I lurched backwards against the side of the carriage, losing my balance and falling against the seat. The sound of the bricks scraping together filled the carriage before the rocking came to a stop and the carriage settled itself, albeit in a different position from before. Once it had stopped moving, I pushed myself off the seat and stood up, giving myself the once over to make sure I hadn't been injured by the sudden movement. Everything seemed to be fine, but I didn't want to stay in the carriage any longer than I had to.

"Rosie? Are alright?" Robert's voice came through the window above my head.

"Yes, although I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to be," I said.

"We're working on it. We need to stabilise the carriage before we do anything else. You'll have to sit tight for a little while longer."

"I'm not going anywhere."

He laughed outside and I listened out to the conversations unfolding around me from inside the carriage. Whether my mind had started playing tricks on me or not, I could hear the slight movement of the bricks from the wall as they shifted under the weight of the carriage. The wall wouldn't be able to hold the weight that much longer and I doubted there was anything that could stabilise it fully so I could get out with a ladder or something a little safer.

Although I could hear them trying to solve the issue outside, I glanced around the carriage to see if there was a quick way out if the opportunity presented itself. With the bottom of the carriage flat, and the seats at an angle, there didn't appear to be an easy way out, but that didn't mean there wasn't a way. Despite how precarious and dangerous it would be, I knew I could climb onto the edge of the overturned seat and pull myself through the broken window.

At least I had a way out if I needed it.

I listened to the sound of the men outside, the shifting of wooden beams and the sliding of the bricks on the wall. Through the small gap in the window, I could see them trying to stabilise the carriage with the wooden beams by propping them against the side and then wedging them in place to get them to stay. Despite all the effort, I had the sneaking suspicion that it wouldn't work the way they wanted to. The carriage weighed far too much for it to be halted by some wooden beams and a brick wall.

The carriage shifted yet again.

Rather than wait for the carriage to be stabilised, and risk it going through the wall, I decided to climb out. I placed one foot on the edge of the overturned and seat and reached up to the door handle to pull myself up. When I was crouching on the edge of the seat, I grabbed onto the edge of the broken window and started to pull myself up and through the window. My arms shook violently as I pulled my head up through the gap, but my strength wavered, and I almost dropped.

Someone grabbed onto my forearms and helped to pull me up through the window and out onto the side of the carriage. I wiggled my way along the edge of the carriage until I could sit with my legs dangling over the edge of the carriage. After taking a breath, I swung myself off the carriage with my knee almost giving way when I hit the ground. I turned just in time to see the ladder pulled backwards and the carriage tumbled over, smashing through the brick wall and sending a plume of dust up into the air.

"That was a tad too close for comfort," I muttered.

"Are you alright?" Robert said, creeping up behind me and rubbing his wrists. He had been the one to pull me out through the window.

"Fine. For once my tree climbing skills came in handy." I let out a nervous laugh. "How is Arthur?"

"Father thinks he will be alright. He accompanied the carriage to the hospital, so the doctors knew just what had happened."

"He won't lose his arm, will he?"

"We don't think so, you got him out just in time. There will be some damage to his lower arm and potentially his leg as well, but he'll keep his arm." He paused. "Are you sure you're alright? You're shaking."

I looked down at my hands and saw a slight tremor in my fingertips, spreading up my hands and into my wrists. My focus had been on getting out of the carriage that I hadn't noticed the fear that had bubbled up inside of me. Robert looked at me and took my hand in his, holding them for a few minutes and rubbing his thumb across my knuckles. He released my hands and I squeezed the, into fists a few times, noticing the shaking had stopped rather abruptly.

"Better?" Robert asked.

"Much better."

"That was close, Rosie. Perhaps a little too close," Matthew said, stepping into view. He raised an eyebrow at Robert but said nothing. I expect he had seen Robert's actions and didn't feel all that happy with it. None of my brothers liked the idea of Robert and I spending so much together.

"I know. Nothing happened and I'm completely fine, honestly, albeit a little soggy."

"We should get you into something dry before you catch your death." He looked at Robert. "Do you mind? I know the trial is supposed to be all day, but she cannot return to the office looking like a drowned rat."

"No, it's fine. Father was going to close up the office when we got back anyway. We've spent most of the day here and we're all soaked through. I'll let him know that you've already gone home."

"Alright." I paused. "Thank you for your help, Robert. I wouldn't have been able to pull myself out of the carriage otherwise."

"You're welcome. I shall see you in a few days, for the party."

"Yes, you will."

I smiled at him and Matthew placed his hands on my shoulders and steered me towards a waiting carriage. Water dripped off my dress and shawl and most of my hairpins had fallen out, leaving my hair hanging down my back and sending water cascading down my spine. The rain had turned fine, but that was just as bad as heavy rain and I knew I had no chance of drying until we got home. All I wanted to do was changed into my nightdress and drink hot cocoa under a blanket.

Matthew gave me a light shove and I climbed into the carriage, the seat beneath me becoming soaked in a matter of seconds. He climbed in across from me and just stared at me as the carriage pulled away from the scene and back home. The carpenters who had tried to stabilise the carriage were attempting to get it back on its wheels so they could repair the wall, but it was proving to be a much harder job than they anticipated. Bricks lay scattered across the ground, some in pieces, and they presented a difficult terrain for the carpenters to try and climb over.

The carriage pulled away from the scene of the accident with the driver moving remarkably slower so as not to end up the same as the other carriage. From across the seat, Matthew looked at me and raised an eyebrow. There was a small trace of a smile tugging at his lips and I raised an eyebrow at him in confusion, but he refused to look away or stop smiling. I had seen the look before and it was never a good sign.

"Why are you staring at me?" I asked.

"Nothing really. You and Robert looked rather close just now," he said.

"Don't you start, I've had enough of that from James and Christopher. We're friends."

"Are you sure that is all it is? I saw you at the ball the other day and plenty of other times when you appeared to be getting rather close."

"You're a nightmare."

"Am I? Or do you just refuse to see something in it?"

I turned away from Matthew and looked out the window, watching two droplets of rain cascade down the glass until they came to a stop. The sound of the wheels moving against the ground and running through puddles broke the silence, but I couldn't stop the thoughts that had already started spinning through my head. James and Christopher had mentioned in dance at the ball several times since it had happened and they both refused to accept the possibility that there was anything more than friendship between us.

In truth, I was as well.

When Robert had written that letter all those months before, I didn't want to think anything of it. I didn't want to accept the possibility that Mrs Ealing's snide comments about our friendship had some merit in them. Perhaps it was naïve of me to think there was nothing there, but as time went on, I started to think there was. My conversation with Kitty the day before the ball had exposed a lot of truth in my own feelings but I just wasn't ready to accept that they were real.

Robert and I had been friends since he first found me after my dismissal from the factory and I didn't want anything to destroy that. If we were to exchange feelings in that way it could just as well ruin any friendship, we had and I didn't want to lose him as a friend. Yet I knew I couldn't keep pushing my feelings down when they had become so obvious to everyone else around me. I would have to confront them head-on if I was to stand any chance of understanding them in their entirety. It would have to wait for the party.

The carriage came to a stop outside the house and Matthew climbed out first with me following behind. My dress had stuck to the back of my legs due to the rain but it didn't matter all that much since we were back home and no would have seen me other than my brothers. We walked down the front path and into the house. James appeared in the hallway seconds later with a pin in his mouth. He furrowed his eyebrows and removed the pin.

"You're back early," he said. "And soaking wet. Have you been for a swim?"

"Not exactly. A carriage overturned and a little boy was pinned in by the window."

"What were you doing to end up that wet?"

"Someone needed to go into the carriage to free the boy from the window and to make sure his injuries weren't severe."

"And that was you?"

"No one else could fit, the door was stuck, and I had to slide in through the window."

"She did pretty well, James. Stayed calm although getting our of the carriage was a little too close, I felt like my heart would stop," Matthew added.

"You can tell me all about it once you've dried off. You're dripping water all over the floor and I doubt Mrs Baker will be happy with you."

James shoved me up the stairs with the pin in hand whilst he and Matthew retreated back into the living room, no doubt so Matthew could tell him all about the adventures of the day. I expected to be receiving a telling off by the time I returned downstairs, so I vowed to take my time in changing out of my wet dress.

I walked down the hall to my room and pulled my nightdress out from under my pillow and dumping it on the edge of the bed. After fiddling around with the clasp on the back of my dress for a few seconds, I managed to undo it and peel the dress off. The dress had been that damp that even my skin felt wet, so I quickly dried myself off with a towel from my bedroom floor and changed into my nightdress. I then pulled out my hairpins and shook my hair out, running a comb through it and leaving it down.

After pulling on my housecoat, I tied the belt around my waist and headed back down the stairs, returning to the living room and throwing myself down on the sofa beside James. He motioned his head towards a mug of hot cocoa on the table and I grabbed it, wrapping my fingers around the mug. Heat coursed through my fingertips and up my arms, but the drink was still too hot to sip. I had had more mugs of hot cocoa in just a few weeks then I had in my lifetime.

Draped over one of the armchairs was my dress for the party. The silver embellishments that had taken so long to do wound their way up the skirt and along the sleeves. With the dress completed, my birthday seemed a lot closer.

"It sounds as though you had quite the day," James said after a little while.

"You could say that. Mrs Ealing turned up at the office before the accident. Her and Doctor Ealing got into a shouting match."

"What was it about?"

"Something about her wanting the twins back and Doctor Ealing refusing. He said he didn't want them to turn out like Matilda. Robert and I left to deal with a sprained ankle, so I didn't hear any more than that."

"And then you had the carriage accident?"

I nodded. "It was right after Mrs Ealing left."

"What is it with you and finding yourselves in dangerous situations? I've never known someone to go through so much in short space of time."

"Someone has it in for me?"

James chuckled and took a sip of his tea. He had a point though. Back at the factory, I had always been a target for the foreman and when I thought that was over, I became a target for Mrs Ealing. It was as though someone had just painted a target on my back, and it followed me where I happened to go. Granted, the carriage accident had been that, an accident, but it still happened during my time at the office and not on any of the previous days.

I couldn't help but think that I was just cursed. That bad luck followed me wherever I was, and I would do better to huddle up inside and never leave the house. With everything that had happened, I wondered if it would just be easier to not accept the offer and instead just focus on my painting. I didn't think I could cope with incidents like that – and worse – on a regular basis. It had been too much at the factory.

"So, your trial day is complete. Are you going to take them up on the offer?" Matthew asked. I had forgotten he was still in the house. Christopher must have been at work.

"I don't know." I shrugged my shoulders and took a sip from the cocoa.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"James, calm down. Today was probably a very trying day and I expect Rosie needs a few days to really decide. You cannot expect her to have an answer straight away," Kitty said.

"You will have to make your mind up soon, Rosie."

"I know and I will. Just not yet. I'll have an answer for them by the party, I promise."

"Alright. You just drink that, you're freezing." He pressed his fingers against the back of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.

We fell into silence and I sipped the rest of my hot cocoa. Darkness had started to fall outside, and I could hear Mrs Baker cooking in the kitchen, pots and pans rattling together. James asked Matthew if he wanted to stay for supper, but he hated being away from Sebastian so turned the offer down. Christopher arrived home not long after Matthew left, retreating to his room to sort through the paperwork and documents he had accumulated through the day. He said he would take his supper in his room due to the amount of work he had.

When darkness fully descended, James went around the house and lit all of the candles, he even lit the fireplace in the drawing-room to add a little bit more heat. The hot cocoa had warmed me only slightly, but the fireplace bathed the room in a warm glow, and I was warm within ten minutes. I didn't understand why the fireplace hadn't been lit when I came home, but James liked to work in silence and his eyes, the fireplace offered far too much noise.

Once he had lit the fireplace and the lamps around the house, he left Kitty and I in the drawing-room and went down to the kitchen in search for something to eat before supper. All he appeared to think about was his stomach even when supper was a little while away. I expected Mrs Baker to chase him out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon. Kitty moved from the other sofa and sat beside me where James had been before he went in search for food.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Uh-huh. Today was just a little difficult, that's all," I said.

"From what Matthew said, you did well despite the situation. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to see the boy like that, but you remained calm."

"I'm still shaking," I said. I held up my hands and noticed the slight tremor that remained in my fingertips. It had calmed down a little after Robert had tried to soothe it, but it had returned and showed no sign of subsiding this time around.

"Come here."

Kitty opened her arms and pulled me into a hug. I accepted it and laid in my head on her chest and listened to the soft sound of her heartbeat.

"You did well today Rosie; don't let fear control your life."

Kitty was right. In more ways than one.

~~~

A/N - We are back with Chapter Thirty-One! You'll be pleased to know that I have officially finished the last chapter of TAG ! You guys are not ready for what I have in store in the last four chapters! Make sure you're here every week!

Also, thanks to memey6 we officially have a title for the Prequel! I still need to get a cover so I'll get back to you on that one. Not entirely sure on updates and stuff just on the basis that I have to edit my Watty's entry, but I shall try my best to get it ready for a few weeks after TAG had finished!

Anyway, the party is coming up! Predictions on the next few chapters?

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to Mocha15years for the comments and votes on TFG, TSG, and TAG!

First Published - August 11th, 2020