Page 80 of Trouble

‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ His lip was bleeding slightly, as if he’d been worrying at it with his teeth. ‘She keeps some things secret, even from me. She doesn’t want to bother me. All right, Oliver – let’s go back down to the beach and keep walking.’

‘She can’t have made it very far,’ said Emily, thinking of that long stretch of coast – but Aster’s face twisted into a pained grimace, and Emily realised that he wasn’t entirely sure that they weren’t looking for abody.

That threw everything into sharp relief, and Emily went hurriedly upstairs to put her trunk down in her old room. She stood in the hall, trying desperately to recall the conversations she’d had with Grace, even the most banal and mundane. There had been something about her mother, she thought – afternoons playing on the beach? But Aster and Oliver already had that covered.

It was useless to search the rooms of the house again, but she did. She paid special attention to the sort of nooks that might fit a Grace-sized person, even if they could not hold an adult: cupboards, sills, even the trunk in Meera’s office, as if Meera would not have noticed Grace folding herself in. It was all for naught.

In the garden she met Joe, who was heading to the back road through the gate. There was a scattering of trees out there, but they were easy enough to search and had obviously been gone over before. Grace was not sitting on a branch like a pigeon. She was not curled in the hollow of a trunk like a woodland creature.

‘Captain’s in the village,’ Joe said grimly. ‘Mustering people to start walking the fields between, in case she tried to get there for some reason.’

‘Why would she go to the village?’ said Emily, as they turned back towards the house, defeat in the sag of their shoulders.

‘Don’t know,’ said Joe. ‘Perhaps she was going after someone.’

His look at her was a little too pointed.

‘Oh, don’t. Do you know what’s so .?.?. so hideous, sovexingabout all this?’ Emily said, as Joe held open the gate for her. ‘We probably would havefoundher already if she’d just been allowed to get a bloody dog.’

‘Hmmph,’ said Joe, which was his way of agreeing wholeheartedly.

Back at the house, Emily ascended the stairs to the servants’ quarters at the top of the house. She would have felt bad about intruding into their rooms, but the doors had been left open, cupboards already thrown wide. There was no Grace to be found in any of them.

She was almost at the stairs, thinking that she would try to find Meera and ask what she should do next, when she happened to glance up at the battered wooden ladder resting lopsidedly against the wall at the end of the hall. If dragged upright, it would have led right up into the rafters themselves, a place Emily had never found cause to go.

Hadn’t Grace once said something to her about the attic?

On instinct, Emily righted the ladder, grasped the rungs and began to climb.

What she found was really no more than a crawl space, not big enough for an adult to stand upright and with only as much light as managed to creep in from below. There was a lantern, but it had burned out, and over by an assortment of crates and boxes, Emily found Grace curled up on what seemed to be a pile of dresses.

‘Grace?’ Emily said, her voice rising urgently.

She fell to her knees and forced herself to slow down and take stock: yes, Grace was breathing. No, she did not appear outwardly hurt.

‘Grace,’ Emily said again, giving her a gentle shake. ‘Wake up.’

‘Oh,’ Grace said, rousing slowly and then squinting up at her dustily. ‘Oh!Amy!’

She threw herself at Emily, so that Emily had to catch her; they sat like that for a long minute, Grace apparently unwilling to let her go.

‘What the hell are you doing up here?’ said Emily, once Grace had finally relinquished her iron grip. ‘Everybody’s looking for you. They sent for the constable!’

‘Oh no,’ Grace said, her face crumpling. ‘I really didn’t mean .?.?. I just wanted to come up here for a while to be alone, with Mama’s things, and then I fell asleep after all that crying .?.?. but I must have done something wrong with the ladder, because it wasn’t where I had left it, so I couldn’t climb down. I did try calling for Meera and the others this morning, but I don’t think they heard me.’

‘We’d better go and tell them you haven’t drowned,’ Emily said. ‘Do you think you can make it down?’

‘I want to stay a little longer,’ Grace said, going from sleepy to pouty in an instant.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Emily, her patience wearing thin. ‘What on earth for? I came all the way here to get you – I’m not leaving you up here covered in dust in an attic, and if I tell your father where you are, I’m sure he’ll come and drag you down himself.’

‘Stop being horrid,’ Grace said. ‘It’s notyou.’

‘It most certainlyisme,’ said Emily. ‘Look, I’m not going to be your governess any more, Grace—’

‘You’re not?’ said Grace, with a little intake of breath that half-broke Emily’s heart.

‘No. I’m sorry. But it means I can finally speak plainly. I am rash and impatient, and I have a very short temper that you’d do best not to incur. Let’sgo.’