with Lucy or going off with your friends. K is for Killjoy. L is for Leave Me Alone.”
“If you want to be treated like an adult, Emily, start behaving like one.”
“N is for No I Don’t Want To Talk To You Right Now.”
“You forgot M,” Cassandra said, giving up. She had no idea what else to say or what she was doing wrong.
She looked at Mr. Newell, who wore the pained “please let me turn into a chair now” expression he often wore when caught in their arguments. “If we might have a word outside?” she said.
Out in the hallway, Cassandra closed the door to the parlor. Immediately came a sound that was suspiciously like a book hitting the door.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. DeWitt,” Mr. Newell said. “I know Miss Lucy ought not have gone out with Mr. Isaac, but she insisted and she can be…willful.”
Cassandra sighed. She would have to talk with Isaac. And he might be with Joshua, for at least Joshua was talking to him now, and she would very much like to be with Joshua. Oh, for night time to come faster. To be in the dark, in that warm bed with their bodies wrapped around each other and the rest of the world forgotten.
“It’s not your fault, it’s mine,” she said. “You are my secretary, not their governess. But I can hire a governess for Emily now that Lucy will stay with our grandmother and cannot drive anyone away. If you could place some advertisements and speak to the agencies, I shall ask the other ladies if they can recommend someone.”
“Of course,” he said. “I shall start today.”
“Poor Mr. Newell. I have embroiled you in our family matters, while taking you from your own family for too long.”
“Mrs. Newell understands. She has hopes of a holiday by the seaside in summer…but perhaps this is not the best time to mention that.”
“This is the perfect time to mention that. For I need your help desperately and would grant you any wish at all. Take your family to the seaside for a month, and Mr. DeWitt will give you a bonus.”
Mr. Newell smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. DeWitt. I apologize also for mentioning my friend at the theater. But Emily does so love drama, and she writes such witty plays. Perhaps someone—not an actress, mind you—but someone who understands theater could also make a good governess. Merely a suggestion.”
What was the right thing to do? Whatever she did, she always ended up getting it wrong. Joshua would say that respectability did not matter, that he would buy respectability for Emily. Cassandra was more interested in buying her little sister happiness, before Emily turned bitter and faded away.
“A good suggestion,” she conceded. “So long as Emily doesn’t actually mean to be an actress. She is too young and anxious for her age and…”
“If you don’t mind my saying, Mrs. DeWitt, I think Emily is frightened of losing everyone.”
Oh my dear Em, that’s what I fear too. Cassandra swallowed away the lump in her throat. Why did she not know how to talk to Emily? Every day she conversed with scores of people, but she could not talk to her own sister. But since Papa had died, Cassandra had been so busy, running the estate and the household and changing the garden and naming the pigs and a thousand other things.
Busy? Heavens, now she sounded like Joshua or her grandmother. But she had been busy. And the busier the better, so she would not think about Papa and Mama and Charlie and all that had been lost. Perhaps that was why Lucy and Emily resented her.
She patted Mr. Newell’s arm. “I shall find a way to fix this, and I apologize for upsetting you,” she said. “So far this morning, I have upset two sisters, one grandmother, and a secretary. Now I shall scold Isaac, which will upset him, and if Joshua is there, I will no doubt end up upsetting him too, after which I can congratulate myself on a day well spent.”
Chapter 20
Joshua sat at his desk, meaningless numbers dancing before his eyes, and cursed himself for not doing business outside the house again today. His uncharacteristically wayward mind was too aware that Cassandra was at home too, and kept returning to the interesting question of whether he could talk her into bed.
He had just reached the conclusion that he must try or he would get nothing done—and really, in this state, tupping his wife was a matter of