Bell Weather by Dennis Mahoney

Bell was there, too—it should have been a tutor, Father never taught on Wednesdays!—and the moment he turned to see her at the door, Nicholas smiled. Molly smiled back and flushed to her earlobes.
    Lord Bell didn’t chastise—household rules went without saying—but he stared to see if Molly would depart without reminder. Frances hurried up behind her, huffing from the chase. Molly looked at Nicholas—he seemed so lonely and dispirited without her, stuck inside with Father on a fine bright day—and she decided that her only means of staying was to climb. She scaled the nearest bookcase and hoped to reach the top. It was easy as a ladder, multicolored as a tree.
    “Ignore her,” said her father, turning back to Nicholas and forcing him to focus his attention on his studies.
    Frances stood below and tried to whisper Molly down. The quiet of the room, the manners and composure tickled Molly to a laugh that made her brother chew his lip. She watched him as she climbed, hoping to impress him, and she didn’t see the ceiling till she bumped it with her head. The knock surprised her and she reached up, rubbing where it hurt, and then her foot slipped free and she was dangling one-handed, fifteen feet above the hardwood floor.
    Frances yelped. Lord Bell jerked around and banged his fist upon the table. One of the table leaves jumped and hit Nicholas’s jaw, and Molly weakened at the sound, losing her purchase on the shelves. Nicholas stood and clasped his mouth, bloody at the chin, and Molly fell from the bookcase, her petticoats and hair fluffing up around her.
    Lord Bell tried to catch her but she crashed through his arms and hit the floor hard, knocking out her wind and battering her hip. Frances, in her fright, had fallen backward in the doorway, ghastly white with vivid red hives around her neck. Molly scrambled to her side. Frances held her close until she finally got her breath, and she was just about to cry when she remembered Nicholas and pushed away, running across the room to see his wounded mouth.
    Lord Bell caught her elbow.
    “I’m sorry, m’lord,” Frances said, wobbling to her feet. “It was all my fault. We were running in the garden.”
    “You were not to go running in the garden,” Bell said. “You were to keep her calmly occupied while Nicholas was studying.”
    “Yes, m’lord, I’m sorry, sir. As I said, it wasn’t her. I allowed it and I chased her. She was frightened of the chase. She didn’t mean to climb—”
    “I did!” Molly shouted. “Let me go!”
    “Return to the garden,” Bell said to Frances. “I will summon you when Nicholas’s lessons are complete.”
    “M’lord—”
    “Now,” he said, squeezing Molly tight enough to bruise. “Close the door behind you.”
    Frances nodded with a curtsy that was virtually a swoon. Tears clung like little bubbles to the governess’s eyes, and then she left and shut the door with the gentlest of clicks.
    “Nicholas is bleeding!” Molly said.
    Her father cocked an eyebrow and looked toward her brother. He was startled by the sight, glancing back and forth as if the siblings were deceiving him, but Nicholas’s mouth was genuinely bloody.
    “How—”
    “It was you!” Molly said. “You struck the table and it jumped!”
    Nicholas confirmed it with a quick, sharp nod.
    “I would not have struck the table if you hadn’t climbed the shelves,” Bell said.
    “I didn’t mean to hurt him!” Molly yelled and tried to free herself.
    Bell gripped harder. “Show me your mouth,” he said to her brother.
    Nicholas approached him.
    “Take away your hand—a split lip, nothing more. Let me see your teeth. Ah,” Bell said.
    Molly wilted at the sight. Her brother had lost a fragment of his upper left incisor. Molly pinched herself as fiercely as she could and started crying.
    Bell turned to her and said, “See what your unruliness has wrought.”
    “Nicholas, I’m sorry!”
    “No,” Bell said, looking at her brother, who for one