Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.21 Madison in trouble, and an unexpected visitor

The next day, Nancy's parents returned from their trip to London. Both were in extraordinarily high spirits, having visited the opera and the ballet and having attended a garden party at Buckingham Palace hosted by Her Majesty the Queen.

The arrival of Lord and Lady Kerrington sent the maids, servants and other staff at Kerrington Manor into a flurry of activity that I completely failed to comprehend until Nancy explained to me that they were related to the planning and preparation of a grand ball to be held a mere four days from now. It had been the idea of Lady Hamilton, one of Lord Kerrington's three sisters, to take the opportunity to introduce Cousin Madison to her relatives, a group of no less than fifty-three people, all of them members of the British nobility.

It became nearly impossible to navigate the halls of the manor house without colliding with a servant or maid bustling about on some errand or other. Natty, Nancy, Madison and I tried hard to keep out of their way. The only way for us to achieve that was to stay outside as much as we possibly could. Consequently we spent the next few days hiking, skinny-dipping at the nearby lake and horseback riding. The latter turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated, and I tended to end up on the ground, on my butt, more often than I would have thought possible.

As abruptly and unexpectedly as they had started these activities came to an end, a mere two days later. Apparently, all preparations for the big event had been completed, and it had become safe again to enter the manor house during daytime without risking collisions with extremely busy members of the staff.

To celebrate the return to normalcy, Natty, Nancy and I had stayed up late, first watching shows on the black and white television set for hours and afterwards, stretched out on our beds in the room the three of us shared, playing cards until we had finally fallen asleep well after midnight. We slept late and woke up no earlier than nine o'clock in the morning.

As we entered the dining-room, Nancy asked one of the maids if it was too late to prepare a small breakfast for us.

"Not at all, Miss Nancy.  I shall set the table for Miss Natalie, Miss Catherine and for yourself."

"Thank you, Mary-Ann." Nancy smiled at the girl. "Say, have you by any chance seen my cousin, or do you know where I could find her?"

"Miss Madison?  No, I can't say where you might find her, Miss Nancy. But I know that the governess has been looking for her all over the place."

"Ms Cavernough has been looking for Madison?" Nancy frowned. "Do you know what she wanted from her?"

"I don't know, really." The maid shrugged. "But I think it was something about one of the cars."

"About one of the cars?" At that point, Nancy was looking alarmed. "Did Ms Cavernough say anything more specific or perhaps ...." She broke off. "Never mind that, Mary-Ann."

Natty frowned. "One of the cars, huh? Perhaps we ought to find Madison and, you know, warn her or something."

"Indeed." Nancy turned towards the maid. "Please continue to prepare breakfast for us, Mary-Ann. We will try and find Madison, in the meantime."

We lost valuable minutes by hiking through the ground floor of the manor house in search of Nancy's cousin. Eventually, we heard Ms Cavernough's  voice through a closed door that led to the second living-room.

Leaning closer, we strained to listen.

"I warned you that it would come to this, Madison," the governess was saying.

Madison's answer sounded a bit shrill. "You can't do that."

"Watch me," was Ms Cavernough's grim responsive.