The Wonderful Bouquet

CHAPTER SEVEN: Annoying people

"She is making me crazy!" Madilyn shouted loudly. "And angry and annoyed and ready to kill her!"

"Who?" Thomas asked as he looked up from the piano. "Florence?"

She came to sit next to him, her arm touching his. "No, Eleanor. I wish it was only Florence," she added with a sigh.

The lady had arrived on their doorsteps a few weeks ago, asking for shelter. She had run away from her family, saying they want to marry her off to an evil man. Though Madilyn and Adelaide doubted the man was truly evil, Thomas believed it. Lord and lady Hayes had the tendency of marrying their children off to bad men.

In their defence, they did not know of the shady business of the two men. But everything was revealed to them when the lord of Colston – who Madilyn was supposed to marry – was caught. One would think that after those two bad marriages, the couple would have learned. But Thomas was not certain they had.

Lord Edgar and lady Martha were not the kindest people, and certainly not the best parents. They might have seen their first two daughters in ruins after their decision, but they might think that now they were doing the right thing by marrying their twenty year old daughter off to someone else completely.

Unfortunately, Eleanor did not feel like doing that, despite her strict education and her being the favourite daughter of the lord and lady of Woodward. She claims to have seen the destruction on her sisters and did not want the same to happen to her. Instead she wanted to wait until she had found true love so that she could be happy like Madilyn.

Madilyn and Adelaide did not share that dream with her, for it meant the lady must stay at their house.

The two sisters did not have a good relationship with their youngest, for she had always been the favourite of their parents. Thus Madilyn and Adelaide lacked the attention they wanted from their parents, for they only had an eye for Eleanor.

The lord and lady of Woodward had had great hopes for all three their daughters, but it would seem that not even their favourite was able to live up to them.

"I can send her away," Thomas told his wife, but she quickly shook her head.

"I cannot do that. Twould be bad for my conscience," she admitted with an irritated tone in her voice. "She is still my sister, no matter how much I dislike her."

"Is there no other place she can go?" he tried, though he already knew the answer.

Madilyn shook her head. "She does not want to go back to her parents, nor does she have any friends she can stay with. And I could not send her out into the streets. The poor thing would not last a week."

Tis true that the Hayes' were very rich and would not know what to do without their wealth. Thomas could indeed understand that Eleanor would not last long when she did not have beautiful dressed, nicely donned hair or decent food at a steady table. Yet he would not feel so guilty to throw her out. But then he could not do that to his wife, who would hate him for that. And he had seen her hate that. He did not want that again.

"Then I fear we will have to learn to live with her," Thomas admitted while he took Madilyn's hands in his. "And all the noise she brings, as well as Adelaide and our children."

Madilyn chuckled. "O how that is your only problem, I do not understand."

"It bothers me immeasurably," he told her. "I cannot work in silence in the study, for the children storm in, afraid of the aunt they do not know. And when that is not their reason, than it is Adelaide who is playing with them or the nanny who wants them to learn."

"They are afraid of Eleanor?" Madilyn asked surprised.

Thomas bit his lip. "I promised I would not tell you," he admitted.