Page 27 of Trouble

There was a pause, and then Captain Edwards cleared his throat.

‘Miss Laurence,’ he said meaningfully to Emily. There was no mistaking what he wished her to do.

‘Come along now, Grace,’ Emily said, going to her and putting a hand on her shoulder.

Grace was glancing about nervously like a stray dog about to be collared.

‘Oh, I don’t have to go yet, do I?’ she said, shifting away from Emily’s touch. ‘We were just getting to know one another! Father, might I stay a little longer?’

The adults laughed indulgently, and Captain Edwards grimaced.

‘Listen to Miss Laurence, Grace.’

‘But it wasn’t Miss Laurence who wanted me to go,’ Grace said insistently. ‘So ifyoudo not mind—’

‘Grace. Enough.’

He didn’t shout it, but it was stern enough that it was almost worse than a shout. Grace didn’t resist this time when Emily gently guided her away, out of the drawing room and up the stairs.

‘I won’t go to bed,’ Grace said bitterly. ‘I mean it.’

‘Fine,’ said Emily. ‘What is it you wish to do instead?’

What Grace wished to do instead was to spy on the dinner party. It turned out that from the second floor above the entrance hall, they could see into half of the dining room on one side and half of the drawing room on the other, provided that they sat pressed up against the banisters like perverts outside a brothel, as Grace seemed determined to do.

‘This is unseemly,’ Emily said, and Grace only laughed darkly like some creature of great evil, her forehead pressed so hard against the banister that it was likely to imprint the fretwork onto her skin. She seemed to have rallied from the disappointment at impressive speed.

‘Interesting things happen so rarely around here,’ she said, sounding a bit squashed. ‘I want to see.’

Emily sighed, but she sat down next to Grace and put her chin in her hands and found her eyes drifting to the drawing room just for something to do. It was preferable to being called back down to the kitchen to help with dessert. Meera, Akia and Oliver kept passing through the entrance hall, back and forth with drinks and empty glasses, and then the entire party moved from the drawing room to the dining room and Emily watched Captain Edwards’s stiff, uniformed shoulders as he shepherded his guests on. Just as he was about to step through the doorway, he looked sharply upwards and caught Emily’s eye.

She didn’t know if she was supposed to be embarrassed to be discovered perched there, but it wasn’t as if it had beenheridea. He didn’t look angry, exactly – more like he was slightly surprised to see them sitting there, side by side. Next to her, Grace fixed her posture: sat up straight, removed her head from the banisters. Captain Edwards’s gaze dropped, and then he was gone.

When Akia passed underneath them on her way back from serving the soup, she also looked up, and smiled when she spotted them. Five minutes later she climbed up to deliver a large cushion to Grace and a large glass of wine to Emily.

‘If anybody asks, you stole that yourself,’ she said sternly, already on her way back downstairs. ‘I’m not going down for crimes I didn’t even get to enjoy.’

Emily still didn’t understand why Akia was being so kind when she had given her absolutely no encouragement, but she accepted the wine and sat sipping it as they listened to the sounds of a party under way, of clinking glasses and soft laughter and the fire crackling in the background.

It had a soporific effect. She didn’t even realise that she had fallen asleep until she was being gently shaken awake by Grace, who was standing now, one end of the cushion in her hand and the other trailing on the floor.

‘You drank all your wine and then you fell asleep,’ she said helpfully. ‘But I’m going to bed, and I thought you might not want to be discovered here .?.?. drooling.’

Emily wiped her mouth, and her hand did indeed come away slightly wet.

‘Goodnight!’ said Grace, irritatingly perky.

It took Emily a little while to find the strength to stand. Her knees hurt. Her neck hurt. She felt very nine-and-twenty.

The party was still going in the drawing room, although from the stretches of quiet and the muted chatter it seemed that they had moved on to the sitting-and-smoking portion of the evening. Somebody was half-heartedly tapping away at the keys of the piano, but not attempting to strike up a real tune. Emily moved slowly away, hoping desperately that Captain Edwards had not crossed the hallway while she was sleeping and looked up again to see her fast asleep and salivating all over herself.

During her slow, creaking journey along the landing, she caught a glimpse of movement out of the window, and paused to investigate.

There were two people walking quickly across the lawn, with urgency that didn’t match the attendance of a dinner party. At first they were nothing but shadowy blurs, but as they drew closer, the light from the house illuminated them and Emily realised who it was: Aster, wrapped in an enormous coat, and Oliver walking with her, positioned so that he could talk in her ear as they moved. It looked as if he was saying something very serious, from the expression on both of their faces. As they approached the house they moved out of sight; curious, Emily slipped quietly down the stairs and made her way towards the back entrance, careful not to be spotted by the inhabitants of the dining room.

When she reached them, they were standing together in a corner of the hallway, their heads very close together.Tooclose together. Oliver said something to Aster, and Aster muttered back in reply, their voices low and intimate. Oliver sighed, then put his hand on Aster’s shoulder and gave her an affectionate squeeze before letting go.

When Aster turned around, Emily caught a quick glimpse of her face and saw that she looked almost on the verge of tears – but a glimpse was all she could risk, and she stepped quickly away, returning to her room with a dry mouth and a racing heart.