Page 33 of Trouble

‘Careful,’ he said, his voice clipped, as if she’d done it on purpose.

She only realised when she straightened up from being crumpled against him that he’d had to put a hand on her waist – her coat had fallen open again, and the thin, gauzy fabric of her nightgown was laughably insubstantial. She could feel the warmth of his fingers, which meant thathecould feel the contours of her waist; it was a nightmare from which they both tried to recover quickly, springing apart so violently that Emily almost tripped again.

She judged it best not to speak, so the only sound as they made their way down to the beach and started walking along the stone-strewn sand was the soft roar of the sea and the crunching of their footsteps. There was a breeze nipping at her heels, the evening still warm but notquitebalmy enough to be forgiving to somebody mostly clad in nightwear.

Emily had never been so close to the ocean, and was feeling somewhat overwhelmed by this assault on her senses and the knowledge that to her left was endless black water. When Captain Edwards stopped, she had to resist the urge to step in closer to him, so that he might shield her from the fine spray and the whipping wind.

‘There,’ he said, nodding further ahead towards the craggy face of the cliffs.

Emily didn’t know what he was trying to show her, but she squinted into the dark to show willing. Nothing notable was forthcoming.

‘There’s a cave,’ he said, which added essential context.

‘You think she’s in a cave?’ Emily said, as the lantern swayed in her hand with a subdued squeak.

Captain Edwards’s expression was grim as they picked their way forward across sand that was boggy with salt water; it seemed that Grace’s warning about high tides had been a portentous one, because the waves were sending it lapping right up to the entrance of the cave.

Inside was muffled and dank; there was rubbery, slippery seaweed underfoot, and the sounds of shuffling wings and a rhythmic dripping. The smell of salt and something unpleasant and rotten intensified the further they delved. Emily was trying to pay heed to what she was stepping on, but even with the lamp it was somewhat impossible to understand what was going on under her feet.

‘Take my arm,’ Captain Edwards said, sounding impatient.

‘I’m fine,’ Emily snapped back, without thinking.

Captain Edwards did not reply, but she thought she saw him shaking his head out of the corner of her eye.

The cave went far deeper than Emily would have guessed, and around twenty yards in she realised that she could hear another sound: girlish laughter.

It was honestly quite haunting, echoing off the damp walls. She glanced over at Captain Edwards, but he looked both unsurprised and quietly furious.

The scene they discovered when they turned the corner looked a little like a Joseph Wright painting Emily had once seen reproduced, of people gathered around a scientific experiment by the light of a candle – except that in this case the experiment seemed to be drinking spirits, and the intrepid scientists were a group of girls around Aster’s age, clearly hailing from the village. When they saw Emily and the captain come into view, they froze in startled silence.

‘Aster,’ Captain Edwards said dangerously. ‘Getup.’

At this, the girls scattered, getting to their feet with flushed cheeks and damp dresses and darting past Emily like mice fleeing a cat. Aster was the only one who did not stand; she was lounging against a jutting shelf of rock, wearing what looked like men’s breeches and an untucked shirt.

She was obviously very drunk.

‘Evening, Father,’ she said, her words slurred. She still had a bottle of spirits in her hand. Emily was quite impressed by her gumption; even she would have quavered under the thunderous expression on Captain Edwards’s face. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here .?.?. Do you come often? We must keep .?.?. missing each other.’

‘I will not speak to you like this,’ Captain Edwards said. ‘We are going home. Now.’

‘Fine,’ Aster said, sighing.

As she moved to get up, she lost her grip on the bottle, and after a short drop it smashed loudly against the rock by her foot. She frowned down at the pieces.

‘Ah. Hmmm. That was .?.?. a different shape, just a moment ago.’

When she tried to take a step forward, it became clear that she could not be responsible for her own feet. Captain Edwards went to her immediately, put an arm around her and began the slow journey back out of the cave, Emily hurrying along beside them with the lamp lifted as high as possible until her arm felt as if it might fall off.

If she had thought the walk down to the cave felt never-ending, the return journey explored new realms of torture. Captain Edwards wasn’t so much helping Aster along as he was holding her up, and it seemed that with every step they took, his silent fury intensified.

It didn’t help that Aster kept talking.

‘I have not done anything wrong,’ was her very strong opener. She started listing all the reasons why this was the case, frequently forgetting herself halfway through a sentence and skipping ahead to the next on her list, until she concluded with ‘.?.?. and besides, I have been under .?.?. underconsiderablestrain at work.’

‘You do not have a job,’ said Emily.

Aster twisted around in her father’s grip, almost earning herself a close encounter with the sand.