he took the second kipper from Nicholas’s plate and placed it next to Molly’s. He licked his fingers clean and waited for further instruction.
“Eat,” Mrs. Wickware said.
“No,” Molly answered.
“If you refuse to eat them now, you will see them again at midday. You will have nothing but kippers until you have learned to accept what you are given.”
So it went with all of Mrs. Wickware’s punishments—repetition, multiplication, more and more of the same. Molly longed to sit in her chair and finish her toast and tea.
“I’d rather starve,” she said.
“They say a starving man will eat his own boot before he dies,” Mrs. Wickware replied. “You will surely eat fish before the day is done.”
Molly tossed her kipper to the middle of the table, but before she could throw the second, Jeremy caught her arms and pinned her wrists behind her back. His grip was so strong she couldn’t free herself or turn. Nevertheless she tried, flinging her hair about and stomping.
“Enough,” Mrs. Wickware said to Jeremy, who gave himself an extra few seconds to comply.
Molly rubbed her wrists and backed away from the table.
“In my busy years as governess,” Mrs. Wickware said, “I have come to know a great many young women and men. Your strengths are not unique. Neither are your failings. You no doubt think yourself extraordinary, for it is a trait that young people share: the conviction that their youth is startling and new. But I cannot be surprised, Molly. I have seen it all before, and I intend to lead you firmly to predictable maturity.”
Molly looked to Nicholas and watched him finish his egg. Instead of acknowledging the argument, he said to Mrs. Wickware, “May I please be excused? I need to tidy my room before dusting the frames in the garret.”
“The frames in the gilt room. There aren’t any portraits in the garret,” Mrs. Wickware corrected, disappointed he would make such a ludicrous mistake.
“Yes,” Nicholas said, bowing his head and smiling at his foolishness. “I’m sorry, yes. The gilt room.”
Mrs. Wickware excused him. He folded his napkin next to his plate, straightened his chair, and left the dining room.
Molly watched him go, picturing the garret.
* * *
Molly sat alone in her room, where she was supposed to be writing copies of the household schedules and rules. She had been told to copy them once on the first day of Wickware’s reign, and the number had doubled with each refusal—two, four, eight, sixteen, and now the ridiculous thirty-two, which may as well have been thirty-two hundred as far as Molly was concerned. The sole reason she remained in the room was that to be caught elsewhere in the house would lead to Jeremy hauling her back, locking her in, and staying at her side the rest of the afternoon. So she sat at the window overlooking the street, jealous of the midday action there below: gentlemen in hats, ladies riding carriages, children unfettered in the late summer air.
Then she spotted Mrs. Wickware and Nicholas leaving the house to purchase leeches at the market. They would be gone for more than an hour, and as her hunger had grown unbearable, she decided to risk escape and crept downstairs, moving furtively and listening for Jeremy’s plodding footfalls.
She entered the kitchen with its cool stone floor. Vegetables and herbs were strewn across the tables, cheese and feathered foul dangled from the rafters, and a glorious wholesome stew burbled in a cauldron. Two fresh pies—crushberry and apple—puffed aroma from the knife-slit X’s in their crusts.
“You mustn’t be here!” said the kitchen maid, Emmy, a girl of Molly’s age who happened to be the cook’s own daughter. The two of them looked at Molly with startled expressions and identical snub noses, the younger holding a broom, the elder with a cleaver.
“We have instructions,” said the cook, “not to slip you any food.”
“I’m given kippers,” Molly said. “You know I hate kippers.”
“And who do you think prepares ’em?” asked the cook, looking wry. “I use the very best butter I can find to make ’em flavorful, and all of it to waste, all of it returned.”
She resumed cutting mutton to avoid Molly’s face, sorry that she couldn’t cook the siblings what they wanted.
“Mrs. Wickware told us you was copying the rules,” Emmy said.
“Which we’re waiting for to read,” the cook snapped, redder than the mutton she was carving on the block. “Though we know the rules already and we don’t intend to flout ’em.”
“What if Jeremy finds you here?” Emmy asked,