The letter haunted him for the rest of the morning.
Nathaniel attempted to focus on his correspondence, but his thoughts kept drifting to that masculine handwriting, that London postmark, that envelope now presumably in Miss Collard’s hands. Was she reading it at this very moment? Was she smiling at its contents, or frowning, or—worst of all—blushing?
He found himself constructing increasingly elaborate conjectures. A former employer, perhaps, seeking her return. A scholarly acquaintance, sharing some item of intellectual interest. Or—a suitor. The word lodged itself in his mind like a barb. A gentleman from her past, writing to renew his attentions.
It was ridiculous. It was tormenting. It was entirely of his own making—and yet he could not seem to stop.
By the time the luncheon hour arrived, Nathaniel had accomplished very little and was in a decidedly sour temper. He made his way to the small dining room where the family customarily took their midday meal, hoping the children’s company might draw his thoughts from their unproductive course.
Instead, he found Miss Collard already seated at the table, a sheet of paper in her hand and an expression of pleased surprise upon her face.
The letter.
She was reading it—there, before him—leaving him no choice but to witness her reaction without the smallest notion of its cause.
“Good afternoon, Uncle Nate!” Rosie exclaimed, bouncing in her chair. “Miss Collard has had a letter!”
“So I observe,” Nathaniel replied, his tone carefully even.
Miss Collard looked up, and something fleeting crossed her features—colour, perhaps, though it was gone almost at once—before she folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” she said composedly. “I beg your pardon for the distraction. I received some unexpected news.”
“Pleasant news, I trust?”
It was a perfectly civil enquiry. Entirely appropriate. The sort of remark any employer might offer upon observing correspondence.
It was not, in the least, an attempt to learn more than she had chosen to reveal.
“Yes—quite pleasant.” She smiled, though there was a note of reserve in it, as though she were holding something in careful abeyance. “An old acquaintance has written with news of mutual friends.”
An old acquaintance. Mutual friends. Words that conveyed everything and nothing at once.
Nathaniel resisted the urge to pursue the matter—to ask who this acquaintance might be, what news had been shared, what had prompted that fleeting colour in her cheeks. Instead, he merely inclined his head.
“How agreeable,” he said, and took his place at the head of the table.
The meal unfolded in its customary fashion. Rosie recounted her morning’s observations of butterflies with great animation; Samuel ate quietly, contributing the occasional thoughtful remark; Ella questioned Miss Collard with determined earnestness about the classification of various garden plants.
Nathaniel spoke little. His attention remained fixed upon Miss Collard, noting every expression, every hesitation, searching for some clue to the contents of the letter now concealed upon her person.
She was distracted. Cheerful, certainly—there was a lightness about her he had not observed before—but her thoughts seemed elsewhere. Twice she asked Ella to repeat herself. Once she reached for the salt when she clearly meant the sugar.
What had that letter said?
“Uncle Nate, you are not eating.”
He blinked, refocusing to find Rosie regarding him with solemn concern.
“I’m not very hungry, sweetheart.”
“Are you ill?” Rosie’s brow furrowed. “Miss Collard says we must eat properly or we shall become weak and sickly.”
“Miss Collard is quite correct. But I assure you, I am not ill. Merely preoccupied.”
“What does ‘preoccupied’ mean?” Rosie asked.
“It means he is thinking about something,” Ella supplied with the air of one imparting wisdom. “Grown-ups are perpetually preoccupied. It is one of the less attractive features of maturity.”
