Page 2 of Trouble

Amy had been too ill this morning to get out of bed, even to see Emily off. She had tried to pretend she was simply terribly sleepy, but Emily had always been the liar of the family. She had told Amy quite a few lies as she’d left, to try to ease their parting.

That it was all temporary. That she had written to Fairmont House to explain, and that they had inexplicably accepted Emily’s help until Amy was well enough to travel. That she would be pleasant and amiable, and would not hold it against these people that they were gilded and landed and able to put out advertisements forstaff, while the Laurences could only afford to send for the (mediocre) doctor when things were looking especially dire. That she would try not to be so angry.

Even in the fog of fever, Amy should have been able to see through that one. Emily was always angry.

‘Do be kind,’ Amy had said, as Emily clasped her too-hot hand, her own chest painfully tight. ‘And let them be kind to you, idiot.’

‘I will,’ Emily had lied. ‘God, I’ll miss you.’

That one had been the truth.

She had taken their mother aside and given her the sort of detailed instructions one might provide when leaving an acquaintance in charge of a beloved pet. Their mother had frowned at her all the while.

‘You are aware that I live here?’ she said wearily, once Emily had finished. ‘And that I am your mother, and that Amy is my daughter, and that I know where we keep the soup ladle?’

Emily was not entirely convinced. Their mother was prone to long stretches abed, evenings spent staring unseeing into the fire with her needlework abandoned in her lap, swollen joints frozen halfway between a stitch. Emily was the one who surreptitiously checked if Amy was feverish each morning, and heaped more vegetables into her portion of stew, and opened the window when the bedroom was getting too stuffy. Emily was the one who kept the accounts, went to the market, set money aside as often as she could in case they had to call for the doctor. Had she told her mother about the windows? Perhaps she could write, just to make sure.

‘And have you been a governess long?’ said the lady in the carriage, her knee accidentally knocking against Emily’s as they weathered a small hillock. ‘You cannot be more than .?.?. five-and-twenty?’

She was attempting to be kind. Emily was nine-and-twenty, and looked every minute of it.

‘Yes,’ she said. These people might not be acquainted with Captain Edwards, but if she was going to play the part of veteran governess, she ought to start at once. ‘I recently cared for the children of a local family.’

‘What age were they? The children?’

‘.?.?. six?’ Emily would have done a better job, but the coach had just experienced such violent turbulence that her stomach was attempting to leap out of her mouth.

‘What – all of them?’

‘Most of them,’ said Emily.

‘Mostof—?’

It was a blessed relief when the carriage crashed.

Chapter Two

Emily was no expert in carriage-driving, but she was relatively sure that the back wheels weren’t supposed to leave the ground.

Everything lurched forwards, reticules and hats and children flying through the air like flower petals at a parade; when they finally came to a stop, Emily found herself wedged between seat and indeterminate limbs. She scrambled to disentangle herself as her fellow passengers did the same with grunts and squeaks of discomfort, and after a stunned pause, all three children burst into tears in discordant harmony.

‘Stop it,’ Emily said breathlessly to the nearest child, who blinked at her and then made a concerted effort to cry harder.

Once it was ascertained that nobody had been seriously perforated or snapped in half, they all clambered out into the mud so that the coachman could attempt to dislodge his vehicle by encouraging the horses with intermittent cajoling and threats of horrible violence. He even had the gentleman from within the carriage – whom Emily now learned, against her will, was called Mr Sandler – attempt to lead the horses while he pushed the carriage from behind. Unsurprisingly, this did not make any discernible difference to their circumstances.

When it began to rain, Mrs Sandler, who had up until that point been bravely taking charge of her dirtied, weeping children, let slip a small wail of despair.

‘It’s no good,’ said the coachman, with the grim practicality of a man who had weathered worse than this and was silently imploring them to not be dreadful little babies about it all. ‘I’ll run ahead to the house for help.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Sandler, his voice entirely devoid of feeling. ‘No, no, I shall do it.’

The coachman did not bother engaging with this pretence, and immediately departed.

‘Well, that was rather rude,’ said Mr Sandler, roused to true emotion. ‘Offer the man my help, and he won’t even entertain the idea!’

‘Oh, Malcolm,’ said Mrs Sandler, in a tone so perfect for the chiding of children that Emily made a note to replicate it when the time came to eke out discipline.

It seemed silly to sit out in the rain with a perfectly good carriage available to hide in, so Emily went back inside to collapse into the lower altitude seat, and was horrified when a few moments later Mrs Sandler reopened the door and put the youngest of her children on Emily’s lap.