Page 62 of The Summer Country

Ignoring her, Mrs. Poole turned to Emily. “The trials! We were all on tenterhooks until they discovered the ringleaders. There was a renegade named Busy or Barney or . . .”

“Bussa,” corrected Mrs. Davenant.

“But some said he was only a scapegoat and the real culprit was a white man. Can you imagine that? Of course, one never knows what to expect from a Redleg, but—”

“More cake, Bertha?” said Mrs. Davenant loudly, and all but shoved a fairy cake into Mrs. Poole’s mouth.

Emily set her teacup down. “You don’t mean my grandfather, surely?”

Mrs. Davenant looked quellingly at Mrs. Poole. “I understand that Mr. Fenty was a pillar of Bristol society and a credit to the island that bore him.”

It would have been more convincing if she hadn’t looked as though she were chewing a mouthful of nettles as she said it.

“What a story it made, though!” said Mrs. Poole. “Because who would arrange for a rising on the very eve of his wedding unless the wedding was planned as a distraction to divert people from the rising? And then away on the wedding journey right after . . .”

“Really, Bertha. Trying to untangle your thoughts is like trying to make sense of my work basket after the cat’s been at it. Did you hear the rumor that the militia planned the whole rising that they might have the sport of quelling it?”

Mrs. Poole rose like a fish to the fly. “Really?”

“No.” Mrs. Davenant snorted, and Emily had to bite her lip to hide her grin. “But you would have believed it, wouldn’t you?”

Mrs. Poole drew herself up, bows quivering. “It’s not at all the same. No offense to your grandfather, my dear,” she added to Emily. “So very long ago, after all . . .”

“Very,” agreed Emily, nodding reassuringly to Mrs. Davenant. “More tea?”

Mrs. Poole was clearly muddled in her thinking, Emily decided, as she went through the familiar motions of pouring and portioning out sugar.

The rising might have happened in 1816, but her grandparents’ marriage had to have been at least two years earlier, in 1814. Her mother, she knew, had been born in 1815, Uncle Archibald in 1817. It was impossible to imagine her grandmother, with her plain, dark dresses and uncompromising white caps, anticipating the marriage, even for such a charming rogue as her grandfather might have been. Emily had no doubt it was another wedding Mrs. Poole was thinking of, just as she’d confused a rising with a hurricane.

As for her grandfather being involved in a slave rising . . . She just couldn’t see it, not at all. Her mother, yes. Her mother would have reveled in organizing secret meetings and striking back against a corrupt system. Her grandfather, no. It was impossible to imagine him as a latter-day Robin Hood. He wasn’t nearly civic-minded enough, and a green jerkin would have made him look bilious.

Her grandfather. What would he think of all this? Emily was beginning to feel that he had left her woefully unprepared, that he ought to have left her, at least, a manuscript or a journal detailing the events of his departure from Barbados rather than a locket with a miniature of her mother and a deed to a plantation, both of which were very well in their way but told her nothing of what she was meant to do.

Get on with it. That’s what her grandfather would tell her to do. Never mind the events of forty years past.

It was the present that mattered, and, in the present, Peverills was still lying fallow and untended.

When Mrs. Poole finally took her leave, and Mrs. Davenant made to rise, Emily seized the opportunity to say, “May I trouble you for a moment? I had wondered whether we might discuss the arrangements for a lease.”

Mrs. Davenant took her time getting to her feet, shaking the creases out of the rich stuff of her skirt. “A lease.”

“The southwest corner,” said Emily, hoping she had it right. “We had discussed . . .”

“Yes, yes, I know. Heavens, child, what put that in your head now?”

It wasn’t precisely the response Emily had been expecting. “We’ve been here for some time, and—”

Mrs. Davenant cut her off. “There’ll be time enough for that once you know which piece of land I mean! I wouldn’t want you to make a poor decision out of ignorance.”

“I should think an ignorant decision would be very much in your favor,” said Emily, surprised into honesty.

Mrs. Davenant gave a bark of a laugh and rose from the chair, walking briskly toward the stair. “You’re too wide-awake for that. We’ll find time to come to terms soon enough. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have accounts to see to. Go write a letter, take a turn about the garden. I’m sure you can find something to occupy you.”

“The ledgers, perhaps?” Emily called after her. Mrs. Davenant stopped, standing very still. “You promised me I might look at the old ledgers from Peverills.”

“They’re about somewhere,” said Mrs. Davenant vaguely. Emily thought of Mrs. Davenant’s study, every paper in its place, the ledgers neatly stacked by date. “I’ll hunt them up for you when I have time. This is our busiest season, with the cane being harvested and boiled. There’s no time for trivia.”

But there was time, thought Emily, to entertain guests every day. There was time for George to spend an hour each morning riding with her.