Page 90 of Trouble

Emily packed quietly. It wasn’t hard; she hadn’t been back long enough to truly spread herself out across the room and claim it as hers again. She felt a little sick every time she looked at the hamper of goods that she had placed on the dresser, ready to be sent home. She would deliver it herself now, along with the news that they should urgently look for other lodgings, lest someone come looking for her. She was not going to underestimate Charles ever again.

It would not be so bad to leave their house. There were other mills where Emily could find work; places where she could start again. Perhaps they could even move closer to the sea, and Amy could finally stand in the surf and breathe in the spray herself. This was what Emily focused on as she folded her things with shaking hands, and then closed the trunk and tucked it behind the door.

Just before dawn would be best. She could be up and out before the others awoke, and by the time she had walked to the village it would not be long until the regular post came to take her away. They would assume her still abed. She might be well on her way by the time Akia knocked on her door to enquire if she’d be bothering to do her job that day.

It was unpleasant to imagine anything further, so she didn’t.

She tried to harden her heart against Fairmont and the people inside it, the way it had been so easy to do when she first arrived – the way she had been doing her entire life – but this time it didn’t work. The comforting numbness would not come. As she lay in her bed, far too worked up to sleep, she was plagued by the stirrings of a dangerous thought. When she let it break free, it threatened to engulf her.

Why shouldn’t she have something for herself, just this once, before everything came tumbling down?

It didn’t matter if she wasn’t destined to be some swooning heroine in a play, the way Aster had described it; if nobody would ever cast her as the recipient of true, passionate love. That had never been her fate anyway.

She almost didn’t realise where her feet were taking her until she found herself outside the captain’s study. When she knocked, there was no answer. When she pushed the door open, she found the room dark, the fire burned down to chalky embers.

He wasn’t lingering in either of the drawing rooms. He wasn’t anywhere to be found on the ground floor as a whole. With a sense of purpose that made no earthly sense, Emily walked the second floor corridor until she came to a stop by a door she had never approached before.

The captain was still dressed when he answered it, which was a small mercy.

‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Aster? Grace?’

‘No,’ said Emily. ‘I just .?.?. wanted to talk to you.’

To his credit, he acted as if she had approached him politely in his study at two o’clock in the afternoon, not appeared outside his bedroom door past midnight with a look in her eye like a fox bedevilling a rabbit. When she stepped past him into the room, he looked mildly suspicious, as if this might all be part of some elaborate prank – but when she came to a stop in the middle of the room with her arms folded, he let go of the door and walked warily towards her.

His room was rather plain. Emily wondered if it had been a guest room at one point, because there were hardly any flourishes at all. The bed seemed good quality, the curtains thick and dark, but there was not much to recommend it otherwise. The wallpaper looked deep, turbulent blue in the low light, and Emily found herself looking at it rather than at the captain while she tried to gather her faculties to speak.

‘You and Mrs Spencer should be engaged,’ she said.

He actuallyrolled his eyesat her like a petulant child and went to sit down at his dressing table, as if she weren’t there at all.

‘Should we indeed?’ he said. ‘Well, I am terribly sorry to disappoint you.’

‘I only meant to stay until you were married,’ Emily ploughed on, ‘but now that there are no plans for a wedding, I cannot just wait around until you manage to find another heiress who suits your purpose.’

‘Fine,’ said Captain Edwards.

‘As long as you understand—’

‘Miss Laurence,’ Captain Edwards said, turning to look at her from his chair. ‘I most certainly donotunderstand, and likely never will. You seem determined to run from my house, even when you have so recently agreed to stay, and I will not ask you to extend your suffering if it is still so disagreeable to you. If you wish to go, thengo. I have made my own wishes perfectly clear.’

It was her cue to leave. She didn’t.

‘Your wish for me to stay?’

‘Yes.’

‘For the children?’

‘Yes.’

‘And .?.?. for your own .?.?. entertainment.’

Captain Edwards stood up. ‘For God’s sake, Emily.’

Emily.There was still something so weighty about hearing him say her real name; it sank into her chest and lit her on fire. It made her want to fight him harder.

‘You were all too happy to speak plainly about this before—’