Page 28 of The Summer Country

“A foreigner?” Charles didn’t quite manage to hide his confusion.

The maid was betrayed into something that might almost have been a smile, a barely perceptible movement of her closed lips. “Colonel Lyons brought me with him from Jamaica. That makes me a foreigner.”

“Jamaica isn’t so very far.” Not to him, maybe, he realized. But to a woman who couldn’t leave the parish, much less the island, it must seem as far as the moon. “How old were you?”

“A little more than five, or so I’m told.” She shifted and the light from the windows fell across her face, highlighting the long bones of her cheeks, the shape of her face beneath her plain white cap.

Charles peered at her through the dim light, caught by an odd sense of familiarity, a resemblance he couldn’t quite place. “Surely, by now . . .”

“I wasn’t born here. It isn’t something anyone forgets.”

“Being born here doesn’t seem to have done me much good,” said Charles ruefully. “Do you miss Jamaica?”

“I don’t remember it.” But there was something about the way she glanced away from him, her eyes glinting silver in the light, that made him suspect she remembered more than she said. The maid dropped a curtsy, bowing her head. “Beg pardon, sir. My mistress will miss me. Do you have any message for her?”

Charles could feel his cheeks heat. What would anyone think to see him standing here, talking to his neighbor’s maid? One of two things, neither of them to his credit.

“Only that I trust she will save me a dance,” said Charles. In the ballroom, the set had finished. He could see Miss Beckles curtsy to his brother. And he could see his brother’s eyes settle on him. “Will you tell her so for me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the maid, and Charles was caught again by that tug of recognition. He had been standing on another balcony, another night. “I shall be glad to be of any honest service.”

Another pair of pale eyes in a fine-boned face.

The girls at Beckles . . .

“Thank you . . . Jenny.” But she was already gone, leaving Charles staring after her, fighting with the evidence of his own eyes.

“Trying to ingratiate yourself with the lady’s maid?” Robert strolled over to join him, leaning an elbow on the rail.

Charles felt as though he’d bitten into something rancid. “That only works in the theater. And generally turns to farce. Are they cousins?”

“Who?”

“Miss Beckles and her maid,” said Charles urgently. He didn’t know why he was asking, when he was already sure of the answer. But if so . . . if so . . . it made what had already been gross, grotesque. “The colonel—is he the maid’s father?”

Robert shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised. He’d have to be a monk to refuse what’s offered.”

“What’s offered?”

Robert folded his arms across his chest, looking narrowly at Charles. “What were you plotting with Miss Beckles’s maid?”

“Not what you think,” said Charles. Whatever the colonel might have offered. His own daughter. He had offered his own daughter. “We merely happened to be on the balcony at the same time.”

“Are you planning to propose to Mar—Miss Beckles?”

“I’m not planning to propose to anybody! I’ve only just made the acquaintance of Miss Beckles.”

Robert turned abruptly away from the rail. He wore his militia uniform and the gold braid winked in the light. “Have you heard what they say about her?”

“No, and I don’t care to.” The last thing Charles wanted to do was think about Beckles or its inhabitants. “Are we old women to gossip over our tatting?”

Robert wasn’t deterred. “They say she has intemperate appetites. Why do you think she goes nowhere without that maid of hers? Her uncle doesn’t trust her with a groom. . . .”

Charles cut him off. “Sour grapes, no doubt. She’s not in the common way, certainly, but there’s nothing the least intemperate about her.” If anything, there was an innocence to her. No, not innocence. That wasn’t the right word. A lack of coyness. Her attempts at flirtation were unstudied and awkward, alien to her forthright nature. “She lacks polish, but that’s not surprising.”

“I forget,” said Robert. “We’re all provincials to you. This must seem very flat to you after London.”

“I dined out once a fortnight in London. This is an excess of gaiety in comparison.” Robert made no effort to hide his disbelief. “I was a student, not a pink of the ton. Most of my evenings were spent with my Blackstone and a cold pork pie.”