The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

  “Do you think your uncle would mind if we were wed from his house?” she asked, after some time.

  “If he let us set up a hospice for cholera patients . . .” said Nathaniel, and Emily swatted his arm. Undaunted, Nathaniel smoothed back a lock of her hair that had unaccountably freed itself from its pins. “Where should you like to go on our wedding journey?”

  A very long time ago, before her grandfather had died, Adam and Laura had meant to go to France on their wedding journey. Thinking of Paris made Emily remember something else.

  Wiggling to a sitting position, propping herself up in the lee of Nathaniel’s arm, Emily said, “If you don’t mind it, I should like to go to Paris.”

  “I don’t mind at all. Aside from the presence of the French, it’s quite a nice place.”

  Emily looked at him with interest. “Have you been?”

  “A time or two.” Nathaniel stretched his arms above his head, leaning back lazily against the wall. “I consulted with colleagues there. I’m sure my aunt would be delighted to send us an introduction to her milliner and modiste.”

  Emily made a face at him. “Can you imagine me in French fashions? No, there’s someone I need to see, but it’s not your aunt’s modiste.”

  “Or her milliner, I take it?” Seeing she was serious, Nathaniel gave her his full attention. “What is it?”

  “There’s an old wrong I need to set right.” It seemed selfish to be quite so happy when, far away in France, Charles Davenant still didn’t know that his child had lived, had grown into a woman of character and conviction, loved and beloved. “Do you remember that story I was telling you about, that Mrs. Davenant told me?”

  “Something about love despite the odds?” said Nathaniel, taking her left hand in his.

  “Yes, that.” Taking strength from his touch, Emily took a deep breath and began, “A long time ago, there was a child who was born to a slave woman and hidden away. . . .”

  Epilogue

  Paris, France

  November 1832

  Edward Davenant stood in the Place des Vosges, the rain dripping off the edges of his hat onto the already soaked shoulders of his greatcoat.

  His hands were frozen through. He blew on them to warm them. He really hadn’t expected it to be quite so cold. He’d known it wouldn’t be hot here, but the sheer bitterness of the weather had taken him by surprise. The raindrops were needles of ice, cutting through his clothes, chilling him to the bone.

  Behind him, a beggar was giving him strange looks. Edward was tempted to slink away, but his empty wallet and the rain decided him.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Charles Davenant, please,” he asked the concierge, speaking very slowly and clearly in what he had once thought was French, but it seemed wasn’t, or at least not if the reactions of the Frenchmen he’d met so far were anything to go by.

  He had the uncomfortable feeling his grammar wasn’t quite right, but Charles Davenant was Charles Davenant was Charles Davenant in any language. Unless he’d changed his name? Edward began to have an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach, and not just because he hadn’t eaten anything since that highly suspicious stew last night.

  This had been the address he’d found in his mother’s papers, he was sure of it.

  “Charles Davenant?” he repeated, calculating the number of coins left in his pocket and the distance between a bed and the gutter.

  It was looking more and more like the gutter. He wanted to tell the man that he was the son of one of the wealthiest planters in Barbados, but, in his bedraggled state, he doubted anyone would believe him. Besides, his teeth were chattering too hard to manage English, much less French.

  Edward twisted his blue lips into a hopeful smile. “Monsieur Davenant. Mon oncle?”

  The concierge shrugged and said something in a French that wasn’t at all like the French Edward had learned in the schoolroom at Beckles. It was faster and more guttural and entirely incomprehensible, but the man had opened the door, so Edward took his frozen body through the arch and up a flight of stairs paneled in rich, dark wood.

  A bas-relief, depicting something out of classical myth, adorned the turn of the stair. The rain pattered against high-set windows. Edward’s feet squelched in his inadequate shoes, leaving damp marks behind him.

  He was deposited at a paneled door, where a rapid discussion took place with a maidservant, who disappeared and then reappeared again, gesturing Edward to follow. She took him through a richly papered antechamber into a high-ceilinged room with, thank heavens, a coal fire burning away in the grate.

  Edward scooted closer, rubbing his hands over the blaze, and then turned to flip up the damp tails of his coat to dry them.

  It was in this very undignified pose that he was caught by his host.

  “They tell me that you’re my nephew, Ned?” said the man. He had blond hair, graying at the temples, and a lined, dignified face. At the moment, the lines had folded into creases of amusement. He gestured toward the fire. “I would have known it anyway, from your eagerness to get warm.”

  Edward hastily dropped his coattails. “Yes, sir. I mean, I am. I beg your pardon for not writing in advance.”

  “You always have a welcome here,” said his uncle Charles, quite handsomely, Edward thought, given that he didn’t know him from Adam. “Allow me to make you known to my wife, your aunt Jeanne.”

  He’d been so busy being embarrassed at being caught with his nether end up that he hadn’t even noticed the woman behind his uncle.

  “I say—that is—I’m, er, delighted.” Edward tripped over his tongue and his boots.

  His mother had never mentioned that his uncle was married. Or that his uncle’s wife was a mulatto. Which might, now that he thought of it, be why his mother had never mentioned it. If they were married.

  Could one marry colored people in Paris? He supposed one could do anything in Paris. It was, after all, Paris.

  Edward stepped forward, prepared to do the pretty. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs.—er—Aunt—er—”

  His new aunt took his hands, holding them out, looking at him with bemused gray eyes. “Neddy. Little Neddy.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—that is, you have the advantage of me.” Edward felt stupid and gauche, his wet suit of clothes—his only suit of clothes—clinging to him. His uncle’s wife was dressed in a claret-colored gown, richly trimmed with whatever those things were with which women trimmed gowns. She was quite beautiful in an old sort of way.

  His uncle’s wife dropped his hands, taking a step back. “Forgive me. I’ve heard so much of you from your uncle that I feel as though I know you already.”

  “Oh,” said Edward, at a loss. He had been not quite three when his uncle had left. He had never imagined that he’d left such an impression. “I’d no idea. . . .”

  “It’s a pleasure to see you grown,” said his uncle gravely. “Even if somewhat unexpectedly.”

  “And rather damp,” added his wife.

  “I apologize for appearing like this,” said Edward stiffly, trying to reclaim the situation. “If you’ll point me to a reasonable inn . . .”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said his uncle. “You’ll want a hot drink, I expect.”

  “And a bath,” put in his uncle’s wife.

  Edward felt his cheeks flush. “I, well, I seem to have underestimated how much it would cost to travel,” he admitted. “I lost my baggage in Calais.”

  Lost, he thought, sounded better than stolen. The man had claimed to be a porter, so Edward had given him a coin and his bags and had never seen either again, or the man neither. He couldn’t believe he’d been such a flat, but he had, and here he was, wet and miserable with only the clothes on his back and not quite penniless, but close to it. He could just imagine what his mother would say.

  “You haven’t come as your mother’s emissary, have you?” his uncle asked. Edward saw his uncle exchange a look with his wife. “If you’re here about Peverills . . .”

&n
bsp; “No!” Edward flushed with embarrassment at his own vehemence. “That is, no. I’m not. I’ve come away on my own account. My mother—she doesn’t know I’ve come.”

  Whatever happened, he wasn’t going back to his mother. Or to Beckles. His wife had cuckolded him with a half-pay officer at St. Ann’s Garrison, had dragged his name through the mud and left him shamed, and then had the nerve to tell him she’d never wanted to marry him anyway, a callow youth barely out of the schoolroom. She’d done it because it was the only way out of her parents’ house, but if she’d known what life at Beckles would be like, she would have stayed home with her parents and spared herself his fumbling attentions. The very memory of it made Edward hot with shame and resentment.

  Did Julia think he’d wanted to marry her? He’d been bullied and badgered into it. She was nearly a decade his senior, the eldest of six daughters. But she came with a piece of land his mother had wanted, and so there they were, yoked together, although they hadn’t a word to say to each other and nothing at all in common. He hated them, he hated them both, his mother and Julia, his mother for using him as a pawn and Julia—Julia for not wanting to use him for anything at all.

  Edward felt a moment of guilt at the thought of the baby, but that was succeeded by a flush of resentment. His mother had wanted an heir to Beckles so badly, his mother could raise the child. He wasn’t falling in with her plans, not ever again, even if he had to run halfway around the world to get away.

  “You won’t tell my mother, will you?”

  “I won’t tell her if you don’t want me to,” said his uncle. He grimaced. “After she hears I’ve sold Peverills, I expect she won’t want to have anything to do with me at all, so I expect you’ll be safe.”

  “You’ve sold Peverills?” Even in the midst of his own difficulties, Edward couldn’t help but take notice. He’d spent his whole life hearing of Peverills, the legendary Peverills, and how grand it would be once the estates were joined.

  “To an old acquaintance. He was rather keen to have it, and I . . . It seemed time to let it go.” Uncle Charles exchanged a glance with his wife. “Everything I love is here now. It’s best to let the past lie.”

  “Yes,” said Edward fervently. He was all for leaving the past behind. “You won’t hear the contrary from me. Let it all sink into the sea, that’s what I say.”

  “Hardly that. There’d be no sugar for your coffee,” said his uncle mildly. “Shall we have some coffee? You look like a young man with a story to tell.”

  Edward nodded. He found he was suddenly bursting to tell all. “Yes, you see—”

  “Ah.” His uncle lifted a hand, listening to something. “There are your cousins. I expect you’ll want to meet them. Philippe! Sybille!”

  “Coming!” called a voice from the antechamber. There was the sound of umbrellas being shaken out, and scolding in French from the maid.

  “Hercule and Amelie have gone to the Tuileries Garden with their nursemaid, but they’ll be back presently,” said his aunt Jeanne.

  “I have cousins?” said Edward. He hadn’t expected cousins. From the way his mother talked, he’d always imagined his uncle leading a hedonistic bachelor existence in the gambling dens and brothels of Paris, not this richly decorated family apartment with aunts and nursemaids and cousins, and, most likely, barley water and hot milk.

  His uncle looked at the mantelpiece, at a pencil sketch of a very young girl. “You had another, but she died.”

  His wife’s hand unobtrusively found its way into his. Edward noticed that they seemed to be able to communicate without talking, as though they had their own private language. “It was a very long time ago.”

  “That was drawn from memory,” said his uncle, nodding at the framed sketch on the mantel. “Our poor little girl.”

  “She’s in heaven now, I expect,” said Edward uncomfortably, since that was the sort of thing one said.

  He was saved by the appearance of two of his cousins, a boy of about thirteen, beautifully turned out in a suit that made Edward all the more aware of his rumpled and very obviously provincial costume, and a girl some years younger, with her mother’s beautiful bones and her father’s blue eyes.

  “This,” said his aunt, “is your cousin Edward, come all the way from Barbados.”

  “Bonjour,” said Edward awkwardly.

  “You’re rather too old for the nursery,” said Uncle Charles. “Philippe, if you might find your cousin a place in your room?”

  “Come with me,” said his cousin Philippe, in accented but beautifully fluent English. “I’ll see you settled.”

  His cousin Sybille trotted along with them.

  “Good,” said Sybille. “Now come along and I’ll take you to my favorite place in the square.”

  “In the rain?” said Edward, slinking down into his collar. Philippe, he noticed, was quietly laughing, but doing his best to hide it.

  “Cousin,” said Sybille, “you have so very much to learn.”

  “Sybille,” called his new aunt, taking her daughter firmly in hand. “You can torment your cousin later. Let him have a cup of coffee first.”

  Edward followed his uncle’s wife into the warm drawing room, where he was bustled into a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee out of a flowered china pot and a cake made of almonds, while his cousins teased each other and laughed and the coal crackled merrily, and his uncle held hands with his aunt under the table. His younger cousins appeared and were introduced, and then hustled off to the nursery to have their hands cleaned and their frocks changed, with much commentary and rapid French and some sticky fingerprints left on Edward’s pant leg, which he found he didn’t mind at all, especially since Philippe had promised to take him to his tailor.

  “Cousin!” demanded Sybille, waking him out of a half doze of contented warmth as the conversation ebbed and flowed around him. “Cousin Edouard! How long do you mean to stay?”

  Edward looked around the red-papered room, at his smiling cousins and his aunt and uncle, and thought of the echoing rooms of Beckles, sharp with secrets. He hadn’t known that people could live like this. How had he thought it cold? He was warm through, a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather.

  “As long as you’ll have me,” he said.

  Historical Note

  The history of Barbados in the nineteenth century is so rich and complex that to do it justice this note would need to be longer than the book itself. Since the production staff do not seem to like that idea, I have tried to confine myself to those points most important to the story—and, of course, to answering the question that always plagues me upon reading historical fiction: What happened and what didn’t?

  The Davenants, Beckleses, Fentys, and Turners are my own invention, but all are based on real people. Charles Davenant and his father were inspired by an actual planter and reformer named Joshua Steele. Like Charles’s father, Steele came from London to Barbados in the 1780s and set about trying to enact reforms. He believed, essentially, that Barbados’s slaves were equivalent to the serfs of medieval England, who had been oppressed and tied to the land, but, once given the proper institutions, became sturdy yeomen and model Englishmen. As David Lambert, author of White Creole Culture, Politics and Identity during the Age of Abolition, points out, this won Steele plaudits from abolitionist circles in London, but did not go down well with the majority of the plantocracy. Undaunted, Steele set about implementing his ideas on his own lands, offering wages for work, reorganizing his lands along a copyhold system, setting up courts of law by and for the enslaved. He was also deeply concerned about the plight of the Redlegs, the poor white Barbadians, and made an effort to find them employment upon his estates and to promote the creation of industries that might provide employment.

  Sadly, what one remembers about Steele, however, aren’t his ambitions during life, but his disappointment in death. Steele maintained an intimate relationship with his housekeeper, an enslaved woman named Ann or Anna Slatia, whom he leased from a neighbo
ring landowner. They appear to have lived together as man and wife, although it is, of course, impossible to ascertain what Ann Slatia’s sentiments may have been about the arrangement. Upon his death, he left the bulk of his fortune to his two children by Slatia, Edward and Catherine Ann. There was nothing unusual about a planter leaving a bequest to his natural child: wills of the period are filled with them. Very often, planters would manumit their natural children upon their death, along with some legacy in cash or property. What was unusual in this case was that Steele’s children were another man’s slaves, and the courts had no idea how to handle this novel and distressing situation. In the end, they ruled that property could not own property. Steele’s executor, Francis Bell, belatedly spirited the children to Britain, where he had them manumitted—but he couldn’t change the determination of the courts. The children were disinherited. This situation ended as happily as it could under the circumstances: Bell took charge and sent Edward to his own son’s school in Norwich and Catherine Ann to a young ladies’ academy in Camberwell, fulfilling the spirit of his friend’s wishes, if not the letter. But Steele’s predicament, unable to free his own children, thwarted in his attempt to make them his heirs, informed Charles and Jenny’s story.

  We don’t know how Ann Slatia felt, whether she cared for Steele or merely submitted to him. As Professor Hilary Beckles points out, in his Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados, it’s very hard to know the reality of such relationships. Relationships between planters and enslaved women were common: so common that in 1801, the Barbados assembly voted to hike the manumission fees for female slaves from £50 to a whopping £300, a mind-boggling sum (the price of manumitting a male was, in contrast, raised only to £200). The not so subtle purpose of this tax was to prevent men from manumitting their mistresses and children, and, in the process, creating a free colored community that would challenge the distinction between races. People found ways around this, such as “selling” slaves to friends in England, who would manumit them in London, eliminating the fee. But the very fact that the assembly felt it necessary to impose such draconian financial penalties tells us something about the prevalence of planter/slave relationships and the threat that the offspring of these relationships posed to the prevailing paradigm.