* * *
The sight of Mama’s memorial stone in St. Michael’s graveyard was no longer frightening. As Maddie let the dirt of Charleston fall from her hand onto her grandfather’s coffin, she recalled the rebellious child and buried her as well. Leaving the sexton to the task of returning the earth to the Mahon family plot, she took her grandmother’s arm and offered a silent prayer of thanks that she had been granted the honor of sharing Grandfather’s last few weeks of life.
The mourners returned to the drawing room at Riverside, a more subdued crowd as compared to the brightly colored flock that had fluttered through the house on New Year’s Day. Ethan had hosted the party, a Beauchamp tradition, but never could he have expected to open the house two days later to receive a litany of condolences.
Once Grandmother was comfortably seated among her remaining friends, Maddie slipped out of the stuffy house for a breath of fresh plantation air. The past weeks had been hectic, passing in a blur of parties and sick room visits, teas and family dinners. How she managed to find the time to write a letter to the Admiral she could not fathom, but she had to inform him of her activities and pass along news of his far-flung American relations. She had spent long hours perfecting a sketch of little Sarah Beauchamp, which was framed by the Riverside carpenter and shipped off as a Christmas gift. From her perch on the piazza she looked out over the gardens and wondered if her stepfather would be pleased to learn that she had made her debut in Charleston in a dress borrowed from her sister-inlaw. Would he laugh over the efforts made to add to the length, or smile as she confessed her preference for the greater splendor of the Queen’s drawing room? The departure of guests distracted her from her thoughts.
“I suppose you have a veritable army of beaux back there in England,” Mr. Taft said.
“None so handsome as a Taft boy,” she said, “if I had any beaux.”
“You are much changed,” Mrs. Taft said. “We all thought it was a sad day when you went away, but you were right all along, Ethan.”
“Which is not to say that I was free of all doubts at the time,” Ethan said. “Now that it is all behind us, we can be grateful that things turned out for the best.”
In a gesture of comfort, Emma took Maddie’s arm and embraced her, as if she could shield her husband’s sister from a barrage of unpleasant memories and awkward compliments. It was no accident that she had kept Maddie’s room intact. While Ethan did nothing but manage the Beauchamp businesses, Emma spent her days thinking of the comfort of those around her, seeing into the future and anticipating Maddie’s needs before those needs existed. In spite of her efforts, however, Maddie did not feel at home at Riverside. It was not her home any longer.
“Will you join us for dinner on Wednesday?” Mr. Taft asked. “A quiet family gathering, of course. In light of your great loss.”
“Pity that you are entering your first season here in mourning,” Mrs. Taft said. “Although Mrs. Mahon told me herself that she would not be happy if you shut yourself away at such an important time in your life. Look to the future, she said, and leave the past with the old folks to tend.”
“There is plenty of time,” Emma said. “Just going on seventeen, only just. And Charleston so full of fine gentlemen, a girl would have to work hard not to have one fall right into her lap with no effort at all.”
“What a great shame that Miss Maddie so rarely sits,” Heywood Taft said. He blushed bright red when Ethan reminded him that he kept Maddie on her feet on New Year’s Day, asking her to dance three times when she was about to take a seat.
Walking slowly to the pier, where a fragment of the children’s ferry system remained as a rusted pulley embedded in a pylon, the families chatted about nothing of importance. There was some talk of Grandmother Mahon refusing to move out of her house, refusing to take up residence with her two remaining children in Boston. In spite of her protests, it had been decided that she would reside with Ethan, while Uncle Mahon would rent out the Church Street house and then sell it to Stephen when the young man was ready to settle down. The estate was all but settled, which was more than one could say about Mrs. Mahon, who was a strong-willed woman by anyone’s reckoning. Maddie noticed that Heywood displayed a deep interest in her shawl, at one point interrupting the conversation to ask if she had embroidered it herself. The topic led to others, until she was describing the rooms at Farthingmill Abbey and lauding the shooting, said to be the finest in Hampshire.
The Second War of Rebellion Page 36