Page 24 of The Summer Country

Mr. Davenant pointed to a metal tube mounted to the railing of the veranda. “They’ll have seen us coming some time since. I’ll wager Sally has already laid extra places at table.”

Emily took a cup, the metal cool beneath her fingers, incised with a coat of arms too faded to make out. “Is that a spyglass?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Davenant, taking a grateful swig of his own drink. “It’s an old planter trick, to welcome one’s guests with the door open and a cold drink at the ready.”

And see what one’s slaves were doing, Emily didn’t doubt. “May I?”

“Go right ahead,” said Mr. Davenant.

The metal was warm to the touch but not hot; the hedges shaded the veranda from the sun. The road leaped out at her and, on it, Dr. Braithwaite in the barouche, making his way back to Bridgetown.

He had shifted to the forward-facing seat, his back to Beckles. Relieved to be done with them? No doubt.

They would not, Emily supposed, see him again, and she found the thought unsettling, although she wasn’t sure why. The sense of a conversation unfinished, perhaps. Or the fear that she hadn’t shown to good advantage—that all of them hadn’t shown to good advantage—and she wanted to set it right.

The polished lacquer winked in the sunlight, disappearing behind the long stalks of cane.

“Don’t keep it all to yourself,” said Adam, and Emily obligingly moved aside. “Ahoy, mateys! I feel quite piratical.”

“When I was a boy,” said Mr. Davenant, taking Emily’s empty cup from her and setting it back on the tray, “I thought my grandmother was omniscient. She knew whenever I was getting into something I shouldn’t.”

“Climbing into the cooper’s barrels?” said Emily. “But I could see only the road.”

“Oh, this is only one of many,” said Mr. Davenant. “There are spyglasses all about the house. I’m sure I haven’t found the half of them. My forebears liked to know what was going on about them. There wasn’t anyone or anything on their land they couldn’t see.”

“How . . . enterprising,” said Emily.

Mr. Davenant looked uncomfortable. “It’s hard to explain how it was. One lived alone out here, surrounded by one’s people. Not that one didn’t trust one’s people, but . . .”

The maid holding the tray stood impassive.

Mr. Davenant smiled at her. “Thank you, Polly. Will you tell Mrs. Davenant that we have company?” To Emily, he added, “It’s a formality, of course. She’ll know already.”

“How convenient,” murmured Emily, but she couldn’t help glancing back over her shoulder at the spyglass sitting so innocuously on its stand.

Was that how Mr. Davenant had seen them, all the way by the ruins? Could he see all the way to Peverills? It was disconcerting, knowing one was being watched.

“I think it’s ingenious,” said Adam. “I’ll have ten of them put in at Great George Street, so that we can pretend not to be at home when my sisters call. Are you coming, Emily?”

“What? Yes,” said Emily, and followed Mr. Davenant and her cousins through the front door of Beckles.

Chapter Six

Beckles

March 1812

“What is she doing riding out with Davenant?”

Jenny’s father caught her behind the washhouse, her arms full of linens. That he’d lain in wait for her, she had no doubt. He’d have seen her from the glass he kept by his window and marked his time until she emerged. Jenny schooled herself to show no reaction. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d startled her.

“Riding,” said Jenny, and then, when her father’s face darkened, she added, “If there were anything more, don’t you think I’d have told you?”

“Would you?” The colonel gripped her chin in his hand, forcing her to stare up into the face that was so like hers. She’d gotten her looks from him, the long lines of her cheekbones, the deep-set gray eyes. Nobody dared comment upon it, yet everybody knew.

She wasn’t the only one of her father’s bastards at Beckles, but she was the only one he had honored with his attention.

Jenny forced herself to stand still, even though her heart was going like a blacksmith’s hammer beneath the pile of linens. “I know which side my bread is buttered.”