For the first time in six months, I was scared to work.

Just waking up that morning made my heart race, my hands shake and my palms to become overly sweat to the point I struggled to pin my own hair up. After what Lady Thatcher had said the previous day, I knew Mrs Ealing would be coming for me more than ever and for the first time, I wanted to spend the day hiding in the kitchen rather than help out around the house. As I prepared to go down to the kitchen that morning, I figured I could solve all of my problems but simply telling Doctor Ealing about the troubles I faced with his wife. Yet I didn't want to become the thing we despised at the factory. A snitch.

Instead, I made the decision to do the work that was required of me and avoid Mrs Ealing wherever possible. I didn't want to give her the reason she needed to give me another infraction. Pinning my hair in place, I rammed my bonnet onto my head and left the bedroom, blowing out the candle as I went. Miss Jenkins and Esther's voices carried up the stairs as I slowly climbed down them, using the handrail as I went. My knees ached a little and it hurt to walk a little more than usual, but I wasn't going to mention that. All those years of sliding around on my knees at the factory had played havoc with my joints and some days were worse than others. I had never told the Ealing's about any of my old injuries; it just gave them a reason to get rid of me.

Hobbling down the stairs, I walked into the kitchen to see Miss Jenkins and Esther preparing the trays for breakfast. Esther had woken up before me and Miss Jenkins had had to yell up the stairs to wake me up. Apparently, Esther had tried to shake me awake but it hadn't worked. Normally I slept very lightly but that night I didn't want to wake up in the morning, so it seemed my sleep was heavier.

"You're limping," Miss Jenkins noted as I hobbled into the kitchen.

"I walked into the bed when I went to make it. It was stupid," I lied, hoping she wouldn't notice.

"That was stupid. Are you going to be alright to work?"

"Yes, it's nothing."

"Good. Breakfast is on the table, just jam and toast I'm afraid, nothing too special. Apparently, the twins weren't too happy about having to spend yesterday's luncheon in the nursery with the nanny and they destroyed it when no one was looking. I'll have Esther deal with the tea trays for this morning and you can tackle the mess if you don't mind."

"Of course not, I'll head straight up after I've eaten."

I limped to the table and grabbed the piece of toast. Resting my hand on the table, I ate the toast within seconds and brushed the crumbs off on my skirt. My stomach groaned at the lack of food, but I ignored it and left Miss Jenkins and Esther to deal with the tea trays whilst I went to tackle the mess that the twins had left behind. If the state Zachariah's room on a normal day had anything to go by, the room would not be a pretty sight. The combined force of both of them would probably have brought the ceiling down could they reach it.

Using the bannister attached the wall, I heaved myself up the stairs and out onto the hallway. A small stream of sunlight travelled through the front door, lighting up a strip of the hardwood floor that lined the hallway. I stepped out into the hallway and into that small patch of light, glancing towards the door to see if I could catch the beam shift as the sun moved. Back at the factory, there used to be a single window at the top of the wall and during the summer it would give us a bright strip of sunlight that lit up the whole room. Sometimes it would shine directly on Isabel as she worked. We used to joke that it made her an angle. I don't think we realised how true that might have been.

As the sun moved slightly, I stepped out of the sunbeam and through the hallway towards the stairs. Once again, I used the bannister as a point of leverage so I could climb the stairs without having to put too much weight on my knee. It felt as though it was bothering me more than usual, but I had work to do and my knee would have to wait. Instead, I carried on up the stairs until I reached the nursery. Holding my breath, I pushed the door open and stepped inside, shocked by the chaos that covered the room.

There were crayon drawings all over the walls, collections of scribbles and stick figures lined the yellow wallpaper. Books and blocks covered the floor alongside the discarded crayons, some crushed and pressed into the carpet, staining it various colours. They had even gone as far as to pull the feathers out of the pillows and scatter them all over the floor. It looked as though the twins really weren't happy about being excluded from the dinner, they had destroyed the room. It looked like far too much mess for one person to clean up, and I didn't think I could get the crayon off the floor or out of the carpet.

"Did the twins do all this?" Matilda asked, shuffling into the doorway as I grabbed a handful of feathers and made an attempt to stuff them back into a cushion.

"Hm, either that or two bears broke in and learnt to hold a crayon," I replied.

"A plausible option." She smiled at me and took a step into the room. "You caused quite the stir at luncheon yesterday, at least as far as Mother is concerned."

"That was never my intention."

"I know, I don't think anyone quite expected Aunt Sybil to suggest going to the kitchen, least of all Mother. She seemed particularly interested in you, though. Although I think she was more interested in the factory then anything else, she kept asking questions about it."

"How did she even know about it?"

"Robert. He has always been her favourite out of the four of us and they write quite frequently. I expect he told her everything about what goes on here, and you cropped up."

"I wished he hadn't said anything," I muttered.

"He meant nothing bad by it and I doubt Aunt Sybil did either."

"It's not them I'm worried out."

Matilda said nothing as silence settled upon us. I turned my attention away from her and back onto the mess in the room, hoping it could serve as some sort of distraction from the whirlwind of thoughts that were spinning through my head. Whether he had meant it or not, by writing to his aunt, he had ended up causing more trouble for me with Mrs Ealing. I knew she wouldn't take her sister's comments lying down and that I would end up on the receiving end of whatever she had planned for me.

Until that day came, I just had to keep my head down and keep out of her way so she didn't have the ammunition she may have needed. First things first tackle the mess the twins had left behind so I couldn't be accused of not doing my job properly. If Mrs Ealing were to pass and see me doing nothing but talking to Matilda, I knew she would use it against me. I didn't want to ask Matilda to go, I liked the company, but I knew I would be in trouble were I to be caught standing around. Isolating myself from everyone in the family seemed like the most logical move. It allowed me to do my work and not have to worry about Mrs Ealing finding me doing nothing.

"I should get on with this," I said, gesturing to the mess behind me.

"I'll leave you to it. Don't worry so much, Rosie, you're starting to stress me out," she replied, shaking her head and smiling slightly.

"The day you feel stressed over anything would be the day the world implodes on itself."

"You're thinking of Robert, but I won't tell him that."

She grinned at me as she continued her walk down the hallway before disappearing down the stairs and out of sight. I groaned to myself and returned to the mess presented before me, wishing I had suggested taking the tea trays rather than dealing with the chaos. It just seemed to get worse the longer I looked at it and I had to look at it a lot. How the twins had managed to create such a mess without the nursery maid noticing or telling them off remained a mystery to me as I started to make an attempt to clean it all up.

I stuffed the pillows back into the cushions and placed them back onto the sofa at the far end of the room. Having the feathers returned to the pillows certainly made the room look a little cleaner, but the drawings on the walls just looked more obvious. I didn't think it would be possible to remove them unless the wall got repainted. Putting the drawings on the wall and crayon embedded into the carpet aside, I cleaned up anything I could. I stacked the books back on the shelf and threw the blocks into their storage box. By the time I was finished, the room looked fairly better.

With no method of removing the crayon from the wall or carpet, I returned to the depths of the kitchen. My knee felt a lot better after being used for longer than a few minutes and I no longer needed the use of the bannister to get down the stairs. Once again, the house seemed eerily quiet as I climbed down the stairs to the kitchen. The silence unnerved me, the same way it used to back at the factory. If it were too quiet, we knew something would either happen, or something had happened. I hated that the feeling had returned, that something was lurking around the corner waiting to happen.

"How did you go with the mess? Was it as bad as the nursery maid made it seem?" Miss Jenkins asked as I stepped into the kitchen.

"Worse, they've drawn all over the walls and crushed crayons into the carpet. I got the rest of it sorted out, but there was nothing I could do about the crayon," I said.

"They used to do that a lot when they were younger. Luckily, we develop a way to get it out of the carpet and off the walls. I'll send Esther up to clean the last of it, but we'll have to train you in the art of cleaning it up. They're bound to do it again."

"Well, I'll be praying they don't. Scrubbing crayon off walls is a pain, I would know, I used to paint and draw on the walls all the time."

"I would have hated to have looked after you when you were the twin's age, you sound worse than they are."

"I was. James and Matthew would agree. I caused more trouble then the three of them did, and they're all relatively close in age."

"Hm, well you can do the dishes whilst Esther sees to the wall. I need to go and see Doctor Ealing about luncheon for next week. I'd rather know ahead of time if we have company."

Miss Jenkins shook her head at me and grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil from the table before leaving me alone in the kitchen. Sighing to myself, I crossed the room to the sink and started to wash the mountain of dishes that had been left. The more I thought about it, the more of my chores at the house ended up being dishes, or some other variant of cleaning around the house. I didn't mind it all that much, I liked cleaning as it gave a sense of order to the chaos and order was exactly what I needed. Still, I would have liked to have done something else. Even Esther spent more time helping in the kitchen then I did, even if she had more experience cooking then me, it would have been nice to be considered for the opportunity.

With Miss Jenkins gone and Esther off who knows where I made my way through the dishes that had been piled up in the sink ready to be cleaned. One family seemed to have a lot of dishes for such a short period of time and I envied them for it. The longer I worked for them, saw the things they had and what they could do, the more I wished I could have been part of it as well. The children all had large bedrooms, four-poster beds and things they could call their own; things that belonged to them. I had to share a bed and had only the small collection of things that I had gathered, some of which came from Robert.

"Right, that's luncheon sorted for next week, no guests planned so we should be alright. Nothing too complex, how would you like to help prepare it? Give you a break from dishes at least," Miss Jenkins said as she entered the room. It felt as though she had read my mind.

"That would great. I think I've washed most of these dishes more than one-hundred times," I said jokingly as I placed the last plate on the drying wrack.

"Maybe one day I can take a day off and you and Esther can get the food ready, I can't remember the last time I had a holiday."

"We'd manage, though I can't guarantee the kitchen would survive."

"That's what I'm afraid of." She laughed. "Where's Esther got to? I asked her to collect the bedsheets an hour ago."

"I'm here, sorry. Mrs Ealing held me up, she wants to talk to Rosie," Esther said, stumbling into the room with her arms full of bedsheets.

"Me? Why?"

"She didn't say. I'd go now, though, she seems unimpressed. She's in the drawing-room"

"I haven't done anything!"

"We know that, Rosie. Go on, go, before she has a reason to be unhappy with you."

I threw a cloth across the room, watching it slide across the counter and almost fall onto the floor before I walked around the table and started the climb up to see Mrs Ealing. It may have only been a short distance from the kitchen to the drawing-room, but it felt as though it took forever to reach the top of the stairs. My knee ached as though it was telling me to go back to the kitchen, pretend that Mrs Ealing hadn't asked to see me and I just turned and walked in the opposite direction. I wanted to turn around and walk through the back door, to keep walking down the gravel path with no real direction in mind. Anything would be better than having my meeting with Mrs Ealing.

Sighing to myself, I reached the top of the stairs and slowly inched my way down the hallway and towards the drawing-room. The house sat silent, as though it was watching me and simply waiting for what would happen next. It felt like there were eyes everywhere and all of them were telling me to run until I couldn't run anymore. They were watching me and waiting. I creaked down the hallway and towards the drawing-room. My heartbeat loudly in my ear, my hands shook, and my palms grew sweaty as I walked through the doorway and saw Mrs Ealing standing in the middle of the room.

She didn't say anything as I entered the room, just stood there at stared at the wall behind my head. I didn't want to be the first one to speak, I knew she would only use it to hurt me in one way or another. Whatever she wanted to talk to me about, it wasn't a good thing and it certainly wouldn't do me any good to make the whole thing that much worse. I wanted it over and done with, but she seemed to determine to drag it out for as long as possible.

"My sister seemed to think you were the best thing to have happened to our household. Despite the trouble you've caused, the lack of work you have done and your influence over my son, she believes we did a good thing by bringing you here. My sister has never been one of the most intelligent people I've met, and I can't quite understand what she sees in you nor why she thinks you're so special. What I also struggle to comprehend is why on earth Robert felt the need to write to her about you in the first place. Could you answer that one for me?"

I said nothing.

"I didn't think so. My son thinks the world of you, and I don't know why, and I certainly can't understand how you have got him wrapped around your finger the way you do. There is something about you that he is infatuated with and that just isn't going to work here. I don't want you here, but I know Albert would be less than impressed if you suddenly disappeared with no logical explanation. I am going to get you out of those doors if it's the last thing I do, you mark my words and I have just the way to do it.

I watched as she crossed the room and grabbed a wooden cane that had been hidden behind the curtain. She knocked it on the floor as she approached me, passing by and closing the door behind me. By having the door open, I had viewed it as an escape route, a way out if things got a little hairy between the two of us. Yet she had just shut the door on that, and my escape route had been taken away from me and I had no way to leave if I needed to. Mrs Ealing moved behind me and walked back her spot in the middle of the room.

"Come here," she said, waving her finger at me.

"Why?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Because I said so!"

Swallowing the bile in my throat, I moved across the room as slowly as I possibly could. The floorboards squeaked with every step as I made my way towards her. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest and my hands shook so violently I thought I would have dropped anything I was holding. My hands were soaked with sweat and I wiped them on my apron in hopes that Mrs Ealing wouldn't notice. When I got to a spot right in front of her, she raised her hand up to stop me.

"Turn around."

I did as she asked me to and turned my attention towards the door.

I heard her footsteps as she grew closer before they fell silent.

A flash of pain travelled up my right leg and I fell to the ground.

~~~

A/N - I actually remembered to update today! This is the start of the chaos that is the next few chapters so I hope you're ready!

Also, a little bit of admin for you, Christmas and New Year both fall on a Wednesday which is the day after update day. The plan is to move it the Friday AFTER both these days. Making the updates on the 27th of December and the 3rd of January. This isn't set in stone and may change. 

To add to this, I don't think I'm going to get 35 chapters out of it, possibly 34 but I don't know. Meaning the book WILL be ending in January!

Anyways, what are your thoughts on the ending? Comment below!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to gimmesomeserotonin who has been silently voting away for each chapter. I appreciate you!

First Published - November 19th, 2019