Page 123 of The Summer Country

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.”