Page 25 of The Summer Country

Her father released her, so abruptly that her head snapped back. “See that you do.” There was no need to add an or else. He’d made the consequences clear enough. He might not own her anymore, not on paper, but what he wanted to do with her, he could. He had proved that well enough. But she wasn’t going to think about that. Not now. “I don’t want her seeing Davenant again.”

“Stranger if she doesn’t. Being neighbors and all.” Jenny balanced her basket on her hip, trying to look as if the idea had just come to her. “They say familiarity breeds contempt.”

Her father gave a short bark of a laugh. “Give her enough rope and she’ll hang herself? There are times when you almost show sense.”

“Sir.” Jenny bowed her head, the picture of submission. As long as he couldn’t see her eyes.

The colonel’s booted foot tapped against the dirt path. She could see him working over the idea, turning it over in his mind.

“All right. Let her have her amusement. It will all be over soon enough.” As if by chance, he added, “I’ve asked Dr. MacAndrews for dinner. These headaches my niece has been having . . . I don’t like them. I don’t like them at all.”

“No, sir,” said Jenny.

Her father didn’t say anything else, just nodded abruptly and strode away, confident that his message had been received. Which it had. First the stick, then the carrot. That obscene pantomime with Davenant, followed, now, by this pretense of complicity. She could work with her father to destroy her mistress—or suffer the consequences.

It might, Jenny thought, making her way back to the house, have been more effective as a tactic if she’d had the least faith her father would stand by her. But she knew, knew from experience, knew from years of watching him, that as soon as her usefulness was done, so would she be. There would be no manumission, no tidy house in Bridgetown or advantageous marriage, the various plums he had dangled in front of her as his fancy took him. Instead, she was just as likely to be sold, an inconvenient reminder of an unfortunate interlude.

At least Mary Anne could be trusted to keep her promises—most of the time.

And that was just the crux of it, wasn’t it? Mary Anne needed Jenny; she might even love her. But that didn’t mean she was to be trusted. None of them were. And Jenny would do well to remember that.

Mary Anne had no such reserve. She came running down the steps to meet Jenny, in a welter of impatience.

“Well? Do you have my sprig muslin?” Lowering her voice, she added, “I saw you from the window. What did my uncle want with you?”

“The front breadth is spoiled.” Jenny made a show of adjusting her burden. “He’s asked Dr. MacAndrews to dine.”

“Doctor MacAndrews.” Mary Anne didn’t bother to hide her contempt. Jenny cast her a warning look. The maid dusting the brasses, the boy sweeping the steps: any of them might be her father’s spy. Any of them probably were. “What? He’s no more been to the university in Edinburgh than I have. The only study he’s done is of the bottom of a bottle.”

Jenny kept her eyes down, her voice neutral. “The master wishes the doctor to alleviate the pain of your headaches.”

“By removing my head?” Mary Anne muttered as they crossed the threshold into her rooms. The chambermaid didn’t stop her sweeping, but her head moved slightly, listening. Mary Anne bared her teeth in a smile. “My uncle is all kindness, but he is mistaken. You can go now, Esther. Tell Cook there’ll be one more at table.”

Never mind that Cook already knew, probably had known long before her mistress. Mary Anne fought fiercely for the illusion that she had any say in the ordering of her own household.

The door had barely closed behind the maid before Mary Anne turned back to Jenny. “Is that his plan, do you think? To drug me into insensibility?”

Jenny busied herself laying out the linens, smoothing imaginary creases out of an impeccably pressed chemise. “He didn’t say.”

“You must have some idea.” When Jenny didn’t answer, Mary Anne turned on her heel, pacing her usual track from window to bed. “He means to put me in the madhouse, doesn’t he?”

“He might do,” said Jenny neutrally.

Or an accident, carefully staged. Poor girl, her mind was unbalanced. She never noticed that open window. . . .

“Might do,” Mary Anne mocked. “What did he tell you?”

“Only what I’ve told you.” Jenny held her mistress’s gaze. “I’m not privy to his plans. Not anymore.”

Mary Anne’s eyes dropped first. She knew the reason for it as well as Jenny and the cost exacted for it.

She sat down among Jenny’s carefully folded linens, never minding the mess she was making. “He’s grown bolder.”

Bolder wasn’t exactly the word Jenny would have used. Her father was still playing a careful game, nothing that could redound discredit upon him. But he was enacting his moves with a grim determination that boded ill for Jenny’s mistress. He was done playing a waiting game.

And Mary Anne . . . Mary Anne wasn’t suited to subtlety.

“You might try to pay him off.” Even as she said it, Jenny knew it was futile. Once, perhaps, it might have served. But not anymore. Her father would never settle for less than the whole. And Mary Anne would never willingly part with a penny of what was hers, even if she wrote her own death warrant in the process, and Jenny’s with it.