Page 85 of The Summer Country

And it wasn’t, she told herself. The words George had been reading weren’t his; they were a lady’s, possibly translated from the Portuguese. Adam and Laura had passage booked back to England in June. They would leave and their stay at Beckles would become nothing but a memory, a story to be told of their tropical sojourn in chill drawing rooms in Bristol.

Emily retreated to her room, where she found, to her surprise, that the desk of the escritoire in the corner of her room had been lowered and an untidy stack of clothbound ledgers dropped on it, spilling one over the other.

Laura’s delicate condition could wait. Emily seated herself eagerly at the table, set out some blank paper, dipped her nib in ink, and began.

Men and women, horses and oxen, bushels of feed and bolts of cloth. The Peverills that had been unfurled across the page in her grandfather’s strong hand. The land that she had only seen laid waste came back to life, a busy, bustling place, with carpenters and seamstresses, cooks and housemaids, wheelwrights and joiners, and everything else one could imagine. It was all there, down to the tiniest detail.

Some made Emily squirm uncomfortably in her seat.

The slave trade had been long since abolished by the time her grandfather had taken over his wife’s shipping company. He had traded in sugar, rum, and molasses; in cloth and tools and timber. Never in flesh. But here. This. This was how the sugar his ships had carried had been planted and harvested, with the sweat of men and women whose lives were not their own. And her grandfather, as bookkeeper, had noted it, without criticism or comment, bonuses for the women who bore children, the value assigned to each man, woman, and child.

Thank goodness for people like her mother, then, Emily told herself determinedly, and forced herself to concentrate on the practical aspects, the numbers of barrels required, the repairs to machinery.

The numbers involved seemed very large to her, but she could tell why Mrs. Davenant had shaken her head over the management of Peverills; however large the revenue, the outgoing receipts were nearly as great, leaving little in the way of profit. She could see where economies began to be made, household stuffs cut down, the number of candles and amount of tea queried and then reduced.

Her grandfather’s salary was in there with the rest, and then—Emily blinked, thinking she must be misreading. No. Her grandfather’s hand was remarkably clear. Payments to a Rachel Fenty, for fine sewing.

There were no fewer than eight seamstresses on the plantation.

Rachel Fenty . . . Vaguely, Emily remembered her grandfather speaking of his sisters. He’d been youngest of six, six who lived, that was. It was a story he loved to tell, the poverty and loss in sharp contrast to the well-lit room with its polished brass fire irons and Axminster carpet. Yes, he’d mentioned his sister Rachel, closest to him in age and temperament.

It wasn’t surprising that he might have found her employment on the plantation. What was surprising was the sum. Emily flipped forward, her pen resting forgotten against the blotter. There it was, once a month, starting in July of 1813. Rachel Fenty: fine sewing, two dollars.

A special project of some sort? Needlepoint chair covers or brocade drapes? It would have to be very fine, indeed, to merit the sum.

The payments stopped, abruptly, in January of 1815.

Emily set aside the 1813 and 1814 ledgers, an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. There were other payments to tradesmen outside the plantation. But nothing like that, nothing so regular.

Her grandfather thought the Peverills owed them, Adam had said. It would be like her grandfather to settle the score by any means possible. If he believed he was owed the money . . . it wouldn’t be stealing.

She was, she realized, chewing the end of her pen and staining her fingers with ink. Emily hastily set down the pen. She was being fanciful. It was that ridiculous Mrs. Poole, that was all, going on about Redlegs and sabotage and goodness only knew what. The payments to Rachel Fenty for fine sewing were probably just that, payments for fine sewing.

Emily returned to the 1815 ledger, forcing herself to concentrate. She was beginning to note the patterns in the ledgers now, the regular rhythms of the plantation year. Her grandfather had separate sections in the book for agrarian and household expenses, although the two sometimes blurred, as her eyes were beginning to do. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her she’d had only a hasty bite to eat before riding out to Peverills that morning.

She glanced at the clock and was amazed to realize that she’d missed luncheon; she’d been bent over the ledgers for hours. Emily hunched her shoulders, stretching as much as the closely stitched fabric of her bodice would allow.

She was ready to close the 1815 book when a new entry caught her eye.

Cot for Carlota.

There was also an order of law to make Carlota underthings, leather to be given to the cobbler to make her shoes, muslin for her dresses, and ribbons for her hair.

He had a ward, George had said. A Portuguese ward, without a name, without a grave.

But here she was. Here was her name. Carlota. Carlota in a sprig muslin dress with blue ribbons for her plaits, put to bed in a cot made for her by the most senior of the plantation carpenters, a cot with carved finials, and a small rocking chair made to match.

Another page in, her name came up again.

One doll (Paris).

Wooden ark and animals (Dresden).

The estate carpenter must have been capable of making playthings. These were the very cream of their kind, imported from England and France, Italy and the German states.

One gold bracelet, for Lottie. She was Lottie now, Emily noticed, with an ache in her chest for this little girl in her ruffled lace pantalets and sprig muslin dress, her hair tied back with silk ribbons, Italian leather slippers on her little feet, kneeling by her German Noah’s ark, her French doll in her arms, a gold bracelet from the finest goldsmith in London on her wrist.

That poor, poor child. Whoever she was, wherever she had come from, she had settled in to Peverills, been loved, cherished. She could feel it even in the ledger, the extra care her grandfather had taken with the entries for Lottie, the writing careful and clear, the letters just a bit larger than usual. There was a doll’s house made for her in March of 1816, and then, just one month later, nothing. All entries ended, the pages blank.