Page 43 of The Summer Country

“Please, God.” She had seen cholera. It had cut through Bristol five years before, while her father delivered sermons of hope to a church nearly empty of worshippers, those who dared to come the desperate and devout, everyone else too afraid of the tainted air.

She had thought her heart would break with the helplessness of it, spooning drops of soup into mouths that couldn’t swallow, singing lullabies to children too ill to hear.

“God and the Board of Health,” said Dr. Braithwaite. “We had two physicians come from England three years ago to set up a Board of Heath and take action, but . . . to call it a drop in the bucket would be to assume a bucket the size of the ocean. People are meant to throw waste in the sea, but half the time they simply fling it outside their door. And why should they bother to do otherwise? The well water here in Bridgetown is all tainted.”

“All?” said Emily, thinking of Laura’s lethargy, the fits of nausea that seemed to strike with no warning. “What of Miss Lee’s hotel?”

Dr. Braithwaite blinked, and then sketched a dismissive gesture. “Oh, you needn’t worry. The water you drink doesn’t come from here. It’s drawn from Beckles’s spring.”

“Beckles? As in the plantation?”

“It’s a common enough name in these parts.” Dr. Braithwaite shrugged. “It’s peddled for half a cent a gallon. Few can afford to buy enough for drinking, much less washing, not unless you want to spend all your earnings on enough water for a sponge bath. We’re ripe for an epidemic and every physician here knows it.”

Emily could feel sweat pooling at the back of her neck. Her lips felt dry. “What can we do?”

“We?” He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time, then took a step back. “You needn’t concern yourself. You’ll be long back in Bristol by then.”

“What makes you think I won’t stay?” It felt as though a door had been slammed in her face.

“Your cousin said you sail back to England in June.”

Trust Adam to say what pleased him in the assumption that time would make it true. “He sails back to England in June. I have a plantation to see to.”

Dr. Braithwaite raised a brow. “Don’t you mean you have a plantation to sell?”

He wasn’t being sarcastic; he seemed genuinely baffled by the notion she would stay. Emily rounded on Dr. Braithwaite, venting all of her frustration in the direction of his cravat pin. “Why does everyone assume I mean to sell? Is it so inconceivable that a woman could run a plantation?”

“A woman, yes,” said Dr. Braithwaite, and then ruined it by adding, “but one bred to it.”

“I should think you of all people would realize that . . . that horticulture is hardly something that runs in the blood!”

“Agriculture,” murmured Dr. Braithwaite.

“Agriculture, horticulture, anything can be learned with enough study.” Emily flung up her hands in frustration. “You trained as a doctor. Why can’t I train to grow sugar?”

Dr. Braithwaite went very still. “My training as a doctor was that unlikely, was it?”

“No! That’s not what I meant at all.” At least, she didn’t think it had been.

“Isn’t it? There were a number of my colleagues in Edinburgh who shared that view.” Dr. Braithwaite smiled without humor. “Medical students aren’t noted for their subtlety.”

“Don’t you think I heard the same at the infirmary? As if to be a woman were to be a simpleton!” Emily gave her skirts an agitated shake. “I can’t change my sex any more than you can the color of your skin.”

“Some women do,” said Dr. Braithwaite. Emily detected a thaw.

“Yes,” she said wrathfully, “in Shakespeare comedies, and very unconvincing it is too. Can you imagine me in breeches and a cravat, with a mustache drawn in charcoal on my lip?”

Dr. Braithwaite lost the battle with his lips. He grinned at her. “Now that you mention it, yes.” Gravely, he added, “And I see your point.”

There was something in the way he was looking at her that made the color rise to Emily’s cheeks. “Well, then,” she said, resolutely turning back to the matter at hand and away from the disquieting light in Dr. Braithwaite’s eyes. “I only meant that one needn’t be bred to something to master it. If that were so, shouldn’t you be in business like your uncle? But you could be taught a new trade and so can I. Mrs. Davenant has invited me to stay at Beckles to learn the running of a plantation.”

“Has she?” Dr. Braithwaite looked at her sharply. For a moment, he seemed about to say something. But then he shrugged and said only, “I’m sure you can learn a great deal from her.”

“What do you mean?”

Dr. Braithwaite turned away, walking back the way they had come. “Precisely what I said. If you want to learn about the cultivation of sugar, there’s little they can’t tell you at Beckles.”

And he would know. Emily bit down the urge to say that, asking instead, as she hurried along after him, “Is there anything I should know about Beckles? Or Peverills?”