Page 73 of The Summer Country

“I’m so sorry.” It was so painfully inadequate. “Why does Mrs. Davenant keep him on?”

“Habit?” Turning away from her, Dr. Braithwaite began lining up his implements. “Power, perhaps. She does the real physicking at Beckles. Oh yes. If you want a wound bound, or a powder for a pain, you go to Mrs. Davenant.”

“Is she—” Emily waved her hands around, looking for the right word.

“Competent? Yes,” admitted Dr. Braithwaite, with the air of someone who would be fair if it killed him. “I doubt she’s reading the latest edition of The Lancet, but she can clean a cut without killing the patient. She’s used to having it her own way. It mightn’t suit her to have someone interfering. Or—”

“Or?”

Dr. Braithwaite turned away from her, using a pair of tongs to pass the needle he had been using through the fire. “MacAndrews knows something she doesn’t want told.”

“You told me, before I came, that there was something wrong with Beckles.”

Dr. Braithwaite dropped the red-hot bit of metal into a dish. It clattered against the ceramic. “As I recall, I told you nothing of the kind.”

“Not in so many words, perhaps—but you implied it.”

“You forget, I’ve been away these past twenty years. I was eight when I left—when my uncle freed me.” He looked up, his expression uncompromising. “I assume you know about that.”

“Yes.” Emily didn’t know where to look or what to say.

Dr. Braithwaite hung up the tongs on their hook. “As you can imagine, it isn’t a time I remember affectionately. And no, before you ask, I wasn’t hunted with dogs or beaten for sport. One doesn’t need to live in Uncle Tom’s cabin to resent being chattel.”

Emily’s cheeks were bright red and not just from the fire. “How did you know I read that?”

“An upstanding member of the Bristol and Clifton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society?”

“It’s done a lot of good, that book.”

“I don’t deny that. But I don’t want you pitying me. Or searching my back for scars.”

Emily couldn’t help it; she looked at his back, a broad back, cased in linen and wool.

“My point.” In a clipped voice, Dr. Braithwaite said, “I’ve spent most of my life in England. My memories of Beckles are, of necessity, limited. If you ask anyone, they’ll tell you that Mrs. Davenant was a good mistress—by the standards by which people judge their own.”

Emily felt confused and wrong-footed, and also that she was missing something, something just under her nose. “That isn’t an answer.”

Dr. Braithwaite sat down heavily on the chair. “That’s because I don’t have one to give you. Beckles was—is—a thriving place. The people here are fed and clothed as well or as poorly as anywhere else on the island. If I tell you that I found it an unhappy place—I had reason of my own to do so.”

She could tell how much it cost him to admit it. He might not bear scars on his back, but that didn’t mean he had emerged unscathed.

“No. It isn’t just your perception. It is an unhappy place, somehow.” The spyglasses, the strange tensions in the great house, the missing members of the family, the ruins of Peverills just visible in the distance. “George—Mr. Davenant, I mean—told me his father ran away.”

“Perhaps you’ll change all that when you take your place as mistress.” Dr. Braithwaite rose from the chair, pushing it back with a screech. “When is the happy day?”

“Happy day?”

“Your impending nuptials.” Dr. Braithwaite was at his most clipped. “Two great estates, finally united.”

“Oh, not you too,” said Emily without thinking. “That is—I have no intention of marrying anyone. If any estates are joined, it will be in exchange for pounds sterling, not my hand in marriage.”

“That’s not the word among the house servants. An announcement is expected daily.”

Emily shook her head and reached for the cloth, busying herself in wiping surfaces that had no need of wiping. “We’ve overstayed our time at Beckles, my cousins and I. I should have known it would cause talk. It’s past time we took our leave.”

“If you scrub any more, there will be no table left,” said Dr. Braithwaite mildly. “Where do you intend to go?”

Emily surrendered the scrubbing cloth. “Here, eventually. I had thought we might move into this house—or the overseer’s house.” She could imagine just how much Adam and Laura would approve of that course of action. They would have to be persuaded. Somehow. Emily put that aside to deal with later.