“You do not have to have dinner as the reason to see her. You can just stop to visit her like you do your associates about town.”
“I am not interested in the work that takes place in the pub, and I do not like it when there are a great deal of patrons.”
He was so difficult to talk to sometimes, and Hazel felt herself losing patience. “Just stop in to say hello sometimes. That is what friends do.”
“It is loud inside the pub and smells bad.”
Hazel gave up; he would have to sort it out for himself. “Never mind.”
“I am going to see if Elizabeth liked the fish that Delores brought for her.”
He turned to leave, but she called him back. “Duncan,” she asked. He stopped and turned back. “What do you know about the study done regarding traits passed on from parents to offspring?”
“Physical traits or habitual ones?”
Hazel considered that. The held plates. The long noses. “Perhaps both.”
“Well, there is the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. There has been additional study, of course, but I think Lamarck to be the most comprehensively published naturalist of distinction to have explained his theory of perpetuation of characteristics in species.”
“Yes,” Hazel said, settling into her chair and then leaning forward to pull her yarn basket closer to her. Knitting had become a useful occupation for her hands when she engaged Duncan in a lecture rather than a discussion in which she was an active participant. He seemed to enjoy both types of discourse, and sometimes it was nice to simply listen and make something useful at the same time. So far, all she’d made were scarves to give to the staff on Boxing Day, but it was something all the same.
“I remember only the most basic of his hypothesis, but I would like to understand his work in greater detail,” she said, drawing him in.
Duncan began pacing. “Jean-Baptist Lamarck was primarily a botanist, though he had always had an interest in medicine, and it was his first published works on plants that gained him admission into the French Academy of the Sciences. It was only after securing this place among other scientists of the age that he was able to fully explore his theories regarding inherited characteristics between parent and offspring . . .”
On Christmas Eve, Duncan left early and returned with an armful of evergreen boughs he then dumped on the parlor floor.
“Duncan!” Hazel said. “What a dreadful mess!”
“It is the greenery for Christmas, and it is bad luck to bring it into the house before Christmas Eve.”
Falconridge had never held to the tradition of decorating, but there had been a fair amount of greenery at Howard House last year when Hazel had visited at Christmastide. The bows and sprigs had been perfectly fastened and spread along mantels and banisters along with ribbon and rose hips. Not dumped into a pile in the middle of the room.
“I have never put up greenery,” she said.
“Nor have I,” Duncan said, digging through the pile, sending pine needles and bits of twig and bark further into the room. After a few moments, he stood with a large evergreen branch in each hand. “Delores explained that it is a traditional practice, however, and told me where in the woods I might find a good supply.”
He moved to the mantel and stuck one bough into a vase and another behind it. He did not pause to assess his work but instead returned to the pile and extracted two more branches.
Hazel pressed her lips together to keep from laughing as she looked from the haphazard display on the mantel to Duncan, who had shoved one branch into the middle of the small woodpile beside the fireplace and now laid another on top of the writing desk like a Holland cover.
“I believe there is more to decorating than simply placing boughs around the room.”
“It is one and the same.” He propped a large branch next to the door and put a smaller one flat on the windowsill.
Hazel moved to the bellpull and summoned Corinne, who surveyed the room with barely hidden dismay.
“Corinne, have you ever, um, decked the hall with boughs of holly?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“I did not cut any holly, as I do not like the scratchy leaves,” Duncan said as he balanced a branch on the other windowsill.
Hazel ignored him but smiled at housekeeper. “Corinne, you are the expert. Would you mind giving us a lesson?”
“Of course, ma’am. Let me fetch some twine and wire.”
“What would we need twine and wire for?” Duncan asked.
It took approximately two hours to fashion Duncan’s well-intentioned heap of evergreens into a pleasing addition to the room. A symmetrical garland now graced the mantel, woven with red ribbon Corinne had found in a storage closet. The vase now served as the center of the design. Additional garlands graced each windowsill with an unlit candle in the center, and a wreath hung on the front door. Duncan had grown tired of the action and cleaned up the messy remains while the women worked.
Hazel took a wide look around the room and smiled. “This is perfect, Corinne, thank you.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” She stood and displayed a circle of wire wrapped with some of the smaller and more flexible evergreens. “All it needs is a bit of mistletoe before it’s hung over the door.”
Hazel blinked. “Mistletoe?”
“Well, you have to have mistletoe for a proper kissing bough.” She walked to the doorway and held the sphere as high up as she could, which was not high enough to clear the casing. “Mr. Penhale will need to secure it; let me fetch a nail.”
She left the room, leaving Hazel and Duncan alone. They were usually alone in this room, so Hazel did not understand why it should feel different now.
“Mistletoe is an invitation for kissing at Christmas,” Duncan said.
Hazel limped to the mantel and tucked a stray sprig of pine into the garland. She said nothing, though her cheeks were on fire as she remembered the one kiss they had shared.
“I enjoyed our kiss on our wedding day,” Duncan said from somewhere behind her. “Did you enjoy it?”
Hazel stared at the garland, keeping her back to Duncan and hiding her red face. “I do not want to talk about that,” Hazel said softly. “It was simply part of the ceremony. A necessary rote.”
“But did you enjoy it?”
Corinne saved her. “Here it is!”
Hazel turned and looked at the housekeeper standing in the doorway with a hammer in one hand and a nail in another. She handed off the items to Duncan. “After luncheon, I could fetch some mistletoe. There is a vendor in the square who is always selling some sprigs, and since I still need to fetch a few things for tomorrow, it would be no trouble.”