Dear Future Husband

5. I Wish I Could

1 January 1889

Dear future husband,

Happy New Year! I pray the new year finds you well. How was your Christmas holiday? Was your family gathered round the hearth to celebrate with presents and eggnog and mulled cider?

That reminds me... have you any brothers or sisters? Have you a whole gaggle of younger ones to trail you around and irritate you with bothersome questions and embarrass you in front of your friends? Or perhaps you have a younger brother who imitates everything you do and declares that when he is bigger, he wants to be exactly like you? Or perhaps a kindly older brother or sister who sneaks you sweets when your parents aren't looking and brings you presents from far-off places? I wish I could have a sibling. But Father says it will never happen--

"Whom are you writing to?" Anna Carver, who was two years Rosalie's senior, asked, snatching the paper away from Rosalie before the younger girl could protect it from her. "Ooh, your future husband?"

"Give that to me!" Though three inches shorter, Rosalie determined not to appear weak nor to be trifled with. Especially not by the newcomer to Grenledge. Though she had been in the countryside two months now, apparently the niece of a Miss Patterson in town, and had been the cause of quite some ruckus in church. Rosalie's father had invited her over after Rosalie had asked for a sister and instead attained a very irritating companion whom she refused to call her friend. "I shan't be mocked."

"Oh, how very lonely you must be," Anna mocked, holding the parchment above her head of red curls. "Walled up in Grenledge Manor with your silver tea service and fancy ball gowns. Please, do not pretend you have tasted suffering."

"The contents of my correspondence are private, and thus none of your affair!" Rosalie was about to be most unladylike--as she had already done by raising her voice--and climb up onto a chair to snatch the letter back. "And you have no right to speak to me so when you are a guest in my home."

"Girls." Miss Wilson's voice had never been so welcome until this moment. Anna dropped the pages to the ground, where they fluttered before landing in a heap on the library's Oriental carpet. Rosalie hurried to snatch them up before they were trampled. "How are your French lessons coming along?"

Behind Miss Wilson's back, Anna made a face at Rosalie, who pretended she was too dignified to return the expression but beneath the table, aimed a kick at Anna's ankle. Anna ignored it and carefully copied out the conjugations of venir, poussoir, and other irregular verbs. Rosalie watched her handwriting for a moment as she wrote with her right hand; it was a very bad hand indeed.

"What have you to say now?" Anna demanded in a hissed whisper as she felt Rosalie's gaze on her.

"Nothing," Rosalie murmured, her cheeks flushing red with the chastisement.

Anna made a noise of distaste before she picked up her quill and went back to writing--but it was with her left hand now, and her script was much finer.

"Why did you not use your left hand to write, earlier?" Rosalie asked when Miss Wilson went in search of a book.

Anna finished her conjugations before she answered Rosalie nonchalantly. "My parents and the schoolteacher would beat me when I used my left hand for anything," she explained. "They tied my left hand behind my back and made me learn to write with the other one."

Rosalie frowned. "That doesn't seem fair at all. It isn't as if you can help being left-handed!"

Anna shrugged. "Don't go taking pity on me now, Rosie."

She gasped in mild horror but it was playful now, not in earnest. "Only my father is permitted to call me that, Annie!"

"Whom are you writing to?" Anna asked, gesturing to the letter that Rosalie had tucked under a French grammar book.