Page 38 of Trouble

‘All?’ he said, sounding momentarily as if he had lost command of the room. He recovered quickly. ‘Yes. That is all.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, getting up, still not looking at him. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

She left him sitting in his chair with his whisky. On the way upstairs, she stole a gold and tortoiseshell snuffbox and a tiny carving of what looked like a saint from the hallway mantel, and didn’t even stop to check if anybody was watching.

Chapter Fourteen

Oliver was sulking. From the way everybody else was reacting, it seemed that this was not an uncommon state of affairs, but Emily knew it to be aimed at her and therefore found it extra irritating.

He had ignored her all through dinner, but been unable to stop himself from cornering her in the hallway and asking, ‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t say anything,’ Emily had replied, sick to the back teeth of all of them, and particularly hating the fact that he had placed himself between her and her exit. ‘And don’tcrowdme. Just for future reference, furtively demanding to know the details of conversations you weren’t privy to does not make me any more convinced of your innocence.’

Oliver had huffed away – huffed to church on Sunday, huffed past Emily any time their paths crossed – and now at breakfast on Monday he was huffing still.

‘Did you two kiss by accident?’ Akia asked, pointing her fork at Emily and then at Oliver. Emily looked disgusted. Oliver did, too, which she was probably supposed to take as an insult. ‘No? All right. I’m just trying to work out what this strange tension is. Just regular, garden-variety hatred, then?’

‘I don’t hate her,’ said Oliver. ‘I’d have to think about her to hate her, and she’s barely even a person to me.’

‘I kissed somebody by accident once,’ Akia said, ignoring him. ‘We were attempting to say good morning to each other in a corridor and both leaned in and somehow ended up in a mouth collision.’

‘Oliver,’ Meera said. ‘You aretwo-and-thirty.Please establish a firm grip on yourself or I will be forced to take you by the scruff myself.’

After an intolerable breakfast came an intolerable lesson with Grace.

Aster was still not in attendance, now glaringly so; Emily had gone to knock for her and found that she was not in her room at all. Thinking of Captain Edwards watching her from the other side of his desk, she had actually gone in search of her mislaid pupil, and eventually determined that she was hiding in a locked storage room that usually housed linens.

Aster had pretended not to be there, which was ridiculous considering the fact that Emily could hear her breathing, but Emily had not recently come into possession of a battering ram, so she had admitted defeat for one more day.

Grace was still clearly smarting from their argument about Aster’s escape, and had been in a skittish sort of mood ever since, skirting around Emily like a rabbit avoiding a trap. Emily had found it easiest to let Grace guide their lessons, so while she offered a few subjects when they started for the day, it was always Miss Edwards who chose their agenda. They were studying poetry that morning, but everything Grace selected was dire and gloomy, obsessed with death and meting out punishment.

‘Grace,’ Emily said eventually, when she reached for a pen and Grace actually flinched. ‘Stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘Stop acting as if I’m going to stab you with the sharp end of a paintbrush if you talk too loudly.’

‘I don’t think you’re going to stab me,’ Grace said. ‘I just don’t want you to shout at me again.’

‘I didn’tshoutat you,’ Emily scoffed, but then she stopped to reflect. It might have been loud enough to qualify as shouting. ‘All right, I’m not going to shout at you .?.?. unless you truly deserve it. But what you did was very irritating. You should have told me that you suspected where Aster might be.’

‘But I—’

‘Grace. You should have told me, and I was right to tell your father. Aster was in danger. He needed to know.’

Grace chewed on her lip, and then nodded reluctantly.

‘I just don’t want him to .?.?. to only notice when we’re doing something wrong.’

‘You are not being performance reviewed in your roles as his children,’ said Emily. ‘He is not going to dismiss you if you make a mistake.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Grace said darkly.

Emily thought of what Akia had said, about Captain Edwards caring more for his children than anything else in the world. She had seen not a shred of proof that this was the case – and if she felt this way after just a fortnight at Fairmont, she could only imagine what sort of evidence Grace might have compiled to prove to herself that her father’s love was conditional.

‘I do know, actually,’ said Emily, even though she did not believe it. ‘Because he is your father, and he cares for you.’

This was the sort of thing you said to children, regardless of the truth.