Chapter Two
Maybe it was her lucky day. Maddie knocked at the servants’ entrance and Livingston the butler opened the door. This was always better than either the footman or housekeeper, who both seemed to have been nourished in the belief that if their employers didn’t like someone, than they shouldn’t either.
“Miss Tifton, what a pleasure,” Livingston said, opening the door wide, instead of the usual bare minimum. “How do you do?”
“I do fine,” which made them both smile. It was something she had said since she was small and couldn’t reach the knocker yet.
He indicated that she enter, and took her cloak and bonnet. Maddie couldn’t help but notice all the silver cutlery, knives lined up like a rank of soldiers at attention across the table in the servants’ hall, a sure sign of parties and dinners to celebrate the season. She imagined there would be holly and ivy upstairs. She had already noticed the huge wreath on the front door. Who could miss it? Christmas was underway, and it was a ponderous undertaking at Tifton Manor.
Funny notion about that wreath: The first time Maddie remembered seeing one here was in her sixth year, when she and Mama came to the front door. Eyes wide, mouth open, she had gaped at the size of the wreath, which was what Mrs. Tifton never forgot. (“Mouth agape like a half-wit,” had been her comment, as relayed to Mama by a servant who liked to embarrass them. Which servant? They were all the same.)
Maddie still didn’t want to think about their reception on that doorstep years ago. It lasted less than ten minutes, as long as it took Mrs. Tifton to come downstairs in all her glory and listen to Mama explain that her husband, the wicked brother of Peter Tifton, had died of drink and left them penniless in a Norfolk rooming house.
Mama didn’t ask for help beyond what she thought was due to her, and it was probably obvious to anyone with eyes that they needed it. Maybe Mama’s Norfolk accent was too strong. Maddie doubted Mama was impolite, because Mama never was. Mrs. Tifton didn’t want to hear another word.
“Good riddance to my worthless brother-in-law,” had been Mrs. Tifton’s comment. “And good riddance to you.” The door with the huge wreath had slammed shut on them.
Time might never erase the shock and sadness of their dismissal. The wreath loomed as large today as it did when Maddie was six, so she was happy to take the servants’ entrance instead, as she always did.
Today, Livingston offered her tea and cake. “Do you need any help with all this silver?” she asked.
“Oh, no, child. I’ll ferret out a lazy servant from somewhere in this vast pile,” he said, his eyes merry. “It’s a skill we butlers possess. You’ve been summoned to measure the scrawny Miss Tifton for her usual Christmas frock?”
“Aye, soh ,” she said. It was fun now and then to put on that broad Norfolk accent, which, apparently, was good enough for the late and much-admired Admiral Lord Nelson. “ Prups thee’ll announze meh ?”
“ Prups , miss,” he replied with a smile. “I’ll escort you up the backstairs.”
Up the backstairs, she didn’t risk encountering her Aunt Loisa Tifton, as nasty a woman as one could wish to not know. It was enough to catch a whiff of fir and balsam from grand rooms below and know that soon the halls at Tifton Manor would be decked, now that Advent was well under way and Christmas approaching.
Their first Christmas in Ashfield had been dismal, spent in a tiny room over the public house. They only stayed there because they could not afford to go anywhere else. Maddie vaguely remembered a solicitor or two, Mama’s tears, and then the scratch of pen on paper. Mama had been forced by want to accept a yearly pittance of twenty-five pounds, instead of the two hundred pounds from her late husband’s portion as a Tifton. Mama soon learned of three rooms over the circulating library, at a price she could afford. Eventually, they both had a bed each, and table and chairs.
That was then, she reminded herself as she walked beside Livingston. Through the years, and several redecorations of Tifton Manor, he had quietly sent hand-me-down furniture their way. Luckily, the Egyptian decorating frenzy after Nelson’s victory at the Nile was mercifully short.
Livingston took her up the first floor to the catch-all room, where she perched on a second or third-best chair. Tape measure in hand, she waited for her cousin.
She waited more, but not as long as usual. Once Amelia kept Maddie twiddling her thumbs for upwards of an hour, simply because she could, a chip off her mother’s block. “As soon’s I saw you coming around to the back, I sent Miss Amelia word that you had arrived,” Livingston whispered on the stairs. “She probably thinks you’ve been up here all this time, waiting for her, when you and I were really having tea belowstairs, and a chat. None the wiser, eh?”
“I trust I haven’t kept you waiting,” Amelia said from the open doorway ten minutes later.
Something happened to Madeline Tifton then. After years of slights and rudeness, she decided not to duck her head meekly and say, “Oh, no, not long at all.” Maybe the credit went to thinking of kind Mr. Ince and sweeping snow in front of his empty house. Maybe she finally decided that worrying about what Amelia Tifton said or thought didn’t matter. Maybe she was tired of the whole charade. Whatever it was, her response came easily.
“It was no problem at all,” she replied. “I had tea with Livingston belowstairs. He is so thoughtful. The usual for you this Christmas? Stand over there where the light is best.”
What could Amelia Tifton do but comply? Humming to herself, Madeline measured her cousin. Scrawny as ever, she thought, and decided that her own pleasing roundness gave her frocks something to drape on without clinging in terror.
“The fashion this year is another inch up from the floor,” Maddie said. “What would you like?”
“I prefer the usual,” Amelia replied, squashing any change.
Maddie owned to a wicked delight. Usually she was the silent one, quiet and head down, a servant and not a cousin. “Are you certain?” she persisted, then lied because she felt suddenly generous. “You do have nice ankles, Cousin Amelia.”
N o, I have never called you Cousin Amelia until this moment , Maddie thought gleefully. It didn’t hurt a bit and it’s true .
“Very well then, another inch up,” came the faint reply, followed by an unheard of, “Thank you.”
“What color would you like this year?”
“Yellow, of course. What were you thinking?” Ah, the disdain was back. Quick recovery cousin , Maddie thought, impressed.
But there it came again, the desire to shake things up a little, and suggest a wiser choice. “What about deep blue this year?” Maddie asked. “It will compliment your complexion.” Anything but yellow , she thought. All that does is make you look like a corpse three days dead .
“I prefer yellow,” was the reply, minus the disdain. Was that…could it be…uncertainty?
“Very well. Let me know if you change your mind. I have a lovely blue linen that would bring out the color of your eyes.”
That, then, was that. Maddie pocketed her pad and pencil stub. “I’ll come by with your dress in a week for a fitting, and you’ll receive it a day later. Will that be enough time for you this year?”
“Yes. We have nothing special planned this Christmas.”
Maddie heard something wistful in her voice, as if Amelia already knew she faced a future of nothing special. We are more kin than you realize, cousin , she thought. I have nothing special planned, either . “Very well, then. I will see you in a week. Good day.”
That was painless. She went belowstairs, where two maids were sullenly polishing silver now. This was not a happy household. Livingston gave her the high sign and she met him by the door. He had a small wreath in his hand.
“This is for my favorite Tiftons,” he said. The wreath was his annual present.
So pleased, Maddie wanted to tell him that the only reason she still trooped here to sew a Christmas dress for Amelia was for his wreaths and other small kindnesses through the year.
He walked her outside and shut the door behind them, in case the maids wanted to eavesdrop, which they often did. “There is an interesting rumor floating about. It involves Mr. Ince.” He lowered his voice. “Surely you have heard the rumors that Mr. Ince was Mrs. Tifton’s father.”
“I’ve heard something about selling off his ancestral acres in Wiltshire to speculate in some business scheme. He was a lovely man and I miss him,” Maddie said with what she hoped sounded like finality, not wanting more rumor about someone she liked so well.
Livingston glanced around as if he expected a Tifton to pop out from behind a bush. “It might involve an American.”
This was something. She remembered quite well Mr. Ince’s letters that went to an American in Connecticut and occasionally in Boston.
The butler lowered his voice even farther. “The footman overheard comments in the public house from Mr. Clare, the solicitor.”
“To what effect?” There. She wouldn’t ask anything more, because she remembered kind letters to and from America.
“The story circulating around the manor––mind you, it’s rumor and I wouldn’t put much credence in anything the footman says––is that Mr. Ince left some money, and it might involve this American.”
“Just rumors, sir,” Maddie said. His name is Amos Foster and somehow Mr. Ince is his grandfather , she could have added, but knew better.
“I suspect as much,” Livingston replied. The butler managed a well-mannered chuckle. “I doubt there is anything to it.”
As Maddie started down the lane, she thought about the letters that Mr. Ince had written to Amos that he never sent, because of war between the United States and England, which precluded all commerce. If that wasn’t enough, the animosity of Napoleon meant that ships sailing from America to anywhere else could be seized, too. The newspapers she read in the circulating library called them Orders in Council, and the Berlin and Milan Decrees. To Maddie it was just one more aggravation of war.
“I will write anyway and keep my letters in this cardboard sleeve,” Mr. Ince had told her. “Perhaps someday I can mail them. A war can’t last forever, can it?”
Now at last, the war was over, with the French defeated at Waterloo, opening the seaways in all directions. Maybe Amos and the American were one and the same. If he came to visit the Tiftons, she doubted she would ever see him. No Tifton at the manor would ever call attention to poor relatives living over a library.
Still, it would be good to give those letters to the American possibly coming to visit, if he really existed. It was all speculation.
As she passed Number Fourteen on her way home, Maddie resolved to forget the matter.