Page 151 of The Summer Country

Was it disloyal? Or was it just sense to let the living get on with living? The dead were gone, there was no helping them.

Besides, Emily rather suspected that if there was any justice, it would be watching Laura neatly thwart Mrs. Davenant. Mrs. Davenant had no idea.

Mrs. Davenant was waiting for an answer. Emily turned away from the window. “I’m not sure George and I would suit. In fact, I’m quite sure we wouldn’t.”

“You needn’t worry about George. He’ll do as he’s told.” Mrs. Davenant lowered her voice. “He doesn’t ever need to know.”

It took Emily a moment to realize what Mrs. Davenant was talking about. “About my grandmother being a slave?” she said, and Mrs. Davenant made a hideous face. “Well, she was. I wouldn’t lie to the man I meant to marry, about that or anything. That’s no way to start a marriage.”

Mrs. Davenant gave a choking laugh. “Oh, my dear. That’s little you know about marriage. There’s none of that meeting-of-minds nonsense. It’s a contract for property, and a license for the creation of heirs. Lawful ones. Everything else is better left aside.”

“Not for me,” said Emily, feeling her jaw set. “I would rather be honest and take the consequences. I couldn’t countenance a marriage based on untruths.”

“You’re a fool,” said Mrs. Davenant bluntly. “There were only the four of us left who knew. Charles is gone, Fenty is dead, London Turner won’t tell. He didn’t tell you, did he? I didn’t think so.”

“Why did you tell me, then?” Emily demanded.

“I was out of my mind with lung fever. I would hardly have mentioned it had I been in my right mind.” Mrs. Davenant sat in silence for a moment. “When you started asking questions about your grandmother—I was just as happy for you to think your mother might be Boland’s get, even if he was an Irishman.”

“You never meant to tell me, then?”

“Didn’t I just say that? It seemed a way of making amends, to have Jenny’s granddaughter mistress of Beckles. It was the only thing left I could do for her.” Pulling herself together, Mrs. Davenant said in a very different tone, “And, of course, I’d like to see Beckles and Peverills united. Had Lottie lived, I would have seen her married to Edward.”

“She did live. She was my mother.” Maybe it was the dismissive way Mrs. Davenant waved her hand, but Emily felt her temper rising. “That girl you call ‘the child’ grew into a force to be reckoned with. She ignored everyone who told her she ought to sit by the fire and work net bags and went out into the world and did everything she could to remedy what she believed to be the world’s greatest ill: slavery.”

Emily looked pointedly at Mrs. Davenant, who turned her head away on the pillow, making a show of not listening. Well, she would listen, whether she liked it or not. Emily wasn’t going to let her shape the world to her making, not anymore, not even here at Beckles, where she was used to reigning supreme.

“My mother,” said Emily, her voice ringing through the high-ceilinged room, “corresponded with ministers of Parliament and American presidents. She never, ever let anyone stand in the way of what she believed. She fought to marry my father when my grandfather refused her, even though he was a lowly minister from a poor family and hadn’t a penny to his name.”

Emily broke off, her whole body shaking, feeling hot and cold by turns.

“You say all of this as though it were a virtue,” said Mrs. Davenant acidly.

“It is.” The anger had gone, leaving behind it a strange certainty. Emily felt like a convalescent, as though she had been sickening for months and only now was herself again. “It’s a virtue to know one’s own heart and mind. It saves a lot of bother and a great deal of unhappiness.”

For a moment, it was as though she could see her mother there, in the room, behind Mrs. Davenant’s dress, her dark hair dressed in the simple knot she had favored, an expensive Kashmir shawl tossed carelessly around her shoulders, her only ornament the simple gold band on her left hand. Her mother had never let herself be distracted by inconsequentials. When she loved, she loved without reservation, without a care for what the world might say.

As her mother’s true parents had done before her, regardless of the costs.

“What day is it? It’s Thursday, isn’t it?” Emily didn’t wait for Mrs. Davenant to answer; she was already hurrying to the door.

“How would I know? One day is much the same as another when you’re confined to bed.” Pillows and sheets shifted as Mrs. Davenant lifted herself on her elbows. “I didn’t tell you that you could go! Where do you think you’re going?”

Emily paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder at the other woman’s outraged face. “To Peverills, of course.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Christ Church, Barbados

October 1854

There was the usual huddle of people outside the bookkeeper’s house at Peverills, from which Emily concluded that the doctor must be in.

She had ridden out without a groom, without her habit, without a hat. The habit she didn’t regret, not really. The hat she did. There were rainbows at the corners of her eyes and her hair felt as though it had been baked into bronze.

Well, Emily thought giddily, tethering her horse to the old lime hedge, that would give her some excuse for her appearance. She could see the doctor for sunstroke.

But that would be a coward’s trick, and she had been coward enough already.