“Wonderful,” Duncan said. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Mr. Penhale.” Corinne smiled and looked to Hazel. “Luncheon shall be ready in another quarter of an hour.”
Sometime between luncheon and dinner, mistletoe was added to the kissing bough. Hazel noticed it when she lowered herself into her favorite chair in the parlor after the evening meal. She stared at the small sprig of green that included a few white berries. Duncan had adopted the routine of staying in the dining room to enjoy a glass of port before joining Hazel in the drawing room each evening, and so she had a few minutes to prepare herself before he joined her. As it was Tuesday, she would be leading the evening’s discussion.
When Duncan entered the room, he immediately looked up at the kissing bough hanging above the door. He turned back to her, looked her directly in the eye, and smiled. It was disarming in its normality, but Hazel had already made her decision.
“For tonight’s discussion,” Hazel said, “I would like to talk about poisonous plants, specifically those which are toxic to animals and, most specifically, toxic to cats.”
Duncan’s expression fell.
“Case in point,” she said, pointing above his head. “Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that feeds off its host and is adorned with berries that can be fatal if ingested. For example, if a cat mistakes it for some other bit of food fallen to the floor . . .”
The discussion ended rather abruptly when Duncan tore the kissing bough from above the door, threw it into the fire, and then spent an hour tracing how the mistletoe had been brought into the house so as to ensure that none of the fatal berries had fallen to the floor and rolled into a corner.
Hazel smiled to herself as she finished knitting her last scarf.
Church services were at ten o’clock, so after a simple breakfast, Hazel focused on getting ready, though it was not as simple as she’d thought it would be. She wanted to look her best but did not want to appear as though she were playing to rank the way Mrs. Marcum thought she should. Duncan had not purchased any new items of clothing despite Amelia’s encouragement, so he would be dressed in the same black pants and gray coat he wore to church every Sunday. Though not shabby, it was not fine, and if Hazel overdid her presentation, they would look mismatched.
Finally, she decided on the peach muslin with the ruffled hem. It was rather plain in design, and she did not think it her best color, but it seemed the right one for the occasion. She braided her hair into a crown around her head, then curled a few tendrils around her face. The hairstyle made up for the plainness of the dress, but she wondered why it mattered when she put on her bonnet, white straw trimmed in blue and yellow. The hat—one of only three hats she had purchased as part of Amelia’s wedding-gift wardrobe—covered the entire creation.
At nine thirty, Hazel was waiting in the entry, her gray wool cape over her shoulders. Because they had to walk several blocks to the church, she had retrieved her cane from her trunk. She could not remember the last time she’d walked such a distance.
When she heard Duncan’s boots on the stairs, she turned to face him.
He stopped halfway down, all his attention focused on her. “You look beautiful, Hazel.”
“Thank you,” she said, swallowing her embarrassment.
He continued to study her. “Other than the dress, everything about your presentation is exceptional.”
“What is wrong with my dress?” She looked down at herself.
“It is orange.” Duncan moved to the coatrack and removed his gray coat before pushing his arms into the sleeves.
“It is not orange; it is peach.”
“Peach is a light orange, and it has too much yellow for your skin tones. You look better in colors with blue tones, specifically purple.” He put his hat on his head. “Are you ready?”
Hazel felt rather flummoxed. Did she really look poor in this color? Was there time to change? She knew as soon as she thought it that there was not, nor would she change for anyone’s sake but her own.
He opened the door, put out his arm, and looked at her expectantly.
She took his arm, and they made their way onto the street. Because she spent most, if not all, of her time in the heated rooms inside the house, she was unused to the cold. After three steps, her nose was already tingling. She blew out a breath specifically to see the cloud it made in front of her face. Why had she ever agreed to go to church? Oh, yes, to avoid making small talk with her cousins and seeing Harry, so she had better make the best of this.
“You know a great deal about color,” Hazel said after a few more steps, her cane improving her gait more than she’d expected it would now that she had her new boots. Hopefully her hand would not be frozen solid around the cane by the time they reached the church. Her gloves were already proving to be less protection than she’d expected. She definitely should have worn a scarf. And wool underthings.
“Yes.” The cold did not seem to affect Duncan in the least.
She gave him adequate time to expound on his knowledge of color, which he did not do. “Most men cannot tell what looks good on a woman and what doesn’t.”
“Catherine was fussy about clothing.”
Hazel was intrigued. Though Duncan often mentioned Catherine, it was usually within a larger discussion where Catherine was not the focus. “What exactly was she fussy about that translated into you determining what does and does not look good on a woman?”
“Not a woman—you.”
She looked sideways at him, noting that the tip of his nose was red, which reminded her of the similarities between his nose and Delores’s nose. This increased her eagerness to learn more about him. “You are only attentive to what colors look good on me?”
“Yes.”
“Why not be attentive to what looks well on other women?”
“I do not care about other women.”
But he cares about me. Hazel swallowed, and they walked in silence for a few steps. The topic of Catherine was still wide open, however.
“Did Catherine ever attend church with you?” The vicar had said she had not, but Duncan did not know that Hazel knew, and it seemed the most natural segue.
“No. She said the church might be struck by lightning if she attended, which I found quite frightening until Mr. Marcum explained that sometimes people use lightning as a symbol of God’s judgment, which is not based on fact or biblical example. Typically, God exercises his judgment through more widespread natural catastrophes such as floods and famine that, should the people follow His counsel, they could survive. There is not a single instance of the God of Abraham using lightning as a judgment.
“However, the Greek gods often utilized lightning, which makes Catherine’s commentary an example of how paganism and modern Christianity share many of the same roots. For instance, in ancient Rome, December twenty-fifth was the traditional feast of Saturnalia in honor of the sun deity. Replacing an existing celebration with a celebration of Christ’s birth made it easier for the populace to embrace Christianity once it was decided that its growing strength could be utilized for the propagation of Rome’s political goals, which were—”