Page 16 of The Summer Country

Charles tossed the note down on the table. “I haven’t secured anyone.”

Robert didn’t deign to answer, only pulled the platter of ham closer, looking over the pieces with exaggerated care. “No meat for you, brother? Or haven’t you the stomach for it?”

He hadn’t the stomach for any of it.

Disjointed memories of the previous night chased themselves around Charles’s brain. The veranda at Beckles, candle flames bobbing like will-o’-the-wisps. The colonel’s barbed bonhomie.

Not but what it’s hard for him being a second son, eh?

My niece is not like other women.

Mary Anne Beckles was an heiress; Robert a younger son. Was that what all this was about? Was Charles being cast as Count Paris to his brother’s Romeo? From what he’d seen, Miss Beckles made an unlikely Juliet, quiet throughout dinner, but that might have been resentment only, resentment at being made to dine with the heir, the designated suitor.

Looked at in that light, the evening took on a distinctly different cast. The message sent by the maid—her uncle’s doing, not hers? The offer of a woman for the night. Jenny. Charles could picture the maid, her apron ghostly white in the torchlight. All a test, like something out of a fairy story?

Charles decided he didn’t care to know. He didn’t want anything to do with any of it. He was here to take over management of the family plantation, not to engage in intrigues, romantic or otherwise. And if his brother had an interest in that direction, by God, he’d be damned if he ruined his chances.

Their parents’ marriage had been a love match. Imprudent, some had said, an heiress marrying a dancing master, a younger son without prospects, albeit from a proud English family. But Charles could remember them still, sitting together of an evening, their heads close together, speaking in soft voices as Charles played on the floor with his toy soldiers.

“Did you have designs in that direction?” Charles asked neutrally. “Because if you do—”

“What, me? You can have the heiress and welcome to her.” Robert pushed back his chair, sending pain exploding through Charles’s skull. “I’m just a younger son, good for nothing but to be left at home.”

“Would you like to go to England?” Charles demanded, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. He told himself he’d be patient with Robert, be understanding, be kind, but it was maddening to be made the villain for something that was none of his doing. “Is that what this is all about? I could arrange it, if you liked. Letters of introduction, lodging—”

“For what?” Robert’s voice cracked, and Charles was reminded, jarringly, of how young his brother was still, never mind the breadth of his shoulders or the bold brass buttons of his coat. There were six years between them, but it felt more like ten. “So I can be told I’m a bumbling colonial? No thank you, Charles. I have no desire to go abroad to be sneered at.”

“It isn’t too late,” said Charles, even though he knew it to be a lie. Or, if not a lie, then not entirely true. It had been bad enough for him at seven; it would be far worse for Robert at nearly twenty-one. “I have friends in England who would welcome you.”

Not family. Their Davenant cousins, safe in the security of their Elizabethan estate in Essex, had nothing but mockery for their West Indian relations. Charles had spent several miserable holidays at Beauleigh Abbey those first few years in England. A dead rat in his bed, incongruously wrapped in cloth of gold, with a tag around his neck reading “nabob,” had been the best of it. Charles had been only too delighted to abandon Beauleigh for the homes of his classmates, avoiding his relations whenever possible.

His head still aching, Charles said shortly, “If not England, then why not elsewhere? The Continent is hardly fit for travel, but you might visit America if you liked. Mother had cousins in Charleston.”

“Trying to get rid of me, brother?”

“Hardly. I need your help even more than you know.” Charles rubbed his aching temples. “If you wanted to go so badly, why did you never say?”

Robert rose from his chair, resting a hand against the polished mahogany of the sideboard. “Someone had to be here with Mother. She was entirely bedridden by the end, did you know? She liked to have me to read to her. Besides,” he added abruptly, “there was no money. Father couldn’t afford to keep two sons in school.”

Charles stared down at his empty plate, lost for an answer. He’d thought himself so abstemious, so virtuous, all because he’d never wagered too high or developed a taste for expensive horses. But there had been a thousand expenses, all the same. All of it had seemed so reasonable at the time. Furnishings for his rooms at Oxford, new suits of clothes, just the standard perquisites of a gentleman. His father had never said him nay. And West Indian planters were all rich, everyone said. Charles’s memories were of servants circling around him, silver shining from the sideboard, objets d’art from France and books from England.

Why had no one ever said?

Charles cleared his throat. “If I’d known how bad it was, Robert, I’d have come home years ago. Believe me. Father never said. I’d thought—”

That they were rich as everyone claimed. That everything at home was just as Charles had left it, eternally the same, gilded in sunshine and wonder.

Robert smiled, but it was a Medusa smile, beautiful and cold. “No, he wouldn’t, would he? Could you see him admitting what a failure he’d been? Oh, no. Wouldn’t want to tarnish that heroic image.”

Charles shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “That’s not entirely fair. The import duties—”

“And the prices, yes, I know! But we might have managed better. When we might have expanded our land, Father built model farms. Model farms. He had an idea he could turn the slaves into yeomen farmers.”

Their father’s ideas had been much praised in certain circles in London. “Was it such a terrible idea?”

Robert cast him a look. “Just look at the books.”

“I mean to,” said Charles calmly. “I have an appointment with the bookkeeper after breakfast. Fenty?”