Very Truly Yours, Simone

8. the many letters

Dear Daniel,

I truly hope you are doing well. It is not quite easy to tell since your last letter had been four years ago. If you ever received mine, I hope they never bothered you. I have sent you many letters since your last, but this would be the last.

Please know that I do not hold it against you, but I also hope you don't hold this letter against me. Since that night you did not show up in your play, I have always wondered why. You said you had an urgent matter to attend to, and although I was curious, I never pressed. After all, I am just a friend. And I was your friend, yes?

But you stopped talking about your life in the theater. You stopped telling me about the dirty curtains and how they made you sneeze whenever they closed. You started asking questions instead. About my life in Abberton, the animals in the courtyard, and everything mundane. I even told you about the goose that chased Gale and me around. I told you about my new teacher in Parlton. And I even dared send you my drawings of a wedding dress I designed. I told you about my suitors, hoping you would share a bit more.

It was only when your letters came less and less that I realized you asked the questions simply so I could not ask mine. And I reached the conclusion that perhaps you no longer find our correspondence worthy of interest.

Wherever you are, Daniel, I hope you are living the life you want. Someday, should we ever meet again, I hope to be the one to ask the questions. I hope to hear exciting stories of travels and crazy plays.

This letter shall be addressed to your villa in Picadilly where my many letters had been sent. It has remained empty, but I was told you still own it.

Very truly yours,

Simone

***

She sent Daniel Cavendish her first letter when she was sixteen.

They wrote to each other for two years since then until she was eighteen.

His last letter was six years ago when she was nineteen, a year after they last saw each other in Picadilly and never showed up in his play.

She sent her last letter two years ago when she turned twenty-three, after having not heard from him for four years.

Nine years. It had been nine years since she met him. She had been young and childish and hopeful.

Now, at twenty-five, she was a lady.

"A spinster," Gale said with a gesture of his hand at her. "That's what you are, cousin, if you continue to lock yourself inside this bloody room."

Simone looked at him wryly. Her hair was not entirely curly, but the ones at the side of her face were, and they were a mess. "What do you want me to do, Gale? Go out and marry the first man I meet?"

"I would not go as far as that, Sisi," Gale said, walking closer, hands in his pockets. He looked around her workshop, a room connected to hers which their grandfather ordered to be transformed the very day Simone made her first dress. The sewing machine he procured for her from England was still the same one she sat behind every day. "Well, at least you open the windows," Gale murmured before veering back to the subject of her apparent marital condition. "What I'm saying is that you might consider dressing up and come down to greet the three gentlemen waiting for you in the parlor."

"I already told Susan to relay that I'm indisposed."

"Sisi, I told them you're not indisposed before you sent the maid," Gale said. "Come down."