As she dressed for the day, she thought of how just yesterday, the Gold Room, which had been prepared for her stay at Howard House, had seemed bright and elegant; a lovely place to spend the spring holiday between school terms. After Uncle Elliott had presented the dowry, however, Hazel had limped back to the Gold Room and found it tacky and overdone. She had cried herself to sleep in the gaudy room over long-buried dreams.
Morning had not offered as much of a remedy as she’d have liked, and the hurt lingered with her as she made her jerky way through the halls, down the stairs, and into the empty morning room where breakfast had been laid out on the long sideboard that spanned the entire west wall. Hazel was used to being surrounded by students and other teachers most of the time, which made the room feel even emptier.
She chose a soft-boiled egg and a single slice of toast from the sideboard, then sat in one of the chairs at the long table that faced windows overlooking the Howardsford estate. The picturesque fields of Norfolkshire and countless shades of green still draped in morning mist could have been those of her childhood home in Falconridge some fifteen miles west. She had lived at Falconridge, the Stillman family estate, only until she was six, so her memories of that place were soft and faded.
Hazel looked away from the representation of a life denied her and returned to the task at hand: determining whether to make amends with Uncle Elliott and stay the week as planned, or leave today and return to the teacher dormitories at Cordon Academy and her tiny room on the second floor with a single window roughly the size of her breakfast plate.
Using the edge of her knife, Hazel swiftly sliced the soft-boiled egg in half, shell and all. She used the spoon to scoop the contents of each half of the egg onto the single piece of buttered toast. The liquid yolk soaked into the bread as she mashed the rest of the egg with the back of her fork. She was cutting her first bite and thinking about the long trip back to King’s Lynn after she’d only just arrived, when the door to the morning room opened and a dark-haired man with equally dark eyes stepped over the threshold.
They’d never met, but she knew he was Duncan Penhale, her sort-of cousin. Duncan had been raised by Hazel’s scandalous Aunt Catherine, whom Hazel had never met either. He had been expected yesterday afternoon, and had Hazel not been unraveled in her room after her conversation with Uncle Elliott, they’d have been formally introduced at dinner. Instead, she’d skipped dinner and wallowed in a rare bout of self-pity.
Duncan took three long steps toward the buffet, saw her, and came to an abrupt stop. He inclined his head, looked at the floor, clasped his hands behind his back like a schoolboy prepared to give a recitation, and cleared his throat. “Forgive me, ma’am. I had not thought anyone else would be up at six o’clock for breakfast.”
Ma’am?
“Neither did I,” Hazel replied with the same even tone he’d used. “Though you owe me no apology.”
He continued to stare at the floor. His boots were not new but showed a recent polish. His trousers and coat were those of a working man, and his dark hair was combed smoothly back from his forehead. The tips reached his back collar with determined curls, the ends not entirely controlled by whatever substance he used to keep his hair in place.
It was not such a bad thing to have something—or, rather, someone—to distract her from the howling thoughts still omnipresent in her mind. Never mind that it was a someone she’d always been curious about.
“You must be Duncan.” She smiled at him the way she smiled at new students in hopes of putting them at ease. “I am your cousin, Hazel Stillman.” She held out her hand without standing, palm down, and after a moment’s hesitation, he crossed the remaining space between them.
Instead of bowing over her hand as she’d expected, he took it as he would a man’s, gave two solid pumps, and let go before stepping back with almost military precision. “Duncan Penhale. Nice to meet you, Miss Stillman.”
“Please call me Hazel.” She heard plenty of “Miss Stillman” at school, though that was preferable to “Ma’am.”
“I do not think that appropriate, Miss Stillman. We have only just met.”
“But we are cousins.”
Duncan shook his head, his gaze still on the floor. “You and I share no blood relation.”
The rigid posture and the way he spoke without looking her in the eye reminded Hazel of some of her former students, one in particular. Audrey Mathews had been solitary and analytical in ways that set her apart, though the girl had never minded her isolation. She excelled at mathematics, which had put her and Hazel in accord.
Relying on her skill of reading people rather well and rather quickly, Hazel took a chance and spoke to Duncan in the same upfront way she’d found effective with Audrey. “My mother, Jane, and Catherine, your . . . guardian, were both Uncle Elliott’s sisters, and he has been your benefactor just as he’s been mine. Therefore, I feel it appropriate for us to continue on a first name basis due to our shared connection. Also, Uncle Elliott considers you his nephew as though you are a blood relation.”
His tight eyebrows made him appear unconvinced.
“Would it be more comfortable to call me Cousin Hazel?”
“It is a false relational title.”
“As I have never met any of my blood cousins and know as much about them as I do you, I think calling one another ‘cousin’ is appropriate. It at least gives us a distinction between any other person we might address more formally. Does that not seem reasonable?”
Duncan pondered a few moments, then nodded. “That is a reasonable distinction. May I breakfast here, or would you prefer to dine alone?”
Hazel celebrated the victory internally. “I am not opposed to company, Cousin Duncan. You are welcome to dine here with me.”
He nodded and continued to the sideboard, filled his plate to heaping, and chose the chair two seats away from Hazel. Whereas Hazel’s plate contained a single slice of toast with egg, Duncan’s plate was full. Hazel did not eat that much food in two days’ time. She watched the way Duncan focused on his plate, the way he employed his fork and knife to cut exacting bites. He’d chosen three of each item—three links of sausage, three quarters of potato, three hard-boiled eggs, three slices of kidney pie, and three slices of ham. He had not served himself any hash or beans; perhaps those things were difficult to count?
“When did you arrive at Howard House, Cousin Duncan?” she asked when half of his plate had been cleared. He had eaten one slice of pie, followed by potato, ham, sausage, egg. Then he’d started over in the same order.
He finished chewing the egg from his second pass and swallowed before he spoke. “Yesterday afternoon. I shall stay until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, which is when the carriage will fetch me for the return journey. I do not like to travel.” He continued to cut and eat his food, chewing each bite carefully and not talking with his mouth full.