biography with neither shadows nor colours, a vague outline of the person I wanted him to know but did not dare to reveal. Should I expose all, he would surely hate me, and then where would I find myself?
If Mr. Thornfield was mortified, I never saw it; instead, he shifted with a thoughtful finger edging his temple.
“You’ll want to know about the swearing as well?” I asked timidly.
Mr. Thornfield laughed—the laugh of a soldier who has brushed the sands of the Sutlej from his trousers, told jokes which should have made any woman blush. “Of course I want to know about the swearing—it was damned expertly done.”
My pulse tingled in the tips of my fingers. “When I left school, I went to London because I’d no family who would take me. Have you any experience with distant relations yourself, Mr. Thornfield?” I added slyly, gesturing at our surroundings.
“This place was empty when we took possession, and we should not be here had it been otherwise, Miss Stone.” He shrugged, watching his wine swirl gently. “At the risk of sounding a deuced ingrate, it was a stroke of luck not to have made their acquaintance, if y’ follow.”
“Of course,” I hastened to assure him, fearful of pressing. “I quite understand and meant only that penury requires one to live among coarse people, which is the other reason I carry a knife, and the reason I have an atrocious vocabulary—if you worry that I might endanger your ward, Mr. Thornfield, having already endangered your person, I cannot blame you; but I can admit I am not a typical governess and hope that my present candour brings you some mollification.”
I awaited judgement as if being sentenced to Newgate.
Mr. Thornfield let his spoon clatter to the dish with a ring of finality. “If you think I’m intimidated by your weaponry, you’ve clearly not visited the billiards room. And there are practically stars in the Young Marvel’s eyes when she speaks of you, so . . . consider me mollified. You must feel odd being the only knife-brandishing governess outside of London?”
I tipped my glass to him, endlessly thankful he could not see my knees knocking.
“Yes, sir. You must feel odd being the master of a Sikh stronghold in the English countryside.”
“Pish—when I feel odd, it’s certainly not on that account, as I’m hardly the master of anything. You’ve ridden Nalin, you know of which I speak. I could threaten to have the whole pack of these lunatics, horse and human alike, sold for glue, and they’d all laugh in my face.”
“And how,” I ventured, my nerves calming fractionally, “did that strange circumstance come to pass?”
His severely arcing brows tensed below the pristine hair. “Frankly, I find myself a terrible topic for conversation.”
“I feel the same about myself, but I’m deeply interested in your household. How did you come to be acquainted with Mr. Singh, for instance?”
The tension in his shoulders melted. “We were practically schoolfellows, before. Shall I be shocking, Miss Stone?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
“Where on earth did she come by the cheek? London alone couldn’t have managed the feat,” Mr. Thornfield muttered. “You are aware from the advertisement I was involved in the Khalsa conflicts. You may know that I was born in Lahore?”
Silence befitted Mr. Thornfield; so I tried it out myself, blankly encouraging.
“Well, how I came to be born there prior to British annexation is brief in telling and rather broad in ripple effect generally, so I’ll out with it: my parents were complete scoundrels, Miss Stone.”
“Mr. Singh said your father was an entrepreneur?”
“So are pirates, according to the dictionary.”
I laughed until I could hardly breathe. Mr. Thornfield rumbled with amusement himself until I had calmed.
“Nathan Thornfield—that’s my father, mind you keep up—started life as a merchant in the loosest sense of the word,” Mr. Thornfield continued. “Genteel as a baronet, all polished monocles and pinches of snuff. But really, he was what romantics call an adventurer and cynics a rapscallion. Travelled like the pox—Australia, China, even America, the daft old crust. The codger ought to have been locked in a cage lined with pillows, if you take my meaning, but instead he made and lost several fortunes before settling in the Punjab with my mother, née Chastity Goodwill, and if that name don’t beat the Dutch, Miss Stone, the Dutch will rule the globe.”
Patience Goodwill and Chastity Goodwill. My pulse thumped against my drab grey dress as I recalled my aunt’s maiden name. Sisters—there is the connection.