Page 121 of The Summer Country

Jenny looked up at him, her gray eyes nearly black in the darkness. “Don’t you want her back?”

Did he? The truth was, Charles wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it. In theory, yes, she was his child. But he had a strange reluctance to see her. It was as if this child was his failures made flesh. He’d thought to be better than his father, but his father, at least, had contrived to free his lover and child.

It was almost easier to pretend she was what he claimed, the child of a friend, whom he could welcome with open arms and every affection, for Hal’s sake.

But he couldn’t say that, so, instead, he said, “Don’t worry. She’s being raised with every care. Jonathan wouldn’t stand for less. I would suspect Jonathan of extending the arrangement to keep the fees but for the fact that he spends most of it on gifts for her.”

Jenny wasn’t amused. “He doesn’t want to give her up. Have you seen the way he looks when he speaks of her? As if she were his.”

Charles rubbed her arm consolingly. “He’s hardly going to run off with her. Don’t worry. We’ll have our girl home soon.”

“You’ll have our girl home,” said Jenny, so softly that Charles could scarcely make out the words. But he did, and he knew she was right.

“We’ll find a way,” he said again, but even to his own ears, the words sounded thin.

“Yes,” said Jenny politely, and turned to go.

“Wait!” Charles put out a hand to her. Speaking rapidly, he said, “There’s a seat opening on the council. I mean to have it. It will mean spending some time making up to red-faced planters and their narrow-minded wives, but . . . you were right. Writing letters to London only does so much. If I can work here, from within . . .”

“Oh, Charles.” Jenny put a hand to his cheek. Charles wasn’t sure why, but it felt like good-bye.

Taking her hand, he turned it and pressed a kiss against the palm, trying to put all the strength of his love into that kiss. “Please, don’t give up. I haven’t. We’ve come this far.”

Standing on her tiptoes, Jenny pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips. “I need to get back.”

Charles watched her go, seeing his mother, Robert, everyone he had failed. But there was only Jenny, stepping lightly across the freshly hoed fields, disappearing into the gloaming. Jenny, who was his future, he promised himself, not his past.

It would all come right. He would make it right.

Once he had his seat on the council, once their child was come to Peverills . . .

“Soon,” he promised Jenny, his whisper traveling on the wind like the sound of the cane. “Soon.”

Christ Church, Barbados

July 1815

It was nearly a year before Charles Davenant’s Portuguese ward came to Peverills.

Ructions in Europe had caused difficulties in getting a ship from Lisbon. The girl’s nursemaid had taken fright at thought of the journey and abandoned her post at the harbor, causing a delay as a new nursemaid was found. The stories were vague, but no one really demanded much in the way of details. No one cared. All thoughts were concentrated on Napoléon’s escape from Elba, his triumphal march on Paris, the new war in Europe.

Carlota St. Aubyn slipped into Barbados society hard on the heels of the news of the Duke of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo.

She benefited from the general elation and a vague sense of warmth that extended to all things related to the duke, Portugal included. Gossip, predisposed, in this case, to be positively inclined to anyone connected with the late victories, elevated her parentage, endowing her mother with the fictional rank of first contessa and then marquesa, creating a dramatic and doomed love story between the persecuted noblewoman (resisting the lustful advances of the French conquerors) and the noble English officer who had rescued and married her, only to succumb, tragically, to a Frenchman’s sword.

That there wasn’t a word of truth in it didn’t bother anyone in the slightest. By the time Carlota had been at Peverills for a week, half the island believed it, and the other half deemed it impolitic to disagree.

“Not that it matters,” said Mary Anne, donning a new round gown of ruby merino, trimmed with sapphire velvet and Valenciennes lace, utterly impractical for the climate, but made to model from a batch of slightly wilted fashion papers come from England on the same ship as word of the duke’s victory over Bonaparte. It was, Mary Anne had decided, close enough to a year that the lilac of half mourning could be abandoned, and she intended to do so with a will. “The child is Charles’s ward, whether she’s the daughter of a countess or a Lisbon doxy.”

She seemed to have no suspicion that the child might be anything other than the daughter of Charles’s old school friend, and for that, Jenny was grateful.

Not that Jenny would know if Mary Anne thought otherwise. The old days, when Mary Anne would speak whatever was on her mind, were gone.

Sometimes, Jenny would catch Mary Anne watching her, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. There were tests, seemingly casual comments, designed to see if Jenny could be tricked into referring to the events of that awful night. Jenny, who had thought the skill gone with her father, rediscovered the art of turning to stone, presenting a blank countenance when pressed.

But Mary Anne wasn’t satisfied.

Jenny wasn’t sure what would satisfy her. To bring it up, openly, and swear fealty? But to voice it would be to acknowledge it, to acknowledge that Mary Anne had killed her husband and suborned the nearest physician; it would be like plunging her hand into a fire to grasp a hot coal, like a medieval saint praying for a miracle.