but a tray of bread and cheese and fruit had been left, and a bottle of wine, and I quickly collected these, shutting myself in once more.
Tying my messy hair into a painful braid, I stoked the fire which had burnt down to coals. The sustenance was accompanied by a note:
Dear Jane,
I should have set myself as guardian over your gate forever, save that I cannot know whether I inspire feelings of safety and security in you or dampen them, and immediate arrangements must be made. You shall not be disturbed, I vow, and should you wish to disturb any of us, a bell rung will be answered upon the instant. I cannot help but live in hope I might be called for personally, but already owe you far too great a debt to make any further presumptions.
Sahjara is from home, staying with Mrs. Garima Kaur in the cottage with the grooms rotating watches over them. Whilst investigating last night’s siege, we thought it best; should you wish to repair there, arrangements would be made with all haste, and the place has been thoroughly cleaned and heated.
It grows less and less bearable to consider denying you any wishes, come to that, save only those beyond my power—if you can imagine a way I might ease the burden a good woman like yourself should never have had to bear, I beg you to command me.
Your servant,
Charles Thornfield
Laughing at the depth of this miscalculation, I forced myself to eat food which turned to cinders on my tongue, washing all down with half the bottle of wine and a larger dose of laudanum than I had taken since my London days, for my head felt as if a glowing poker had struck it.
It was not, I ought to clarify, troubling to me that Jack Ghosh was no longer numbered among the living; he had hurt a little girl I had grown to love, and in any case, he had not precisely inspired esteem during our brief acquaintance. No, he could rot for all I cared, and he would, too—but he had smashed my dam and now the seawater was up to my neck.
I could live a complete lie, I comprehended as I sorted through the knotted threads of dread in my chest; I could not live a partial one.
Already, falling in love with Charles Thornfield had meant dropping truths in his path like so many bread crumbs, and though he may have approved my stabbing Jack Ghosh, however could I justify four previous killings? The number was outrageous. I could neither lie, nor could I confess; and I could neither pull down his walls without candour nor risk baring my hollowed heart.
When Jane Eyre understands that she must depart from Mr. Rochester or else become his mistress and not his wife, her eyes remain entirely dry, and her former fiancé surmises that her heart must have been weeping blood before he begs her to stay. I admire this passage for a number of reasons—not merely because it is beautiful, but because I can be moved by it even when recalling my own experience of leaving Highgate House, and my reasons for doing so, and want to shake the other Jane’s damn fool head off for leaving a gentleman who loved her so, and was remorseful for his error. For I understood that night—not with a dry eye, either—that as much as I had come to adore Sahjara and esteem Mr. Singh, I could not love Mr. Thornfield every livelong day without having him.
I could have lived off my fingers in his white hair, or my brow against his collarbone, or the whole expanse of our bared skin nestled together in sleep, or my lips against his rugged temple. I had done far worse things for love than entwine fingers or kiss the nape of a neck, had I not? The prospect of total famine, however, dying of thirst and nothing betwixt me and the glass of water resting on the table—I cannot imagine that anyone could have done it.
Very well, I determined around midnight, my eyes crimson and my head pounding. You will live as you used to, and life is a tenuous thing after all, so one day inevitably the hurt will stop.
There was still the matter of Highgate House, however, so I located the fateful letter from London and opened it with shaking fingers.
SNEEVES, SWANSEA, AND TURNER
No. 29C Lisle Street,
Westminster
Dear Miss Steele,
Though you addressed your letter to Mr. Swansea, that gentleman