Page 21 of Trouble

She sought out Meera instead, thinking her the best intermediary for note-passing, already rehearsing the story she’d tell – that a nondescript messenger had given it to her on the road by the house, rather than a very describable man slipping it into her hand two drinks deep at the Rose and Crown.

She was on her way to the stairs, intending to go down to the housekeeper’s office to see if she could find Meera there, when she instead saw what looked like a bundle of fabric crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. It took her another few seconds to realise what she was looking at.

‘Grace?’ she said, striding over to get a closer look. ‘What are you doing?’

For one horrible moment, she thought Grace was unconscious, or worse. Her limbs went cold with fear, her body reacting before her brain could; she knew it was Grace on the floor, but her mind saw Amy, fainted clean away on the path outside the house when she had come home from the Turners to visit at Christmas, berries crushed bloodily into the stone, snow in her hair. Amy had looked just like this: too still, too small, hurting in a way Emily couldn’t fix .?.?.

‘Oh,’ said Grace, stirring. ‘Good afternoon, Amy. I was just .?.?. I was on my way upstairs, but I needed to have a little rest. I shall be fine in a minute.’

‘Did you fall?’ said Emily, catching her breath.

Grace looked as if she were in quite a lot of difficulty; she was half-sitting, half-lying against the bottom steps, her face flushed and damp.

‘No,’ Grace said stubbornly. ‘I sat down! This is how I sit.’

Emily thought again of Amy, insisting she was all right to go back to work – thinking she was doing an excellent job of hiding the fact that she was swaying on her feet, refusing Emily’s arm when she offered it.

‘Fine,’ Emily said. ‘I would also like to sit.’

God save her from little martyrs who refused to be helped, but she could hardly trot away and leave her there. She might have been irritating, but shewasonly a child.

‘You don’t have to do that, really. I’ll just .?.?.’

‘I wouldn’t have married Valancourt,’ Emily said after a few moments. ‘I think he’s an idiot. And he lost all his money.’

‘Oh, but he’s a hero in the end,’ Grace said, closing her eyes and smiling. ‘On second thoughts, I think he deserves another chance. Perhaps he’d be more discerning, the next time around.’

‘People do not change,’ said Emily. ‘If they do, they only get worse.’

‘I cannot believe that,’ said Grace. ‘Not least because, if that’s the case, Aster will be a seasoned criminal by the time she turns one-and-twenty.’

Emily snorted, and Grace’s face lit up.

‘She means well,’ she said, and then at the expression on Emily’s face, rethought. ‘All right, notwellexactly. I suppose I mean .?.?. she is good in ways that you do not see right away.’

‘She threatened to kill me the other day,’ said Emily.

Grace sighed, letting her head fall gently back against the step.

‘Yes, she does tend to do that quite a lot.’ There was quiet as she pondered this. ‘Do you have any siblings?’

Emily wasn’t going to tell her; she didn’t owe Grace anything – explanations or intimacy or pieces of her heart – but it felt strange to deny Amy for any reason at all.

‘I have a sister.’

‘Oh!’ said Grace, looking pleased. ‘Then youknow.’

‘For allyouknow, we might hate each other,’ said Emily.

‘Do you?’

‘No,’ Emily admitted. ‘No, I do not hate her at all.’

Grace closed her eyes, and Emily realised that even having this conversation almost horizontally had stretched her a little too thin. There was a quiet creak on the upper landing, the sort of noise houses like this made all the time just because they could, but Emily glanced up anyway and found herself looking directly at Captain Edwards.

He was standing with one hand on the banister and one foot on the top step, as if he’d been arrested mid-movement. His brow was slightly furrowed, his lips pressed firmly together as he looked back at Emily, off guard and deep in thought. She had no idea how long he had been watching them like that, and expected that any moment he would come marching down the stairs to take charge of his daughter, ask after her health and arrange to have her carried upstairs.

He did not move. His expression was the only thing that changed – a journey from puzzled focus to something much more neutral, a smoothing over of the lines that made his face irritatingly interesting.