A/N there will be some racist language in this chapter. I'm not condoning it but it is period accurate and reflects the attitudes of people at the time. As a black girl and an Asian boy, Hazel and Frank would have stood out in the 18th Century English countryside and been seen as somewhat freakish.
The annual autumn fair in the village of Skye-on-Styx coincided with the local regiment being stationed there. Vendors set up tables and booths in the village square to sell both produce grown or created regionally or imported from far away. Hazel used what pin money she had to buy a new silk fichu, a pair of gilded sewing scissors shaped like a bird, some embroidered garters, and a heart-shaped pin cushion which could hang from her waist by a ribbon.

A/N I do embroidery and I own a pair of scissors like this.

One of the most interesting sites there were two exotic beasts from the Andes in South America: they were covered in wool like sheep but had long necks like giraffes. Hazel was told that they were called alpacas.
Mrs. Di Angelo, her stepmother, stopped to chat with a friend.
"Hazel," she commanded in a stern tone, "Wait here until I come back."
The "quick chat" turned into a long conversation and Hazel grew bored. She knew that her stepmother was doing this to spite her.
Ever since she had married Hazel's father, Mrs. Di Angelo had resented having Hazel around. Why did she have  to let her husband's natural daughter live with her?
A/N "natural" was a euphemism for "illegitimate."
Mrs. Di Angelo, née Persephone Flowers, was the second woman to carry that title. Maria, the first Mrs. Di Angelo, had been the mother of Bianca and Nico, Hazel's half brother and sister. Being the second Mrs. Di Angelo, Persephone was uncertainly stepping into another woman's shoes. Knowing that her husband had betrayed his first wife and had a child with another woman and therefore would most likely do that to her made it worse. Hazel served as a constant reminder of this.
To pass the time while her stepmother was talking with a friend, Hazel listened to the fife and drum music played by the regimental band. The tunes such as "The British Grenadiers" and "Over the Hills and Faraway" were lively and infectious and made Hazel feel like dancing.

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She started practicing the steps to the gavotte: prancing, leaping, and curtsying.

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Hazel soon noticed that a young man had noticed her. He was exceptionally tall and broad in the chest and shoulders with large, strong arms. His face was soft and pleasant with a warm smile and kind dark eyes. He had something ungainly in how he carried himself, like he had not fully grown into his large size.
The young man approached Hazel and bowed.
"Madam," he said, "May I have this dance?"
Hazel curtsied and took his offered hand.

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For such a large, clumsy looking young man, her partner was a surprisingly good dancer. Both of them blushed when the steps of the dance required them to touch hands.
He bowed and she curtsied when the music stopped.
"Thank you for the dance, Sir," Hazel beamed, "Might I trouble you for your name?"
The young man took her hand and kissed it.
"Zhang Fai," he replied, "Your servant, Madam."
Hazel stopped herself from saying: what an odd name. She noticed that his eyes were narrow and almond shaped which marked him out as a Chinese.
"...but I'm called Frank Zhang."
"Hazel Levesque," she replied.
"Charmed."
The both of them blushed to noticed that people were watching them. A chink dancing with a negress, some of them commented, how amusing.
Looking in the mirror which stood in the window of milliner's shop, it was not difficult to see why everyone was gawking. Her straw bonnet, held in place with a white scarf and decorated with a blue feather, shaded a coffee colored complexion, the only one to be seen in Skye-on-Styx.

"Hazel," Mrs. Di Angelo called, she had finished up her conversation, "Where are you?"
"I must go, Mr. Zhang," Hazel told Frank, "My stepmother is expecting me."
"It was a pleasure, Miss Levesque," Frank swept Hazel a parting bow.

During the carriage ride home, Hazel kept thinking of Frank: his gallant manners and graceful dancing. He was someone she would very much like to see again.
Styx Abbey, the mansion that the Di Angelo family called home, had once been a Cistercian monastery. It was a gloomy, grey building with gothic windows, turrets, and casements which glowered over a forest of pine trees.

It looked like the setting for a novel filled with raging storms, dark secrets, ghosts, and terrified maidens running through the halls wearing flowing white nightgowns and holding a single candle. In truth, the house was haunted by two ghosts: Mr. Di Angelo's first wife, Maria, and their daughter Bianca, who had both been carried away by smallpox years earlier at the ages of thirty-two and twelve respectively. Their portraits were given pride of place in the drawing room. Maria had been a pretty dark haired woman with a wide forehead, long, graceful neck, and coy, playful smile. In her portrait she wore a loose, pale grey gown, a dark blue velvet shawl, and a wine colored turban atop her pouf hairstyle.

Mrs. Di Angelo always looked at her predecessor's image with resentment. The two women resembled each other somewhat with their pale complexions and raven hair and onyx eyes. Objectively, Mrs. Di Angelo was more beautiful but lacked the warmth and vibrancy that drew one to Maria's portrait. In the mauve gown, wine colored petticoat, and lace fichu she wore that day, Mrs. Di Angelo looked gaunt and severe.

She handed over her straw brimmed lunardi bonnet over to a parlor maid, who she instructed to have tea brought into the drawing room.

"Have you seen Nico?" she asked the maid.
"No, Madam," the maid replied.
Mrs. Di Angelo then looked over the portrait of her late stepdaughter. Bianca had resembled her mother: small, delicate, and pretty with a black and white complexion. The painting which hung over the fireplace showed Bianca sitting in a wild flower adorned autumn forest at twilight, wearing a simple white dress tied with a pink sash. A straw bonnet tried with a rosy ribbon dangled in one of her hands.

Mother and daughter had posed together for a third portrait, embracing affectionately in classical dress.

Maria and Bianca had been the closest things Hazel had to a mother and sister for a number of years. Hazel's birth mother, Marie Levesque, died when she was four after a fever came to the plantation in Louisiana where they were living at the time. Marie's masters, the Levesque owned land near the cotton and sugarcane plantation outside of New Orleans which provided a sizable portion of the Di Angelo family's wealth. Mr. Di Angelo made the trip across the Atlantic to Louisiana every few years and socialized with the Levesques while he was in New Orleans. This was how Hazel came to be. By the time of his next visit, Marie had perished from a fever and Mr. Di Angelo decided to bring Hazel back to live with him in England.
Instead of resenting the imposition of an illegitimate child born out of her husband's adultery, Maria had loved and cared for Hazel like her own little ones. Bianca, who was three years older, had been one of been Hazel's closest friends; the other was Nico, her other half sibling, who was a year older.
When Maria and Bianca passed away, it was like heavy, velvet curtains had been pulled over the windows of Styx Abbey, blocking out the sun and fresh air.
"I will go look for Nico," Hazel told her stepmother.
She left the drawing room and went out into the garden with an idea where her half-brother might be.

Maria had been fond of rhododendrons, specifically those that were a deep, luscious blood red. As a new bride putting her own stamp on Styx Abbey, she planted a number of rhododendron bushes around the estate.

Those bushes had grown into massive giants over the years following Maria's death because her beloved garden had been largely neglected since then. In mid to late spring, deep crimson blooms could be seen from every part of the house. In Maria's time, they had been allowed to come inside and be proudly displayed in the drawing room and dinning room but Mrs. Di Angelo complained that their strong perfume gave her headaches. Nico, on the other hand, loved these flowers. When they were in bloom, he always kept a bunch of them in a vase in his room because their color and smell reminded him of his mother, and placed a bouquet of them on her and Bianca's grave.
Their mausoleum was in the middle of a grove of weeping willows.

The monument was held up by classical columns and elaborately carved with funerary imagery such as cherubs, death's heads, willow boughs, lambs (a symbol of innocence and purity), butterflies (a symbol of the soul and how fleeting life is), and mermaids (messengers of Proserpina who bring souls to the underworld). On the door was a relief depicting mourners in Ancient Greek dress weeping over a tomb.

All was quiet and solemn in this grove. Hazel could hardly imagine that outside the grounds of Styx Abbey, the countryside was golden and bustling during harvest-time. The only sound or disturbance was the wind whistling through the boughs of the willow trees.
Hazel found Nico sitting in the grass by the mausoleum. His back leaned against the trunk of a willow tree and his head toppled over from having nodded off. Choppy and tousled dark hair covered his face.

A/N "lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum"- Nico Di Angelo, reaching peak emo since 1777 (the year he would have been born in this au).

"Nico," Hazel called to him, "Mrs. Di Angelo is looking for you."
His head shot up. Deep set dark eyes blinked at her.
"Back from town already," Nico replied in a groggy voice.
"It's almost tea time. Our stepmother is expecting us."
Nico straightened the black velvet ribbon which held back his queue. He stood up and brushed leaves and dirt off of his coat and breeches.
"What are you doing out here?" Hazel continued.
"Thinking," Nico smirked.
"About what?"
"How I would rather have Mamma and Bianca around than our stepmother."
"That's cruel. She's trying her best."
They walked down the white gravel path back to the house which was lined with Chinese lantern flowers.

"How was the fair?" Nico asked Hazel.
"Wonderful," Hazel replied. She told him all about what she had seen and bought at the fair and specifically her interactions with Frank.
"My little sister is smitten, isn't she," Hazel blushed, "By the way, you look lovely today."
Hazel was dressed in a black round with a green apron- green suited her cinnamon brown curls and large, golden eyes.

"Father is leaving for Louisiana again in a few weeks," Nico continued.
"On such short notice?" Hazel inquired.
"Mr Thanatos, the overseer needed to be let go and Father has to find his replacement."
"Why did Mr Thanatos need to be dismissed?"
"Father didn't say, but he's going to be away for several months."
"It's going to be well into winter when its time for him to return, a terrible time for sailing."
"The Duke of Olympus also invited us to a house party around the same time that Father is to leave. We'll see him off and then make our way to Skye Castle."
"How exciting!"
The frown on Nico's face told her that he did not agree. Social obligations were something he avoided when he could.
"Mrs. Di Angelo said that I am to meet eligible young ladies and you are to go as a companion to those young ladies."
Any excitement Hazel had felt about the house party quickly disappeared. So she would not be a guest but rather a glorified servant. This was yet another reminder of her position as a bastard daughter of the house.
The thought of Frank improved her mood. She hoped that she would see him again soon.