Page 97 of The Summer Country

“And besides, she was mostly busy with the children.”

“Her children?” That was something else Emily had never considered, that there was a whole branch of the family tree elsewhere. She knew that her grandfather’s sisters had moved to the Carolinas, that he had seen them settled there with some of his wife’s money, but it had never occurred to her to wonder if they had families of their own. Her grandfather’s world had narrowed to Bristol.

George leaned his head close to listen. “Her child and the child her brother paid her to look after.”

“Aye, my lady.” The woman put her hand on Emily’s arm, speaking simply and clearly so that Emily could understand. “’Ee gi’ ’ee outside trild to ’ee sister.”

Emily looked up at George. “Outside child?”

George tugged at his white stock. “His, er, natural offspring.”

The woman nodded, unimpressed. “’Ee bastard.”

Chapter Twenty

Christ Church, Barbados

June 1813

“I’ve been thinking about our child,” said Charles.

Jenny rubbed her aching back, trying not to think unkind thoughts. He might have been thinking about their child, but she’d been doing the work of carrying it.

The only mercy was that she was spared from doing her usual work. Mary Anne lay in a twilight state from the laudanum Dr. MacAndrews had prescribed, drifting in and out of consciousness. Robert, frightened into contrition, sat by his wife’s side, reading to her from manuals on estate management. Queenie and a series of undermaids bathed their mistress and changed her linens, leaving Jenny, for the first time in months, with time on her hands and no one to watch where she went.

“Have you now?” she said neutrally.

Charles was too lost in his own thoughts to notice. “What if . . .” he began. “What if the baby were to be born dead?”

Jenny could feel herself stiffen, turning to salt like the woman in the tale. “Is that what you want?”

“No! Quite the contrary!” Charles looked so genuinely horrified that Jenny let herself relax, but just a little. Instead of leaning into him, she stayed upright on the stone they were sharing in the Old Mill, moving just a little away from him. He looked at her earnestly. “What I meant was, what if the baby were to appear to be born dead?”

How had they come to this? From promises of manumission to mad schemes. Jenny put her hand on her stomach, on the mound that was their baby, and felt the child squirm within her.

“Are you planning to whisk it away in a warming pan?” Jenny asked wearily.

Charles had the grace to look sheepish. “Something like that. Not the warming pan, perhaps, but what if your baby—our baby—were to disappear?”

“And be raised by someone else?” As if feeling her distress, the child undulated, making ripples against her dress. “Where—where would you send him?”

Jenny tried to control her emotions, to think of the baby and not of herself. What was better, to keep her child with her in captivity or see him free and a stranger? Her child might grow up in England, that land where even the air conferred freedom. He might grow up ignorant of her past, thinking himself the equal of any man.

He might grow up among strangers, never knowing his mother.

At least she’d had her mother, even for a short time. She could remember what it was to be loved.

Yes, Charles loved her, she knew that. It seemed strange to say that, to believe in his love, when a year ago she would have sneered to think that such a thing existed. But it was a different sort of love, a balancing of personalities, not the simple, fierce love of a mother for a child. She’d known that love; was it so wrong she wanted her child to know it too?

Or was it for herself she wanted it?

Perhaps it was crueler so. Perhaps her child would be happier for the not knowing her, not having to bear the pain of losing later.

Charles took her hands, all contrition. “I’m making a muddle of this, aren’t I? I don’t mean our child to be sent to strangers, not permanently, at any rate. I had a letter last week, from an old schoolfellow. One of my friends, one of the best men I knew, died on the peninsula.”

Sometimes, she felt she and Charles had lived like this forever, known each other forever, but at times like this, she was reminded how much of his life she didn’t know. Charles might give the impression of being an open book, but there were whole chapters he kept closed. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t quite believe he’s dead. Perhaps if I were in England, perhaps if the war were over, it might seem possible, but as it is, I keep thinking he must still be somewhere in Portugal, and the whole thing a mistake.” Charles recalled himself with a visible effort. “But that isn’t the point. What if Hal were to have left a child?”