Page 74 of Trouble

‘Yes,’ Emily said quickly. ‘I am. I mean .?.?. it is. I’m Emily Laurence.’

He leaned down to hand her the note, and Emily’s heart jolted uncomfortably in her chest when she recognised her mother’s very unfortunate handwriting.

Forgetting Captain Edwards was there at all, she broke the seal and read as quickly as she could manage, navigating her mother’s spilled ink and irritating tangents. When she deciphered the letter’s meaning, her fingers went so shockingly numb that she almost dropped it.

Amy had taken a turn. She was much worse. Emily was called home,just in case.

She thought she was going to be sick, but instead, she opened her mouth and swore so violently that the messenger immediately turned his horse and scarpered.

Captain Edwards was watching her. He did not seem particularly taken aback by her language. Not that she would have cared if he was; nothing here mattered at all, suddenly. Her heart was at home, bedridden with fever, and every second she spent here was time wasted.

‘Miss Laurence?’ Captain Edwards said.

‘My sister,’ Emily managed. ‘Amy is unwell, I must .?.?. I need to go.’

‘Amy,’ he said slowly.

Emily realised her mistake. It was of no consequence.

She was already gone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Meera wouldn’t let Emily leave without pressing a month’s wages into her hand, and Joe wouldn’t let her go without an enormous basket of food. Captain Edwards seemed to be hiding from her. Oliver insisted that she’d be a damned fool if she walked to the pub in the dark to catch the early morning post, and had her wait for an excruciating half an hour while he set up the gig, and then insisted on driving.

‘I can drive myself and have somebody bring this back to the house when I’m gone,’ she said, as he hauled her trunk up and then offered her an arm. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

‘No, I don’t,’ he mused. ‘But I’d probably look like an unfeeling bastard if I didn’t, wouldn’t I? Come on, the horse is getting cold.’

He was quite a terrifying driver, but there was nobody for miles around for him to crash into, so Emily held on to her limbs and her luggage and found herself barely able to register the cliffs, or the bumps in the road, or the view of the sunrise just peeking above the horizon in the distance.

As they approached the pub, Emily looked at Oliver properly for the first time since they’d left and noticed a very distinctive bruise on his neck, as if somebody had forgotten how to kiss and had taken a bite out of him instead. She thought of the blond he’d been flirting with in the corner, and wondered if the exact size and shape of Oliver’s injury would match up to the man’s dental records.

‘Oliver,’ she said, too tired to consider her words properly, ‘did that man bite you?’

‘Hmmm?’ said Oliver, trying to glance down at his own neck and obviously failing. ‘Ah. Yes. Not hard enough, frankly.’

‘Oh,’ said Emily. ‘That’s .?.?. nice.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Oliver. ‘Christ, look at your face. You must feel like you’ve accidentally wandered into hell.’

‘Does Captain Edwards know?’

‘Ben?Ha! Yes – Ben knows. We have been in each other’s confidences about such things for a long time. It was the reason he took me on, when I was cast unceremoniously out of my previous house for kissing the butler. His nurse when he was a boy was of that persuasion, too, you know. Lives with a lifelongfriend.Carries the wrong sort of umbrella.’

The sunrise was putting on its very best show, and Emily was too distracted to see it at all, except in the way it made Oliver the colour of ripe peaches and bitten grapes.

‘I really am sorry I accused you of .?.?. being inappropriate. With Aster.’

Oliver let out a long sigh, actually bothering to glance over to the left and right as they reached a crossroads.

‘No, no, I think you were right. I mean, you werewrong– I was simply trying to make sure he had somebody to talk to, and to stop him from making an enormous mess of his life before he’d even had the chance to be himself properly – but ifI’dseen anybody else sneaking about in the dead of night with one of those children, I’d have garrotted him myself. They’re lucky to have you.’

Emily did not want to hear this. It occurred to her, in a sudden rush of jumbled feeling, that it might be for the best if she never returned to Fairmont House. She would not have to worry then about what to say to Charles, the next time they met; she would not have to untangle the mess of Captain Edwards and how she felt about him; she would not have to explain why she had been calling herselfAmy, now that her story was beginning to fall apart. She would have to find another job – perhaps even go back to the dreaded mill – but that had always been inevitable. It would be somewhat of a relief to leave all her lies behind her, and better for everyone at Fairmont, too. The next governess would not be so stupid as to accept the friendship of a dastardly stranger in a pub. The next governess would never set foot in a pub at all.

Emily bit down on the meat of her mouth and pushed away the thought of Aster handing her the scissors; Grace’s face brightening every time her governess walked into the room. They would be fine. They alreadyhada family. Emily was going home to hers.

Logistics took over once she reached the Rose and Crown, and she had no idea if she wished Oliver farewell or said anything to him at all before she was bundling herself into a carriage that, to her great relief, only had a single elderly man inside. He nodded at her and then closed his eyes to go to sleep, leaving Emily to sit and look out of the window as her mind spiralled.