Page 49 of The Summer Country

Behind him, Charles could hear Robert’s drunken laugh. Charles looked up to see his brother with three other men, one of them fondling the breast of the girl who’d led the carts.

Colonel Lyons looked at Charles as though daring him to say something.

“What I really need,” said Charles, biting back the sharp words that rose to his lips, “is the nearest convenience.”

“You can piss anywhere you like. They do.” At the look on Charles’s face he chuckled. “If you must save your modesty, there’s a chamber pot behind a screen next to the arbor.”

“Thank you,” said Charles, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “That girl . . .”

“What? Do you want her? She’s taken, but I imagine I can find you another to your liking.”

Charles’s stomach turned; he bit back a comment about pimps and panderers, saying instead, “No. No, thank you. If you’ll excuse me . . .”

Charles escaped to the chamber pot, grateful for the screen that protected him from the colonel’s watching eyes. Let them mock him for being unable to hold his liquor. It was better than the alternatives. He waited a few moments before slipping carefully away in the other direction, away from the mill, toward Peverills and the Old Mill that once, a very, very long time ago, the two estates had shared, over a century ago when sugar cultivation was in its infancy. The mill was on Beckles land, a bone of contention that had continued long after the mill itself was out of use.

The sun flared out, the sky lighting orange and purple. In the short dusk, Charles covered the last few yards to the Old Mill, blinking at the darkness inside. It was cool in the mill, the air heavy with the scent of wet earth, the sharp sap of the vines that circled through the old stones, and, incongruously, the crispness of sun-dried linen.

“Jenny?” he said softly. The act of saying her name felt like an indiscretion, as though he were taking a liberty.

“Here.” Her voice came from a corner of the wide, conical room. She must have taken off her white smock; her dark dress blended with the shadows, rendering her all but invisible. “Did anyone see you come?”

“The colonel, you mean?” Her silence was answer enough. “No. Was it he—has he done anything to cause you discomfort?”

He felt like an idiot as he said it. Of course he had.

Jenny didn’t respond, not directly. Instead, she said, in a strange, abstracted voice, “Did you mean what you said before? About God’s retribution?”

“Yes. And no. I don’t mean to say that I didn’t mean it. What I mean is, I’ve never believed that the Lord visits vengeance as they have it in the Old Testament.” In the darkness, Charles’s voice sounded unnaturally loud. He tried again, scrounging for sense. “But it was He who made Nature’s laws. When we broke those laws, we set the world out of joint, and nothing will be as it should until we put it right again. If we assume that in the state of nature all men were born equal and that no man can, in logic, contract away his own freedom, then slavery, by its very nature, is an illegitimate institution and an offense to the laws of Nature. That’s the theory, in any event.”

The silence pushed against him like a living thing. Charles began to wish he’d said yes and left it at that.

“I . . . Perhaps our Methodist friends are right and we’re courting brimstone. I’m beginning to see the appeal of that. Theory is all very well, but there are injustices that call for action. Human or divine.”

Charles’s ears strained, attuned to the drip of moisture down the stone, the rustling of leaves outside, and then, finally, the sound of Jenny’s voice. “I wouldn’t share those views if I were you, Master Charles. You won’t make any friends that way.”

“I had gathered that,” said Charles, letting out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “But you—you wanted to speak to me about something. If there is any way in my power to be of service . . .”

“Yes. There is.” She took a step closer and then another, near enough that he could hear the gentle sway of her skirt and make out, in the gloom, the tension of the hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I need you to marry my mistress.”

Chapter Eleven

Christ Church, Barbados

March 1854

“Are you sure this is quite necessary?” Emily looped the skirt of her borrowed habit over her arm and looked at the beast that awaited her in the stable yard.

Horses, she decided, looked a great deal larger when detached from a carriage. Also less friendly.

The creature whiffled in her general direction. Emily took a step back, tripping over the hem of her habit.

“Steady there,” said George Davenant, who seemed, for once, a great deal more confident than she. “She’s only trying to make your acquaintance. Hold out your hand to her.”

“Should I offer her my calling card?” The horse nosed at her fingers, leaving a patch of slime on her kid gloves.

“You can, but she would most likely prefer a carrot,” replied Mr. Davenant mildly.

Emily had strenuously resisted being taught to ride, but Mrs. Davenant had insisted that riding lessons were the very first priority, and there was nothing at all she could do until Emily could sit the back of a horse without being tossed about like a sack of meal.