Page 29 of The Summer Country

Or with his fellows, sprawled in someone’s rooms, drinking cheap claret out of mismatched glasses. The circles in which he’d moved in London wouldn’t have interested Robert, but Charles missed them, desperately. He missed the gray fog and coal smoke, the murky backdrop against which ideas blazed out with such clarity, words more real than objects.

Not like here, where the world of the flesh pressed around him, everything too hot, too earthy, too real.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” said Charles shortly, “that Miss Beckles’s uncle might have spread those rumors to ward off the fortune hunters?”

Robert’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. “Like me?”

“Or me,” said Charles. “You aren’t burdened by expensive obligations.”

“No, I’m not, am I? I haven’t anything.”

Charles cursed himself for imprudence. “I misspoke.” He cast about for something, anything else to say. “Did you know someone’s been stealing at Peverills?”

“Would you like me to turn out my pockets?”

“I wasn’t accusing you.” Charles felt suddenly deeply weary. It was no use. There was nothing he could say that Robert wouldn’t interpret to his discredit. “Fenty said he showed you the books.”

“What does a Redleg know about the running of a great estate?”

“Enough to add a column of numbers and find it wanting,” said Charles. “You know the estate better than anyone. Is there anyone who would steal from us?”

“You might ask if there’s anyone who wouldn’t,” said Robert savagely. “Including that Redleg of yours.”

“He’s taken nothing we haven’t given him,” said Charles. He’d worked closely with Fenty these past few weeks. Every shilling the man earned went back to his family in St. Andrew. For himself, Fenty lived a Spartan existence, his entire being focused on his work. Charles had invited him to avail himself of the table at the great house, but Fenty seemed to prefer to dine on whatever came to hand, gnawing a crust as he continued at his labors. His one indulgence was candles, burning late through the night. “I would vouch for his honesty.”

“What do you know of him? He could be robbing you blind if he’s as clever with numbers as that.”

“He could,” Charles admitted. The best way to blunt rage wasn’t to fight it but to let it wear itself out. “But I don’t believe he has. Not yet, at any rate. I can account for every candle he’s taken, all burnt in our service.”

Robert took a turn around the veranda, his boots clicking on the boards. “All right. If you must know. It’s Old Doll. And I told her she might.”

“You told her she might?” Old Doll had been the housekeeper at Peverills for as long as Charles could remember, her various relations filling the house as seamstresses, housemaids, nursemaids, the very upper echelon of service. She had her pick of the family’s castoffs; she dined well on the leavings from table. Of all people, she would, Charles have thought, have had the least need to steal. “I don’t understand.”

Robert slouched away. “It’s not as if I gambled away the family silver. Who’s to miss a bit of tea and candles?”

“Hundreds of pounds of tea and candles,” said Charles slowly.

Fenty had painstakingly reconstructed years of jumbled accounts, revealing a steady drain on the household. Old Doll must have made a pretty penny reselling the family’s goods in Bridgetown. With Robert’s connivance.

“You mean dollars.” Robert glowered at him. It was, apparently, yet another betrayal on Charles’s part that after all his years in England he thought in pounds rather than dollars; both might be used on the island, but the planters preferred their dollars. “Don’t look at me like that! It’s not like I was pocketing the money. I did it for the family. I did it to spare Mama.”

He looked so young, his brother. So young and defiant and scared. In the place of the man in his militia uniform, Charles could see a little boy, still in skirts, holding a broken wooden soldier half behind his back.

Od’s blood, but he wasn’t prepared for this. Not any of it. Charles rubbed his aching temples with two fingers. “What did you do, Robin? If Doll has something over you . . .”

“Me?” Robert choked on a wild laugh, and Charles realized his brother was more than a little drunk. “That’s rich. Not me. Father. Our sainted father. God rest his soul. Do you remember Nan? Doll’s daughter Nan?”

“Nan? Of course.” Doll’s youngest daughter had been their nursemaid. Charles still remembered bringing her posies of wilted flowers; the wrench of being moved from the nursery to the schoolroom. She had, he knew, been made their mother’s maid, her closest servant and confidante. “What has she to do with anything?”

“Father was tupping her.” Robert glared at him, daring him to deny it. “We have—had—an arrangement, Doll and I. I turn a blind eye and she wouldn’t shout the truth to the world. It seemed fair enough.”

“No,” Charles said. That was all. “No.”

“What do you know? You weren’t here.” Robert’s rage and frustration poured out like acid. “Mama was sick in bed and Father was rutting with her maid. I saw them. I saw them holding hands, making eyes at each other. . . .”

“Robin. Robin. I don’t know what you saw, but it can’t have been what you think. Father wouldn’t.” Not with their mother’s own maid. Not at all. “He wouldn’t do that to Mother, much less take advantage of a woman in his power. You know Father’s views. . . .”

“Oh yes, fine words on a piece of paper!”