Page 35 of The Summer Country

“It’s good for him to ride the length of the land,” Mrs. Davenant was saying. “I know every inch of my land; I know it in my bones. Do you ride, Miss Dawson?”

“Only shank’s mare,” said Emily.

Mrs. Davenant was not amused. “What, do you expect to be carried about on a palanquin?” she demanded, rooting about in a cabinet filled with leather-bound books. “If you don’t ride, you’ll have to learn. George can be of assistance in that, at least. He may have his head in the clouds, but he has an excellent seat.”

Emily wasn’t entirely sure she liked the way Mrs. Davenant was taking charge of her future. “I’m sure he has.”

“You’re too old to learn to ride well, but you can hack, at least.” Mrs. Davenant thumped a book down on the desk, letting it fall open. “Ah, here we are. I thought you might like to see these.”

Increase of horses, 1813. January 5. On the plantation: Charity, a bay; Hope, a chestnut.

Decrease of horses, 1813. June 3. Honor, a gray, sold.

The paper was yellowed, the ink faded, but the writing gave Emily a prickly feeling, like the faint sound of a familiar voice in a distant room. She had to stop from turning her head to see if her grandfather was there, behind her, standing by her shoulder to examine his work.

“This is my grandfather’s hand.”

“He kept the accounts for Peverills.” Mrs. Davenant closed the book before Emily could take more than a quick glance at the neat columns of figures. “The world has changed considerably since Peverills was last a working concern, but this should give you some notion of the requirements of a plantation of this size.”

The current accounts for Beckles might be of somewhat more use, Emily suspected, but she doubted that Mrs. Davenant would allow her to thumb through those.

And this had been her grandfather’s. His life, his work. All those years of which he never spoke.

Emily touched the faded paper cover of the ledger. “Might I borrow this?”

Mrs. Davenant scooped it up again. “You may peruse it at your leisure—here at Beckles. You’ll stay here,” she said, as though it were already decided. “Your cousins too, if you wish.”

“But—” A few hours ago, she hadn’t known the Davenants existed; now she was being invited to join their household. Had she imagined the hostility when Mrs. Davenant had heard her grandfather’s name? Or was that just her way? Either way, Emily wasn’t sure she wanted to subject herself to Mrs. Davenant’s rule. “We have obligations in Bridgetown.”

“A nasty, festering place. No, you’ll do better here.” Mrs. Davenant raised her lorgnette, examining Emily as though she were a set of accounts that didn’t quite add up. “We have, I think, a great deal to learn from one another. . . .”

Chapter Eight

Bridgetown, Barbados

April 1812

“Get your corn here! Corn!”

“Eggs! Fresh eggs!”

A chicken pecked at Charles’s boot. “Pardon me,” he said, and realized he was apologizing to poultry.

Broad Street was thronged with hawkers crying their wares. Charles had already refused guava, pickles, and aguacate pears, rum from a dipper, and lengths of fine lawn.

Charles’s cravat clung limply to his neck. The jacket and waistcoat that had been quite comfortable in London were roasting him in his own sweat. He threaded his way through, past carts and donkeys, storefronts spilling out wares from foreign shores, wondering what on earth he was doing here and whether it might be wiser to turn back. But he had come this far. He had met with the plantation attorney that morning, and then, instead of sensibly returning to the horse he had stabled at an inn not far from St. Michael’s, he had turned in the other direction entirely, down Broad Street toward the house where Robert claimed their father’s mistress lived.

If his father had had a mistress. If there were such a house. Or even such a street.

They had never visited Bridgetown when he was a boy. Charles’s tutors had lived at Peverills; his mother had shopped for ribbons in Oistins. Bridgetown was unfamiliar territory, merely a place to embark and disembark, a carriage ride through busy streets. The idea that their father might have a house here, another family here . . . It beggared belief.

His father had made periodic visits to Bridgetown, it was true. He had come to town to consult with the estate attorney, to meet with sugar factors, for meetings of the Barbados Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, of which his father had been an enthusiastic and vocal member.

But he had never been gone long. Only a night here and a night there.

But that was before. Before Charles’s mother had fallen ill, back when his parents still walked together in the garden of an afternoon, when his mother played the harp in the evenings and his father swore no angel could ever make a song so sweet. Nan had been there too, coming to collect Charles and Robert and shoo them back upstairs to the nursery, to scrub their faces and sing them songs.

They were all, Charles realized, frozen in his memory as they had been nearly two decades ago, before he had been sent away to school and never came home. Had his father not died, he would be in England still. There had always been an excuse to stay away. His father certainly hadn’t chivvied him to come home; his mother’s health had worsened so gradually, her illness had worn on so long, that there had never seemed any urgency. Or so his father said. Charles had assumed his father had acted selflessly, wanting to spare Charles, his time in England given as a gift.