Free The Folly by M. C. Beaton Page A

sugar to be harvested?”
    But Rachel did not feel like entering into an argument on the rights and wrongs of slavery with her mother. The next day was Sunday, so there would be no visit from the Blackwood children, although they could expect to see the Blackwoods in church.
    When Rachel was brushing out her hair before going to bed, Miss Trumble quietly entered the room.
    “You look worried, Rachel. Was Mr. Cater not to your liking?”
    “He is a very pleasant man. But he keeps slaves. The slave-trade was abolished, or so you told us.”
    “The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807,” said Miss Trumble. “But this act, be it remembered, did not abolish slavery but only prohibited the traffic in slaves. So that no ship should clear out from any port in the British dominions after May the first, 1807, with slaves on board, and that no slave should be landed in the colonies after March the first, 1808.”
    “So why is there still slavery?”
    Miss Trumble sat down with a weary little sigh. “The product is now home-grown, just like the sugar. Slavery has been going on so long that there are black children growing up into slavery.”
    “It distresses me,” said Rachel in a low voice.
    “Many things in this wicked world distress me,” said the governess. “But you are not going to reform a plantation owner. Should you marry him, all you could do would be to see that the slaves werewell-housed and fed and not ill-treated. With the education I have given you, you would be well-equipped to educate them. But in order to go to such a situation on the other side of the world, you would need to be very much in love. Arranged marriages often work out quite comfortably in England, but it would be different there. There would be so many stresses and strains.”
    “It looked very much tonight as if our Mr. Charles will make a match of it with Miss Santerton.”
    “I do hope not.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “A feeling, that is all. I think there is an instability of mind there.”
    Rachel gave a little shrug. “Where such beauty is concerned, I am sure a little madness would not even be noticed.”
    “Perhaps,” said Miss Trumble.
    At church in the morning, with the congregation heavy-eyed after the ball the night before, Rachel noticed that the Santertons were there, Minerva and Charles looking very much a couple. Mr. Stoddart, the vicar, preached in a monotonous voice. “I do wish that little man would end. Is he going to prose on forever?” Minerva’s voice sounded in the church with dreadful clarity. Mr. Stoddart flushed, but smiled down at the Mannerling party in an ingratiating way and brought his sermon to an abrupt close.
    Outside the church, where ladies clutched their bonnets in a frisky, blustery wind, Mary took hold of Rachel’s arm in a confidential way. “It looks as ifMannerling will soon have a new mistress. And so suitable!”
    Rachel felt irritated and depressed at the same time. At that moment, the wind came to her rescue and whipped Mary’s straw bonnet from her head and sent it scuttling off among the tombstones, with Mary in pursuit.
    At least Isabella will soon be with us, thought Rachel, her eyes straying to where Charles Blackwood was escorting Minerva to the Mannerling carriage. Charles had not spoken to her or acknowledged her presence.
    She did not know that Charles had had every intention of speaking, not only to her, but to various other parishioners, but that Minerva’s hand on his arm had been like a vice and that, outside the church, she had instantly claimed that the sermon had given her a headache and that she wanted to return “home.”
    As his carriage drove off, he saw that new fellow, Hercules Cater, approach the Beverley family and saw a smile of welcome on Lady Beverley’s thin lips.
    Though he was finding Minerva a heady and enchanting beauty, she was beginning to annoy him. He did not like the unspoken and yet calm assumption of brother and sister that he