The Factory Girl // Book 1 in the Rosie Grey series

Chapter Twenty-Two

When my nerves had straightened themselves out, I turned and headed back towards the kitchen, the rain starting to fall a little more. It ran down the back of my dress and pooled on the top of my bonnet before running down the side of my face. Still, I walked at my regular pace, twisting the handkerchief over and over again in a repetitive motion until I reached the small kitchen side door. The laundry I had dumped in the doorway earlier had been moved, the door being propped open by a small brick rather than the heavy basket of laundry. Sighing, I pushed the door open and stepped into the kitchen, letting the door slam back against the brick with a loud crash.

"What on earth happened to you? One minute you're leaving the laundry on the floor and the next your returning dripping wet with mud all over dress and stockings," Miss Jenkins said when she caught sight of me standing in the doorway. The laundry I had delivered earlier had been draped over the brazier to fully dry, Esther still adding the occasional piece of clothing to the pile.

"The wind caught a handkerchief and threw it across the grounds, thought it would be better to have it then to leave it. It'll need to be washed again, mind," I said, holding up the handkerchief so Miss Jenkins could see the state it was in.

"If it was going to involve you getting covered in mud I would have told you to leave it. Your dress is going to need a good scrub before you can do any work in the house, maybe it's a good thing you're working in the garden for the next few days."

"I can give this a scrub before bed, it'll be fine in the morning."

"Hm, it better be, we don't have a spare. As for the handkerchief, just throw it with the other laundry in the other room and it'll be washed tomorrow. Do it quickly, despite the weather your work in the garden isn't over and Samuel will be waiting for you. Don't forget to take something to eat before you go, you barely ate anything at lunch."

"Okay."

I screwed the handkerchief into a ball in the palm of my hand and left the kitchen, heading into the small side room where I dropped the cloth into the basket I had left behind earlier on. Taking a breath, I pressed my back against one of the walls to try and calm my nerves, but it felt as though they were never going to return to normal, whatever normal happened to be. The event with the cupboard had put me on edge and the interaction with Alexander even more so, it felt as though nothing was going to work itself out no matter how much I may have wanted it to. The ongoing threat just kept changing and warping into something new, something that I couldn't fight back. It was a never-ending struggle.

Pushing myself off the wall, I pulled Esther's shawl tighter around my shoulders and headed back into the kitchen, grabbing one of the sandwiches off the plate, but not eating it. I stuffed the sandwich into my pocket, to give the illusion that I was going to eat it whilst outside, and left the kitchen, not even giving Miss Jenkins or Esther the chance to say anything. The rain that had been falling earlier had stopped, but the mist and fog remained, covering the landscape in a darkness that felt inescapable. I had no idea where Samuel was, but in a hurry to find something to distract myself, I crossed the garden towards the stables.

As I crossed the garden, I took the sandwich from my pocket and threw it into the woods, hoping a bird or animal would get it before Miss Jenkins found out I hadn't eaten it. It wasn't as though I wanted to lie to her, I certainly didn't want to upset her all over again, I just didn't think I could stomach the food. Whenever I got nervous, I couldn't eat. It had happened before the factory when I was a small girl living with my family, but at the factory, food was so scarce and infrequent that I had to eat it, even when nerves got the better of me. Since leaving the factory, food was once again in abundance and I was back to eating nothing when I got nervous and recent events meant I wouldn't be eating large quantities of anything for a little while.