There was something about the way she said the wordfriendsthat made me feel queer. “Yes m—yes Miss Branningham.”
“Please, call me Emily.”
I looked down, not wanting to make eye contact. Or not wanting to want to. It weren’t my place, though her eyes were beautiful and terrible, like the first storm of a hot summer. “Don’t seem right, miss.”
And she was closer again, taking the birds back out of my hands. “Of course, how thoughtless of me. And I’ve made you get blood all over your fingers. You must think me quite boorish.”
“No, miss.”
Without much care, she set the grouse aside, which meant now they were bleeding onto the white tablecloth and it’d need to be reset, though I reckoned Mrs. Loris’d understand. I’d only been there a little while and she’d already told me many times to watch out for the young mistress’s fancies.
“Still, won’t do to have you go about your duties dishevelled.”
She took my hand then, turned it palm up. There weren’t that much blood on it to be honest, but she was looking down on it like it was a wounded mouse.
“It’s not a worry, miss,” I told her. “Really.”
“Even so.” She began to smooth the blood from my palm with her thumb. She was wearing these soft leather gloves, and her touch sent a shiver through me. “It’s the least I can do.”
If that was the least she could do, I was a little worried what the most was. “My hands is easier to clean than your clothes.”
“Pish.” She shook her head dismissively. “This is my shooting getup anyway. Made to get dirty. Whereasyou”—she raised my hand to her lips, smeared just a touch of blood across her mouth—“you should be taken care of.”
“I’m meant to be taking care of you, miss.” It weren’t exactly true. I was mostly meant to be taking care of the table, though that was shot to buggery if you’ll pardon my language, what with the dead birds and everything.
“When we were girls we took care of each other.”
I didn’t think that was really how she saw it. But I liked the idea. “That was years ago.”
“And you’ve never thought of me since?”
The right thing to do, I knew, was not to look up at her. But I did. And then I had nothing. “Every day.”
She smiled again. Blood mingling with her lipstick. “I think I would rather like to kiss you again.”
And I’d got no words. I never did when I was with her. I just nodded, and maybe smiled back, just a little.
So she kissed me. And it wasn’t like the first time, when we was barely more than kids. Nor even like the last, when it was her way to say goodbye as I went off to London. There was a fire in it that I’d always known was part of her but that’d got stronger in the years between, turned into something that melted me. That near broke me.
She was pulling me to her with a strength I’d not expected and I felt myself doing the same, and some little voice at the back of my mind was reminding me that I had work to do and that she was the master’s daughter and that no good would come of it. But a much louder one at the front was telling it to shut up and just let me have this.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a good life. I’ve had my joys and my tears and my in-betweens. But where I come from you don’t think you’ll get the magic, and that’s what Emily was giving me, what she was pouring into me. What made me feel like I really could be some nymph out the ocean what walked ashore and took a human girl away with her.
Somewhere I lost my balance and letting go of her—though I’d’ve given anything tonotlet go of her—I reached back to steady myself and I knocked the stand what I’d put the pie on, and it toppled over with this awful crash. The pie split open, though it was so dense that the filling stayed mostly inside. She used to make a great pie, did cook.
“Ah,” Emily looked down at the mess, then at me. “That might take some explaining. Don’t worry, Daddy will understand.”
I weren’t sure what to say. My lips were still almost stinging from kissing her so hard, and I couldn’t quite think of anything except kissing her again.
She reached past me and broke off a piece of the pie and popped it into her mouth. “Waste not, want not,” she told me. And then she left.
I had to tell Mrs. Loris what happened. Parts of what happened, at least. That the young mistress had come in with a brace of birds while I was setting the table, and that she’d startled me and that’d led to the pie getting knocked but that I was very sorry and that I hoped how she wouldn’t dismiss me though I’d understand if she did.
She took me through to the pantry and sat me on a stool.
“What happened?” she asked again.
“I told you,” I told her. “And Miss’ll back me up, I swear.”
