Jane Steele (21 page)

“A few, perhaps,” he said at length.

I knew better than to press this point. “What did you think of London?”

Relieved I had shifted topics, Mr. Thornfield answered readily. “It’s filthy, and wet, and hides a brutal soul behind majestic walls. Its people are alternately snobbish or base, and if I didn’t come from a culture of warriors, I’d say it was the most savage city I’d ever seen. I thought it glorious, of course, from the instant it sullied my boots.”

“I loved it as well.”

“Yes, and if there are bits of yourself which you should prefer to toss in the gutter . . .”

“You can shed your skin.”

“And no one the wiser.”

“Still. It was by far the most crowded place I’ve ever been lonesome,” I added, staring into my glass.

“That ought not to have been the case, Miss Stone,” he said quietly. “I know very little about you, but I know you would be absolute rubbish at solitude. Your relish for companionship is clear as print.”

Tripping steps sounded, and Sahjara entered the room with her face alight, wearing a dressing gown over her nightdress. Rushing to Mr. Thornfield, she tugged at his sleeve. “Charles, I’ve had the most
wonderful
idea, and Sardar says he’ll only do it if you promise to join him, and of course I will as well though I’m not so good as either of you, but I’ll make up for it on horseback I’d wager, and Miss Stone will be so pleased after having been cooped up indoors for so long.”

“What is she jabbering about?” Mr. Thornfield asked irritably, swallowing a measure of Scotch. “She speaks English, I know she speaks English, she learnt the tongue in the Punjab from my parents and perfected its nuances here when she was five.”

“Charles, don’t be dreadful, we’re going to put on a demonstration!”

“A demonstration of
what
, you ill-mannered imp?”

“Of everything!” She turned to me, her smooth cheeks flushed with enthusiasm. “Riding, in my case, and perhaps archery. The
chakkar
, the
tulwar
, the
aara
—”

“Has she lost her mind?” Mr. Thornfield exclaimed. “You want to stage a mock fight Khalsa-style in the middle of the British countryside?”

“Yes!” She clapped her hands together decisively. “Yes, the way Sardar says you used to practise outside Lahore’s gates, only we’ll do it on the grounds, and Miss Stone will
love
it.”

“Miss Stone will be entirely put off by our foreign antics and will quit the house in high dudgeon.”

I burst out laughing at the transparent falsity of this excuse.

“Have I not given you steeds?” Mr. Thornfield demanded, rubbing his temple. “Have I not given you fine frocks and an English mansion? Have I not given you a governess—”

“Please, Charles.” Her smile meant she expected to get her way. “Sardar said yes.”

“Sardar spoils you so obscenely it’s all I can do not to throw myself in the nearest river.”

“Please?” I interjected, grinning. “It would be so educational.”

Mr. Thornfield’s glower was fast losing strength; finally he gave a martyred sigh, finished his whiskey with a snap of the wrist, and said, “I’m no match for the pair of you martinets.”

“Hurrah!” Sahjara exulted, taking his gloved hand and delivering a peck to it. “Tomorrow?”

“Oh, certainly, supposing you prefer me headless. I’ve not practised with the
aara
in years.”

She swung the hand she still held. “Next week.”

“You’ll be the death of me yet. Fine.”

“It really is a marvellous idea,” I said, smiling at her.

“It’s a ridiculous idea.” Pushing himself to his feet, Mr. Thornfield brushed a wisp of hair off Sahjara’s brow. “Go back to bed, darling, and thence to sleep, so that you’ll be unable to hatch any fresh schemes to gall me.”

“Insufferable gaffer,” she said affectionately.

“Impertinent brat.”

Sahjara disappeared with a toss of her head. Mr. Thornfield returned our empty glasses to the sideboard, looking contemplative. I had begun to better cherish his silences, for he possessed many shades of stillness and sharing them with me meant he was at ease in my presence; this was a blue quiet, as deep as his eyes.

“I wish that whatever you are thinking, you did not have to dwell upon it,” I told him.

“You’ve a generous nature, Jane.” He stopped, turning back to me. “Apologies, I don’t know how that slipped, only I’ve come to think of you . . . Blame it on my upbringing, if you please.”

A sting pierced my chest; hearing my actual name was meaningful, as if he had taken my mask off and glimpsed my real face.

“You may call me Jane if you like.”

He cocked a brow. “You don’t find it overfamiliar?”

“Not from you.”

Had he been anyone else, I should have dreaded making so bold a declaration; as it was, my heart thrummed major chords within my ribs as I watched him blink.

“Thank you—as you might gather from the Young Marvel’s example, you may call me anything you damn well please.” The empty
expression he affected did not hide the fact his mouth was pinched at the corners. “Jane, I’ve apparently a deal of unnecessary physical training to undergo tomorrow—shall we retire?”

Breathlessly, I agreed; but he only carried me up to my room and bid me the usual polite
Good night, then, Jane,
and I pretended the strange sweetness upon my tongue when I bid him the same was due to expensive whiskey. I then assured myself that my symptoms merited a diagnosis of simple lust, and I fell asleep repeating that Charles Thornfield had stolen nothing more serious than my attention.

•   •   •

T
he air crackled and clawed the afternoon of Sahjara’s demonstration; it had snowed again, and an inch of powder lay glimmering upon the grounds, awaiting the performers as the pale January sunlight bent down to kiss the top of the trees. I sat in my wheeled chair wearing my cloak as well as two blankets, hot-water bottles at my lap and feet, upon the terrace at the side of the house; surrounded by Singhs and Kaurs, who spoke excitedly to one another in Punjabi and stamped their feet against the cold, I awaited the performers.

I will not attempt to describe the dexterity with which Sahjara on Harbax navigated the jumps the grooms had built and strewn about the lawn. She was dazzling, and Mr. Thornfield’s face as he watched her mirrored Sardar Singh’s in a potent combination of glad mouths and strangely anguished eyes. Neither can I conjure the impassioned cries of “
Khalsa-ji!
” from the Sikh household as Mr. Singh, left arm loaded with serrated metal circles and right forefinger spinning a disc in the air, threw ten
chakkar
s in rapid succession, cutting ten distant poles into splintered halves. His servants screamed their approval, and I thought I glimpsed a tear in Mrs. Garima Kaur’s eye, reflecting sunlight just as her scar did.

Should I not at least essay to capture the spectacle of Mr. Thornfield wielding the
aara
outside my childhood home as the sun sank,
however, I should consider this entire memoir a failure. He joined Mr. Singh on the lawn with a set of double-tongued metal whips about five feet in length, both wearing very loose cotton trousers fastened at the calf and nothing more, bare shoulders gleaming like cliffsides, and at a nod from his friend, they began what can only be called a dance.

They did not merely flick the deadly tongues at targets, for there were no targets; they leapt from foot to foot, sweeping the flexible steel over and under and above themselves, vicious blades passing within inches of their heads and arms. The snow exploded as they struck it, plumes flying with the sharp snaps of a thousand firecrackers, and the servants and Sahjara screamed encouragement in their native tongue. Faster and faster they whirled, sometimes falling bodily back to catch themselves, sometimes balancing on a palm after throwing themselves forward headlong, and all the while the
aara
s sang and snapped.

Mr. Sardar Singh was the superior; his lightness of foot and the detached technicality with which he performed a madcap dance was unsurpassable.

I could see, however, why he wrongly claimed Charles Thornfield was his better when it came to the
aara
, because he was riveting; he silently snarled as he flayed the ice and mud, surged from foot to foot as if a demon possessed him, and following this onslaught of fury, could flick the tip of the blade to send a scant few snowflakes delicately soaring.

I can assure the reader that I did not do anything so asinine as to fall in love with Mr. Thornfield by watching him demonstrate the
aara
; I had already fallen in love with him, and on that day, a feverish sheen upon my brow despite the winter’s chill, I elected to admit it, if only to myself. For the thought of confessing as much could only mean confessing far more about myself, if I truly cared for him, and I could not bear the idea that he should ally himself with evil unawares.

It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.

P
erhaps the most touching passages in
Jane Eyre
are those after she discovers she loves Mr. Rochester and before she discovers he loves her in return. There is little unwieldy pretension and still less saccharine sentiment; she simply loves him, as I loved Mr. Thornfield, and is woeful because one cannot uproot love any easier than one can force it to flourish.

I wrestled with the identical problem, although my tactics during this period would have positively curled Miss Eyre’s hair.

A week later I was out of the wheelchair with my ankle tightly wrapped, my knee quite healed, limping gamely, and Mr. Thornfield must have supposed himself haunted by a familiar when my mobility was restored. I took his elbow when he asked me if I cared for a walk; I drew my fingertip down the silver cuff he wore; I shone in every way I knew how, and lastly, I told him the truth.

Truth in my case must needs have been partial, but I thrilled at each new self-exposure.

“Sahjara lived with my father’s sister in Cornwall when she emigrated, until Sardar and I arrived early this year,” he answered my question after a curried fish supper.

“I hated my aunt.” My nerves whistled in high alarm, but I soldiered on. “She called me cruel names and snubbed my mother perennially.”

Mr. Thornfield scowled around his cigar. “If she had such poor taste as that, failing to hate her should have been shirking, Jane.”

Further examples abound; for instance, Mr. Thornfield and I often granted Sahjara’s wish that we might all go riding together, precious windswept occasions on which water sprang to my eyes at the keen wind and the joy of galloping over hillsides; and on the first of these rides, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Thornfield’s horse—a great rusty-black stallion.

“I just adore him, I can’t help it,” Sahjara crooned, pressing the flat of her hand up the beast’s nose.

“I assume he is called Falstaff because he is so funny and charming?” I asked, smiling.

Mr. Thornfield coughed dryly, his breath clouding in the cold. “He is called Falstaff because given the choice, he would eat oats and sugar until his belly exploded and he was strewn all over Christendom.”

I laughed, as did Sahjara, and Mr. Thornfield shot me another of his queer appraising glances, the ones which sent liquid warmth pooling through my torso.

“There were times when the comfort of communing with horses was all I had,” I admitted.

“I think the same was true of me, before. I can’t remember. Oh, Charles, say you’ll give Nalin to Miss Stone—she’s better on her than anyone!” Sahjara entreated.

Mr. Thornfield tugged at her cloak’s collar until it lay flat. “Young Marvel, ordinarily I should have to box your ears for squandering my assets and forgetting Miss Stone is not in a position to keep her own horses.” He glanced at me. “But supposing that I can retain the honour of feeding and sheltering duties, Jane should consider Nalin entirely her own.”

Can I be blamed for strewing my secrets like seeds when they blossomed into such kindly responses? A fortnight had been expended on the practise before I began to run dry of tasteful confessions, and then, reader, I invented them like the lying devil I am.

“I should like to read the Guru Granth Sahib,” I declared. “It would explain so much about your character.” Mr. Thornfield sat writing a letter in his study as I watched him, pretending to be reading Balzac.

“There is neither an adequate explanation for my character, nor a copy of the Guru in the English language.” He dipped his pen without raising his head. “Apply to Sardar, he can recite damned impressive heaps of the stuff.”

“I shall. I can’t give any credence to the Bible because so many villains quote it.”

This was not true; I simply wished for something freshly shocking to tell him. Though the Bible dictated my mother and I would be listening to each other’s skin crackling for eternity, and my former headmaster had been cruelty incarnate even as he called upon God’s Name, I thought many of its teachings beautiful.

Mr. Thornfield’s eyes narrowed in amusement. “Never read the thing, though Sardar has lobbed plentiful passages at me—my parents are more for cheap novels when they can get ’em. Whale blubber and seal pelts and nor’easters. Damsels, you understand.” He coughed charmingly. “Heaving bosoms.”

“There are plentiful bloody bits, and even some sensuous parts, I suppose,” I said idly, passing fingers along my hairline. “Song of
Solomon is about a pair of lovers. ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!’ It’s quite salacious material.”

“I’ve heard better. Now kindly shut your head whilst I finish congratulating my father on his latest swindle.”

Helpless to stop myself, I tried again the next day, discovering him reorganising books in the library and (predictably enough) offering my assistance.

“Are there any Punjabi books in the house?” I wondered, sorting through several volumes of Medieval spiritual poetry I suspected belonged to Mr. Singh and not Mr. Thornfield.

“Oh, certainly.” He craned his thick neck upwards, wearing a frown as he lifted a stack of unbound folios. “But they kept turning up missing, don’t y’know, great gaping holes in the collection, and when Sardar found ’em circulating at a jaunty clip in the servants’ wing, we installed proper shelves where they were wanted.”

“That was good of you.”

“Of course it wasn’t. I can march over there whenever rereading
Chandi di Var
*
tickles me, can’t I? I have legs, and so does Sardar.”

Finished, I began sorting through the Renaissance plays. “Your servants are very interesting. They must know you both well, I take it, since they worked for Mr. Singh before? Mrs. Garima Kaur, for example, seems most devoted to him, even for a confidential secretary.”

Mr. Thornfield glanced up from where he was kneeling, eyes lit with the wistful shade of earnest. “You know how she came by that extra bit of facial ornament, then?”

“The scar? How should I?”

“She saved his life once.”

“No!” I exclaimed, kneeling to mirror him. “Oh, do tell me how.”

“Nasty business,” he owned, frowning. “Sardar was
twenty-three, I believe. He was overseeing the delivery of—what was it, indigo or ivory? damned if I can recall, ivory it must have been—across town by the Bright Gate, and he was set upon by thieves. Not your friendly book-borrowing type either, the picking-their-teeth-with-
tulwar
s kind, and Garima was accompanying him to keep records. Sardar is a tiger, but it was five on one, and incapacitating suits his delicate sensibilities better than slaughter. Anyhow, Garima threw herself into the fray and did him a few good turns with the knife she carried before taking that slash over the brow. She’d be dead but for his skill, and he’d be dead but for her help.”

He fell silent, sifting through titles.

“I would fight like that, if I cared enough for the person,” I confessed with endless devotion in my eyes.

Mr. Thornfield quirked a smile, granting me the merest glance. “
You
would have eaten their hearts in the marketplace afterwards. Just fetch me the magnifying glass on the desk there? Damned if I can make out this inscription.”

So it went; day after day he gave me smiles rather than scowls, and at times I tilted my head up at the perfect evening angle when he passed my chair to refill our glasses of Scotch, and still my lips went unkissed and my questions unanswered. Despite these obstacles, I was achingly fulfilled over the simple act of wanting—having passed so much time seeking necessities, a combatant in an arena where to lose is to die, possessing the leisure to lie awake yearning after caresses I did not merit felt like an extravagance in and of itself.

That is, until work upon the cellar was completed a fortnight after Sahjara’s weapons demonstration.

•   •   •

T
he pinging of distant hammers and circular progression of workmen hauling rubble out the back exit had been a torment, and I do not mean in the sense of peace disrupted; I yearned to know what
was below; and when one day I came downstairs for breakfast to discover profound silence save the ticking of the standing clock, I quickly inferred that the men had, at last, finished.

“Congratulations.” I took the tea Mr. Singh offered me, containing a splash of milk and one lump of sugar, exactly as I liked it.

“Might I ask upon what account, Miss Stone?”

“The completed renovations downstairs.”

Mr. Thornfield stirred his coffee, transfixed by the newspaper; Mr. Singh nodded graciously, whilst an uncaring Sahjara yawned over her bowl of spiced porridge.

“The immediate dangers of an unsafe substructure have been seen to, yes,” Mr. Singh reported, “but it remains best to consider the place entirely unsafe, ladies. That is, supposing you value your lungs, for the place is yet a haven for mould and damp.”

Sahjara’s nose wrinkled; Mr. Thornfield made a remark about the weather.

Unsafe, my shapely white arse,
I thought.

That night, I heard a tread in the corridor outside my bedroom which was neither Mr. Singh’s stately glide nor Sahjara’s heedless prance. It was Mr. Thornfield’s vigorous stride, at four o’clock in the morning.

A frontal attack seemed best, as the cellar was now kept locked during the day—and should I catch Mr. Thornfield at whatever nocturnal activity he had been indulging in, I could claim to have been frightened of intruders sent by the odious Mr. Sack. At any rate, I did not fear my nominal master’s wrath, for he now showed me every courtesy, including the caustic teasing I had come to relish. Two days I waited; then a long crate was delivered to Highgate House and quickly spirited away.

Tonight,
I determined, and after pleading the excuse of a headache, I lay awake and fully dressed with my ears tinnily ringing, so hard did I listen for the faintest whisper of sound. Midnight chimed,
then one o’clock; at last, a bit before two, I heard a man’s steady footfalls. As I had done when eavesdropping upon his conversation with Mr. Singh, I waited a few minutes until I knew Mr. Thornfield was fully engaged and then slipped from my bedchamber with a fitfully flickering candle.

When I reached the door to the cellar stairs, again I heard the suggestion of movement below; this was all to the good, however, and—finding it unlatched—I opened it.

Where once only rubble and the columns of the house’s foundations stood, here a polished wooden staircase plunged below the earth. Though I glimpsed wall sconces, they were unlit, and the breath seized in my chest at the thought of my taper going out, for the terrain was now an uncharted one.

Step by step I advanced, careful of the faint echoes of my healed injuries, eyes watering as I peered into the gloom. The noises grew louder—what was he doing, this unexpected love of mine, that he waited for the dead of night and hid below the earth’s surface?

I reached the bottom and stopped, suddenly fearful; a queer, sweet reek like badly mouldering apples coated my throat. Shaking minutely, I turned the door handle.

Several horrible things happened at once.

There had been a lamp lit, for its amber ribbon had lined the threshold, but upon my opening the portal, the room was subsumed in darkness. This would not have been frightening had I not been pretending false confidence when I threw the door wide, which snuffed out my own flame . . . but not before I had glimpsed an unholy tableau. A muffled male curse pierced the black curtain at the same time I emitted a strangled squeak—nothing so dignified as a scream—and dropped my candle entirely.

All was sable midnight surrounding me, and I shared the room with Mr. Thornfield and a naked corpse.

I clutched the doorframe to orient myself. More curses followed, then slow, confident steps, until an arm wound about my waist and an urgent hand caught my shoulder.

“Jane, please—are you hurt, or only frightened? Jane . . . I turned down the lamp to prevent your seeing anything you wish not to, but you’re quite safe.”

When I opened my eyes—for in my insensible startlement I had witlessly shut them—I discerned that I could see after all, as the lamp still held a spark of life, though its ghostly sphere now illuminated only Charles Thornfield’s face, the familiar worried line between his brows, and the edge of a great table like a butcher’s where a carcass lay supine.

“I’m all right,” I managed. “The light gave me a turn when it went out, and . . . the . . .”

The truth was, reader, that—though I had created four corpses—I had never lingered over my accomplishments; this specimen was well past its prime, and the candied egg smell was overwhelming enough to choke me.

“Confound it, Jane, you’ve no business here!” Mr. Thornfield snapped. “I gave explicit orders—”

“I heard noises. Pray don’t be angry, I was thinking of thieves, I—”

“And when you supposed ruthless
badmash
es had invaded, rather than wake the menfolk—who are, I will take the liberty of reminding you, deucedly clever when it comes to sharp objects—you marched down here to challenge ’em to a duel with a bloody pocketknife?”

My mind was a storm cloud, all static and hurtling thoughts. “I was half sleepwalking. I’m sorry.” I steadied myself and gripped Mr. Thornfield’s forearm, looking down.

This was when I noticed: Charles Thornfield was not wearing his frock coat, and neither was he wearing gloves. My lips parted as
I studied his fingers spanning my waist; he retreated now I seemed in no danger of falling, but not before I could see that his hands were positively shocking.

There was not a mark on them. Unscarred wrists, one adorned with a silver cuff, led to subtly veined skin, splitting into slender phalanges with well-shaped knuckles. It felt obscene that I could not drag my gaze from them—as if I had happened upon him naked in a woodland pool and refused to turn my back as he fetched his smallclothes.