“That isn’t what I meant,” Selena said quietly, meeting Bea’s eyes.
“I think,” Bea said, no longer pretending to misunderstand, “you should ask Kyle.”
“Would Danielle have any reason to be upset about our marriage?”
Bea shrugged helplessly. “She can’t. She is married already.”
Selena turned back to the window. Somehow the knowledge that the unknown Danielle had a husband didn’t quite console her.
While her trunks were being unpacked, Bea gave Selena a tour of the main house, conducting her through spacious rooms that were graced with high ceilings, gleaming woodwork, elegant rosewood and mahogany furnishings and polished wood floors covered by plush carpets.
Selena couldn’t help but be impressed. There were five rooms on the main ground floor, which included a large drawing room, a small parlor, a music room, a study for the master of the house and a well-stocked library. There were also two rooms in each side wing, which included a formal dining room, a smaller family dining room, a large sitting room and a general room, where the mistress kept accounts and conducted the business of housekeeping. This last was the brightest, since it boasted two windows and opened onto the flagged courtyard, and was also the most functional, with its huge desk and shelf-lined walls. Selena eyed it with approval; she had been raised to manage a large household and knew she would be spending a good deal of time there.
Selena met Bea’s husband that evening when the family gathered for supper. Tall and angular, Thaddeus Sidlow had an untidy thatch of brown hair that kept falling into his eyes and a studious air that softened measurably whenever he was near his wife. He obviously doted on Bea. Indeed, his manner was so solicitous that when he stood beside her chair, urging her to add another morsel of chicken to her already full plate, Bea told him good-naturedly to stop hovering over her like a mama bird and take his seat.
Such frankness surprised Selena, and she decided it would probably take her a while to become accustomed to the easy, open ways of the Americans.
She wasn’t conditioned to such noise at the table, either. Usually Lydia dined with the adults while the younger girls ate supper in the nursery, Selena had learned, but this evening both Zoe and Felicity had been allowed to join them in honor of Kyle’s homecoming. At the moment Felicity was engaged in quizzing her brother mercilessly about his last voyage and giggling at his teasing responses.
Yet despite the strangeness, Selena couldn’t help enjoying herself; no one could, she reflected, surrounded by such love and laughter. Glancing down the length of the long table, where Kyle sat at the head, she smiled to see him reach out and tweak his little sister’s freckled nose. His obvious delight in the child made her wonder if perhaps Bea wasn’t right about Kyle being pleased to have a family. Selena had never seen him so relaxed and content as he was now, his eyes brimming with mirth as he threatened to make Felicity walk the plank.
Watching him, Selena was conscious of a yearning to have him treat her with the same familiarity, with the same high-spirited affection and love. Yet when Kyle glanced her way, she quickly lowered her gaze to her plate, afraid that her longing showed on her face.
She had just dared to look up again when Felicity left off giggling and blurted out an explosive question. “Kyle, did you know Lydia has a beau?”
Lydia, who had sat stiffly through two courses with a pained look on her delicate features as if she were above such childish displays of exuberance, glared at her sister. “Do be quiet, Cissy! You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I do so! I saw you kissing Tanner Parkington in the summerhouse.”
Bea let out a soft gasp. “Lydia, you didn’t!” sh
e murmured. Kyle’s heavy eyebrows had snapped together in a frown. The abrupt silence that followed the revelation contrasted starkly with the lively conversation that had gone before, which led Selena to conclude that despite the easy manners here, kissing a young man could compromise a young lady’s reputation as thoroughly in American society as it could in British.
“Is that so, Lydia?” Kyle said at last, a hard note in his tone that Selena recognized. She felt sorry for the girl, if it was true. Which it seemed to be. Lydia’s cheeks couldn’t turn any redder, and the glance she gave Kyle was full of guilt.
“Perhaps it is,” she muttered, “but Felicity has no right bearing tales.”
“In this case, I’m glad she did.” Ignoring Lydia’s sullen look, Kyle turned to Bea. “Tanner…Isn’t that Parkington’s youngest boy?”
“Yes, but he’s not really so young. He’s twenty now.”
“Whatever his age, I intend to warn him away. I won’t have him taking advantage of Lydia.”
“He didn’t take advantage of me!” Lydia protested. “I kissed him back!”
Selena saw Kyle’s gaze narrow ominously on his sister. “Tell me, has Tanner found gainful employment since the last time I was here?”
“Of course not! A gentleman doesn’t work.”
A muscle tightened in Kyle’s jaw. “I don’t know where you came by that harebrained notion, and I won’t dispute it with you, but I don’t want him calling here again. Even if his intentions toward you are honorable, he doesn’t have a penny to his name. The Parkington plantation is mortgaged to the hilt.”
Lydia’s expression grew even more sullen, but she didn’t argue further. Yet Selena was certain the contretemps wasn’t over. She was almost as sure that Kyle hadn’t acted very wisely in forbidding Lydia to see her beau. He was only protecting his sister, of course. But such high-handed use of authority was the surest way to arouse rebellion in a girl of Lydia’s temperament.
Selena was considering whether to speak to Kyle about it later when Zoe suddenly claimed the attention of everyone at the table by accidentally dropping her wineglass and spilling dark red Burgundy down the front of her blue muslin dress and on the Aubusson carpet.
“See, I told you!” Lydia said darkly. “Zoe isn’t capable of eating with the grown-ups. She’s far too clumsy.”
Selena suspected that Lydia was still smarting from her quarrel with her brother and didn’t truly mean to be unkind, but Zoe obviously took the remark to heart. With stricken eyes, the young girl glanced quickly at Kyle, then at Selena.