Page 47 of The Summer Country

“And these are your guests. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to overtax yourself. Not with your delicate constitution.” As far as Charles could see, Miss Beckles was about as delicate as a mule. Colonel Lyons was smiling, smiling, his voice raised so that the room could hear. “Let me take on the burden for you. That’s what I’m here for, after all.”

“I am most grateful for your service.” Miss Beckles’s chin went up, and Charles saw Jenny tense, the look of alarm in her eyes, as the heiress said, very clearly, “I am sure you will miss Beckles when you return to your own home.”

Colonel Lyons was smiling again, but beneath it was something raw and ugly. “After all these years, I feel Beckles is my home. If you’d do me the honor, Mrs. Boland? Allow me to escort you.”

Balked of a response, Miss Beckles took the arm Mr. Boland offered her, falling into step behind her uncle and Mrs. Boland, staring at her uncle’s back with such undisguised hatred that Charles could feel the heat of it like a sunburn.

Jenny fell into place behind her, gently touching her arm. “Don’t forget your sunshade, Miss Mary Anne. You don’t want to be too much in the sun.”

Miss Beckles glared at her maid. Jenny met her gaze calmly.

“All right,” said Miss Beckles grumpily, taking the proffered parasol. “I’ll stay out of the sun.”

Charles couldn’t help but suspect they weren’t talking about the weather.

“Well?” said Robert. “Are you going to dawdle there all day?”

Charles gave up and joined the procession through the garden, past the hedge, and down into the mill yard, the gray stone tower improbably decked with ribbons and branches of flowering shrubs for the occasion.

Colonel Lyons had arranged for a curtained gallery a little way back from the yard for the ladies, with small cakes and pitchers of ratafia and chairs lest they feel faint from heat.

The gentlemen congregated farther down, closer to the mill and the press of bodies as everyone came from the quarters to celebrate the end of the harvest, all dressed in their best, with flowers tucked into the folds of kerchiefs and the brims of hats, or braided into the little girls’ hair.

“I’ll stay with the ladies,” Mr. Boland declared when Colonel Lyons invited him to join the party. “Sure, and where shall I find such loveliness otherwise? And such cakes!”

Jonathan stayed behind with him. Charles would have liked to do the same, but he knew how his choice would be interpreted, by Miss Beckles and others. So, reluctantly, he found himself part of the circle around Colonel Lyons, who had tapped a barrel of rum and was handing around cups of the raw beverage.

“Made here at Beckles,” he said proudly. “You won’t find finer.”

The liquor burned down Charles’s throat, making him cough. “Too strong for you, Mr. Davenant?”

“I think I prefer mine in punch,” said Charles, setting his glass down on the top of the barrel.

“With sugar and lemon like the ladies?” The colonel laughed. “You’ll have more, won’t you, Robert, my lad?”

“Of course,” said Robert, and knocked back the dram with a defiant look at his brother, who didn’t know whether to shake him or march him home.

Not that he could do anything of the kind. It was too late, for one. And for another, Robert wouldn’t be the first who tried to prove his manhood by drinking too deep. Charles had done the same his first year at Oxford and been fortunate to discover rather quickly that it wasn’t worth the aching head in the morning. And, too, he had found other friends, better friends, who cared more for ideas than for who could piss the farthest.

Charles found himself missing them, and those days, with a painful yearning. All dispersed now. Carruthers, returned to Northumberland to set the family estates in order; Farleigh, a newly ordained clergyman; St. Aubyn, who had the sharpest mind of their generation, gone to the Peninsula as a soldier to please his father, trading his books for a sword.

And Charles, here in Barbados, confronted with everything he had so long denied.

A cry went up as the first of the carts was sighted, rumbling from the fields toward the mill yard.

The cart was led by a young woman garbed in white, a single red flower burning in the white folds of her kerchief, holding the long skirt of her gown carefully in one hand, the reins in the other.

“Last year’s was prettier,” commented Robert, regarding her critically through a lorgnette provided by the colonel.

“They’re all the same in the dark,” replied Colonel Lyons equably. He clapped Charles on the shoulder. “Eh, my boy?”

“Eh,” said Charles.

He was spared further conversation by the appearance of the carts, gaily decorated with strips of cloth and bright branches of oleander and hibiscus. The rattle of the wheels and the cries of spectators drowned out any reply Colonel Lyons might have made.

Charles seized the opportunity to drift away, distancing himself from the cluster of young bucks around the colonel. They were, he noticed, all considerably younger than their host. The colonel’s entourage consisted of boys like Robert, young bloods still keen to prove themselves men. The older men, the respectable married men, had formed their own cluster, farther away, beneath the canopy with the women.

The carts circled the mill, one, two, three times. Children ran along behind the carts, cheering and waving handkerchiefs or switches made from cane. Women in bright kerchiefs and men in knotted cloth hats with long streamers rode astride the loads of cane, waving to the spectators, who roared in response, hooting and shouting. There was a great deal of banter between the riders of the carts and the crowd in the mill yard; these were, Charles gathered, the best and strongest of the cane cutters, given this one moment of fame for all their labor.