Page 89 of The Summer Country

“No! He was . . . very charming. And I—I was lonely.” The words spilled out, half truth, half lie. “I’m happy for your marriage, Mistress Mary, don’t think I’m not, but it’s always been us together, the two of us. And now you have Master Robert and the baby and I . . . He was kind.”

As she said it, she could almost believe it, the handsome stranger at the dance, sweet words in the garden, a moment’s lapse.

Whether Mary Anne believed it was another matter. “What was his name?”

“Henry.” It was the first to pop into Jenny’s head. “He never told me his last name. He was visiting, from the Carolinas, I think he said.”

Mary Anne pushed herself up against the pillows, looking a bit more like her old self as she calculated. “If it was the dance at Fairview, then you’ll be due in . . . late July.”

“First babies sometimes come late, that’s what Nanny Bell always says.”

“This one had better not,” said Mary Anne grimly, looking at the curve of her stomach. “I’ve had enough of him already. Ah, well. That’s one good thing to your condition. He’ll be a companion for my boy.”

Jenny knew better than to point out that one or both might be girls. Mary Anne was determined to bear a male child, and if she said it, so must it be.

Mary Anne’s face was gray with fatigue and pain. “Your child and mine. History repeats itself.”

“But not in all ways,” Jenny said hastily.

“I hope not.” There was an abstracted expression on Mary Anne’s face, as though she were working out a particularly knotty sum, and one whose result didn’t please her. “Bring me my writing desk. And call Queenie. I want to send a letter.”

“Shall I carry it for you?”

“No.” Mary Anne softened the harsh negative by saying roughly, “Bearing a child is miserable. I need you to take care of yourself.”

This, for Mary Anne, Jenny knew, was an effusive expression of concern.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, her expression calm, her emotions in turmoil, resentment and affection, all jumbled together. She would leave Mary Anne for England in a moment if the chance arose. But she would also feel guilty for it, as absurd as she knew that to be.

Mary Anne turned her face away, uncomfortable at being caught out in a kindness. “How will you attend me if you don’t? Weren’t you meant to be fetching Queenie?”

Jenny never did see what Mary Anne wrote, but Charles did. The letter came to him as he was in conference with the head driver, mapping out a new constellation of tenant farms. Making his apologies, he traded his stained buckskins for pantaloons, hastily tied a fresh cravat, and took horse to Beckles.

Mary Anne received him in the garden, where a special chair had been arranged for her in the shade of the arbor, well supplied with cushions.

It had been some months since he had seen her—four to be precise—and the change in her was as alarming as it was sudden. Her face was puffy, her hands and fingers so swollen that her wedding ring was all but lost in the reddened swell of flesh. She looked like a caricature of herself drawn by Gillray, the greedy Creole swollen with sugar proceeds, lolling on cushions and being served iced drinks by a waiting slave.

Charles dropped to his knees beside her chair, horrified. “Miss Be—Mary Anne. I had no idea it was so bad.”

“There’s no need to wring your hands over me,” she said irritably. “I’m with child. It’s hardly an unusual condition.”

“No, but—” Charles felt entirely at a loss. His knowledge of pregnancy was hardly extensive, but he’d had enough friends with sisters and wives to know that this was something out of the ordinary. He seized on a vague memory from a drawing-room discussion in London. “Has Robert called for an accoucheur? It’s quite commonplace now in London, to have a specialist for childbirth.”

“As if any man could know more than Nanny Bell. Who do you think delivers your slaves’ children?” Charles was caught wrong-footed. He knew, of course, that there were children who were born and midwives who cared for them, but other than ratifying the distribution of extra provisions and monetary gifts to the new mothers, he had little to do with it. Mary Anne took advantage of his confusion to say, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. No, not my child. My maid’s. Jenny’s.”

Charles sat down abruptly on his heels. “Oh? Is your maid with child? If you need a new maid, I’m the last person to be of assistance.”

“It’s not that.” Mary Anne drank deeply from her water glass, then held it up for the slave standing behind her to refill it, never once looking back as the water magically poured into the glass. “She claims the father was a Henry from the Carolinas.”

There was a slave behind her with a water jug, another with a palmetto fan. Mary Anne seemed entirely unaware of either. Charles glanced nervously from them to his sister-in-law. “Do you have reason to doubt it?”

Mary Anne thrust out the cup for the boy behind her to take. “I thought—Robert.”

“Robert.” Charles didn’t have to feign his surprise. Relief gagged him, making him gape at her. “Robert?”

Mary Anne scowled at him. “Yes, Robert. Well?”

“You know I’m not in Robert’s confidence,” Charles said carefully. “I haven’t noticed any signs of partiality.”