Page 140 of The Summer Country

“This,” said Mrs. Davenant, holding it up triumphantly, “used to be mine. My uncle gave it to me.”

Emily instinctively reached to take it back. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. This was my mother’s.”

She was too slow. Pressing hard on the locket, Mrs. Davenant flicked open the catch, and, before Emily had time to protest, stuck her nail beneath the miniature of Emily’s mother, prying it from the back.

“Stop!” Emily protested, but it was too late; the tiny piece of vellum had come loose, the glue on the back old and dried.

“See?” rasped Mrs. Davenant. She pointed with a trembling finger at the gold center of the locket. “To Jenny, for her good service. I gave it to her. I should know. And she gave it to her daughter. There.”

Emily rescued her mother’s miniature, grabbing miniature and locket and pressing the former haphazardly back into its place. “That was my mother,” she said, trying not to show how shaken she felt.

Mrs. Davenant stared up at her, her gray eyes all but black. “Yes, your mother. Lottie.”

“No,” said Emily, beginning to lose patience. “My mother was Lucy. Lucy Fenty.”

“Lucy, Lottie. Jonathan Fenty’s girl. Only she wasn’t. First they said she was Portuguese and then they passed her off as Fenty’s. I’d like to say I knew, but I didn’t. Not until the day of the fire, when Jenny . . .” Mrs. Davenant’s face twisted with pain and grief. “My Jenny.”

“My mother was Jonathan Fenty’s daughter,” said Emily. Never mind that she wasn’t sure whose child her mother was. Augustus Boland’s, most likely. “She can’t have been the little Portuguese girl. Lottie? She died in the fire. George told me.”

“And how would George know? He knows only what he’s been told. He wasn’t there.” Mrs. Davenant grasped Emily’s wrist, her fingers surprisingly strong. “I was there. I was there.”

“I don’t understand,” said Emily. Mrs. Davenant’s fingers encircled her wrist like a manacle.

“Don’t you think I didn’t know who you were from the first?” It ought to have sounded mad, but it didn’t. Beneath the fever glow, Mrs. Davenant’s eyes were clear, clear and intent on Emily’s face. “I was there. I was there and I saw. I saw Jonathan Fenty steal her away. . . .”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Christ Church, Barbados

April 1816

“Jenny!” There was no answer from within, only the crackle of the flames. “Jenny!”

Mary Anne darted forward but the flames were licking up, catching onto the wood panels of the walls, making the canvas of old portraits sizzle. She couldn’t see Jenny through the flames, couldn’t see if she had been hit or had made it through.

Outside, she could hear the shout of “Fire! Fire!”

Mary Anne hesitated a moment, and then gathered up her skirts and ran out the front. People were running about, some with buckets, some with silver, some throwing water on the flames, others fleeing.

Mary Anne grabbed at the first slave she came across, pulling at his arm. “My maid—she’s in there.”

The man didn’t so much as pause.

Mary Anne tried grabbing at someone else. “I order you to—”

But the man yanked away, hurrying with his bucket toward the blaze.

There were doors in the back, she knew, somewhere, doors on the garden side, doors out to the veranda, doors, doors, doors, more and more being engulfed in flames as the futile trickles of water did little to damp the rapacity of the fire. Ash blew on the wind, stinging her cheeks and hair, making her bat at the embers on her dress. The scent of burning cane singed her nostrils and made her cough into the fold of her shawl.

“Jenny!” She couldn’t be gone, not Jenny, her Jenny. Mary Anne ran around the side of the house and saw Charles hurrying toward her, toward the house, his face haggard, a gash over one eye.

“Charles!” The word came out a sob of relief. “Thank goodness. My Jenny—she’s in there. She might be hurt. Please, please, send someone in for her.”

“Jenny?” To her dying day, she would never forget the look on Charles’s face, horror, stark and dreadful.

Without another word, he turned and plunged toward the house, into the flames.

“Charles! What are you—” He was gone, through what had once been a door and was now a gaping maw to hell, spitting ash and fire.