Page 31 of Trouble

‘Oliver!’

‘I’m going to start an Oliver jar,’ said Oliver. ‘Andyoucan owemea thousand sixpences.’

‘She seems to be having a .?.?. difficult time,’ Emily said, which was so generous and diplomatic of her that she probably could have been tasked with negotiations with France. She watched Oliver’s face as she said this. No hint of guilt or unease. But there wassomethingthere – as if he knew something the rest of them did not.

‘She took it very hard when her mother passed on,’ said Akia. ‘Well .?.?. they all did, of course. But Aster has her own way of dealing with things.’

‘Mrs Edwards never would have stood for it,’ said Meera. ‘It’ll be four years next week. I miss that woman.’

‘Hear hear,’ said Joe, raising his glass.

The others mirrored him, and drank. Emily just watched them, her glass already empty.

It was hard to imagine the captain’s late wife as a real person rather than a sad spectre. For some reason she had at first imagined somebody prim and cold, as distant from the children as Captain Edwards was, a worthy mistress for a house like this – but now she knew that Mrs Edwards was a keen gardener; a procurer of paints. That did not conjure up images of coolness and neglect. And besides, she could hardly imagine Meera toasting so sincerely to the memory of somebody so dreadful, even if she did have an overinflated sense of duty.

‘Right,’ said Oliver, smacking his hand on the table. ‘I’m going to the pub. I’ll shut up the house when I get back. Is anybody coming with me?’

‘I will,’ said Akia. ‘If you swear to take up arms against the bigots, the starers and the grabbers.’

‘You know I always do,’ said Oliver. ‘Joe?’

‘One drink,’ said Joe. ‘No dancing on the tables. No arrests.’

‘Damn,’ said Oliver. ‘Then what’s the point?’

Meera declined, her idea of fun being an empty to-do list and early to bed, and Emily made similar noises of refusal. She climbed the many stairs – so many stairs,toomany stairs – and once she was in the sanctuary of her room, fell quickly asleep.

Chapter Twelve

It felt like only ten minutes later that Emily awoke to somebody shaking her arm urgently.

‘Amy?’ somebody was saying. ‘Amy, please wake up.’

‘What’s wrong? Is she all right?’ Emily said, addled by sleep, before she remembered thatshewas Amy.

Grace was looking down at her, tearful in the light of the single candle she was holding.

‘No, she’s not all right,’ she said, somewhat confusingly. ‘She’s not in her bed. It must be two o’clock in the morning! Please, Amy, I don’t know what to do.’

‘Aster isn’t in her bed?’ said Emily, catching up.

‘Don’t tell Father,’ said Grace urgently. ‘He’ll be furious. I just need to find her, and then—’

‘Are you sure she’s not there?’ Emily said, getting up. She pulled on her threadbare coat over her nightclothes and slipped clumsily into her shoes. ‘I’ll look. She’s probably in the house somewhere. Go back to bed, Grace. Now.’

‘I can’t,’ said Grace, utterly miserable.

She followed Emily along the hallway and stood nervously outside the door as Emily went into Aster’s room to check it thoroughly before she started dredging the house. It took a while to check under all the drifts and piles, but Aster was indeed missing from her bed.

There was no point waking Meera, or any of the others, if they had even made it back from the pub yet – Aster would probably be lurking somewhere in the depths of Fairmont, causing trouble on purpose.

As governess,Emilyknew she might be consideredsomewhatresponsible for her whereabouts, and wanted to put off conversations of that nature for as long as possible. She would simply search the house and gardens herself.

She went down to the ground floor and methodically walked from dining room to drawing room, parlour to hallway, checking everywhere – behind doors, curtains, furniture. In the dining room her candle illuminated a shadowy mass that looked so much like a person lurking in the dark, waiting for her, that her heart forgot to beat for a moment. When she drew closer, it became a coat that had been left unceremoniously tossed on a chair. This, surely, was a sign that Aster had been here; in the same way that bats left droppings and deer footprints, Aster left casual disregard for both people and property.

Eventually, Emily had to concede that Aster was not on the ground floor, unless she had become some sort of contortionist and crammed herself into a knee-high dresser or trunk. The longer this went on, the more likely it seemed that she would have to go and fetch Meera, and the thought filled her with rising dread that wasn’t helped by how foreboding the house looked in the dark. Captain Edwards had seemed displeased enough that Aster had not attended the brief showing at the dinner party; how furious would he be if Emily had to break the news to him that he now had only half his children remaining?

Oliver might have been able to offer some insight into where Aster was, but Oliver was out – now that Emily thought of it, there was some chance that Aster might have gone tomeethim.