“I’ll attend to your clock tomorrow,” Mr. Barraclough said. “Good night, and watch your footing on the cobbles—they are treacherous this evening.”

“Thank you,” Emily said, wondering how such a concerned warning could sound so much like a threat.

27

Anne

There was something that Charlotte wasn’t telling them—that much was clear to Anne from the moment they arrived home. Anne found her sister skittish and excitable, unable to settle in one place or, what was more, to listen to what Agnes Fielding had told them. That Charlotte was keeping her interview with Lady Hartley to herself was highly irregular. Under normal circumstances she would have regaled them with every detail of the meeting at once, whether they wished for them or not. But even as Emily was describing with great dramatic emphasis the look on Agnes Fielding’s face as she had spoken of the evil she had seen, Charlotte’s thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

Charlotte was, as Aunt Branwell used to say, “quite taken” with Lady Hartley or, as Tabby would have said, she had had her head turned. Anne could only hope it wouldn’t be turned away from the matter in hand for very long, for Charlotte so distracted was of use to neither beast nor man.

In any event, their conversation with Agnes Fielding had left them none the wiser exactly, though her refusal to discuss her master was intriguing. At least she had given them another path to follow, and one that had taken them a little further in their detecting, even if she was unable or unwilling clearly to point the way. It was frustrating that she wouldn’t say what she had seen that summer night, but Anne understood why perfectly well, and so did Emily, which was why neither had sought to press her further.