Page 55 of The Summer Country

Emily wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. “What are you on about, Adam?”

“Surely you can’t be that naive.”

“Apparently I am,” said Emily in frustration. “Do stop speaking in riddles.”

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Inspecting the family tree . . . trotting you out in front of all the local worthies . . . tête-à-têtes on horseback . . .”

Emily had an unpleasant sense that she knew where this was tending. “Oh no—” she began, but Adam was faster.

“Oh yes,” he said triumphantly, as pleased with himself as if he’d marched her down the aisle himself. “She means you to marry her grandson, of course.”

Chapter Twelve

Christ Church, Barbados

June 1812

“Marry your mistress,” Mr. Davenant repeated.

“It would be a very good match,” Jenny said, and winced at how strident her voice sounded. Honey, not vinegar. But she was desperate and it was very hard to be honeyed when the devil rode at her heels.

“As the world accounts such things,” said Mr. Davenant quietly, and Jenny knew she was losing him.

No, she had lost him before she had come, she had seen it, that moment when he saw her mistress, checked, and turned away. Her father had seen it too, and there had been no mistaking the triumph on his face.

Through the dust and the drought, her father had bided his time, but now, now that harvest was in, the blow would fall soon, she was sure. She wasn’t sure what her father had planned for her, but whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. At best, she would be sold. At worst . . .

“Please,” Jenny said, the word scraped from the back of her throat, raw and hoarse. “Please, before you say anything, there is something you should know. It touches on my mistress. And the colonel.”

“The stories he tells about her?” Mr. Davenant was quick, she would grant him that. “I don’t believe them, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“That is only the smallest part of it.”

The loamy atmosphere of the Old Mill pressed hard around her. She looked up at Mr. Davenant, a charcoal sketch of a man in the gloaming, threatening in the abstract. One word from him and she would find herself flogged. Or worse. But she clutched to her the memory of that afternoon, the way he had spoken out against the breaking of Nature’s laws. This wasn’t a man to throw her over to the courts, to see her stripped and flogged.

She hoped.

Over the months, she had searched relentlessly for a crack in his facade, a sign that his civility was a ploy. But there had been nothing, nothing to show he was other than he seemed. Jenny, expecting hypocrisy, had been first skeptical, and then baffled, and, finally, reluctantly intrigued. She had never met anyone like that before, a man who wore his heart on his sleeve as Mr. Davenant did.

What would marriage to Mary Anne do to him?

She couldn’t allow herself to think of that. Pity was the privilege of the powerful; she could afford none.

Jenny took a step toward Mr. Davenant, her palms sweaty against the fabric of her skirt. “I—I know I have no right to ask you for anything, but may I ask that what I tell you remain in confidence? It is more than my life is worth should any of it be known.”

Mr. Davenant straightened, looking very solemn. “On my honor.”

Honor. A word men used among themselves, but never to her. “You say that now. When you hear—you may think otherwise.”

“Whatever you say to me here stays between us. No other will hear. You have my word.”

Words, only words, Jenny knew, but they rang out like the trumpets of an avenging army, and she found herself, strangely, reassured. Reassured and unsure.

“I hardly know where to begin,” she confessed.

“At the beginning,” suggested Mr. Davenant.

And so Jenny did.