“Certainly. I will look forward to meeting her.” Her teeth were beginning to chatter.
Hazel noted a couple break away from one of the clusters and begin toward them. Dear heavens! She put her arm back through Duncan’s and leaned into him. Dr. Randall seemed to watch them closely, and she realized that Duncan had not showed any tension when she’d taken his arm today. In fact, he had not showed tension when she’d been close to him at all in the last several weeks. She thought back to his words from that morning: “I do not care about other women.” She swallowed and forced her smile higher on her cheeks.
“We really do need to be going, Duncan,” she said softly.
“Yes, Hazel is not familiar with the ritual of visiting after church and does not like the cold,” he said to Dr. Randall. “She is eager to return home.”
Her cheeks flamed, but Hazel did not try to amend what he’d said, she only wanted to leave before this other couple reached them and this entire conversation played itself out all over again.
“Would you like a ride home in my carriage?” Dr. Randall asked, pointing toward a row of carriages lined up on the far side of the yard. Some of them had already begun to leave.
She looked from the carriages to the approaching couple to Dr. Randall. “Sir, I would pay any price you asked for a ride home in your carriage.”
Dr. Randall laughed. “A promise to plan that dinner is all I ask.” He spied the approaching couple and looked back at her. “I cannot spare you the Harringtons, but I shall bring the carriage around to the street as quickly as possible so you will at least have a reason to excuse yourself.”
“Thank you,” she breathed.
He nodded and turned toward the carriage as Hazel kept smiling, counting the seconds until she could make her escape.
Life resumed its routine in the weeks following Christmas. Duncan had not tried to retain any of the Perkins & Cromley clients, despite Hazel’s encouragement to do so since he had been the clerk managing their accounts for years. He did not feel it would be right. While a few had brought their business to him without his request, and Dr. Randall had come on as a client, Duncan did not have enough work to keep him busy all day. The situation might have frustrated another man, but Duncan was not dissuaded.
He did what work there was in the mornings and then visited his associates around town or checked on the tenants of the Burrow Building to fill the remaining time. Then he would go back to the office in the late afternoon and not leave until five thirty. Because Uncle Elliott was paying the expenses of the house, all the income Duncan was making from his tenants and his accounting was being saved, which Duncan liked very much.
Hazel corresponded with Sophie every week, worked on curriculum and schedule ideas, balanced her ledgers—though she was not spending much money—and read from the books in the parlor, now expanded to include Duncan’s small but prized collection of books on history and mathematics.
She took to sleeping late for the first time in her life, which meant she had her breakfast after Duncan had already left for the office at 8:50 each morning. He returned at approximately 5:50, and they enjoyed an early dinner and a discussion on whatever topic was dictated by the day of the week. It was a struggle to keep up with his vast knowledge of so many topics, but Hazel felt she held her own due to the study she would engage in each afternoon.
It was a good life, very different from what she’d ever imagined, and Hazel was grateful every day for such comfort, but by mid-January, she admitted she was growing bored. She had been used to interacting with students and other teachers every day. She had always prized her time alone but now realized that her enjoyment was at least in part because it had been such a rare occasion. Now she was alone for the vast majority of her day, and she missed . . . people.
There had been a few visitors since the vicar and his wife, including Mrs. Meyers, the wife of the local squire. She had come to acquaint herself with another “noblewoman” who fit Duncan’s definition of a “Fancy Lady.” Hazel did not take to the woman in her ruffled satin and her critical eye passing over the parlor that clearly did not meet her standards.
Mrs. Timoth had also come for a second visit, which was slightly more comfortable than the first. She was the wife of a carpenter and lived only a few houses away; she talked mostly of her five children.
Hazel knew it was typical to return a visit after being called upon, but the idea of limping into another person’s home and making small talk as a guest made her incredibly anxious. She told herself that because of her foot, no one would expect her to return the visit. Never mind that she did not feel particularly drawn to developing a closer relationship with any of the women who had come to call. She had sent notes of thanks for the visits instead of making the returns and hoped that would not come across as too ill-mannered.
And then she had three visits in a single day! Mrs. Lester, a widow in the parish who brought a jar of honey from her bees, Mrs. Timoth again—she brought three of her children; what an exercise in patience that turned out to be—and Mrs. Randall, who was newly returned from her sister’s estate in the lake district and seemed a bit rushed through their visit. She and Hazel chose a night to have dinner together with their husbands—Friday next at Lavender House, since Hazel and Duncan did not have a carriage, and it was difficult for her to make the trip across town.
Over dinner with Duncan that evening, Hazel complained about so many visits in one day. “I was nearly sick from eating so many shortbreads in a single morning, and not one of my guests had written me ahead to warn me of their visit.”
“Was it not a good distraction from the boredom you spoke of the other evening?”
“Well,” Hazel said, feeling sheepish because of course she had complained about her boredom a few nights earlier. “I think three visits in a single morning is a bit excessive, and the visits are so . . . dull. They talk about their families or their bees but nothing of real substance.”
“I believe female relationships typically revolve around more domestic interests. What else would you want to talk about?”
“The world,” Hazel said, her annoyance growing the more Duncan dismissed it. “Politics. Science. Women’s rights, perhaps.”
“But then what would you and I talk about if you discussed all those topics with the women who come visit?”
“I can talk about such topics with more people than just you, Duncan. And women’s perspectives might be different, not that I would ever know since they do not seem to know anything about such topics.”
“You did not ask them what they know on those topics, however, so you cannot be sure.”
“Never mind,” Hazel said, her irritation rising at the limitations of Duncan to truly understand her. She went back to her meal of ham and new potatoes.