Free The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones Page A

mother’s hopes up in the John Buchanan department, but Charlotte smiled her most loving smile at her.
    ‘So he is,’ she said and went off into her room mollified. ‘Keep an eye on the silver!’ was her last instruction, muffled by the door.
    Emerald hurried back downstairs to see to the Suttons. Out of sight, out of mind , she comforted herself, regarding her parent, but she may as well have been speaking about the poor, shocked passengers, for in her haste to fulfil her duties, like Myrtle, she had clean forgotten them, and altogether overlooked the necessity of telephoning the Railway. She did not stop to consider that the morning room was not large, or that the fire that warmed the passengers might be dying.
    Whilst Charlotte remained in her room with her mere dreams of etiquette, Emerald, stalwart, practised it, entertaining Ernest and Patience in the library despite unusual events, displaced passengers and Clovis’s sulks. Having obliged by fetching back the grooms, he now felt he had carte blanche to be blackish.
    ‘Can’t tell if it’s nighttime now, or just weather ,’ he said, flinging himself onto the window seat and glancing askance at the squally afternoon.
    The fire, neglected, had sunk down onto itself. Ernest threw apple logs onto it, and wrestled with the coal scuttle as Emerald poured the tea (brought in by Myrtle, who badly needed a change of apron after lighting the morning room fire, but had not yet seen to it).
    Smudge had not been able to drag herself away to dress and knelt slavishly at Patience’s feet, gazing up at her. Patience stared into the flames and allowed her face to relax the expression of keen enthusiasm she routinely maintained. Exhaustion swept through her tiny frame.
    ‘I must say I’m relieved we didn’t die in a train crash,’ she said.
    Emerald smiled at her. ‘I am, too, Patience; it would have quite spoilt my party,’ she said, and handed her a cup of tea.
    ‘Thank you. I wonder if anybody did die! ’ said Patience gloomily, wrinkling her delicate brow. The china cup trembled against the saucer.
    There came a rumbling sound from near the window.
    ‘Did you utter, dear brother?’ said Emerald, fixing Clovis with what she hoped was a granite look.
    ‘I said,’ Clovis shook himself violently, like a wet dog and sat up, ‘“Has that only just occurred to you now?” Whether anybody perished, that is.’
    Patience and Emerald exchanged glances. ‘We haven’t exactly had much opportunity to talk about it!’ said Patience and turned her small shoulders pointedly away from him.
    ‘ Brrr! ’ exclaimed Clovis, shivering dramatically and making them all jump.
    ‘I should think,’ began Ernest in a measured tone, ‘that when the railway fellow said “a dreadful accident” he must have been referring to fatalities. Injuries, at least.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Patience. ‘The porter did say “dreadful”; one can only imagine the worst…’
    Clovis ignored Ernest to continue baiting Patience.
    ‘The guard didn’t give us any other details, though, Miss Sutton. Did he? You’re merely guessing.’
    Patience was slapped down, but only momentarily: she was two years older than Clovis and had decided he wasn’t to be considered as a potential attachment. There were plenty of older, more serious men who liked her at home in Berkshire and at Cambridge, where she had recently begun to read History, and she had no designs whatsoever on the boy Clovis Torrington. Still, she was disconcerted how often her thoughts hovered tremblingly around his fledgling Romantic looks – even during the years they had not seen one another. When last they had met, she had been a cheerful seventeen and he, at fifteen, boisterous and fair. She did not count his father’s funeral as a visit, but even at that sad occasion she had felt an unsettling urge to stroke him, to put her arms around him. At the time she had put it down to sisterly compassion, but now her fluttering pulse gave the