"London was awful crowded this spring," Emilia said to her father over supper, hoping to change the subject from him pressuring her to use her position for his dubious benefit. "Much more than last year."

"Aye, I bet it was," he groused. "Hundreds of people all crammed in everywhere ye go. Don't know how you survive these seasons of yours."

"They're not my seasons. They're Miss Prudence's. But somehow, I manage." Emilia was glad her father had grasped onto one of his pet gripes. He'd never been to London, nor Leeds or York nor any place bigger than Pickering, but he had decided he hated big cities. "It's not so bad for me. Miss Prudence has to deal with the crowds. I only dress her... when she lets me." It wasn't that Miss Prudence didn't allow her to do her job at all, but she certainly refused to allow Emilia to do it to her satisfaction.

She truly missed Miss Charity. Despite the madcap adventure the girl had dragged her on, she had always been her favorite, if only because she had a much higher opinion of Emilia's skills. She would not only take her advice on dress and hair, but proclaim it invaluable. "Work your magic," she'd say.

As for Prudence, there was no magic there. She'd simply tell Emilia not to bother. She supposed Prudence thought she was doing her a favor but Emilia, much like her mother, would rather do her job well than be paid for less than her best, let alone allowing Miss Prudence to rush about covered in paint as she was wont to do. In London, it was as if she had no control over the girl at all. She tended to gad about with only Lady Dartmore's coachman, the very terrifying Carter, for company. Visiting friends, she said, friends for which she didn't need a lady's maid in attendance nor a smart dress or even a passable one.

At least, in Yorkshire, Emilia had Lady Crewe to take her part when dressing Prudence for dinner or the odd party, convincing her that looking her best was not some failure of her strange, bluestocking ideals.

"Then again, I suppose London isn't all bad. Got all those parties with the fine food," her father offered. "I bet ye danced your feet off at one of them fancy balls."

"Me?" She laughed. The closest she'd come to a ball was when Lady Dartmore held one in her townhouse. Though she did eat rather well, she hadn't danced, unless her father counted her watching the couples from the hall, tapping her feet here and there. 

"Aunt Muriel says I'm not to refuse a partner," Miss Prudence had lamented as Emilia dressed her hair that night. "Not even with a very good reason. She says that even if I endeavor to twist my ankle, I must hobble my way to the floor with anyone who asks me."

"Aye, ye poor thing. Forced to dance? Next I'll hear she'll be makin' you eat cake." 

"No, she's right. Since we are hosting, it would be terribly rude of me. So... I will dance with anyone who asks," Miss Prudence finished slyly. And she did. But she made such a mess of herself -- as planned -- during the first reel that no one had dared ask again.

Emilia watched the entire debacle from the staircase, shaking her head, wishing someone had mistaken her for a lady and asked her for a dance. She'd have been less horrified at the idea. Granted, she didn't know all the dances, but she'd danced the odd reel at the village fair and Charity had taught her some country dances while begging her aid for practice. That practice had only showed her the male end, but she would be glad enough to dance even that rather than never dance at all.

But who was she to complain? What use had she for dancing?

"I suppose ye could say I danced as much as I needed to," she said to her father now, standing and clearing the plates. "Are we finished? You'd best get to bed."

"But it's too early for bed," her father protested. "I have so much more to tell about my big-"

"Ye've caught every cold in the village while I was away. Ye need your rest if you're goin' to tackle any idea, big or small. Off to bed."

He chuckled. "I thought I was the father in these parts," he said, but he did shuffle off to his room as she finished the dishes and put some bread and soup Cook had donated to the cause in the tiny larder. He wouldn't eat worth a pin without her setting him up for the week. Even as much care as she took, she never felt right leaving him by himself, which was ridiculous, she knew. He was a man of two and forty, not a child nor an infirm old man.

She didn't wish to feel responsible for her own father. In another life, he might have sent her to bed while he cleaned up. Maybe he'd have even cooked. Then again, like most men, he went from his mother's care to his wife's and, now, to his daughter's. He couldn't be trusted to do more than boil water without burning the kitchen down.

On that thought, she made certain to stack the bins and boxes of his latest big idea away from the fire, before hanging her clothes and dressing for bed in one of the old, threadbare nightgowns she left here. It barely reached past her knees, but it otherwise fit, skinny old thing that she was.

Ian Douglass, who'd been in service at Crewe House long before she arrived - though he'd risen much higher since, to say the least - had always called her Sticks and she almost didn't miss him because of it. To be fair, Cook had started it, calling her a wee broomstick. She protested it where she could, but she couldn't deny the truth of it. Still, it wasn't her fault. She wasn't slim for the same reasons Miss Prudence was, so caught up in filling her days with her projects that she did ridiculous things like neglect her appetite.  Emilia was simply born that way.

Girls who grew up poor and often hungry didn't have such luxuries as forgetting to eat. Whatever food was put in front of her, she ate it quickly and gratefully. Emilia was sure, especially at Crewe House, she ate as well as a lord. It just never seemed to go to the proper places.

Then again, Emilia was never concerned with whether she was pretty. What good would it do her? She did take special care with her hair and the dressing of it and she supposed and, vain and useless as it was, she took some pride in her eyes -- enough not to obscure them with spectacles as both her charges had nagged her to do. They were, Emilia decided, the only pretty thing she had. Her mother had often called her eyes dark and mysterious, so deep brown they might as well be black. "Eyes like a faerie. Many a man will get lost in eyes like yours," her mother had declared.

It hadn't happened yet, and Emilia was sure it wouldn't, but she still didn't want to hide her eyes behind glasses, whatever Miss Charity had to say about it. Miss Prudence had gone so far as to compel her to see a doctor and bought her the stupid spectacles, but she couldn't force her to use them.

Emilia tucked herself into the cot in the corner of the small bedroom. In their old cottage, she'd had her own room, small as it was, but here there was no such space. Still, she didn't mind it much. If she was going to be here, she'd rather be near her father, listen to him as he slept, decide if he was wheezing. But she could only hear even breaths, which she should be grateful for...

"I can hear you thinkin'," her father said. "It's very loud."

"Is it?" She wished he could hear what she thought, that he might know how worrying his latest schemes were and just be... normal.

"Aye, it's not as bad as when you kick in your sleep. That's when things get dangerous."

"You're exaggerating," she grunted.

"I'm not," he said in the darkness, chuckling. "When you were little, your mother and I used to let ye sleep between us, but you kicked so much, we feared for our lives. We talked of sendin' ye to doctors for a cure, like that kicking princess of old, but I suppose you know what happened there..."

"I don't remember," she lied. "You could remind me." She turned to him, resting her cheek upon her hand as she used to do when she was little, when things were better. "Tell me the story."

"Well..." He took a deep breath. "First ye have to remember that this princess came from a kingdom where kicking was strictly against the law. But since she was a princess, she was above such laws..."

Emilia settled back on her cot. Her father always spun the funniest stories. It was what she loved most about him. She supposed that was one of the reasons she liked Miss Charity so well, though their stories weren't the same. Miss Charity told tales of beastly children meeting appropriate ends - violent as those ends may be - all with a lesson to be learned. Her father's stories never contained a lesson, except for the bit of nonsense he tacked on at the end.

"Always keep still in church," he'd say or, "Don't make silly faces in case they stay that way." These lessons were usually at the end of stories that had nothing to do with either church or silly faces. Yet Emilia still enjoyed every nonsensical word.

"Now, when I say this princess was a kicker, I don't mean she just kicked when she slept or when she spied a tempting pine cone worth kickin' along her path. When this princess kicked, she meant it. When her maid brought her a two-minute egg instead of a three-minute egg, she was kicked straight into the village to seek other employment. And when her father introduced her to some fancy prince who wasn't handsome enough, she kicked him clear back into his own kingdom. And when her mother told her to go to her room when she was naughty... Well, she couldn't kick her own mother, but she would kick the nearest guard right into the next county."

"She sounds dreadful," Emilia yawned, settling back into bed.

"So you'd think, but it wasn't her fault she kicked too well. She'd have been perfectly happy with kicking people a reasonable distance - perhaps only off the bed like you do rather than-"

"Here now..."

"Eventually, her parents decided enough was enough. Every time she was upset, they misplaced a servant, kicked into the distance and left to wander back, which most didn't want to do. And it was no way to run a kingdom."

Emilia giggled. "So they called the doctor to fix her. I remember."

"You remember wrong. They called several famous doctors, but none of 'em fixed her. The princess kicked all of 'em far away like it was nothing."

"I do remember. That was when the old lady came."

"But she was no ordinary old lady. She was a woodsy witch. She knew everythin' doctors did and quite a few things they didn't."

"Why wasn't she a doctor herself?" Emilia asked now, just as she had when she first heard the story.

"They didn't let women be doctors."

Emilia scoffed.

"I don't make the rules. It was a very strict kingdom."

"Doesn't sound much different from ours," she muttered.

"Anyhow, when the princess tried to kick the old lady, she did somethin' no one else had thought to do... she moved. See, everyone else had let the princess kick them as much as she wished, but this woman...she simply didn't."

"Good for her."

"The princess didn't know what do. See, she had become accustomed to kicking to get her way and now it wasn't working. The woman would see her windin' up that leg and just skip neatly out of the way. What could she do in the face of such innovation? And that was the day princess learned..."

Emilia sat up a bit, waiting for the lesson.

"...to wash her hands after usin' the chamberpot."

Emilia giggled and laid back again. "Thank you, Papa. I've learned my lesson. I'll try not to kick in my sleep."

"And?"

She laughed louder. "And I'll wash my hands after using the chamberpot."

"That's all I ask," he said on a yawn. "That's the moral of the story, after all."

Despite the rest of the evening, Emilia drifted off with a smile. Her mother often said, after her musings on his flaws and how the Lord knew she loved him, that, he always made her laugh and she could forgive a lot for that.

Perhaps Emilia was too hard on him. Who was she to judge his big ideas when she didn't have any of her own?

The next morning, she woke up at dawn, but took pains not to disturb her father. Once upon a time, she'd wake him on Sundays, chide him about whether or not she'd see him in church.

"The Lord and I have a passin' acquaintance. He's a fair judge," he'd say. "We'll meet when we meet and I'm sure he'll bear a poor man no ill will for not having visited enough."

So she'd eventually given up on that. She did glance askance at the bins, but tried to tell herself it was not her concern now. From now to next Saturday, she had her own work to do. Still, she hated leaving him to his own devices in the six days between. It was almost torture when she had to go to London with Miss Prudence.

She left some coins on the counter and prayed he used them wisely before she made her way home. In her early years in service, at Hartley Hall, she'd never considered that place home. She'd always longed for that little cottage with the climbing ivy. But Crewe House was different. She felt a sense of home there that she never expected and she supposed it was all down to...

"Ah, so ye've graced us with your presence, Miss Finch," Cook said. Gruff as she was, Cook made this place home.

Emilia supposed, as a lady's maid, she should rightly be called Miss Finch, but she had started as Emilia. Lord knew the upper crust resisted change of all kinds, so as Emilia, she would stay. 

"I don't know who Miss Finch is, but I'm glad to be home," she said fondly. Lady Crewe still insisted on calling her Emilie to her peers, fancying a French name was more fashionable, and though Emilia still wished it had caught on, she was as likely to answer to that as to Miss Finch.

"Glad, are ye? I don't see why. You're late," Cook pointed out.

As much as Mrs. Pigg -- who much preferred to be called Cook, with a name like that -- complained about her ascension to lady's maid, Emilia knew she didn't begrudge her success, though she might miss the company in the kitchen. Agnes was a good, hard working sort, but she tended to cower in the face of Cook's outbursts rather than give a little back. If there was anything Cook loved more than a perfect loaf or well-cooked roast, it was a good argument.

"We've had our breakfast," Cook said, "and I'm far too busy feeding the family to cater to you. I've only scraps left, but ye can have 'em if you wish." She pushed a plate across the counter, piled with eggs, sausages, potatoes, and toast.

Emilia hid a smile. "I suppose I'll have to make do."

"Fit for the pigs, I'd wager, but it's the best you can expect. Now leave me be. I'm very busy and that girl is takin' her sweet time gettin' the milk."

Agnes appeared just then, looking aggrieved. "I beg pardon, Ma'am, but Bessie was in quite a mood today. I only got half-a-pail before she shuffled away and refused me any more."

Emilia leaned toward the girl. "I've told you. She needs a bit of sweet-talkin' first."

"I tried. Told her she had a pretty snout and petted her and everything," Agnes protested. "I think she just hates me. I've told Cook she does much better for Jeremy, but she says I have to learn."

The boy did have a way with all the animals. "Really, Cook. You could have Jeremy do it rather than make poor Agnes--"

"Do I have time to cater to all the foibles of the barn animals?" Cook burst out. "Give that pail here, Agnes. I'll do what I can with it. As for you, Miss Fancy Finch, you'd better hurry and tend to Miss Prudence before church. Though you'll have fight on your hands."

"Don't I always?"

"She'll be in a foul mood after last night. Might insist on wearin' a burlap sack."

"Have they quarreled again?" Prudence was often in a foul mood after an argument with her mother, many of which happened upon their returns from London, but after Prudence took herself off to paint in the garret and her mother took herself to the Rose Room to embroider, after a day or so, the two were usually on speaking terms.

"Aye. Miss Prudence quarreled with Lady Crewe, then with Lady Dartmore, then her father took her part and quarreled with Lady Dartmore, which doesn't happen much," Cook said as she continued icing nutty buns. "But Lady Dartmore and Lady Crewe seemed to convince him, together, to take their part. So Lord Crewe argued with Miss Prudence, which happens even less, and now she's going to do... somethin'. I don't know what. I'm only going off what I heard, of course. I tried to get Mrs. Douglass to tell me what's going on, but she says-"

"That we shouldn't be gossiping," Mrs. Douglass said, sailing in.

"I was only telling Emilia. That isn't gossip," Cook sniffed, lifting her chin. "As Miss Pru's lady's maid, she needs to know."

"Yes. I need to know how to best help Miss Prudence," Emilia said, keeping her eyes on her plate, pretending she'd been too busy eating to gossip, but also wanting to know what the devil was happening.

"You could best help Miss Prudence by packing her trunks," Mrs. Douglass said firmly. "Though I suppose you have a few days. She's off to a house party."

Emilia let a bit of egg fall from her fork. "We only just returned from London." And she'd only just finished unpacking the trunks. Prudence wasn't one to travel about in search of parties, far from it. Then again, from what Cook had said, this decision didn't seem to be one of Miss Prudence's making.

It wasn't what Emilia wanted either, having just returned home. She'd felt bad enough leaving her father for a week, now to go away again for... "How long will we be gone?" she asked.

Mrs. Douglass regarded her with a sympathetic look. "I'll look in on him," she said.

"As will I," Cook put in. "Though why a grown man needs such coddlin', I'll never know," she finished on a mutter. Cook didn't much approve of Emilia's father - or at least of how much time she spent worrying over him.

"Ye're a young girl," she'd often said. "You should be having your fun."

Emilia had only gestured to the latest tub of gowns she was soaking in hopes of removing the paint. "And what time do we have for fun?"

Cook could never argue that as it was true enough. Though serving a fine family gave their lives a certain sort of security, it also brought no end of work.

Emilia wrung her hands now, staring at the older women. "I don't want you to go to too much trouble. Perhaps just leave him a basket or-"

"It's no trouble at all," Mrs. Douglass said, staring hard at Cook who looked likely to disagree.

It was more than that. Emilia didn't like subjecting Mrs. Douglass or Cook to her father. Though she did trust them to keep him fed, she often felt embarrassed at the idea of them seeing the nonsense, the quirks of a man she barely understood herself.

Still, none of that could be helped. A lady's maid went where her mistress did. She should be grateful to meet new people and for the opportunity to travel, or so she told herself.

She had no cause for complaint. None at all.

TBC

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That's all for now! I'll be back and we'll be meeting our hero all officially.