Jane Steele

by Lyndsay Faye

  “The heroine emerges.” The accompanying smile was a faintly glinting sickle. He approached me. “Oh, Jane, have you been crying all this while?”

  “Some.”

  “God help us, you have every right, only I cannot bear to see it. You are unaware, I think, of the effect your misery has upon me.”

  “Perhaps so,” I owned as another drop escaped.

  He brushed it away with an almost reverential touch, then gestured at a chair and abruptly returned behind the desk. “Had you been a precious lamb and I a doting shepherd who found it rent by wolves, I couldn’t feel any more harrowed over this—but you are not a lamb, thank Christ for that, you are a lioness and have no need of my bloody incompetent safeguarding. I shall make this all up to you in any way I can, however.”

  “I wondered …” Lowering myself into the chair, I hesitated. “I would appreciate an advance upon my wages.”

  “Of course.” He was already pulling the cheque-book from the drawer. “How much?”

  “Whatever you think fair, Mr. Thornfield.”

  An efficient scratching sounded. “Will a hundred pounds do?”

  “You don’t owe me a hundred pounds!” I exclaimed.

  “Must I listen to her talk utter tripe so early in the morning?” he muttered, gripping the blotter. “Here—payment for initial services rendered, including delivering historical, scientific, deportmental, and elocutionary lessons translated into equine form, not to mention reparations for medical disasters. If you want more, you have only to say.”

  Swallowing, I placed the cheque in my reticule with the two letters. I did this, reader, because the most idiotic thing that Jane Eyre ever did other than to leave in the first place was to depart without her pearl necklace and half Mr. Rochester’s fortune, which he would gladly have given her. If she had been eaten by a bear upon fleeing penniless into the wilderness, I should have shaken that bear’s paw.

  “How cheerless you look still,” he reflected, stormy eyes feathering at their corners. “Come, ask me for something else so that I can say yes, saving only a trunk containing half a million in bauble-draped dolls, for damned if I’ve got it.”

  “So much?”

  “Yes, blast the cursed thing.”

  I cleared my throat. “Mr. Thornfield, I came to tell you my things are packed.”

  He scarcely seemed surprised, and soon I fathomed why. “Do you prefer to take a bite of breakfast with me first, or shall I carry ’em over to the cottage so you can dine with Sahjara? I’ll be glad of your company provided you can stomach mine, but you must wish to see her.”

  I twisted my fingers together in my lap. “Mr. Thornfield, I am quitting Highgate House. I cannot stay here.”

  Mere seconds had passed since he had called me a lamb he should have dreaded to see injured; even were I to etch the words I am now penning straight into the flesh of my arm, the slices would not cut me so thoroughly as his expression did. Far from protesting, Charles Thornfield froze in surprise, then seemed to crumple, as if taking a blow which was not unexpected.

  “No, it isn’t that,” I pleaded. “It’s not your story, nor the distress I was caused—I want to hear all of your woes, and I’d wield a knife for your sake a thousand times over, but you honestly cannot want me to have charge of your ward.”

  “Why the devil not?” he demanded hoarsely.

  “Because … because you know me to be a murderer.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Jane, that makes a neatly matched pair of us. We’ll set up snug as salt and pepper cellars and Sardar can give sermons to us in the garden of a Sunday.”

  Mr. Thornfield’s shoulders bristled after this statement was hurled at me; but it was all bravado, for he searched my eyes as if all his many missed turnings were mapped in them.

  “I … But of course, you were in two wars,” I stammered. “That isn’t the same thing at all.”

  Charles Thornfield drew a stuttering breath—but instead of speaking, he brushed a hand over his lips, shutting his eyes in despair.

  “This is why I cannot stay,” I cried. Rushing to the desk, I took both his gloved hands, which shook like the fine tremor in the bow after the arrow has flown. “You could tell me all and never diminish yourself in my estimation, but these half confidences are like Solomon’s suggestion of cutting a child in half. I understand what it is to feel so myself, for you know I have secrets, and it would never be enough, sharing fractions when I’m the greediest soul in shoe leather. I should blurt it all out, every sordid sin, and want the same of you, be petty and selfish and the most hateful person you’ve ever known when you deny me.”

  “That is the most whopping pack of calumnies I have ever heard,” he husked, shifting my hands in his and studying them where they sat cradled. “Take ’em back this instant. You could never be hateful. And Sahjara will …” He shook his head, still not raising his eyes. “I hardly know what to say to her. Or to Sardar, either.”

  “Tell them I ruined everything, that I always ruin everything.”

  “Stop this,” he growled. “It was my own wretched fault. You are a young woman—intelligent, beautiful, vibrant. Why should you wish to live with a pair of ruined men in a house full of ghosts?”

  “But I never minded that! Only you ought to be free to see ghosts without my demanding to know where the bodies are buried. I’ve always wanted too much, sir—your not wanting me back doesn’t make you culpable.”

  “I never said I didn’t want you.”

  “You could say it now,” I requested, heart hammering.

  “No.” He glanced up at last. Whatever gnawed him, it had burrowed through to the bone. “I could not say that, Jane.”

  “Heaven help me, this is madness.” I leant forward, half-seated on his desk and inches from his weathered features. “The whole truth, is that what you want—my truth in exchange for your own? It could quite literally cost me my life, I … You know what happened when Ghosh attacked me, and—”

  “That was self-defence, you raving—”

  “But I’d not care, I wouldn’t, not so long as you loved me. I should be the happiest woman on earth if you did. Anyone would be.”

  “The last one wasn’t.”

  I suspect something else would have happened there in that cosy study, our lips parted and eyes ablaze with both craving and restraint, had we not heard steadily approaching footfalls.

  “Jane!” he protested when I pulled away, but I turned my back as he rose, composing myself, and so it was in the mirror above the hearth that I first saw the door swing open following a confident knock and Inspector Sam Quillfeather enter the room.

  I did not scream; it was a near thing, however.

  “Oh, gracious me, what was I thinking barging in so?”

  Teeth set tight as a ship’s hull and eyes glued to the mirror, I took in Mr. Quillfeather. He had aged, but not diminished, and the perennial forward sweep of his spine and the exaggerated arches of his nose and chin and brow would already have imparted an impression of relentless momentum without the additional trajectory of his steel-grey shock of hair as he swept off his shabby beaver hat.

  “Quillfeather.” My employer quickly forced his features into neutrality, but this only left him resembling a tattered shoreline after a squall.

  “I’ll come back after surveying the cellar?” Mr. Quillfeather proposed, voice retaining the old questioning lilt. “I’m before my time, I see—yes, three full minutes! Won’t you forgive me? I’ll just—”

  “No, no, it’s all right.” Mr. Thornfield coughed. “Inspector Sam Quillfeather, may I introduce Miss Jane Stone, Sahjara’s governess?”

  There was nothing for it: I forced my fists to unclench and turned to face the gallows.

  He might not recognise you, not after so many years and so much sorrow, I told myself.

  Gallantly, he made a neat bow over my hand; and then his eyes met mine, variegated hazel and canny as ever, and a spark flared to life, and I was caught. For Highgate House had bee
n mine before my disappearance and here I was again, and he could not help but know me.

  “Mrs. Stone, I take it?” he clarified. “It is very good to see you again in these parts. A country widow and so young?”

  “No indeed, she comes to us from London.”

  Mr. Quillfeather studied me, and then Mr. Thornfield added his curious gaze to the already potent atmosphere, and I was just considering the benefits of throwing myself into the fireplace when the inspector waved his hand in the air.

  “Of course, of course, I must have momentarily mistook her? The older I get, the more everything and everyone manages to remind me of, well, of something or someone else entirely? Pleased to meet you, Miss Stone.”

  “Likewise,” I managed.

  The floor was opening like a pit beneath me, gravity turned upside down.

  “Was Miss Stone affected by these dreadful events?” Mr. Quillfeather asked, politely addressing Mr. Thornfield.

  The trail of bodies, oh God, he knows, he must know, first Edwin for certain and then Vesalius Munt in all likelihood, and now there just happens to be another carcass needs burying and here I—

  Mr. Thornfield hesitated not a whit. “Miss Stone arrived downstairs first following the crash which alerted us, and suffered injury at Jack Ghosh’s hands—but thankfully, he was already bleeding out. I’ll show you the window and the glass, naturally, but it’s all quite straightforward. Hoisted upon his own petard at last, if you’ll pardon my satisfied tone, Quillfeather.”

  “Nothing to pardon, my good man! You suspect Sack’s behind this?”

  “I should be a simpleton not to.”

  “Yes, yes, we’ll work it out between us, won’t we? How was the young lady injured?”

  “Torn scalp. It bled considerably, and she nary made a sound. If you ask me, the blackguard could have died for that alone and I should have said good riddance,” Mr. Thornfield droned in his haughtiest tone even as his eyes dared me to contradict him.

  “Might I see, Miss Stone?” Sam Quillfeather asked gently.

  What could I do? I bent my head, and Mr. Thornfield cupped my nape in a tender touch I did not think planned, and Mr. Quillfeather tutted, “Shameful, Thornfield, simply shameful,” and I raised my face after a gentle press to my neck preceded both men stepping back.

  “What luck it was only a minor insult?” Again Mr. Quillfeather turned to Mr. Thornfield for confirmation, and the latter nodded curtly. Then the inspector glanced back at me.

  “A painful hurt, and a lucky escape,” he repeated. “Frankly, it … reminds me of something, Miss Stone?”

  A torn sleeve and a cousin dead at the bottom of a ravine. My mouth turned instantly dry.

  “Jane, why don’t you lie down for a little?” Mr. Thornfield suggested, the gash between his brows thickening. “These have been trying times, and for no one more than yourself. Go to the parlour and try the settee—I’ll be along after I post Quillfeather here, all right?”

  “Just the thing—can you make it unescorted, Miss Stone?” the inspector asked, bending forward solicitously.

  “Yes,” said I. “Please don’t concern yourselves.”

  “We’ll talk further soon,” Charles Thornfield said, voice as tight as it was fond. “Sleep if you can, but we shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

  “Take your time. Excuse me, gentlemen.”

  When I walked into the corridor, I paused for only a second; one glance at the packed trunk persuaded me to leave it behind. It contained nothing I wanted, not without Mr. Thornfield, and I carried the cheque and my collection of letters in my reticule. Walking at first, then sprinting, I raced for the stables and ordered Nalin saddled and after stealing the horse he had given me, I rode hell for leather towards the village.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.

  I left the spirited mare in the care of the inn, leaving explicit instructions that it should be returned to Highgate House and whatever man they sent would be compensated; this transaction complete, I booked a seat on the next coach with coin collected writing gallows ballads, which stock had not been depleted. Then I bought a penny roll and sat upon a bench outside the inn and began numbly to eat, knowing the miles ahead to be slow and dreary as the Thames.

  I had an hour’s worth, more or less, of a head start, and the gallop had taken a mere ten minutes. The coach, meanwhile, should leave in half an hour, and perhaps Mr. Thornfield has not yet been told by Mr. Quillfeather I pushed a child over a cliff and speared a headmaster through the neck, perhaps—

  “Miss Stone?”

  Thankfully I had forced the last of the roll down, else I should have suffocated; there stood Mr. Sardar Singh, warmly bundled, a sheaf of papers tucked under his arm, his the only head in the sluggish trickle of pedestrians which had been wrapped in an elaborate configuration of sky blue (which doubtless accounted for the hostile stares). He was accompanied by Mrs. Garima Kaur, who was recording something in a small pocketbook; her gaunt face looked still more stark than usual, her eyes lost in the curves of her skull.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, shrinking. “What are you doing here, Mr. Singh?”

  “Picking up blank death certificates for Charles from the village physician—we’re not quite outfitted fully, and are to meet with Mr. Sam Quillfeather today.”

  “Yes, he’s there at the house.”

  I knew I did not sound right; I hated that I did not sound right. Mr. Singh turned to Mrs. Kaur, conferring in Punjabi. She looked at me so oddly, a mingling of inquisitiveness and something I could not identify, that I averted my eyes; thus I only saw in my periphery that, after a muted request, Mrs. Kaur began walking briskly back in the direction of Highgate House.

  “We are quite alone, Miss Stone, unless you wish it otherwise,” I heard Mr. Singh state.

  My vision blurred until I was seeing from the bottom of a lake; then the bench squeaked and a hand was at my elbow.

  “What in heaven’s name is— Has something else happened, Miss Stone?”

  “Nothing to speak of.”

  “Miss Stone, please know I would hold any confidence from you under eternal lock and key.”

  “It isn’t that I don’t trust you.”

  “Then please assure me that you’re all right,” he insisted more strongly.

  Several seconds passed.

  “I’m not all right,” I choked at last. “I cannot remain in Mr. Thornfield’s company.”

  Ascertaining what the stuffy, sausage-smelling citizens of that hamlet thought of a Sikh dressed as an Englishman wrapping his arms around a governess as she sobbed soundlessly into his coat would be quite impossible, for I could see nothing whatsoever. However many stares we garnered, the activity served a dual purpose; my heart was breaking, so the simple comfort was appreciated; and if I keened over cruel fate and lost love, I should not have to explain I was also running away to London to escape execution.

  “Yes, there … that’s better,” he said as I calmed. “Miss Stone, may I ask what brought matters to this state?”

  His grey eyes were bright with compassion when I pulled away. After he had passed me his handkerchief and sat there patiently as the quaking in my shoulders lessened, I found I did indeed wish to speak with him, and still had fifteen minutes before my coach departed.

  “Forgive me for making such a scene.”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s just … the night I killed that scoundrel, Mr. Thornfield told me about your sister and Sahjara’s abduction and the trunk, and it’s horrible you were dragged into such a nightmare, and I know you both to be honourable, but he says he’s a murderer and he won’t say how or when, and he won’t say he doesn’t want me, he won’t say anything at all of consequence, nor touch me, nor trust me, and I cannot b
ear it any longer.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Then your sorrow is partly my doing, and I have been gravely at fault.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Charles’s refusal to touch living people.”

  My mouth must have gaped overlong for, passing his fingertips over his beard, he continued after a brief reflection.

  “Charles emulates me, always has done. Even when I have tried to prevent him. But the specific point I am making, Miss Stone,” Mr. Singh said, measuring his words, “is that I am both devout and monastic, and I think Charles may well have confused the two. I have never been married. I have no interest in marriage or its accompanying joys.”

  I stared, yes, but he did not seem ruffled. “You have never loved, then?”

  “That is not remotely what I meant,” he corrected mildly.

  “Oh. You are …”

  I trailed off, helpless; after he had registered shock, he shook his head.

  “No,” he answered firmly. “Ah, I see why you—I beg your pardon. Yes, of course I love Charles, but no.”

  I thought a little longer. “You are like a priest? Devoted to God and to study?”

  “There we have it,” he approved before the shadow returned to his face. “But you must understand, it is very easy for someone who is not tempted by flesh to be celibate, and I have always been so—content to watch the moon rise, to try a new spice, to practise the chakkar but never use it to harm. When I was small, I dreamt of sitting under a tree, waiting for God to possess me with divine knowledge which would incinerate my very soul. If God told me to give up strong coffee, I would feel that loss keenly, and God would thus honour my sacrifice. But I do not actually long for the thing I abstain from—which is not abstinence at all. So I am simply wondering whether, in my own infinite ignorance, I contributed to this great error Charles has made.”