So she trudged from her chamber, plodded along the corridor and traipsed down the flights of stairs.
Loitering in the ground-floor hall was Sally, her head flung back as she glugged wine from a crystal-cut glass, the master’s half-empty lunch tray balanced in her other hand.
“Miss Longlane!”
Sally wiped her mouth and smirked. “Shame ter waste it, Miss.”
Amelia grinned. “Claret, is it?”
“Hmm.” She sniffed the glass. “From further north than that, I reckon.”
What a refined palate.“And its taste?”
“Expensive.” And with a wink, she polished it off. “Are yer off ter the kitchens? How were the tatting?”
“Mrs Dawkins had no wish to learn tatting.” Amelia thinned her lips as they strolled to the basement together. “Apparently Mr Cruikshank said the master wished it and Mrs Dawkins didn’t like to say no.”
So instead the two of them had ventured to the distillation room where Mrs Dawkins had shown her the various jars of marinated toads, soused lizards and some grisly pickled item called an aubergine. “It has the same flower as deadly nightshade,” the housekeeper had grumped, “so I’ll not be using it. ’Tis the devil’s handiwork.”
Sally chomped on an abandoned rind of cheese from the plate. “D’yer know, I tried me hand at sewing a bodice once but halfway down Oxford Street, me bubbies fell out, so I thought it weren’t for me.”
Laughing, they made it to the basement and as Mrs Dawkins was now sorting sheets in the linen closet, Sally was able to procure a draught of willow bark from a jar in the distillation room.
Amelia sat at the kitchen table and drank the foul-tasting concoction as Sally nibbled at half a cracker and chatted companionably about her morning at the market. Too soon, however, voices echoed from the ground floor above them followed by a dash of feet and a distant slam of door.
Phoebe was home so Amelia stood. “I’d best go.”
Sally stared to the plate. The empty plate. “I’d best wash up then.”
Amelia trudged back upstairs, waiting for the draught to work its magic, but as Phoebe’s door was shut, Amelia thought to leave her be and swivelled to her own cham–
A sob caught her ear.
Then another.
She turned and crossed to listen at Phoebe’s door.
Crying?
Long gut-wrenching sobs…then choked guttural moans as though her charge was endeavouring to smother any noise with a pillow.
Amelia bit her lip and dithered.
On such a mission, one should never become involved in the personal trials and tribulations of the household but…
Amelia could not bear to hear Phoebe in such distress.
So she knocked.
“G-go away,” a voice cried.
So she opened the door.
At the pillow end of the gloomy bed, a black huddle of cloth was scrunched over, fist in mouth and head bowed, shaking and sobbing.
Shuffling her feet, Amelia realised she had absolutely no idea what to do, had never dealt with a young girl’s misery before.
What would Miss Appleton advise?
