Page 95 of The Summer Country

“MacAndrews is looking after her,” said Adam carelessly, turning to rejoin the group.

“MacAndrews? He’s about as much use as blancmange!” Flushing, Emily lowered her voice. Mercifully, Laura and George were in the midst of a mournful ballad, caught in their own music.

In the Hazel Dell my Nelly’s sleeping,

Nelly lov’d so long!

And my lonely lonely watch I’m keeping,

Nelly lost and gone!

A little shiver ran down Emily’s spine. Sweat, she told herself. It was the hot season, and while the evenings were cooler than the day, the multiple layers of chemise, corset, and bodice felt uncomfortably hot and rather itchy.

“He can hardly physic himself!”

The silent stars are nightly weeping . . .

Adam shrugged. “That’s not what Laura says. But suit yourself. You always do. Mama always said I got Grandfather’s looks but you got his character.”

Now I’m weary, friendless, and forsaken . . .

Did character travel in the blood, or was it something that could be imparted by gift? Her grandfather had raised her as his own, had loved her as his own, she was sure of it. But if she wasn’t his, not truly, what did that make her?

Not like this child, Adam and Laura’s child, who would know exactly who he was and where he came from.

Emily stepped back, feeling suddenly very flat. “I won’t meddle. With you or Laura. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Don’t take on, Emily. Coz—”

Emily batted blindly at his outstretched arm. “Good night, Adam.”

“Are you all right?” The music had ended and George had walked over to join them.

Emily wrinkled her forehead. “Just a touch of the headache. I think I’ll have a quiet day tomorrow. I was too much in the sun today.”

It might even be true. The ride to and from Peverills was longer than she was accustomed to. The day had taken on a kaleidoscope quality, too much happening at once: Dr. Braithwaite’s surgery, Laura in the garden, the entries in the ledgers.

Emily spent the next few days quietly at home; she sat with Laura and Mr. Davenant in the garden, although only briefly. Her presence was too clearly a constraint. She accompanied Mrs. Davenant to church in Oistins, sitting in the box reserved for the Davenants. In short, she was exceptionally well behaved and half-mad with trying to avoid her own thoughts by the time George broached their proposed trip to Scotland. She accepted so enthusiastically that George stammered something about seeing to the picnic and disappeared, while Mrs. Davenant watched approvingly from behind her coffeepot.

Emily still found riding an awkward exercise at best, but there was no denying the relief of passing through the gates. When George suggested they canter, she agreed, feeling as though she were breathing for the first time in days as Beckles receded behind them, even though she knew she was going to pay for it in bruises on her backside later.

“Well done!” said George. His cheeks were flushed with the exercise, his eyes bright, and Emily realized what a constraint was on him too in his grandmother’s house. “You’ve come some way since we began.”

“I had a good teacher,” said Emily neutrally, and shifted a little in her saddle as he looked away.

As they rode, the landscape began to change around them, the even fields of cane giving way to an uneven terrain of hills and hidden valleys where oleander and aloes, cacti and Scottish heather grew in the lee of the rocks. Even the very color of the dirt beneath their horses’ hooves was different from the soil to which she’d become accustomed at Beckles.

“I’m told by visitors that it’s very like Scotland,” said George, as they walked their horses carefully up a rocky incline. “I’ve only their word on it, though. I’ve never been off this little island.”

“Until I came here, I’d never been more than a day’s journey from Bristol,” said Emily. “We can be ignorant together.”

“The men who settled here came mostly from Scotland and Ireland,” said George. “I’ve often wondered if they came here, to this part of the island, because it reminded them of home.”

“My grandfather’s family was Scottish, I think,” said Emily doubtfully. “He said his ancestors came over as indentured servants and were promised fifteen pounds and land if they completed their service.”

“Many came as prisoners of war,” said George. He had that faraway look he got when he started on about Cavaliers and Roundheads. “Captured in the risings against Cromwell. They were brought here in shackles, to an inhospitable land, and forced to survive as best they could under the burning sun.”

“It sounds like something by Daniel Defoe,” said Emily.