Page 51 of The Summer Country

Emily looked down. And down. “The ground looks very hard.”

“My grandmother would say, ‘Try not to fall on it, then.’” Mr. Davenant’s imitation was so perfect that Emily was surprised into a grin and had to clutch at the horse’s mane to keep from unseating herself.

“I don’t think I could fall if I wanted to,” complained Emily, shifting uncomfortably. Her right leg was very firmly pinned between the pommels, her left foot wedged in a stirrup that appeared to have been made for someone who took a smaller size of boot.

“That’s good, then, isn’t it?” said Mr. Davenant. “Shall we get started?”

Emily didn’t miss his glance over his shoulder, back at the house. He’d had little breakfast and was wasting the better part of his morning when he doubtless had other obligations to see to. Mrs. Davenant had told her that she didn’t trust hired overseers; she preferred to rely on her grandson and the head drivers. So Emily nodded and let Mr. Davenant lead her twice around the stable yard at a pace best suited to funerals and the conveyance of gouty dowagers.

The mare went docilely enough. Emily suspected her of biding her time.

Once they had safely completed a third circuit without the mare bolting, Emily felt secure enough to say, “I’m terribly sorry to be keeping you from your obligations.”

“Don’t be,” said Mr. Davenant, with one of his disarmingly sweet smiles. “My grandmother is only too glad of the opportunity to seize the reins for a day. Er, don’t seize the reins.”

“Oh, I’m so very sorry.” To the horse, she added, “I do beg your pardon.”

The horse snorted at her. It sounded remarkably like Mrs. Davenant.

Mr. Davenant laughed, looking far more relaxed than Emily had seen him since they arrived. “You needn’t apologize—to me or Petunia. You want her to know that you’re in control.”

“But I’m not,” protested Emily, and was rewarded with another fleeting smile. “Couldn’t I learn to drive instead? I think I should be rather good at driving.”

Adam was always claiming he could drive to an inch, which, translated, meant he spent a great deal of time getting new wheels and axels fitted to his curricles.

“May I?” At Emily’s nod, Mr. Davenant removed his jacket. Stripped to his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, he looked very at home in the stable yard. As they made another circuit, he gave thought to her question. “You could learn to drive, but it wouldn’t serve the same purpose. It depends on what you intend. If you wish to engage yourself in the business of the plantation, then a mount is a necessity. If you mean to hire someone to manage for you, then a carriage will serve to carry you to town.”

“Do you mean Bridgetown?” Emily asked, suppressing the sudden yearning to find a carriage, any carriage, and have herself conveyed back to the city forthwith.

It wasn’t that they were unkind at Beckles. On the contrary, she had been offered every luxury. And she could hardly complain of quiet or loneliness when Beckles was a village unto itself, with dozens of servants in the house and hundreds in the fields. The night was busy with the sounds of dogs barking and babies crying and men shouting and the ever-present rustle of the cane. But the sounds weren’t the sounds she was used to.

Most of all, she disliked the sensation of being marooned. All her life, she had been able to go anywhere she needed with a pair of stout shoes and a sturdy umbrella. Now, those stout shoes would take her only so far as the end of the drive, like a medieval ship skirting the edges of the map, with the unknown beyond. Peverills might be as far as the moon, for all that she was able to reach it. She was entirely reliant on the pleasure of others for her transportation, something that made her feel distinctly twitchy.

“Are you ready for a trot?” Mr. Davenant did something to the lead rope and the horse began to jiggle Emily up and down in a most uncomfortable way. “My grandmother prefers to do her marketing in Oistins, but I’m always glad of an excuse to come to Bridgetown. Beckles is very well, but . . . I’m not making a very good job of convincing you to stay, am I?”

“I suppose it’s all a matter of familiarity breeding contempt,” said Emily, clinging to the horse’s mane in what she doubted was approved style as she tried to relieve the pressure on her maltreated nether limbs. “I’ve always lived in town. Our vegetables come to us already shaken free of dirt and our meat nicely butchered and wrapped in a brown paper package. It seems rather exciting to be so close to creation.”

“We are that,” said Mr. Davenant ruefully. “If you wish to see pigs slaughtered, you’ve come to the right place. We grow all our own provisions. My grandmother is adamant about that. We’re as self-sufficient as Robinson Crusoe on his island. There were some rather bad famines in the past between harvests—the hungry time, they call it—so my grandmother likes to make sure we always have enough and then some.”

“Your grandmother seems a remarkable woman,” said Emily, rather grimly.

“She is,” said Mr. Davenant, his tone mirroring hers. His face lightening, he added, “She took to you too. Says you remind her of someone.”

“Most likely my grandfather,” said Emily, frowning at the horse’s ears and wondering just how one stopped one of these things.

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Davenant thoughtfully. “She seemed to mean it kindly and—well. Did you say something?”

“No,” said Emily through clenched teeth. “That’s just the sound of my teeth coming loose.”

The days took on a pattern. After breakfast, she and Mr. Davenant would retire to the stable yard, and if Emily had to spend some time afterward in a darkened room with ice wrapped in linen applied to tender parts of her anatomy, only her maid Katy knew it. By the end of the week, Mr. Davenant pronounced her ready to leave the stable yard and escorted her, still holding the lead rein, as far as the end of the drive.

Mrs. Davenant eluded her requests for instruction, telling her there would be time enough when she had seen the elements of the plantation, and Emily admitted, grudgingly, that there might be some sense in it as Mr. Davenant, on their morning rides, took her day by day to the fields, to the mill, to the boiling house, demonstrating the uses of each.

Emily half suspected Mrs. Davenant of designing the tour to discourage her; she hadn’t realized until Mr. Davenant took her about just how much there was to learn, how many steps from the holing of the cane to its triumphal transmutation into sugar, molasses, and rum. But Mr. Davenant brushed aside her doubts, insisting that if he could manage, anyone could.

“I have no head for business,” he confessed, “or for management. I’m like a parrot that’s been taught to squawk in tune.”

“But with lovely plumage, at least?” teased Emily, who was beginning to enjoy shocking her host. It was so absurdly easy.