Page 17 of Trouble

Grace had finishedUdolpho, which meant that Emily could simply ask her to recount her feelings about it and then let her go and go. Aster got up and perused the bookshelves as she did, finding what she was looking for – a dense-looking tome about sixteenth-century Italian art – and slumping back into her chair.

‘.?.?. and now I think I would probably not like to marry him,’ Grace finished eventually. ‘He is probably the sort of man youliketo think you would marry, but who would actually be entirely useless in reality and spend all his time moping and exclaiming and not knowing where the accounting book is kept.’

‘I see,’ said Emily.

‘Do you?’ said Aster, looking up from her book with a very penetrating look in Emily’s direction. ‘I notice you have not told us whatyouthink ofUdolpho. What are the themes? The moral lessons? What is the symbolic meaning of the black veil?’

Emily swallowed her discomfort and smiled thinly.

‘I am interested in Grace’s thoughts on the book, Aster, as I am already perfectly aware of my own.’

‘There is no need to get testy,’ Aster said, in the sort of infuriating tone that was a test of its own. ‘I just think it rather odd that you have been here for five days and all Grace has done is read her book while you .?.?. Well, what exactly have you been doing? Sleeping with your eyes open?’

She shouldn’t have put the idea of driving nails into hands into Emily’s mind. Now that she was angry, all the world was hammers.

‘I have been enjoying our lessons,’ Grace said firmly.

Aster rolled her eyes; Emily knew that she had been granted a reprieve and should hold her tongue, but her tongue had other ideas.

‘Why don’t you tell us a little about whatyou’vebeen reading, Aster? Have you readUdolphorecently? Enlighten us on thethemes.’

‘I can’t read,’ said Aster, closing the book she had been idly flicking through.

‘Well, I know that’s not true,’ said Emily, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. ‘You seemed as if you wanted desperately to tell us your thoughts on the black veil.’

‘Canyounot read, Miss Laurence?’ Aster said sharply. ‘Is that why you’re getting so embarrassingly vexed?’

‘I was lucky enough to receive an education, as are you. I know you think all this somehow beneath you, Aster, but there are many people who would love a chance to spend their mornings sitting and discussing literature. Alas, they’re working in the mills and the mines. Perhaps you’d like to swap places? I can justpictureyou down a mine.’

Aster sat up a little straighter.

‘Thatwas rather ill-mannered, Miss Laurence.’

‘I am simply trying to educate you, Miss Edwards.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ said Aster, her facade of indifference crumbling for a moment.

‘Call you what?’ Emily said, genuinely confused. ‘Miss Edwards?’

‘Oh,go to hell,’ Aster said, her tone laced with genuine malice. ‘If you can even navigate your way there. You are clearly an idiot of poor breeding incapable of following basic instructions.’

Emily saw red. She saw a colourbeyondred, as yet undiscovered.

‘Ibegyour pardon?’

‘I think you heard me quite clearly.’

‘I’m giving you a chance to reconsider being such an insolent littlebitch.’

She regretted it immediately, all the air leaving her lungs at once. This was not a scrap with somebody trying to overcharge in a street market, or a disagreement on a factory floor. This was certain to lose her the position. There had been no point unpacking after all; she’d be gone before the clock struck twelve.

‘You are the lowest sort of swine,’ Aster said, her face contorted into something hurt and ugly, ‘and you can go andfuckyourself.’

In the silence that ensued, Emily listened to the ticking of the marble clock and swallowed the burning in her chest, locked in the fiercest eye contact she had ever endured in her entire life.

‘I think I should like to readThe Italiannext,’ Grace said desperately, her voice thin and high, ‘now that I have finishedUdolpho. Although perhaps .?.?. should I take a break from—’

Aster stood up, scraping her chair back with force, so that it shrieked painfully against the floorboards.