment. Instead, he raised his glass and said, “Thank you all for joining me this evening. I’ve a bit of news to share.”

“He’s marrying the widow,” slurred Robert.

Fenty’s hand tightened so hard on his glass, Jenny thought the stem would break. Mrs. Boland didn’t deign to acknowledge the comment. She had a quiet dignity about her, the granite-hard dignity of a Roman matron.