“In this moment, Miss Eyre, you will offer me anything?”
“I will, sir!”
He lifted his weight long enough to remove the clamps from my nipples! My cry was swallowed by the raging weather.
As ripples of pain stunned me, he impaled me.
“Orgasm, miss, and do it now!”
With great gratitude, I did. I sobbed out my completion. I was his, his, his, his.
He made some sounds that were of purely masculine tones and then shouted my name. How I loved that I brought him the same satiation he brought me.
My entire countenance was replete. I was hardly aware of his tender ministrations as he loosened my wrists and gathered me close. I had said I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but in truth, I did prefer he gather me against his athletic form.
I dozed in his arms. And when I awoke his lips were pressed to my forehead. I was aware of the storm still in fury, but in my bed, my life, my heart, peace prevailed. “Until the morn, Miss Eyre.”
“I look forward to being able to wake up next to you, sir.”
“Soon, my future bride. The day cannot arrive soon enough to suit my needs.”
He left me, but I did not yearn for him. The bed still felt warm from his body. The knowledge we would soon be together forever sustained me.
Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adèle came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away. I had been aware of nothing save the storm Mr Rochester caused within me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered if it were a dream. Between my legs, my flesh tingled. My bottom felt a small tingle. My nipples had a delicious ache. The feel of fabric against them made them instantly harden.
I took all of the items and placed them in a drawer, hidden beneath other things. As I touched each of the items, I had an uncommon flash of uncertainty, of hesitancy. Was that I who had behaved in that manner? Had I screamed my pleasure? Had I defied him and begged him by turns? He had asked me to be his bride, and I had accepted. Did this mean he loved me as I loved him? I could not be certain of the reality till I had seen Mr Rochester again, and heard him renew his words of love and promise.
While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain, there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look, but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on, it seemed no attire had ever so well become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.
I was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night and to feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar-woman and her little boy—pale, ragged objects both—were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse—some three or four shillings, good or bad, they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang, but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart.
Mrs Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad countenance, and saying gravely—“Miss Eyre, will you come to breakfast?” During the meal she was quiet and cool, but I could not undeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give explanations and so must she. I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I met Adèle leaving the schoolroom.
“Where are you going? It is time for lessons.”
“Mr Rochester has sent me away to the nursery.”
“Where is he?”
“In there,” pointing to the apartment she had left and I went in, and there he stood.
“Come and bid me good morning,” said he. I gladly advanced and it was not merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I received, but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural, it seemed genial to be so well loved, so caressed by him.
“Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty,” said he, “truly pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my mustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips, the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?” —I had green eyes, reader, but you must excuse the mistake, for him they were new-dyed, I suppose.
“It is Jane Eyre, sir.”
“Soon to be Jane Rochester,” he added, “in four weeks, Janet, not a day more. Do you hear that?”
I did, and I could not quite comprehend it, it made me giddy. The feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than was consistent with joy—something that smote and stunned. It was, I think almost fear.
“You blushed, and now you are white, Jane, what is that for?”
“Because you gave me a new name—Jane Rochester and it seems so strange.”
“Yes, Mrs Rochester,” said he, “young Mrs Rochester—Fairfax Rochester’s girl-bride.”
“It can never be, sir. It does not sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species, to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale—a day-dream.”
“Which I can and will realise. I shall begin today. This morning I wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his keeping—heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope to pour them into your lap, for every privilege, every attention shall be yours that I would accord a peer’s daughter, if about to marry her.”
“Oh, sir!—Never rain jewels! I don’t like to hear them spoken of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange. I would rather not have them.”
“I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead—which it will become, for nature, at least, has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings.”
“No, no, sir! Think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in another strain. Don’t address me as if I were a beauty. I am your plain, Quakerish governess.”
“You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my heart—delicate and aërial.”
“Puny and insignificant, you mean. You are dreaming, sir—or you are sneering. For God’s sake don’t be ironical!”
“I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,” he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. “I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.”
“And then you won’t know me, sir and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady’s robe and I don’t call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly, far too dearly to flatter you.” I beseeched him. What we had was honest. I didn’t want him to besmirch it. To drape me in jewels was not fitting with who I am. “Don’t flatter me.”
He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation. “This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be married in four weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below yonder and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun, to French vineyards and Italian plains and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record, she shall taste, too, of the life of
cities and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others.”
“Shall I travel?—And with you, sir?”
“You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples, at Florence, Venice, and Vienna, all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you, wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also. Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions, now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter.”
I laughed at him as he said this. “I am not an angel as you have seen with your very own eyes,” I asserted, “and I will not be one till I die, I will be myself, as much devil as angel overtakes me in reaction to your form. Mr Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you, which I do not at all anticipate.”
“What do you anticipate of me?”
“For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now—a very little while and then you will turn cool and then you will be capricious and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you, but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again—like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.”
“Distasteful! And like you again! I think I shall like you again, and yet again, and I will make you confess I do not only like, but love you—with truth, fervour, constancy.”
“Yet are you not capricious, sir?”
“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil of which you spoke when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper, but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, to the body unfettered by convention, and the character that bends but does not break—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and true.”
Questioned I, for I had a taste of his experience, “Tender, sir?”
“Tenderness wears many cloaks, Miss Eyre.” He drew his heavy brows together. It made him appear serious as well as intimate.
He did not need to speak aloud for me to perfectly ascertain his meaning, something only we shared.
“You shall experience many, many more tastes of my tenderness.”
I felt an unaccountable flush steal up my face.
Using his very strong fingertip, my master tipped back my chin. He needed use no command for I knew—just from his motion—what he wanted. I met his eyes.
“You shall wear my jewels as my bride, and I shall abide no dissembling. I will offer no disrespect to your Quakerish ways—indeed all of your character appeals to me—but a necklace must certainly be acceptable to even one such as you, and it will serve as an outer acknowledgment to the world—even though the world shall not know this as such—that you are my humble, submissive servant in ways they cannot imagine. But you will know, and I will be delighted to see the outward reminder—that you serve at my whim, that you long to please me as I please you. Do you understand, Jane Rochester?”
Thought I, He would bedeck me in order to mark his ownership?
As if he had correctly read my thoughts from the furrow of my brow, he continued, “The sign will be subtle, gentle servant, but you will wear my symbol—you will feel my yoke.”
“As a joy and not a burden?”
“That is my express desire—yes.”
As Mr Rochester—my master—had told me, that was the ultimate freedom, the ability to choose, to accept what he offered for he was not one to force my hand, in fact, with his behaviour, he’d more than once attempted to dissuade my attraction with the opposite effect. I loved him as I could not conceive of loving another.
Of everything he had said, however, one thing registered more strongly than any other, he would be true to one who had character. Asked I, “Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Do you know what it is? Did you ever love such a one?”
“I love it now.”
“But before me, if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult standard?” How I yearned to believe he was not capricious!
“I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and as you said earlier, and never was the truth more well-spoken—you master me—you seem to submit greedily, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced—conquered and the influence is sweeter than I can express and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?”
“I was thinking, sir—you will excuse the idea. It was involuntary—I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers—”
“You were, you little elfish—”
“Hush, sir! You don’t talk very wisely just now; any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a year hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or pleasure to grant.”
“Ask me something now, Jane—the least thing, I desire to be entreated—”
“Indeed I will, sir. I have my petition all ready.”
“Speak! But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall swear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool of me. Truly, I question who is the slave and who is the master.”
I had to try again. It was more than my liberty at stake, it was very nature of the way he would honour me and my character going forward for the rest of our lives. Was I chattel, or was I to meet him as an equal? I entreated him, “Not at all, sir. I ask only this. Don’t send for the jewels, and don’t crown me with roses, you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there.”
“I might as well ‘gild refined gold.’ I know it, your request is granted then—for the time.”
My master had relented!
“I will remand the order I despatched to my banker. But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift to be withdrawn, try again.”
“Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is much piqued on one point.”
He looked disturbed. “What? What?” he said hastily. “Curiosity is a dangerous petition, it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every request—”
“But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir.”
“Utter it, Jane, but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into, perhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate.”
“Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you think I am a Jew-usurer, seeking good investment in land? I would much rather have all your confidence. You will not exclude me from your confidence if you admit me to your heart?”
“You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Jane, but for God’s sake, don’t desire a useless burden! Don’t long for poison—don’t turn out a downright Eve on my hands!”
“Why not, sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked to be conquered, and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you. Don’t you think I had better take advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and entreat—even cry and be sulky if necessary—for the sake of a mere essay of my power?”
“I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach, presume, and the game is up.”
“Is it, sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now! Your eyebrows have become as thick as my finger, and your forehead resembles what, in some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, ‘a blue-piled thunderloft’. That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?”
“If that will be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you to ask, thing—out with it?”
“There, you are less than civil now and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery. I had rather be a thing than an angel. This is what I have to ask—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished to marry Miss Ingram?”
“Is that all? Thank God it is no worse!” And now he unknit his black brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well pleased at seeing a danger averted. As he was wont, he momentarily tightened his hand against my skull. I was prisoner, yet I knew I could unlock the cage at any moment.
“I think I may confess,” he continued after releasing his grip, “even although I should make you a little indignant, Jane—and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet, by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.”
“Of course I did.” I refused to be deterred. “But to the point if you please, sir—Miss Ingram?”
“Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, because I wished to render you as madly in love with me as I was with you and I knew jealousy would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that end.”
“Excellent! Now you are small—not one whit bigger than the end of my little finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act in that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram’s feelings, sir?”
“Her feelings are concentrated in one—pride and that needs humbling. Were you jealous, Jane?”
“Never mind, Mr Rochester, it is in no way interesting to you to know that. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not suffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won’t she feel forsaken and deserted?”
“Impossible!—when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted me, the idea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her flame in a moment.”
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