I find this interesting, and I do hope it bodes well for my own future.

But at present I was not concerned for any future outside that of the next ten minutes, after which I was convinced I would perish from the heat. “The afternoon,” I repeated. “When would you say it ends? Four o’clock? Five? Please say it isn’t six.”

She finally glanced up. “What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Brougham. We did say the afternoon, did we not?”

She looked at me blankly.

“I may stop waiting for him once the afternoon passes into evening, may I not?”

Mother paused for a moment, her quill suspended in air. “You should not be so impatient, Amanda.”

“I’m not,” I insisted. “I’m hot.”

She considered that. “It is warm in here, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “My habit is made of wool.”

She grimaced, but I noticed she did not suggest that I change. She was not going to sacrifice a potential suitor for anything as inconsequential as the weather. I resumed fanning myself.

“I don’t think his name is Brougham,” Mother said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I believe he is related to Mrs. Brougham, not Mister. I don’t know what her family name is.”

I shrugged.

She went back to her letter. My mother writes an inordinate number of letters. About what, I cannot imagine. I would not call our family dull, but we are certainly ordinary. Surely her sisters have grown bored of Georgiana has mastered French conjugation and Frederick has skinned his knee.

But Mother likes to receive letters, and she says that one must send to receive, so there she is at her desk, nearly every day, recounting the boring details of our lives.

“Someone is coming,” she said, just as I was beginning to nod off on the sofa. I sat up and turned toward the window. Sure enough, a carriage was rolling up the drive.