“Goodness, no.” Ephraim chuckled. “That is rather the point of having a clerk, is it not?”
Dr Hitchingham made a noise which might have been a muffled snort. “And do you receive his letters direct into your hand from the post-boy?”
“No,” Ephraim said again. “Mr Hull brings my letters every morning. Do you fear him so deficient in his duties?”
“On the contrary. I fear he may prove all too attentive.”
“If there is such a thing,” said Ephraim, “I’ve yet to encounter it.”
Dr Hitchingham set both knife and fork aside to meet Ephraim’s bewildered gaze. “You take on this young man because he carries a letter from your former clerk. Your former clerk who has never contacted you before this moment since he left your service. Then you strike up a correspondence with your former clerk—a correspondence which always passes through the hand of your fresh hire.”
“Again,” said Ephraim, “that is rather the point of having a clerk.”
“I wonder,” said Dr Hitchingham, “if Mr Hull is not merely the conveyor of your former clerk’s correspondence, but also its source.”
Ephraim furrowed his brow. “I don’t follow you.”
“Every letter you receive from Lofthouse comes from Mr Hull,” Dr Hitchingham said in the tone he used whenever he thought Ephraim particularly dull. “Perhaps Lofthouse is not writing the letters.”
A silence grew between them.
“Balderdash,” Ephraim declared.
Dr Hitchingham gave his ownharumphin reply but said no more on it.
Conversation turned to Dickens and when Dr Hitchingham would join his son’s family for the holiday season. Ephraim’s mind wandered far off, even as he spoke, to think on his clerk. Not to entertain any of Dr Hitchingham’s ludicrous suspicions, but to wonder how Mr Hull fared alone in the office and where he would find his dinner. Ephraim hoped he wasn’t too hungry and that he might eat at least as well as Ephraim himself.
Dinner concluded. Ephraim braced himself for Dr Hitchingham to voice his suspicions again as they bid their good-nights, but either Dr Hitchingham proved wiser and more tactful than Ephraim anticipated, or he knew Ephraim would refuse to hear it, for he breathed not a word of it. They shook hands and parted ways, each gentleman continuing on alone into the evening.
While the streets remained cold and dark, the windows of the office in Staple Inn shone bright and gold through the fog, and Ephraim opened the inner door to find it transformed with holiday cheer. Intricately-woven garlands of evergreen boughs and mistletoe sprigs adorned the window-frame, the mantle, the ceiling beams, and the doorway leading to the second-storey stairwell. A glance upward showed the final garland over Ephraim’s head on the arch of the door-frame he’d just stepped through.
Mr Hull knelt before the hearth, stirring the embers with a poker to coax them back to life beneath the copper tea-kettle. He turned as the door creaked open and had dropt the poker and leapt to his feet with a smile as Ephraim entered.
“Happy Christmas, sir,” said Mr Hull.
“Did you make all these yourself?” Ephraim asked, his voice soft with wonder.
Mr Hull beamed. “I did.”
“They’re splendid,” Ephraim declared, though the word hardly felt adequate. “Just the thing for the season. What a marvelous surprise!”
“It was nothing,” Mr Hull said with a grin.
“Whatever made you think of it?”
“Mistletoe is a sacred herb in my homeland,” Mr Hull explained. “When I discovered it grew here, as well, and had become a symbol of the season, I couldn’t resist bringing some in.”
“I’m very glad you did,” Ephraim declared.
Mr Hull looked more pleased than ever. Though he didn’t so much as glance at the garlands. His warm gaze remained fixed on Ephraim himself.
“I’ve also heard,” Mr Hull said, “that a curious tradition has developed in London.”
He stepped nearer as he spoke. Presumably to gesture upward to the garland, as he did. But Ephraim didn’t follow his hand to note the decoration. Instead he found himself distracted by his clerk within arm’s reach; the way his brawny frame towered over him, and how the heat of his body filled what little space remained between them, and the sight of his noble profile turned upwards with a smile towards his own handiwork. Every breath brought the scent of his masculine musk—with curious notes of honey and elderberries—to Ephraim’s notice. He ceased to breathe.
Then Mr Hull turned that smile toward Ephraim again. Not an ebullient grin, as he oft wore, but a soft crescent of his perfect plump lips, paired with lashes lowered over dark eyes. Eyes which seemed to flick down to Ephraim’s own mouth before they met his gaze.
“They say,” Mr Hull continued in a lower tone, “that those who meet beneath the mistletoe must kiss to bring good fortune.”
