Welcoming family properly required a piazza, which Farthingmill Abbey lacked, while meeting relations in the stuffiness of a drawing room was cold and distant. Maddie waited for the arrival of the guests, fearing that she was making a poor first impression but not sure what was proper protocol in England. Her fears were dispelled when a large party trooped in and no one frowned.
The Ashford men resembled one another in the way that Low Country families were pressed from a single mold. While the Admiral was somewhat taller and darker, the three brothers shared similar black hair and dark brown eyes. Their wives could not have been more dissimilar, as unalike as their children were from each other. Tension between Lady Jane and Marie-Elise charged the air of the drawing room, a combustible mixture of hauteur and contempt. Before choosing sides, Maddie decided to follow her grandmother’s example and let each woman present herself in the best possible light. To dislike Lady Jane for appearing pompous was unjust, and to warm to Marie-Elise for no other reason than her rosy cheeks and laughing eyes was foolhardy. To find her boy cousins annoying at first glance, however, was unavoidable. She did not care for the mockery in their posture, any more than she liked being an object of utter disinterest.
The boys faded into the background as Lucy came forward, all expectation and hope. She was close to Maddie’s age, hesitant in her greeting, as if she feared losing a friend before having the chance to cement the friendship. With her heart soaring, Maddie took Lucy by the arm and led her away to their own corner of the drawing room, to discover likes and dislikes, to speak the language of female childhood that adults could not understand. To have a friend was to have everything that was missing from her new life in England.
“You were away when I arrived,” Maddie said, charming the one who had charmed her. “Shame on you for being so unkind.”
Jests fell on deaf ears as Lucy showed how bacon-brained she was. “Please, forgive me, but I had no say in the matter. My father likes to take the waters. We meant no slight, truly. Had I but known, I would have cried and pleaded to come home.”
“You are a thick one, Lucy,” her brother George said. The oldest of the clan, he had an air of superiority that he must have inherited from his mother. “Our cousin hails from a foreign land, with foreign customs and very funny accents.”
“Take a turn with me, Lucy,” Maddie said. She would not be teased and drawn into an argument, not when George did not signify. Only Lucy existed in the room; only Lucy would have Maddie’s consideration. Arm in arm, the girls promenaded around the periphery until they reached a window with a view of the stable. “Shall we go riding tomorrow if the weather is fine? I’ve been told you like riding.”
“I have never ridden an American horse,” Lucy said. “Are they wild and untamed, like the people?”
“A horse can be trained to obey,” George said. The way that he hovered was unpleasant. “History has shown us that people are not so malleable.”
“Perhaps it is a question of intelligence,” Maddie said. “We proved to be too clever to abide ill-treatment at the hand of our inferiors.”
No one had ever spoken so boldly to George, apparently, given the look of shock on his pustule-pocked face. He stomped off to join his brothers, a departure that caught Lady Jane’s attention. Maddie noticed the slight grin on her stepfather’s face, and at once understood why he failed to mention his extended family before. There was enmity there, the cause perhaps forgotten over the years, while the poison lingered forever.