TWENTY-NINE
As his father had thumbed his nose at the British occupation, so too would Ethan. The first day of 1812 would be greeted with a ball at Riverside Plantation, a tradition that was not diminished by a troubled financial picture. Maddie helped Emma with the decorations, draping holly sprigs and ivy around the drawing room, but she was glad to head to Belle Rive after a long day. Sometimes she could not bear to return to her childhood home.
The trip upriver to the plantation reminded her of her return from England, when she dreamed of closeting herself in her new home and entering life as a spinster, as if her three-week-long marriage had never been. Ethan would not hear of it, and so she took up residence under his roof, only to be continuously reminded of her God-given purpose. An unmarried sister whose return altered the order of Riverside, Maddie recognized that she was a burden to her brother. To escape to Belle Rive required a husband, and there was Heywood Taft who brought her to see the new house and the gardens that she had designed, his supervision ensuring that the plans were followed. Thinking of it again brought back the smell of fresh plaster and newly cut wood, the prattle of their conversation as they stood on the piazza and reminisced about their escapades as children. It was Heywood who found her a new maid when Sophie married Jim Nipper, the courtship begun in England without Maddie ever noticing. At loose ends, with nothing to tie her to anyplace, Maddie found comfort in Heywood’s daily visits, in his solid presence. When he proposed, it was like finding a safe harbor, as if she had come home at last.
She strolled up the path that bisected the gardens, full of empty spaces and leafless branches. On the piazza, she spied Heywood with Johnny and Caroline, attempting to intervene in a dispute. “Baby girl is not a dog, son, and she won’t do what you tell her to do,” he said. “Go on, now, you play with Tar and leave your sister be.”
“No news,” Maddie said, in answer to his unspoken question.
They all craved word from Stephen, who was commanding a brig that had broken through the Royal Navy’s blockade and gone who knew where. The whole of the Low Country was starved for good news of the war, but every newspaper that Heywood read contained nothing but gloom. A foray to invade Canada had failed. The British navy had taken to traveling in packs to prevent single ship combat, but the Unites States Navy lacked the fleet to counteract the enemy action. Harbors and ports remained closed, goods remained in storage. The nation’s economy was all but dead. The north wanted to secede from the south, but would there be northern or southerner states in five months time? Would there even be united states, or would the continent revert to disparate colonies?
“Nothing here, either,” Heywood said. “Not even a letter from your stepfather.”
Chilled from her ride, Maddie retired to her dressing room to change, with Heywood taking his usual spot in a chair drawn up near the fire. They chatted about nothing, the sort of things that married couples found to fill the space between them. “I brought you an almanac from Ethan. You’ll find it on your desk in the office.”
“You never have anything to say about your time in England,” Heywood said. “Was it so bad that you wish to forget it?”
“Life in one place is the same as another,” Maddie said. “There is the season in the city, then a round of country house visits. Shooting at the end of August. Ladies make calls, receive callers. Not any sort of adventure at all.”
“We’ll send Johnny to school in England, where your brothers studied.” He poked at the fire before throwing on another log. “I look at Ethan and I see a man who is refined, a true gentleman. And Stephen, why, he’s only two years older than me but he’s commanding a warship. I’m just an old country boy, a big gawk, and I want better for my son.”
“Don’t you disparage country boys, Mr. Taft,” she said. “I’ll have you know I married one and I won’t hear a word against him.”
“Johnny won’t be anything less than his Beauchamp cousins. A little English polish, like his mama, and he’ll shine bright in the Low Country.”
The Ashfords were solidly Etonian, as were the Powells and the Beauchamp boys. To imagine them all mixed together again was to revisit what Maddie had left behind. “I couldn’t bear to be separated from my boy,” she said.
Maternal affection would not sway a man as stubborn as Heywood. “You have to cut him loose one day. Besides, he’ll have his cousins for company.”
“I can’t believe that my brothers would agree,” Maddie said.
Since her sojourn abroad, her brothers had changed their opinion as to England and British culture, coming to despise what they once admired. In particular, they loathed the Admiral for violating contracts made with their grandfather, a grievous insult not easily forgiven.
“Ethan’s given it more thought, and don’t discount Emma’s influence. All families of substance send their sons to England for school. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stephen changes his mind about it.” Heywood untied his cravat, knowing it was time to dress for dinner but not finished with his speech. “The benefits of a fine education outweigh the negatives of the location.”
“Nothing can be done until Stephen returns and expresses his wishes. And until this war is over, all this talk is just talk.”
A sense of dread roiled Maddie’s stomach as she sat at the dressing table while the maid pinned up her hair. She studied her reflection in the mirror, but who was the woman looking back? Was she a Beauchamp, of fine French and Irish stock? Was she an Ashford, a Powell, a Taft? This was her American self, an image she cultivated over time. A return to England would wipe away that person, and how would she stop herself from slipping into the persona of an English peer whose behavior had been less than impeccable?
After the children were in bed that evening, Heywood brought up the unpleasant subject yet again. Maddie dropped stitches on the sock she was knitting, then lost track of the rows in the gusset. “You have a house in England, don’t you? The boys could stay there between terms,” he said.
“Who would look after them?” Maddie asked.
“What about your stepfather?”
“I rarely saw him when I lived there. He is at sea for years at a time, just like Stephen. Whereabouts unknown, or only to be guessed at. Then too, the house is rented, or it was when I last heard from the estate agent. A long term lease.”
“How long is long term?”
She was on the verge of snapping at him, of railing against his incessant badgering. Maddie tugged at the needles and set about unraveling what she had done, to start over at the beginning and fume silently over the time wasted. Had her husband not worn her down time and time again by worrying a topic to death and then reviving it? Several times he had found a piece of land he wanted for investment, and he kept at it until Maddie gave in and gave him the money from her funds, even when she did not think it was the wisest use of limited capital. “There were no specifics, dearest, and as things now stand, I cannot likely obtain any sort of clarification. Or even attempt to break the lease.”
“You shall ask when the time is amenable to communication.”
“Of course I shall. When this war is over and normal relations resume, I shall have a great deal to ask of the agent. But until then, please, for my sake, do not mention this again. My heart aches for word from my cousin Lucy, my relations, and my friends, and to be reminded is too painful.”