Page 86 of The Summer Country

Can you imagine that? To have made it through a war safely and then to die like this? George’s words echoed through Emily’s mind.

Emily shivered and started to shut the ledger—when something struck her, forcibly.

Eighteen sixteen. Peverills had burned in 1816. Poor little Lottie, Carlota, whatever her name was, had died in 1816. Everything had ended in 1816, including her grandfather’s entries in this, the very last ledger for the accounts for Peverills Plantation.

She had been so caught up in the pathos of the little lost girl that it had taken her a moment to realize the oddity of it all, these entries in her grandfather’s unmistakable hand.

Her grandfather had left Barbados when he married and never come back, that was what Emily had always been told. By April of 1816, her grandparents were two years married, her mother over one year old, and Uncle Archibald on the way, or nearly.

What, then, was her grandfather doing keeping accounts for Peverills in 1816?

Chapter Eighteen

Christ Church, Barbados

December 1812

“Are you certain? I thought you said . . .”

“That I couldn’t bear children. That’s what Nanny Bell told me.” Jenny took a step back, wrapping her arms around herself. “I could be wrong. It might be nothing.”

“Or Nanny Bell might be wrong.” An ebullient grin spread across Charles’s face as he swept Jenny into an exuberant embrace. “Just think of it. Our child. Our child.”

His joy was infectious. But only for a moment. Jenny wiggled to be set down. “Not just our child. Your brother’s chattel.”

“No.” She’d never seen Charles’s face look so hard. “I won’t allow it.”

“How? It doesn’t matter if the child is yours or not. If it’s mine, it’s his.” She had lain awake night after night, uneasily feeling the tenderness in her breasts, telling herself it must be something else, that her courses might be late for any number of reasons. Not Charles’s baby.

Their baby.

Charles’s lips set in a determined line. “If I told Robert—”

“That it’s yours?” Jenny stared at him. “Do you really think that would help?”

“No. You’re right,” Charles said slowly. “Of course.”

He was staring at her, and Jenny realized she’d wrapped her arms around her stomach, as though already protecting the child within.

Flushing, she dropped her arms and made a flapping gesture at Charles. “Go. You’ll be missed. We don’t want anyone asking questions.”

“No. Not now.” Resting his hands on her shoulders, Charles kissed her as carefully as if she were made of fine porcelain. “We’ll speak of this more later. Is there anything that you need?”

“Nothing you can give me.” Too late, Jenny realized how it sounded. Rising on her toes, she pressed a quick kiss to the corner of his lips. “If there’s anything, I’ll tell you. You know that.”

“Do I?” said Charles. He looked at her very seriously. “We’ll find a way to see you free before the child is born, I promise.”

Don’t, Jenny wanted to say. Don’t promise what you can’t achieve. It was almost worse to have the hope of something knowing it could never be. But she couldn’t say that to Charles, not when she knew that he meant it truly, that he would do anything in his control to make it happen.

It was just a pity there wasn’t terribly much within his control.

“I know,” she said instead. “Go.”

It was only when he had gone that she allowed herself the luxury of sinking down on Mary Anne’s chaise longue, pulling up her legs until her forehead touched her knees. She would have cried, but what good would tears do? She had learned that all those long years ago on the ship from Jamaica, when she had cried for her mother, and her tears had brought her nothing but threats.

“You won’t have to cry for me,” she promised her baby, and felt ridiculous for speaking to someone who couldn’t hear.

Mary Anne wasn’t Jenny’s father. She wasn’t cruel, at least, not intentionally. But Master Robert? That was another story entirely. He had the viciousness of the weak, flaring out in temper, hurting for the sake of hurting. It was, in its way, almost more alarming than the calculated cruelties of Jenny’s father. One could predict those.