Page 156 of The Summer Country

It was looking more and more like the gutter. He wanted to tell the man that he was the son of one of the wealthiest planters in Barbados, but, in his bedraggled state, he doubted anyone would believe him. Besides, his teeth were chattering too hard to manage English, much less French.

Edward twisted his blue lips into a hopeful smile. “Monsieur Davenant. Mon oncle?”

The concierge shrugged and said something in a French that wasn’t at all like the French Edward had learned in the schoolroom at Beckles. It was faster and more guttural and entirely incomprehensible, but the man had opened the door, so Edward took his frozen body through the arch and up a flight of stairs paneled in rich, dark wood.

A bas-relief, depicting something out of classical myth, adorned the turn of the stair. The rain pattered against high-set windows. Edward’s feet squelched in his inadequate shoes, leaving damp marks behind him.

He was deposited at a paneled door, where a rapid discussion took place with a maidservant, who disappeared and then reappeared again, gesturing Edward to follow. She took him through a richly papered antechamber into a high-ceilinged room with, thank heavens, a coal fire burning away in the grate.

Edward scooted closer, rubbing his hands over the blaze, and then turned to flip up the damp tails of his coat to dry them.

It was in this very undignified pose that he was caught by his host.

“They tell me that you’re my nephew, Ned?” said the man. He had blond hair, graying at the temples, and a lined, dignified face. At the moment, the lines had folded into creases of amusement. He gestured toward the fire. “I would have known it anyway, from your eagerness to get warm.”

Edward hastily dropped his coattails. “Yes, sir. I mean, I am. I beg your pardon for not writing in advance.”

“You always have a welcome here,” said his uncle Charles, quite handsomely, Edward thought, given that he didn’t know him from Adam. “Allow me to make you known to my wife, your aunt Jeanne.”

He’d been so busy being embarrassed at being caught with his nether end up that he hadn’t even noticed the woman behind his uncle.

“I say—that is—I’m, er, delighted.” Edward tripped over his tongue and his boots.

His mother had never mentioned that his uncle was married. Or that his uncle’s wife was a mulatto. Which might, now that he thought of it, be why his mother had never mentioned it. If they were married.

Could one marry colored people in Paris? He supposed one could do anything in Paris. It was, after all, Paris.

Edward stepped forward, prepared to do the pretty. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs.—er—Aunt—er—”

His new aunt took his hands, holding them out, looking at him with bemused gray eyes. “Neddy. Little Neddy.”

“I’m afraid I don’t—that is, you have the advantage of me.” Edward felt stupid and gauche, his wet suit of clothes—his only suit of clothes—clinging to him. His uncle’s wife was dressed in a claret-colored gown, richly trimmed with whatever those things were with which women trimmed gowns. She was quite beautiful in an old sort of way.

His uncle’s wife dropped his hands, taking a step back. “Forgive me. I’ve heard so much of you from your uncle that I feel as though I know you already.”

“Oh,” said Edward, at a loss. He had been not quite three when his uncle had left. He had never imagined that he’d left such an impression. “I’d no idea. . . .”

“It’s a pleasure to see you grown,” said his uncle gravely. “Even if somewhat unexpectedly.”

“And rather damp,” added his wife.

“I apologize for appearing like this,” said Edward stiffly, trying to reclaim the situation. “If you’ll point me to a reasonable inn . . .”

“Don’t be absurd,” said his uncle. “You’ll want a hot drink, I expect.”

“And a bath,” put in his uncle’s wife.

Edward felt his cheeks flush. “I, well, I seem to have underestimated how much it would cost to travel,” he admitted. “I lost my baggage in Calais.”

Lost, he thought, sounded better than stolen. The man had claimed to be a porter, so Edward had given him a coin and his bags and had never seen either again, or the man neither. He couldn’t believe he’d been such a flat, but he had, and here he was, wet and miserable with only the clothes on his back and not quite penniless, but close to it. He could just imagine what his mother would say.

“You haven’t come as your mother’s emissary, have you?” his uncle asked. Edward saw his uncle exchange a look with his wife. “If you’re here about Peverills . . .”

“No!” Edward flushed with embarrassment at his own vehemence. “That is, no. I’m not. I’ve come away on my own account. My mother—she doesn’t know I’ve come.”

Whatever happened, he wasn’t going back to his mother. Or to Beckles. His wife had cuckolded him with a half-pay officer at St. Ann’s Garrison, had dragged his name through the mud and left him shamed, and then had the nerve to tell him she’d never wanted to marry him anyway, a callow youth barely out of the schoolroom. She’d done it because it was the only way out of her parents’ house, but if she’d known what life at Beckles would be like, she would have stayed home with her parents and spared herself his fumbling attentions. The very memory of it made Edward hot with shame and resentment.

Did Julia think he’d wanted to marry her? He’d been bullied and badgered into it. She was nearly a decade his senior, the eldest of six daughters. But she came with a piece of land his mother had wanted, and so there they were, yoked together, although they hadn’t a word to say to each other and nothing at all in common. He hated them, he hated them both, his mother and Julia, his mother for using him as a pawn and Julia—Julia for not wanting to use him for anything at all.