Page 11 of Trouble

‘Aster! It’s cold cuts today, anyway, remember, because Joe is taking the day off.’

Joe was certainly not taking the day off. During breakfast, Emily had seen him walk into the kitchen and line up all of his knives for sharpening, humming tunelessly under his breath. She still had yet to speak to him and didn’t plan to do so while he was gazing lovingly at his extensive collection of blades.

‘The temperature of the cuts makes no difference,’ said Aster. ‘Good day, Miss Laurence.’

Emily looked from Grace’s consternation to Aster’s disdain and then returned a curt ‘good day’, and left.

It rankled her to be dismissed whenshewas the one who wanted to leave –shecertainly had no desire to eat luncheon while listening to Grace’s constant prattling and fielding Aster’s misdirected ire. To hell with them. Perhaps she wouldn’t eat luncheon at all.

She did, because it was there and she was hungry, but she refused the offer of company with the staff and took the thickly sliced bread and pink ham and cheese up to her room, looking out of the window at the dreary view.

This only took approximately ten minutes to accomplish; with hours still until she’d be expected back in the schoolroom, she started drifting around the house like an ill-intentioned ghoul. The rooms felt cold, even in late summer with the fires lit. It was something about the sea air; it made everything feel perpetually harsh and bracing, even when it was just whistling through small, undetectable gaps in the windows. It was also noticeably salted, the taste white and hot on her tongue. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up brined, like a grim and solitary herring.

Emily passed through the smaller drawing room – thesparedrawing room – and on this sweep paid particular attention to a cabinet full of what looked like expensive curiosities. It was in a dark corner, tucked behind one of the doors. A long-forgotten trinket in a hidden cabinet in a disused room seemed exactly the sort of thing that might go for years – perhaps even decades – without being missed. It was perfect.

On her way back down the hall, she heard voices from inside the dining room and slowed to listen.

‘.?.?. and we were talking aboutUdolpho, Father, which I have nearly finished. I think she’s going to end up marrying him even if he has lost everything and ended up in a French prison. I think she’ll do marvellously.’

‘Who?’ said a man’s voice. It was deep and brusque. It must have been Captain Edwards, of damp horseback riding infamy – not that he sounded particularly familiar to Emily. He’d barely spoken to her at all.

‘Miss Amy Laurence!’

‘Miss Laurence was in a French prison?’ said Captain Edwards.

‘No, Father, you’re not listening to me – Amy wasn’t in prison.’

‘That we know of,’ said Aster.

‘Aster,’ said Captain Edwards warningly.

‘She looks like she fell off the back of a wagon, Father. Didn’t Meera say that her father was a gentleman? I don’t believethatfor a second. Her hands are pitiful. She looks like she dressed herself in the dark at the hessian sack factory.’

Emily looked down at her hands. It hadn’t occurred to her to hide them, but she realised now what Aster would have seen: cracked skin, calluses, little pink pockmarks that had once been shallow injuries.Notthe hands of a lady, reserved for gentle things. They were the hands of somebody who’d had to work hard to survive.

‘Aster, juststop it. How can you be so unforgivably mean-spirited! It’s not her fault if her hands are sore and she doesn’t have any nice clothes. And it is hardly as if youcarewhat anybody wears. I saw you last week, wearing those—’

‘Quiet, Grace,’ Aster said sharply.

‘Aster,’ Captain Edwards said again, stern with a hint of weariness. ‘Enough.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ said Aster. ‘You don’t even have to talk to her! And count yourself lucky you don’t – there’s nary a thought behind those eyes.’

Emily had heard enough. She walked away, fists clenched tightly at her sides, no longer caring if her footsteps were audible from inside the dining room.

She could not remember if there was a special hell reserved for children, or if they were simply assimilated into the general population, but regardless – Aster Edwards would get on there very nicely.

If Grace noticed that Emily was a little colder towards her as they sat down that afternoon, she didn’t say anything; she did glance at Emily’s hands, however, and Emily forced herself not to flinch and keep them steady on the book in front of her. It was a beautiful edition of childhood fairy tales, decorated with a whole meadow of gilt flowers, and Emily had taken it down from the shelf, thinking of trying to ascertain its worth, before finding herself distracted by the meticulously inked illustrations.

‘FinishUdolpho,’ she said, ‘and we shall have silence, please, until you are done.’

Grace picked up the book and turned the pages with utmost concentration until she found her place. She carried herself very carefully; Emily had thought that it was simply an obsession with bearing and good manners, but looking again she realised that every movement was calculated to conserve energy. Not for her the explosive dramatics and skipping of most girls her age, if skipping was indeed still the done thing (Emily had not kept up with the fads). If only Grace’s desire for moderation had carried over into her style of conversation, her company might not have been so tiresome.

As it was, she found it impossible to go more than five minutes without voicing some inane thought aloud.

‘I should never think to describe myself as anymph, even if I were the heroine of a novel. It seems presumptuous,’ and what felt like only a few moments later, ‘When somebody is described asspringingacross a room, I can only imagine them being flung as if from a trebuchet and colliding with the opposite wall,’ and then, ‘I have never met a real nun. They feel as mythical to me as witches, or dragons, and I do so covet their floppy hats.’

Emily said, through gritted teeth, ‘I recall that I asked for silence.’