Becoming Miss Lee

Chapter 1 - Once a Fisher, Now a Lee

I am not quite sure what I was expecting when I arrived at the Lee manor, but the boisterous family was certainly not something I had on my list. I was only eleven when I was pulled into this life by a man I had never even really got to meet until the day of the funeral. The house was readily occupied by a ten year old Thomas, eight year old Ludwell, four year old Mary, and three year old Hannah. I was the oldest child there. I had no idea how I was supposed to act, what I was supposed to say, and in all honesty, I was brutally terrified. The whole ride there was agony. Not so much in the actual trip, but in the horrific scenarios I was formulating in my idle mind. What if they did not like me? Was I then doomed to be trapped in a home where I was despised? The constant bumps in the road kept jolting me away from my impossible fantasies and sent my small frame into the wall or the ceiling more than once. It was of no fault of the driver's. He was doing his best. The ride was painfully long, as I had expected, but the home that I saw was beyond all of my expectations. It was called Chantilly, a plantation and home that was bigger than anything I could have dreamed of in dreary New York. I gripped the small frame of the window and gazed out at it in sheer awe. The grand house was to be my new home. You had to have real money to own such a marvelous place and it was then that I realized the exact nature of my adoption. This wasn't like the new merchants with their finery in New York. This was old money, family money, true and long-earned wealth matched only by the aristocrats in England. These people were part of the colonial aristocracy with all but the titles and I was to become part of that.

The carriage rattled to a halt at the front steps and I emerged into Virginian sunshine for the first time. The air smelled different here. It felt cleaner and had a distinct smell of a farm with earthy smells and the smell of tobacco leaves and an odd undertone of flowers that I have yet to place to this day. The house, I quickly found, was larger than I had anticipated it to be from up the road. It was absolutely enormous compared to the tiny apartment that I had inhabited in New York, courtesy of my father's alcoholic habits, of course. I was greeted by Mister Lee, himself. I recall how stately he was. He was well groomed, impeccably dressed, and he had the most wonderful pair of blue eyes that I had ever seen. I was terrified of him and he seemed to notice because he gave me a large smile and a shallow bow of greeting, "Welcome to your new home, Miss Beatrice." Cane in one hand and my own hand in the other, he escorted me into the house where a throng of children peeked out from behind corners and the lovely Missus Lee stood with a gentle motherly smile waiting for me. "This is my wife, Missus Anne Aylett Lee, and those little rascals peeking around like thieves are my other children."

Missus Lee was a beautiful woman. Her cheeks were rosy, her skin soft and pale and her lips small and plump. She was soft in her shape, a desirable trait for any woman, and her hair was a lovely flaxen blonde that she had swept up in curls and rolled delicately around her head, covered with a satin cap and, from what I could see, powdered for any occasion. She dressed well, too, with clothes that I could only have dreamed of owning before. Gorgeous Satins and wonderful muslin and fine lace that cost more on one arm than my entire plain homespun cotton dress. She was slightly round from having children, but that was the mark of any good wife, and from the way she and Mister Lee looked at each other, I could tell that it was the tenderest of marriages.

The children slowly began to come out, intrigued by my presence. The oldest was Thomas. He was the spitting image of his father with his mother's rosy complexion. His hair was well-groomed and the same lovely blonde that ran in the family with beautiful streaks in it from the sun. His eyes were a darker grey, more the color of Missus Lee's than Mister Lee's, and he blinked at me in curiosity, head cocked slightly to the side. Ludwell followed slightly, not quite leaving the parlor wall to come out. His hair was also streaked with shades of lighter blondes that ranged to an almost pure white. His eyes were light and his nose was more of the turned up shape of Missus Lee. Mary stood beside him, another blonde, with eyes exactly like her father's. Mary looked like him far more than she did Missus Lee, but the look of the straight nose and high brow suited her perfectly.