“Jane,” Mr. Rathburn said in a low voice. “Do we have a spare bedroom?”
“I think there’s still one empty in your wing. I don’t know if it’s ready for a guest.”
“Could you dig up some towels and whatever else the room needs? Just leave them outside the door.” He looked past me, into the hallway behind me. “Is anyone else in the house?”
“Some of the staff, maybe,” I told him. “I passed Walter in the kitchen a while ago. I haven’t seen anyone since. Lucia is out, and all of your guests are still in the barn and the guesthouse.”
“Good, good.” He sounded somber. “Once you’ve taken care of the towels, get out to the barn and check on Maddy. Tell everyone I’ll be there soon. Keep them out of the house. And whatever you do, don’t mention Mason to anyone.” Then Mr. Rathburn left, with Ambrose Mason hurrying to keep up.
After I’d taken care of the towels and an extra blanket, I ran out to the barn and found Maddy right where I had left her. The band was milling around a buffet table; they all looked up when I entered. Behind the stage, Bianca paced back and forth. The look she gave me was as cold as that of a Bengal tiger eyeing a human on the other side of its wall of bars.
“Where is he?” Tom asked. “What’s taking him so long?”
“He said he’ll be here any moment,” I told them. “He had some urgent business to take care of.”
“We’re out of coffee,” Lonnie said. “And we’re low on sandwiches.”
I assured them I would let the cook know and said again that Mr. Rathburn would be back shortly. This seemed to pacify the band members, if not their agitated photographer. Why she so obviously disliked me, I had no real idea, and there wasn’t time to puzzle it out. I made sure Maddy was happily occupied, then ran off to the kitchen to find Walter. By the time I returned, Mr. Rathburn was back, and the rehearsal had started up again. The music lasted until sunset. For the rest of the day, throughout dinner, and at that evening’s party in the living room, I saw no trace of Ambrose Mason. And though I watched him closely, Mr. Rathburn didn’t look my way once.
CHAPTER 13
That night I fell asleep easily but woke abruptly a few hours later. The day’s storm clouds had cleared, and my room seemed flooded with moonlight despite the drawn venetian blinds. I sat up in bed, lifted up one of the slats, and observed an enormous full moon, its light transforming the familiar view from my window into something beautiful and strange.
Just then, a scream pierced the quiet. Loud enough to wake the entire house, it seemed to come from above me.
I froze, and for a moment there was an ominous silence. But then I heard more startling sounds: some kind of struggle just above my head, a crash like a piece of furniture being toppled over, and then glass shattering. And then a man’s raspy voice cried, “Help! Help! Help!” After a brief pause, he called out again. “Nico! Nico! Please… get up here.”
I heard footsteps, someone running down the hallway. There was more stomping above my head. Something heavy fell, then silence. I raced to Maddy’s room to check on her. Unbelievably, she slept on, so I returned to my room.
Had anyone else in the house heard? Maddy and I were the only ones with bedrooms on our wing. The wide playroom stood between us, and the walls of the house were thick and mostly soundproof. Even so, Linda and Amber, who slept on the floor below, must have heard the footsteps. I thought of Bianca on Mr. Rathburn’s side of the house and everyone else in the guesthouse, and wondered if the scream had woken any of them. I sat on the edge of my bed wondering what to do next when I heard voices coming from the end of the hall. One of them was Bianca’s; the other belonged to Mr. Rathburn. Apparently, Linda and Amber were there too.
“It’s nothing. One of the housekeepers had a nightmare,” he said. “You should go back to bed.”
Brenda, I thought to myself. But I hadn’t dreamed whatever had transpired on the floor above. My nerves vibrated, and my hands trembled.
“I couldn’t possibly get back to sleep,” Bianca said. “Whoever it was, I’d fire them if I were you.”
“I’ll take care of everything,” Mr. Rathburn replied. “Linda, would you go out to the guesthouse? If they’re awake over there, let them know it was nothing. Amber, you can go back to bed. Nothing more to see here.” He laughed dryly. “Move along.”
Bianca’s voice rose again. I could hear her say something in protest, though I couldn’t make out the words.
“You’ll be fine,” I heard Mr. Rathburn tell her. “I promise, there won’t be any more excitement tonight.”
Then all was quiet, both down the hall and on the third floor. Though everyone had heard the scream, apparently only Mr. Rathburn and I had heard the scuffling and the struggle. Something told me that Mr. Rathburn would need my help after all. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, pulled on shoes, and sat waiting until the knock on my door came at last.
“Jane?” It was Mr. Rathburn. I opened the door. He slipped in and closed it behind him. “You remember how you said you’d help me if I needed it?”
I nodded.
“We have to be quiet,” he said. “Do we have a first-aid kit?”
“There’s one in the downstairs bathroom, off the kitchen.”
“Can you go get it? And do we have any clean rags?” I nodded. “Good. Bring some to the third floor. Lots of them, as many as you can find. But be as quiet as you can.”
“Won’t I need a key?”
“Knock gently on the door at the top of the stairs. I’ll be listening for you.” I started toward the kitchen, but he called me back in an urgent whisper. “Jane! Are you afraid of blood?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” The question should have terrified me, but instead I felt strangely cool and competent — a feeling I’d had only one other time, when I got the call about my parents’ accident. That calm had accompanied me on the train back to Philadelphia, to the hospital morgue where I’d had to identify their bodies. It had enabled me to plan the funeral while my sister lay sobbing in bed and my brother was absent, off with his friends for a two-day drinking binge. It had gotten me through the funeral and the reading of the will, and had only deserted me when I was back on campus, suddenly weak with sorrow and alone in a dorm full of people.
Acting quickly, I gathered up the supplies, careful to make as little sound as possible. When I couldn’t find any clean rags, I raided my bureau for freshly washed cotton T-shirts. I climbed the creaky stairs as quietly as I could. As soon as I knocked on the low black door at the top of the steps, it opened, and I entered a room illuminated only by the moonlight that spilled in around the drawn shades.
“Wait here a moment,” Mr. Rathburn said, and disappeared through the door on the far side of the room. I heard him say something in sharp tones; a low voice mumbled a few syllables in reply. Then I heard another door farther back open and close, and then a muffled laugh. It must have been Brenda.
“I’m in here.” Mr. Rathburn called me into the inner room, where he stood beside a large sleigh bed. It was dark in this room too, except for an emergency flashlight set on a bedside table. Its beam fell on a figure stretched across the bed. I stepped closer. It was Ambrose Mason, his eyes wide with pain or fear, his full lips white and trembling. His pale shirt was soaked in blood on one side; it seeped into the bedspread under him.
“Give me the rags,” Mr. Rathburn ordered. I complied, and he balled several of them up and pressed them to the bloodiest portion of Mason’s chest.
Mason moaned and thrashed his head from side to side. His breath came in rapid bursts. “The doctor is on his way,” Mr. Rathburn told him. “You’ll be fine.”
“Has he lost a lot of blood?” I asked Mr. Rathburn, whispering so as not to panic Mason any further.
“The wound looks worse than it is.”
I touched Mason’s cheek; his skin felt damp. “He might be going into shock.” I’d taken a first-aid class to earn my babysitter’s license, and some of what I’d learned came
flooding back. “He’ll need a blanket for warmth… and one to elevate his feet.”
“Find some,” Mr. Rathburn said. “There must be blankets in here.” He stayed at Mason’s side, pressing down on the rags with a look of deep concentration.
In a nearby dresser, I found several quilts, rolled one up, and put it under his feet, then draped the other across the bottom half of his body.
“Is there gauze in the first-aid kit?” Mr. Rathburn asked. “Or a bandage? And some tape?”
I pulled a roll of gauze out of the box. “It doesn’t look like enough to wrap around his body,” I said.
“Never mind then. I need you to take over for me. Come over here. Pick up a couple more rags. Don’t peel off the ones that are already there; just put the fresh ones over them and press like I’m doing. As hard as you can.” I complied, leaning into the task with all my weight. Mason groaned again.
“I’ve got to get downstairs and listen for the doctor,” Mr. Rathburn told me. “I don’t want him ringing the doorbell and waking up the whole house. Keep putting pressure on the wound.”
I nodded.
“While I’m gone, Mason, don’t you dare say a word. And Jane?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t speak to him either. Don’t ask any questions. And whatever you do, stay away from that door.” He pointed to a heavy wooden door at the back of the room that was secured with a dead bolt. Though I’d been too concerned with Mason to notice, I now heard murmurings and sounds coming from behind the door.
“I’ll stay away,” I assured Mr. Rathburn. And he left, locking the door to the third floor behind him.
The minutes passed by agonizingly slowly. Mr. Mason seemed to grow sleepier and less agitated. Every so often, I would attempt a reassuring smile meant to convey that the doctor was on his way and that he’d be taken care of soon. Though I willed my hands to be steady, I could feel my composure beginning to desert me. Blood bloomed into the rags beneath my palms. What if Mason bled to death? What if I couldn’t stop him from going into shock? Worse — just behind that wooden door was the woman who had done this to him. Those strange sounds coming from behind the door — grunts and an occasional low chuckle — told me that Brenda was waiting on the other side for a chance to break free and do more harm. What was she? It was hard to imagine how any human being could look so ordinary by day but turn so murderous by night.
A fresh rag lay on the bed. With one hand still on Mason’s wound, I grabbed it and spread it over the others. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t come up with a logical answer to the questions that gnawed at me. Why would Mr. Rathburn risk his own safety, not to mention Maddy’s, to keep someone so dangerous locked away on the third floor? And what other secrets was he keeping?
It felt like hours before the doctor arrived, but it must have been more like thirty minutes. Copilot barked, and soon I heard a car creep up the driveway, then halt by the side of the house. Moments later, Mr. Rathburn arrived in the company of a short man with disheveled gray hair. I recognized him as the doctor who had come to the house once when Maddy had an earache and a fever. “Step aside,” he told me. He bent over Mason and checked under the rags. “The bleeding’s almost stopped,” he said. Then he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the patient’s arm. We silently waited for the result. “He’s at the low end of normal.”
“Am I dying?” Mason asked. It was, I realized, the first time I’d heard his voice. He had an accent I couldn’t quite pin down — Spanish, maybe.
“You should be fine with some antibiotics and stitches.” The doctor looked up at Mr. Rathburn. “This is an ugly wound. You say she used a steak knife to do this?”
“She tried to,” Mr. Rathburn said. “I got it away from her, but not before she’d done some damage. There’s another cut on his shoulder, up near the neck.”
The doctor shifted for a better view, pushing Mason’s torn shirt aside. “This one wasn’t done with a knife. These look like teeth marks.” He sounded horrified.
“She bit me,” Mason murmured. “Nico got the knife away from her, and she came after me with her teeth.” He sounded agitated. “I didn’t know how to stop her. I didn’t want to hurt her. She caught me by surprise. When I came in, she looked so peaceful.” The doctor worked, removing Mason’s shirt, cleaning the wounds with an antiseptic solution, and wrapping gauze around Mason’s chest.
“I warned you, didn’t I?” Mr. Rathburn said. “You didn’t have to go in alone; you could have waited until morning and brought me in with you.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Mason said. “All I could think of was her, up here — how lonely she must be.”
“She’s not lonely!” Mr. Rathburn snapped. “I see to it that she’s not lonely. I take good care of her.”
The doctor glared at him. “Don’t get him excited,” he said. “Just give me another minute or two, and I’ll be able to drive him to the hospital. He’s got a third wound here on his arm. Another bite, it looks like.”
“She tried to suck my blood. She said she was going to dig out my heart and eat it.”
“Enough!” Mr. Rathburn’s face twisted. “Stop talking!” He glanced over at me, then back at Mason. “I warned you not to…”
“Promise me you’ll take good care of her,” Mason said in a choked voice.
Mr. Rathburn’s tone softened. “I’ve always taken good care of her. You’ve seen she’s all right. Now you can go home and leave everything to me.” He turned my way for the first time since he’d reentered the room. “Jane, you’d better go downstairs and wash the blood off your hands. I’ll be down in a minute. I’ll knock on your door.”
I complied, taking a quick, hot shower, glad to clean myself off. I dressed in fresh clothes and waited in the chair beside my bed. Before long, Mr. Rathburn knocked on the door. I let him in and closed the door behind us so our voices wouldn’t carry. “How are you?” he asked me. “Besides exhausted?”
“I’m fine,” I said, “but I was terrified up there when I was alone with Mr. Mason. I thought Brenda might break down the door or pick the lock.”
“It’s a very thick door. Reinforced with steel. And the locks are state-of-the-art. Besides that dead bolt you could see, there are four other locks. I wouldn’t have left you up there if I thought you were in even the tiniest bit of danger.”
“Is she still going to live here?” I asked. “What if she found another way out? She could hurt you. Or Maddy.”
“There are no other ways out. We’re safe. And I’ll make sure that nothing hurts you, ever. You believe me, right?”
I told him that I did, and he took my hand. “Your fingers are still ice-cold,” he said. “How is that possible?” He pressed the palm of his other hand to my forehead. “Are you sick?”
“I don’t think so.”
There were so many questions I wanted to ask him about what had happened. Why was it that Mason cared so much about Brenda? And why had he shown up at Thornfield Park? But I could hardly concentrate. Mr. Rathburn’s hand on my face was large and slightly, pleasantly rough. I could smell the faintest trace of his aftershave — familiar by now — with its hint of wood smoke. I shut my eyes. “Your forehead’s hot. I think you have a fever.”
“I’m sure I don’t. I’m just…” I trailed off, not knowing how to end that sentence. When I opened my eyes, he was still looking at me. Dizzy and afraid of what I might say or do next, I took a step backward.
After a long moment, he looked at me quizzically, then broke into an absentminded smile. “So tell me, Jane. What do you think of my new girlfriend? Don’t we look good together?”
I reached out for the corner of my dresser to brace myself until the dizziness passed. “Yes,” I said after a moment. “You do.” Why on earth was he asking me about Bianca now, after all that had just happened? How could he seem so caring one moment and so callous the next? I shook my head from side to side, trying to clear my thoughts.
“Isn’t she everything I could want in a woman
? Gorgeous, sophisticated, talented?”
“She’s all of those things.”
“Don’t you think we’ll be happy together?”
I couldn’t think of a reply that was both truthful and polite, so I kept silent.
“I want your honest opinion. Should I ask her to marry me? I’ve been alone too long, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Rathburn.”
“Would you drink a toast to me at my wedding reception? Or you could say a word or two at the ceremony. Read a poem, maybe. Would you do that for me?”
“I’ll do whatever you need me to.” I shut my eyes a second. They felt so heavy; I barely had the energy to open them again.
“I’ll let you sleep,” Mr. Rathburn said. “The sun will be up soon, and I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to our guests. Sweet dreams.”
And he left me to dreams that were anything but sweet.
CHAPTER 14
Dawn came too soon. I had fallen asleep in my clothes and had slept only fitfully. Just before I threw last night’s jeans into the laundry, I found my cell phone in the pocket. It had been turned off for days. I hadn’t received a phone call on it in weeks, maybe even months. Still, I turned it on to check for messages, just in case, and to my surprise discovered that I had three. I played them back.
All were from my sister, Jenna, her voice pitched increasingly higher from one to the next.
“Jane? This is Jenna. Listen, call me back, okay. It’s important.” The second ran on awhile: “Jane, you’ve got to get back to me. Where are you, anyway? Mark called, and he’s in New York City. He wants to stay with me. David’s really pissed, and I don’t know what to do.” David was her investment-banker fiancé. “Mark keeps calling. He sounds terrible. He scares me. You’ve got to come.” The third was brief again: “Jesus, Jane, are you dead or what? Don’t you answer this thing?”
I waited until midmorning to call her back; Jenna had never been an early riser. She answered the phone on the first ring. At the sound of my voice, she groaned in frustration, then launched into a monologue. “Oh my God, where have you been? Never mind. I need you here right now. Mark’s been sleeping on my couch, and David’s about to throw him out onto the street. He’s gotten wasted every night since he’s been here, and he’s been absolutely horrible to me, so unpleasant you wouldn’t believe it.”
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