Page 106 of Dawnlands

“My papa said a man was mad to live on the sugar lands without a big-enough mill.”

“He said that after we were married,” he told her with quiet resentment. “Before then, he told me that I could always use the family mill. I didn’t know then that your dowry of sugar lands with only a small mill was like a gold mine without a shaft. If I’d known…”

Rowan, replacing the empty syllabub bowl with a glass dish filled with preserved cherries, shipped from Boston, wondered what Mr. Peabody would have done if he had known.

Dora Peabody laughed at her husband. “Nobody could know that my brother would sell up.”

“Your brother knew, madam. Your father knew. Which is why they are sitting in a huge pile of a house in Kent, with a seat in parliament, and I am left trying to make sugar without a big-enough boiling house, an old mill, and no way to hire the equipment they sold!”

There was a silence. “So, will you plant coffee instead?” she said indifferently.

“Sugar,” he said dourly. “Nothing pays as well. And I’ll draw up my own plans to enlarge the mill.”

She laughed as if she knew he could not. “And how are you going to do that?”

He flushed sweaty red and nodded at Rowan. “He can draw them.”

Dora Peabody turned her pale blue gaze. “The new one?”

“Can read. Says he can write. Can you draw? What’s your name?”

“Ned Ferryman,” Rowan said. “I can draw.”

“There you are then,” Mr. Peabody said to his wife. “I’ll draw up my own plans, I’ll buy new rollers, triple rollers. I’ll enlarge my own boiling house. I’ll make my own sugar. And I’ll live long enough to tell your father to his face that he sold me a pup when I married you for two hundred acres and an old mill.”

Dora smiled down the laden table at the man she had married for his name. “I’m sure you will,” she said pleasantly. “Now, I’m taking a nap. It’s so hot.”

“Can we eat?” Rowan asked. The half-empty serving dishes were like a torture for her to carry back to the kitchen.

“We can eat some,” Cook ruled. “The meat has to be served cold this evening. But you can get a slice of the end. The fish goes to the servants. The scraps go for the slaves’ loblolly.”

Rowan took a slice of the pork from the trencher. The juices rushed into her mouth; it was still warm, tasting of herbs and a little hot seasoning. The fat from the meat was like an elixir of life and she chewed slowly, savoring every moment of it. She closed her eyes. The taste reminded her of her home, of pork traded from the English, roasted over the fire.

“You sure are hungry,” Cook remarked. “Here. Take some carrot too, and some fish. Don’t gorge on meat.”

The carrots were boiled to blandness, but the fish was fried in salted butter. The skin was blackened and crispy, the flesh thick andwhite. It tasted like the fish they used to barbecue on sticks of pinewood. “Good,” Rowan said, her mouth full.

The cook laughed at her and turned to give the child a little plate of food.

“Don’t you tell I give you meat,” she warned Rowan.

Rowan shook her head. “Can I drink?”

“Water won’t hurt you,” Cook replied. “Comes from the well.” She gestured to the green glass jug that they had brought from the table. Rowan took a long cool draft.

“Now you help clear up,” Corree spoke for the first time. “And you got to be waiting when he wakes up. You’re his manservant.” She paused. “He says you’re his valet.” She drew out the word with evident amusement. “Vallaaay. You know what a valet does?”

Rowan shook her head.

“That don’ matter. Neither does he.”

Rowan was given a bed of old cane straw with a square of sailcloth for a sheet in the house servants’ hut at the back of the yard. She would share the hut with Cook, the spit boy, Corree, and another maid called Bonny. She was so relieved to be out of the men’s cottage that she did not complain that she was given the smallest bed at the doorway.

“What do I do now?” Rowan asked.

“Master’ll sleep till sunset,” the girl said. “You better rest. You look a funny color.”

Rowan looked at the back of her hand.