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Edith wrinkled her nose as she looked out of the carriage.
Her mother had advised that Milton was dirty and smoky, but she had to say that the reality was much worse.
Seeing large gates before her, she had to wonder if she had been taken to the wrong place. Surely Margaret didn't live here!
Alighting, she startled when a horn sounded.
She cried out, in great fear for her life, as sounds akin to a stampede began unseen.
"Oh!"
"I say," her husband commented. "Reminds me of marching drills."
She reached for him, clenching his arm tightly as the gates opened and men suddenly poured toward them.
She squealed when one got just a little too close.
"Maxwell!" she cried.
It was all over in just seconds and Edith tentatively took steps to look into the courtyard, finding it empty, bar two figures.
As she stepped gingerly further forward, clenching her husband's arm firmly, she vaguely recognised the man standing near the bales talking to the other man.
This must be Margaret's stern husband.
The tall man in the suit she internally corrected, for the other man wasn't worth her notice.
They only spoke for a few moments longer before a young woman joined them, followed by a string of children.
It was all she could do to watch them bid their master goodbye and leave.
Her jaw dropped when the man nodded his head and duffed his cap in their direction. "Evenin'."
"Well, I never."
The other man turned from their direction, moving toward a large building directly in front of them.
Thinking them offices, Edith received her next shock of the day when a woman stepped out onto the small porch.
Realisation dawned. She lived here?
Indeed, she almost didn't recognise her cousin. This smiling woman with a baby on her hip dressed in two seasons too late could not be the same girl she had grown up with in London.
She knew the moment they noticed their presence. "Edith!"
The baby was in her husband's arms before she hitched up her skirts, made down the stairs and rapidly approached them.
"I did not expect you until the morrow," she said as they parted.
Her husband was there moments later as introductions were made.
"My husband. John, my cousin Edith."
Pleasantries aside, the men did their own introductions as they sized the other up.
"Thornton."
"Lennox."
Whatever expression crossed his face then, it was gone.
"Oh," cried Edith as she drew attention to the baby. "This must be Elizabeth. She looks just like you!"
Looking at the man holding the adorable child, she thought perhaps that scowl softened just a little.
Finito.