Page 57 of The Summer Country

“Yes,” said Jenny gratefully. “He more than any. They climbed trees together and threw rocks and scrambled down in the gully. . . .”

“Yes, I remember it.” Mr. Davenant seemed very distant, worlds away. “I was a child here too, once.”

“He stole a kiss once.” Slightly more than a kiss. Jenny twisted her hands together. Mary Anne had laughed and told her not to fuss. “There was nothing in it, they were only children together, but—well. But they, all of them, started staying away. We know why now, but we didn’t then.” All those afternoons, looking out the window for carriages that never came. Calling at other houses to a frosty, formal reception. “But that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to discredit her. A man might be desperate enough to marry a madwoman for her fortune.”

“Like me?” said Mr. Davenant wryly.

“No!” said Jenny, and was surprised by her own vehemence. “A fortune hunter. There are enough of them who come to the island. If they can’t make a fortune, they won’t scruple to marry it. He couldn’t risk that, not when he’d come so far.”

“What did he do?”

“My father”—oh, he had been her father then, had insisted on it—“came to me. He told me I was his good girl and if I did what he said, he’d see me set for life. He had—he had made a paste from the manchineel. The death apple. I was to put it in her morning chocolate. To hide the taste.”

Oh, he had been clever, so clever. The chocolate was bitter, mixed with quantities of sugar to take away the bite. Mary Anne drank her chocolate every morning, from her very own porcelain chocolate pot, that had been her mother’s before her. No one else used it. Only Mary Anne.

“And you told him no?” Mr. Davenant asked carefully.

“I told him yes.” Jenny looked him straight in the eye, daring him to judge her. “And then I went to my mistress and told her all. She didn’t believe me at first. She didn’t want to believe me. She loved him, you see.”

Mr. Davenant shook his head. “And who could believe that such things could happen now? It’s positively Gothic. Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe . . .”

“My mistress doesn’t read novels.”

“But you do. Or how would you know the names? But never mind. You convinced her, I take it?”

“Do you think I’m making it up out of a book?” Jenny felt a creeping horror that all of this might have been for naught, the risk, the pain.

“No!” He started forward and then checked himself, yanking off his hat and plunging a hand through his hair. “I wish I did. It’s . . . horrific. Unthinkable. How old were you?”

“Fifteen.” It had hurt all the more because she had loved her father too. She had known that he wasn’t perfect, that he used people, that he was careless in his affections, but when that careless affection had fallen on her it had felt like a holiday, like Crop Over, fiddles playing and feasting for all.

Mr. Davenant stared at the hat he held in his hands. “When I was fifteen I was at Eton, with nothing more worrisome than construing Horace. Not decisions of life and death. . . . What did you do with the chocolate?”

“We broke the chocolate pot.” Jenny pressed her eyes shut, remembering the sound as it shattered, the viscous liquid seeping across the floor.

“You were very brave.”

“Or foolish.” His sympathy unnerved her. Jenny dug her fingernails into her palm. “We pretended it had fallen. But my father knew. He knew.”

They had planned it so carefully, timing it to look like an accident, making sure a maid was there to witness it, Mary Anne shrilly berating Jenny for clumsiness, Jenny weeping and protesting that it was Mary Anne’s arm that had knocked her hand, that she would never . . . They had made a great show, and all for naught.

Mr. Davenant made a movement, his eyes seeking hers in the darkness. “Did he hurt you?”

“That’s not important.” A lie. He’d chosen his revenge with diabolical accuracy, making her see just how vulnerable she could be, how little her mistress could protect her. Jenny mustered a shrug. “After that—he knew we knew. He had to be careful. But he also knew we couldn’t say.”

“Why didn’t you go to someone? The constable? The council? Surely, with your mistress’s lineage . . .”

“Against my father’s word? The colonel is a member of the militia, a good fellow.” She couldn’t stop the bitterness that dripped from her words. “Miss Mary Anne would have been sent straight to the madhouse. Poor thing, her mind is disordered. And I— Who would believe a woman and a slave?”

“I do.” Mr. Davenant seized her hands, pressing them in his. His hat fell to the floor, rolling to one side. “I believe you. Who else knows?”

“Only you.” Jenny looked up at him uncertainly, her hands still in his. She didn’t want to offend him by pulling away, she told herself, but it was more than that. How long had it been since anyone had touched her in anything other than anger? He had removed his gloves and his skin was warm against hers, his touch soft, gentle. It made her want to lean toward him, to rest against him. Which was madness, of course. Jenny pulled back. “Miss Mary Anne and I—we’ve carried this alone.”

Mr. Davenant looked earnestly into her face. “You’re not alone anymore. We’ll see justice done. I swear it.”

It wasn’t justice she wanted, only safety. Jenny rubbed her hands against her sides as if she could make the print of his touch go away and, with it, the craving for more. “Then you’ll do it? You’ll marry her?”

“I— There must be another way.”