I hope you will forgive my writing you before getting your response to my last letter and that I did not write to you on a Thursday three weeks after receiving your letter, as is my usual routine, but there have been some developments with my situation that warrant this breach of pattern between us. I wonder if there might be an opportunity for us to speak in person about a potential solution to my current problems, and perhaps to your own as well. Would you kindly write to me as soon as possible with some days that would be most convenient for me to come to King’s Lynn? Would you also inform me of the particular process I should take to notify you of my arrival and arrange a private meeting?
Thank you for your consideration. I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Mr. D. Penhale
Sophie finished reading the letter and lowered it to her lap, though her eyes remained on the page. “After nearly a year and a half of exchanging letters, he still addresses you as ‘Cousin Hazel’ and signs his name as ‘Sincerely, Mr. D. Penhale’?”
Hazel let out an exasperated sigh. “That is all you have to say?”
“Do you sign your letters to him ‘Ms. H. Stillman’?”
“No,” Hazel said tightly, waving toward the letter on her friend’s lap. “What are your thoughts concerning the contents? Is it not strange that he will come all the way to Lynn from Ipswich just to talk with me? That is a very long journey, and he does not like to travel; in fact, this might be the longest travel he has ever embarked upon in the whole of his life.”
Sophie shifted in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, bouncing her foot that peeked out from beneath her solid blue skirt. They were allowed to wear only solid-colored dresses at school, which Sophie found irritating as she liked to dress in all manner of colors and patterns. Hazel, on the other hand, preferred plain and simple dresses and owned only one striped dress that, in comparison to the rest of her wardrobe, felt so overstated she rarely wore it even when she could.
“So, you sign your letters casually, and he continues to sign his more formally. Do you use ‘Sincerely’ as well?”
Hazel put her tea saucer on the table with a thump. “I do not want to debate salutations or valedictions; I want to discuss him coming all this way to talk to me.”
Sophie blinked at her, then cocked her head and looked her up and down as though assessing a bolt of cloth. “I think you should wear the striped dress. What better opportunity will you have to show off the fine cut? I have always thought purple your best color, and so the striped dress is the perfect choice, I think.”
“Enough,” Hazel said, reaching for her cane and using it to push herself up from the chair. This was why she did not discuss her personal life—not that she had much of a personal life. Duncan’s letter had been so surprising, however, that she’d obsessed over it for a full day before deciding to ask Sophie’s help making sense of it.
“Don’t leave. I am sorry for taking fun in your letter,” Sophie said, rising to her feet with a single movement that seemed to defy gravity. She gestured to Hazel’s empty chair. “Sit down, and let us discuss it in actuality.”
Hazel hesitated, shifting her weight to her bad foot to relieve the increasing pain in her left hip. She could limp out of the teacher’s parlor with her nose in the air and leave Sophie to her regrets, but then she would have no help making sense of the letter.
She sat.
Sophie gave her a grateful and apologetic smile. “What do you think of Mr. D. Penhale? Do you like him?”
“I like Duncan well enough. He is . . . unique.”
Sophie raised her eyebrows but said nothing as she added enough milk and sugar to bring the tea to the rim of her cup.
Hazel shifted to her side; the pain in her left hip made sitting as uncomfortable as standing sometimes. “I have enjoyed his letters. He is very intelligent and . . . thorough.”
“‘Thorough’?” Sophie repeated, her tone flat. “Is that a compliment or a complaint?”
“Compliment,” Hazel said, but she frowned. “I think.”
Sophie smiled, then tapped her spoon on the side of the cup before placing it on the saucer. “He is a financial clerk in Ipswich? You have said very little about him to me.”
Hazel wished now that she’d been more forthcoming, but she hadn’t known exactly how to explain Duncan, and so she . . . hadn’t. She looked toward the pink curtains framing the window. A black horse pulled a black carriage with large yellow wheels past the window, and she wondered how Duncan planned to travel the sixty-five miles from Ipswich to King’s Lynn. Mail coach? She did not imagine he could afford to hire a private carriage. She hoped the trip would not be too uncomfortable for him.
“Nothing in those paltry details explains why you would be anxious about his visit,” Sophie said.
Hazel looked back at her. “I am not anxious.”
“Yes, you are, dear.” She took another sip. “Perhaps if I had a better understanding of how you and Duncan interacted that day in Norfolk I could better know how we should proceed with this conversation.”
Hazel looked at the fraying brocade on the arm of her chair and picked at the fibers with her fingernail as she centered her thoughts. She took a breath and explained Duncan, as best she could. “He is personable, good with numbers, attentive, honest, odd.”
“What do you mean by ‘odd’?”
“Well, on the day we met—the only day we’ve ever spent in one another’s company—he needed me to justify our addressing each other as cousins. He also does not look me in the eye when we speak.” The memory made her smile, but she tried to suppress it so as not to give the wrong impression. “He became so excited about the ham served at breakfast that he brought me a slice to try for myself. He mentioned my foot . . . out loud.”
“He did?” Sophie said, eyebrows raised again. “What exactly did he say?”
Hazel felt her cheeks warm at the memory. “I had said I had no prospects for marriage, and he said, ‘Is that because of your . . . deformed foot?’ Only he did not pause as I did just now. He said it as easily as he might have commented on the weather.”
Sophie choked on her tea. She put down her cup and lifted a napkin to her mouth. Her eyes were watering as she lowered the napkin. “Gracious. You were discussing marital ambitions over breakfast the first day you met? And he called your foot—”
Hazel understood why her friend could not say the word. However, she suddenly realized she hadn’t explained the marriage campaign to Sophie. Hazel had not wanted to admit that her uncle wished to buy a husband for her, which was perhaps why she’d said so little about Duncan—he was tied to that entire experience at Howard House. And now she had to explain everything, a year and a half later, with Duncan’s upcoming visit making every detail more uncomfortable.