Page 90 of The Summer Country
“No. Not partiality. Revenge.” Mary Anne looked up, and Charles thought that he’d never seen her look so vulnerable. He was accustomed to thinking of his sister-in-law as indomitable, but now she looked very lost and very young. “If he wanted to hurt me . . . Jenny is the one person in the world who is completely mine.”
It gave Charles a sick feeling, to hear Jenny spoken of so, like a jewel one might put in a case and lock away. “Have you ever thought of freeing her? In reward for her service to you.”
“Why would I do that?” Mary Anne looked at him as though he were mad. “Did Robert put you up to this? He wants me to give her up. He thinks she keeps secrets for me.”
“I haven’t spoken to Robert since Christmas.” Charles pressed his eyes briefly shut. Jenny had been right and he had been wrong, all along. “Are things so bad, then, between you and Robert?”
“He thinks I cuckolded him with you. But you know that.”
“Yes.” He had caused this, without intending to. All of it. “I don’t know how to convince him otherwise.”
“Find a wife,” said Mary Anne. She made to rise, but stopped, her face contorting with pain, her hand going to her stomach.
“Mary Anne?” Charles grasped her by the elbow.
She shook him aside, her back hunched, her breathing ragged. “It’s nothing. It happens—just a pain.”
“Let me take you inside.” For a moment, all Charles’s other worries were submerged beneath the immediate emergency. Whatever she claimed, Mary Anne wasn’t well. He nodded to her attendants to bring her palanquin. “And don’t worry about your maid’s child. I’m sure Robert has nothing to do with it.”
“He’s keeping a woman in Bridgetown. A mulatto girl. He thinks I don’t know, but . . .” She lifted her hand to her temples, pressing hard. “She’s welcome to him.”
Charles held her arm to steady her as she lowered herself onto the sedan chair her attendants had brought for her. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” As they lifted her in the air, Mary Anne looked down at him, chin jutting out. “I should have married you.”
“You don’t mean that.” To the nearest slave, Charles said, “Please give my compliments to your master and tell him to call on me if I can be of any assistance at all.”
He watched, with concern, as Mary Anne was carried back along the path into the house, looking strangely small slumped in her litter. He thought he caught a glimpse of Jenny, standing by the veranda, but he couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to risk coming closer to the house. The risks were too high for them all.
Instead, he went home and wrote letters to friends in London, to Brougham, to Wilberforce, to Lord Grenville. He wrote to Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, and to Lord Castlereagh, the secretary of state for foreign affairs. He wrote to Lord Bathurst, the secretary of state for the colonies, and to Henry Bunbury, his undersecretary. He had little sway with them, he knew; they were Tories and his father had been a vocal Whig, and they were preoccupied with the war with France besides, but someone, someone had to care, to be struck by the injustices being perpetrated under the aegis of the Union Jack.
Charles threw himself into the work of the estate and his letter-writing campaign, permitting himself to wait at the Old Mill not more than once in a week. It was a pointless indulgence, he knew. With Mary Anne as she was, Jenny couldn’t get away, and to walk that far, in her own delicate condition—Charles grimaced himself. He’d seen his own slaves in the field holing the ground and chopping cane while carrying a baby to term. Jenny wouldn’t balk at the walk. It was he who worried for her. It was torture being unable to see her, being forced to rely on the odd glimpse as he rode past on trumped-up errands.
He forced himself to go hat in hand to his brother, under pretense of asking for advice about Peverills in light of Robert’s greater experience, praying for a glimpse, at least, of his Jenny.
Robert was gratified but suspicious. Charles dragged out the meeting as long as he could, accepting the punch Robert offered reluctantly, because hospitality demanded it, trying to give Jenny time to hear and find a way to visit.
“Aren’t you going to ask about my wife?” Robert demanded, as Charles finally took his leave.
“You must think me rag-mannered,” said Charles with a forced smile. “How does Mrs. Davenant?”
“Well,” said Robert, in a tone that forbade further questions, just as Jenny slipped into the room. Charles’s heart twisted at the sight of her. Her face was thinner, her features more defined, but she didn’t look like Mary Anne, he saw with a surge of relief that nearly unmanned him, only like a more tired version of herself.
“Master Robert?” She didn’t look at Charles, but Charles couldn’t quite stop himself from looking at her, at the curve of her belly beneath her apron where their child grew. “My mistress was asking for you.”
“Shall I pay my respects?” Charles inquired carefully. Anything to draw out this moment, to drink in the sight of Jenny and his child.
“No need,” said Robert. “I’ll let her know you were inquiring after her.”
Reluctantly, Charles took his leave. His last sight of Jenny was the sway of her skirt as she climbed the stairs behind Robert.
Charles went home and tried to begin another letter, but his pen stalled and stuttered, spilling blots on the page. What use was the pen? It was nothing here. All his hopes, all his beliefs were mere airy nothing, powerless against the force of law and custom that kept his lover and child from him.
He rested his head against his desk, despair making him weak. What in the devil were they to do? Wait a while, Jenny had urged him, and that was all very well, but what happened when the time passed and he had no better plan than before? And every moment, their child’s birth drew closer. If he failed to free Jenny, he failed their child as well. His own child, who would be born his brother’s slave.
Mad ideas chased around Charles’s head. Kidnapping, deception. The stuff of Monk Lewis’s novels.
Shaking his head at himself, Charles did the only thing he could do. He crumpled up the soiled sheet of paper and began again.
