The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton Page B

just how to set him off. She was a fierce little thing, full of tempers. One time, I remember, she was awful dark at him for one reason or another and took it into her head to give him a nasty fright.’
    ‘What did she do?’
    ‘Now let me think … Master David was out having riding instruction. That’s what started it all. Miss Hannah were none too happy to have been left out so she bundled up Miss Emmeline and gave Nanny the slip. Found their way to the far estates, they did, right the way down where the farmers were harvesting apples.’ She shook her head. ‘Convinced Miss Emmeline to hide away in the barn, did our Miss Hannah. Wasn’t hard to do, I imagine; Miss Hannah can be very persuasive, and besides, Miss Emmeline was quite happy with all them fresh apples to feast on. Next minute, Miss Hannah arrived back at the house, puffing and panting like she’d run for her life, calling for Mr Frederick. I was laying for luncheon in the dining room at the time, and I heard Miss Hannah tell him that a couple of foreign men with dark skin had found them in the orchards. Said they’d commented on how pretty Miss Emmeline was and promised to take her on a long journey across the seas. Miss Hannah said she couldn’t be sure, but she believed them to be white slavers.’
    I gasped, shocked by Hannah’s daring. ‘What happened then?’
    Myra, portentous with secrets, warmed to the telling. ‘Well, Mr Frederick’s always been wary of the white slavers, and his face went first white, then all red, and before you could count to three he scooped Miss Hannah into his arms and set off toward the orchards. Bertie Timmins, who was picking apples that day, said Mr Frederick arrived in a terrible state. He started yelling orders to form a search party, that Miss Emmeline had been kidnapped by two dark-skinned men. They searched high and low, spreading out in all directions, but no one had seen two dark-skinned men and a golden-haired child.’
    ‘How did they find her?’
    ‘They didn’t. In the end she found them. After an hour or so, Miss Emmeline, bored with hiding and sick from apples, came strolling from the barn wondering about all the fuss. Why Miss Hannah hadn’t come to get her …’
    ‘Was Mr Frederick very cross?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ Myra said matter-of-factly, polishing fiercely. ‘Though not for long: never could stay dark with her for long. They’ve a bond, those two. She’d have to do more’n that to set him against her.’ She held aloft the glistening vase then placed it with the other polished items. Laid her cloth on the table and tilted her head, giving her thin neck a rub. ‘Anyways, as I hear it Mr Frederick was just getting a bit of his own medicine.’
    ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What did he do?’
    Myra glanced toward the kitchen, satisfying herself that Katie was without earshot. There was a well-worn pecking order downstairs at Riverton, refined and ingrained by centuries of service. I may have been the lowest housemaid, subject to regular dressing-downs, worthy of only the lesser duties, but Katie, as scullery maid, was beneath contempt. I would like to be able to say this groundless inequity riled me; that I was, if not incensed, at least alert to its injustice. But to do so would be crediting my young self with empathy I did not possess. Rather, I relished what little privilege my place afforded me—Lord knows there were enough above me.
    ‘Gave his parents quite a time when he was a lad, did our Mr Frederick,’ she said through tight lips. ‘He was such a livewire Lord Ashbury sent him to Radley just so he couldn’t give his brother a bad name at Eton. Wouldn’t let him try for Sandhurst neither, when the time came, even though he was that set on joining the navy.’
    I digested this information as Myra continued. ‘Understandable, of course, with Major James doing so well in the forces. It doesn’t take much to stain a family’s good name. Wasn’t worth the risk.’ She left off