Page 26 of Trouble

Mr Khan gracefully accepted defeat, and Akia gave Emily a very knowing look as the door closed behind him.

When they went upstairs in search of said girls for dressing, Aster was nowhere to be found.

‘She’s probably taking a nap,’ Grace said, as Akia pinned her hair at the dressing table. ‘She doesn’t like these things. Father doesn’t let us join them for dinner – he just sort of presents us and then sends us away.’

‘Yes,’ said Akia. ‘I saw her earlier putting on her napping boots and a napping coat, and sneaking some food from the kitchen – in case she’s hungry when she wakes up, I suppose.’

‘Sometimes it’s best just to let her go,’ Grace said. ‘If I try to get her to stay, she just gets all .?.?. scratchy.’

‘Like a cat in a bag,’ said Emily.

‘Yes! Exactly,’ said Grace. ‘Do they put cats in bags at mills?’

‘What would be the practical application?’ said Emily.

Grace thought for a moment. ‘To generate power,’ she said decisively. ‘Like a water mill.’

‘What have you two been talking about in those lessons of yours?’ said Akia. ‘I don’t recall there being a part about bagged cats inThe Mirror of Graces.’

‘Have you been reading my etiquette books?’ said Grace.

‘Yes,’ said Akia. ‘They are .?.?.veryfunny.’

Meera knocked on the door requesting help in the dining room, and Emily didn’t get a chance to breathe again until the dinner party began. It was very obvious how understaffed Fairmont was when it came to entertaining fifteen people instead of three.

The dining room had been meticulously cleaned, the windows washed, the floors scrubbed, but now they had to lay the table, check for any water spots that needed last-minute polishing, arrange large sprays of yellow roses and purple asters from the garden into vases twice the size of Emily’s head. Candles had to be lit, with so many tall tapers that Akia nearly set her hair alight when she leaned over to get to the back of one of the elaborate candelabras.

It looked transformed when they had finished: so decadent it might have been a back room at Versailles. Meera did not have time to be pleased with herself, although she made sure to thank the rest of them before hurrying off to do whatever was next on her never-ending list of tasks.

Back downstairs, Meera, Akia and Oliver prepared to serve the guests, while Emily was relegated to passing things to Joe in the kitchen, which was far more terrifying. She couldn’t tell if she was doing a good or a bad job; Joe seemed generally furious at both himself and the world around him, and only communicated to her in single sentences, most of which were just the word, ‘Spoon!’ barked at her at high volume.

She didn’t mind. It was like being back at the mill. She just kept her head down and waited for her next order. Let her body take over, while her mind blinked out. Hard, physical work like this made sense to her, even if it was in the service of something ridiculous.

When the time came, Emily came up to fetch Grace and present her to the guests in the drawing room. Aster had not been located, and Grace was clearly nervous about it; she kept fidgeting, pulling at her appallingly frilly sleeves, glancing around in the hope that her sister might be about to appear fully dressed and ready to be pleasant, which seemed to Emily about as likely as Joe embracing her and thanking her profusely for all her hard work.

She hadn’t given a thought for her own appearance, except to wipe the spattered sauce from Joe’s enthusiastic stirring from her cheek. When she beheld the guests, however, she suddenly felt as if she were wearing .?.?. What was it Aster had said on that first day? Something about hessian sacks?

Her fingers itched with the desire to try to straighten her dress or fix her hair – but then she felt furious with herself for even considering such a thing.Shewas not the one who should be ashamed. If she looked a mess, it was simply because she had actually beenworking, something none of Captain Edwards’s guests had likely done in their entire lives.

They didn’t seem to care about her appearance, but that was likely because they didn’t look at her at all. They cooed over Grace, who curtseyed and said polite little things about their journeys and the weather, words more suited to somebody three times her age; they all laughed, obviously delighted. Emily mostly focused on the rug, which was a slightly faded scarlet colour and probably Turkish, but when she did look up, her eyes landed on the person she assumed to be Augusta Spencer, who was sitting closest to the pianoforte. She was tall and full-bodied, with creamy skin and an impressive necklace of garnets around her neck that contrasted dramatically with her dark hair. She looked like a fresh cup of milk, or a silky, expensive horse.

Captain Edwards was sitting next to her, and he looked so striking in his Royal Navy uniform that Emily practically did a double take. His buttons were polished, the threads in the gold piping catching the light; the jacket made his shoulders look broader, too, although perhaps they had been this broad all along and Emily simply hadn’t noticed. His hair had a slight wave to it, and the candlelight lent warmth and colour to the parts that were still deep brown rather than silver. He wasn’t looking at his daughter, or at Mrs Spencer. He wasn’t looking at anybody. He was holding himself very stiffly, as if he somehow found this extravagant dinner party he had demanded they throw to be rather stressful.

Poor thing. To have to cope with aparty. To have to put on nice clothes, have six courses cooked for you and be waited on hand and foot. The indignity of it all!

‘And where is your elder daughter?’ said one of the gentlemen, directing the question to the captain rather than to Emily.

Captain Edwards seemed to think Emily was exactly the right person to answer this, because he looked to her, eyebrows raised expectantly.

‘She was tired,’ Emily said, ‘and sends her apologies.’

This was good enough for the guests, but not for the captain, who was looking at Emily as if he knew very well that Aster would never sendapologies, and that he considered her absence to be entirely Emily’s fault.

This was unfair. She was a governess, not a sheepdog or a prison warder. She could hardly be blamed for not bringing Aster down to dinner when she had no idea if Aster still existed on this earthly plane.

‘Do you happen to have a dog?’ Grace was saying excitedly to one of the ladies. Her voice was becoming rather shrill and getting louder by the moment. It at least drew Captain Edwards’s attention away from his disappointing governess. ‘I am ever so fond of dogs – I wish to have one of my own some day! I would like a brown one and I would call it Muffet, or Pudding, or Cyril .?.?. or if it was very large, I would call it Samson .?.?. and if it was very small, Blueberry .?.?. and if it was somewhere in the middle .?.?. well, I shall have to think!’

Captain Edwards winced, and Emily witnessed the exact moment that Grace looked to her father, probably hoping to see encouragement or endearment, and instead caught said wince like a slap. She was too young and too open-hearted to hide the hurt on her face.