Page 26 of The Summer Country

Mary Anne shrugged the suggestion away. “And have him come back for more? No. But MacAndrews, now . . . How much do you think it would take to buy him?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenny honestly.

“Not much, I imagine.” Mary Anne fingered the locket that hung from a ribbon around her neck. “The price of a bottle of brandy.”

“You get what you pay for,” Jenny cautioned.

“Meaning he’ll be too foxed to remember he’s been bought? In that case, we’ll remind him.” Mary Anne was already thumbing through the small box in which she kept her trinkets, the small ornaments her guardian had considered suitable to pass on to her. “My mother’s pearl brooch. I never wear it.”

“Would you offer it to MacAndrews?”

“No. You will.”

Jenny’s hands went cold. Her lips felt numb. “He’ll think I stole it. If he goes to the master . . .”

Mary Anne looked as though she were about to argue, but something in Jenny’s face made her reconsider. With a shrug, she said, “The filigree combs, then. They’ve never become me. I can gift them to you. I’ll do it tonight, in front of my uncle.”

Mary Anne looked dangerously pleased with herself at the notion.

“Don’t tweak his tail too hard,” Jenny warned. Those combs had been the colonel’s birthday gift to his niece.

“Oh, hardly,” said Mary Anne airily. “But I can’t help it if he wastes his coin on bagatelles fit only for the servants. You can sell them—in Oistins. Or Bridgetown. Bridgetown would be best. You’ll get a better price, I imagine. Don’t worry. I’ll give you a pass in case anyone questions you.”

It was no use arguing with Mary Anne when she had the bit between her teeth; one could only hope that she might be distracted or forget. Once challenged, she would only dig in her heels. “What if someone follows me?”

“There’s no harm to your selling something I’ve given you, is there? Whatever Uncle John suspects, he can’t know.” Having resolved the matter to her satisfaction, Mary Anne said, “Once I marry, he’ll have no power over me. I can have him banned from the grounds if I like.”

If her husband allowed it. But they would face that trouble when they came to it.

Against her better judgment, Jenny produced a folded piece of paper with a red seal from under her apron. “The Tremaines of Rosehall are giving a dance for Mr. Davenant.”

Mary Anne frowned at the paper. “This is my uncle’s seal.”

“The master’s reply. He regrets that you’re indisposed.”

There was a dangerous glitter in Mary Anne’s eye. “Oh, am I? On the contrary, I am quite disposed to attend. Get me paper and ink. He’ll never dare challenge my attendance once this is sent.”

Unless he drugged her into insensibility first. Jenny watched as Mary Anne wrote her reply with such ferocity that the nib left a gash in the paper. “Go softly, Miss Mary.”

“Softly won’t serve.” Mary Anne doused the paper in sand, setting up a shower of small grains as she shook the note in the air. “Here. See this delivered. No. Deliver it yourself. I won’t take a chance on this.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Belatedly, Mary Anne glanced up at her, catching something in her voice or posture. “Will there be trouble for you? Will he know you took it?”

After a pause, Jenny shook her head. “Not this time.”

Not if she went to him first, with the information that she’d delivered a sealed paper to Rosehall, professed ignorance when he raged, as he surely would, that she ought to have brought it to him first. He would be frustrated, yes, but he wouldn’t punish her, not this time. He would see it as clumsiness, not treachery.

There were benefits to being underestimated.

“Good,” said Mary Anne, dismissing the matter. “I’ll wear the new jonquil silk. And my mother’s diamonds. Let Mr. Davenant see just what he stands to gain.”

Jenny paused, Mary Anne’s letter in her hand. “Are you sure he wishes to be reminded?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Jenny bit her lip, weighing her words. “Mr. Davenant has . . . romantic tendencies.” She could picture the two of them under the boughs of a tamarind tree, talking past each other, Mr. Davenant speaking of principles and Mary Anne of crops, Mr. Davenant of philosophy and Mary Anne of accounts; Mary Anne cited Lascelles’s Instructions for the Management of a Plantation in Barbadoes and for the Treatment of Negroes, Mr. Davenant quoted a Frenchman named Rousseau. “He might not want to think himself a fortune hunter.”