Page 77 of The Summer Country

“Anything will do, if I make the stitches small enough,” said the woman cheerfully, “but a dark blue by choice. I’m Nanny Grigg.”

“Jenny,” said Jenny, rooting about. “Will this do?”

“You’re very kind.” Nanny Grigg took the spool but made no move to go. She looked at Jenny quizzically. “Are you all right? I don’t want to presume. It’s just—well, you look as though you saw a duppy.”

That was one way of putting it. The box with the gold locket weighed heavy in Jenny’s pocket. “It’s always a flurry, having guests in the house,” Jenny said instead. “And with Christmas and all . . .”

“They get the celebration, we have the work,” said Nanny Grigg companionably.

There was a shout outside, and the sounds of hooves and wheels. Jenny couldn’t help her neck turning, craning to see out the window. But it wasn’t Charles. It was the heavy carriage Mary Anne used for formal occasions, bearing the Bolands and her master and mistress back from church.

“They’re back,” she said, trying not to sound as low as she felt. It was foolish. It wasn’t as though she would be able to speak to Charles anyway, only look at him across the room, which was almost worse than nothing. “Do you need a needle?”

“You gave me one,” said Nanny Grigg.

“Oh, of course.” Jenny shook her head, feeling like an idiot. Seizing on the first excuse she could think of, she crossed to Mary Anne’s writing desk. “I was just remembering that we were nearly out of the puce silk floss. I’ll have to add it to the list to buy in Speightstown.”

“You can write?” said Nanny Grigg, her eyes lighting up. “I was maid to the mistress of Harrow until she died, and then . . . I used to read her correspondence to her, when her eyes began to fail her. Write for her too.”

“My mistress has me write for her sometimes as well,” admitted Jenny. “She’s with child, and it’s been hard with her. Her fingers swell so that it’s difficult for her to hold a pen.”

“Does she like you to read to her?” asked Nanny Grigg. “I used to read my mistress sermons, mostly. Improving texts, that was what she liked. But she liked Mr. Richardson’s works, because she thought they had a good moral sentiment. Have you read Pamela?”

“No,” said Jenny, trying not to show her distraction too obviously as more hoofbeats sounded from the drive.

“There’s a maid in it marries her master,” said Nanny Grigg confidingly. “I’ll hunt it up for you, if you like. Mrs. Boland doesn’t read novels, so she won’t ever notice it’s missing. If your mistress doesn’t mind, that is.”

“I don’t think she would,” said Jenny, although it hit a little too close to home, a maid marrying her master. Not that she thought Mary Anne would notice or make the connection. Mary Anne didn’t read novels.

“My thanks for the thread,” said Nanny Grigg, turning to go. She paused in the doorway, looking back at Jenny. “If your mistress can ever spare you, we have Sunday gatherings at Harrow, a few of us. We read the papers from England and share what news we can.”

Sunday gatherings were one thing; most masters expected their slaves to go visiting on a Sunday. But reading the papers was another, and dangerous.

“It’s all right. Mrs. Boland knows. She thinks it’s good that we improve ourselves.” Nanny Grigg made a face. “I’m not sure how improving it is, but it’s good to have the company, and you’re always welcome.”

“Thank you,” said Jenny, and meant it. She had never joined in the Sunday gatherings before, never gone with the other slaves in groups to dances at other plantations. She had always been held apart, by her father, by her relationship with her mistress. She loved Charles, but there was so much there that was fraught. And as for Mary Anne . . . that was another matter entirely. It would be nice to have a friend, or friends, simple and uncomplicated. Someone to sit and read the papers with on a Sunday evening. If her mistress let her go. “Maybe I will.”

“Do. We’d be glad to see you.” Nanny Grigg reached out and gave her arm a squeeze. “There’ll always be a spot ready for you, whenever you can get away.”

She gave Jenny a friendly smile and a nod and let herself out, closing the door behind her.

Jenny’s eyes stung. She rubbed them, hard, blinking away tears. It seemed she was always on the verge of crying these days. The long separation from Charles, she supposed. And possibly something else.

The box with her father’s locket bumped against her thigh. Jenny drew the box out of her pocket, extracting the locket. Even now, it still made her feel vaguely ill, that scrap of gold, ill with guilt and grief. It weighed heavier in her hand than it ought, like lead instead of gold.

She fit her finger in the clasp. On the interior, her mistress had engraved, “To Jenny, for her good service.”

Proof that it was a gift and not stolen. It was a surprisingly thoughtful gesture, if only the locket had been anything but what it was.

Jenny closed her hand over the pendant, feeling the filigree edges biting into her palm. She knew her father would have done what he had anyway. He’d always intended to take her with him; it would have been the same if she’d kicked and bitten and screamed. But she still, even now, felt shame at the sight of the locket, that she’d been tempted into following him, leaving her mother.

Mary Anne didn’t know that, though. Jenny forced her fingers to relax. Mary Anne didn’t know that, because Jenny had never said. She’d thought she was giving Jenny a gift, an extravagant gift, with title to it written right there for all to see. It was a kindness—and maybe it was, in more ways than one. It was a link, fragile and tainted as it was, to her mother, to those days before. She should think of her mother when she saw it, not her father. It was the only thing she had that her mother had touched. Her mother had helped her string it on a ribbon, helped tie it at the back of her neck.

How had she felt as she had done so? Jenny had never wondered it before, but she wondered it now. Her mother was very much on her mind just now. What had she felt when she bore her? Had she loved her? Feared for her?

To Jenny, for her good service.

Jenny ran a finger over the lightly incised words in their curling script. There was an air of elegy about them, an air of farewell. Recently, Mary Anne had seemed—well, not contented. She was too sick to be contented, too impatient. But as close to contented as Mary Anne could be.