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What should have been a festive time was wrought with anxiety. With no expense spared, Lucy’s wedding was a splendid affair, and the wedding breakfast was a bountiful feast. Mr. Ellsworth’s friends and family were pleasant enough, the young men of the party adequately skilled in flattery and flirtation, but Maddie could not stop thinking about an escape. The ceremony took place at the end of the season, only days before the opening of the grouse hunt. Maddie had a suitable excuse to return to Farthingmill Abbey, but her heart dropped when Lawrence invited his son-in-law’s male relations to the country for the shooting. A mob of hunters, traipsing across the fields and wandering through the woods where Maddie had to pass on her way to London, threatened to upend her plans. Her exit would have to be surreptitious, made under the cover of dark where she might blend into the shadows on foot. Taking the carriage was out of the question.
In the days leading up to a moonless night, her decision to depart took on added urgency. A message from Eliza Monroe revealed a series of events that spelled an end to the secret link to Charleston. The Monroes were returning to their native Virginia after Mr. Monroe was humiliated by President Jefferson, who refused to accept the trade agreement that the honorable gentleman had forged through great effort. Because the issue of impressment was not settled, the treaty was void, and Mr. Jefferson extended his rebuke to the entire nation. He declared all foreign trade to be banned, a decree that would surely bring the Beauchamp empire to its knees. While Eliza provided a letter of introduction to the incoming minister, a Mr. Pinkney, she could not swear that he would be so amenable to using diplomatic couriers for private correspondence.
By hiding an article of clothing under her skirts, Maddie was able to deliver a quantity of personal linen to Nipper, who in turn packed it in his chest. On the appointed night, after the shooting party was certain to be at supper, Nipper called for Lady Madeleine with a tale of a possible injury to her gelding. She sent the servants to bed after changing into her smallest gown, then returned to her room and slipped on another before donning a redingote to hide the bulk. Into the coat pocket went the letter to the Admiral that would be posted in London, a litany of the injustices she had endured but would endure no longer. A sudden thought had her turning back again, to the Admiral’s darkened room. Using a signal that only he would understand, she placed her mother’s heart-shaped pin on his pillow.
“Until we can be together, keep my heart next to yours,” she whispered, recalling the words she had said to Mama when first the pin was given. All was in readiness. Maddie slipped down the stairs in stocking feet, entered the library, and climbed out of the window.
The Second War of Rebellion Page 33