Jane Steele (22 page)

“What is it, Jane?”

“Your hands, sir. They’re not scarred.”

“I never said they were.”

I wrenched my eyes up. “You must think me a hateful busybody.”

“You haven’t the vaguest idea what I think of you.”

“Forgive me.” My enterprise now seemed detestable. “I’ll not broach the subject again, I don’t care what you’re—”

“Yes, you do!” he exclaimed, shoving a hand over his high brow. “Damn it, I— If we are apologising, then I apologise for accidentally besetting you with waking nightmares. Now, do you wish to see something of my work, or shall I escort you upstairs?”

“Oh, please, if you will have me, I should prefer to . . . to stay.”

Mr. Thornfield studied me as the devout study God; then he softened the hard spread of his shoulders.

“I have told you that I’ve not practised medicine save in two wars?”

Nodding, I straightened my spine.

“I have told you that I’ve a friend called Sam Quillfeather who is a police inspector?”

Again I inclined my head; Mr. Thornfield stepped back as if testing how much of the view I could manage.

“Behold the Highgate House Mortuary.” His voice rang clear as a brook, but I could not discern any pleasure in the telling. “There
isn’t a single decent deadhouse between here and London, and Inspector Quillfeather is a monomaniac when it comes to collecting evidence. I had him round for dinner not two weeks after arriving here and told him I should require an occupation or else succumb to despair. This morgue, with me as its coroner, was his notion, and the men have been hard at work for three months.”

He asked more gently, “If I turn the lamp up, will you swoon?”

“Bugger swooning,” I replied, meaning it.

Mr. Thornfield smiled and reached for the tab; the brightening lamp revealed an incongruously lovely sight. The floors had been finished with wood stained quite dark, the walls plastered where before there was only stone. The air made my arms tingle, cool as a cave, and the rough-edged pillars remained; but lining the walls were cabinets and tables, and a set of medical tools was arranged upon a counter. I spied a chemistry apparatus, a formidable hacksaw, and what I would later come to understand was termed a rib spreader.

I forced myself to view the corpse, taking a few steps closer. The stranger was of medium build, with a weak chin and ruddy side-whiskers, aged over forty years, and he lay upon a huge slab of wood with grooves carved along the edges.

“I ought to have had a look at this fellow some two days hence, but was delayed by the family’s protests. Chap dropped dead in his barley field, and Quillfeather understands that the bucolic countryside ain’t precisely free of murder,” Mr. Thornfield observed, watching me carefully. “He and I studied together, so he knew that I always had an uncanny knack for autopsies. It was as if they told me the stories of their final moments—I never once got it wrong.”

You’ll feel better when the dead start speaking to you again,
I recalled Mr. Singh telling him, and could not suppress a shiver.

“Aye, it takes one like that at first.” Mr. Thornfield’s gloves rested next to a delicate chisel, and he pocketed them as if the sight were too private for sceptical eyes.

“You said that you only used your training when you were at war. Why not start a practice rather than aiding an enthusiastic policeman?”

“Because I touch only the dead, never the living.”

Having experienced a fair number of shocks in my time, I gave no outward indication when he said this.

The silence, however, grew around us like a cancer.

“No, not always, not before, I’m not . . . it’s a sacrifice,” he told me. “For my sins.”

“For a period of time, sir?”

“For the rest of my days.”

I do not know how it feels when the trap drops and the noose crushes the windpipe—but though I stood perfectly still, staring at the pained crease thickening above his nose, I imagined the sensation was similar.

“I’ll take you on a brief tour, as the facility is modern as possible.”

Mr. Thornfield wanted me to attend, and I wanted to settle his spirits; so I listened dumbly to short lectures. Absently he said,
this is a microscope
; absently he said,
this is a bone saw.
The morgue was constructed with an attentive eye for detail—there were grooves in all the tables, drainage, plentiful basins, no white tile even a hairsbreadth out of place. When he was quite through, Mr. Thornfield turned, and the face which ought to have been emblazoned with pride looked near as pale as the body he was about to dissect.

“You are mute, Jane. When we walk out of this place, will we two still be friends?” he asked.

Words formed on my tongue and dissolved like dreams; but I already knew what I wanted to say. Striding towards him, I gripped the bend in his forearms where only shirtsleeves separated us, and his hands lifted to mimic mine as if they were not his own.

“You are either asking me that because you mistakenly think having a morgue under the house would upset me, which it doesn’t,
or because you know I seek an explanation for your present distress in your past trials. Mr. Thornfield, I . . . I should prefer to risk all than to inflict further torments on myself. May I ask you three questions?”

“You may ask them, but whether I will answer is another matter.”

Shaking my head, I pressed warm skin beneath cool cloth. “Have you ever loved?”

“Yes.” The reply was immediate, just as I thought it would be.

“Are you now claimed by anyone who made her pledge in exchange for yours?”

“God, no.”

“Do you find me objectionable, sir?”

My feelings were at such a high pitch that he could have said anything and pleased me better than what he did: he released the grip he had on my forearms, pulling himself respectfully away.

“Jane, if anyone ever finds you objectionable, direct me to his house that I might test my crop upon his sorry hide. Please believe that I do not, and forgive me for having befriended you; I ought to have calculated the effect that our conversations might have upon an English—”

“I do not speak this way because I am a confused Englishwoman!” I cried. “You know that I have fallen into past errors and have admitted as much yourself. Despite this, or perhaps because of it—damned if I know whether ’tis one or the other—I understand you, and that understanding led to admiration. We are scoundrels, are we not? Please don’t turn your face, I am not through! I should not like you to suppose you were endeared to me because I thought you as deficient as I am, or because your past is chequered: that would be a gross misrepresentation of my sentiments. I care for you wholly, entirely, not piecemeal, therefore I charge you to be honest with me regarding your feelings if not your history. Only tell me whether . . . tell me whether you value me too.”

This last was delivered upon the thinnest breath of air, and then truth telling could bring me no further: I had unravelled myself, and had only to await his reply.

“Jane.” Reaching, Mr. Thornfield trailed his fingers over my shoulder.

“Don’t stand there deciding whilst I watch you.” Tears were forming, and I forced them back.

“Such a fragile soul she turns out to be after all,” he said softly. “Grievous injury frightens her not, yet my standing here without a yes on my lips quite shatters her. How you look, Jane—don’t allow me to hurt you so. I don’t deserve the privilege, I might venture to say no one on earth does. For God’s sake, be the wild creature I found in the lane, free of ties that will only pull you to pieces.”

“I won’t be torn apart at all, supposing you stay near, sir.” Forcing the words from my swollen throat, I added, “I only want to be closer still. You are unattached, you said as much—where is the harm to anyone in claiming me? Whatever you have done, it cannot be so terrible that you must deny yourself human contact forevermore.”

“There you would be surprised.”

“No, I honestly wouldn’t be!” I cried.

He lightly took me by the shoulders, gazing down with such a look of mingled fondness and misery as I have never witnessed.

“If you knew the immensity of my blunders, if you knew how
culpable
I was, you’d be sore tempted to spit in my eye. But that’s neither here nor there—I know, and the knowledge will never cease to haunt me,” he hissed. “I took small comfort in the fact you were happier here than whatever bloody hellhole you used to occupy in London, the fact I could keep you fed and safe among people who relish your company, but do you really want a partial man, a grotesque carnival figure? The gloves are only an outward symbol of an inner deformity. Please, darling, I hate to see what harm I’ve already caused you. It’s agonising—say only that we can be friends again.”

I could say no such thing; my mind felt full of smoke, my ears muffled with the word
darling
, my veins laced with laudanum though I had taken none. Meanwhile, his eyes could or would not stop roving—from my own, to my lips, to my throat, and back again.

I decided that I would look desperate if I said anything more, and thus my next words were not calculated; they were like slipping off a ravine’s treacherous edge.

And as long as you still mark me, I don’t care.

“You study me, Mr. Thornfield.” I placed a shaking hand over his breast. “Do you find me beautiful?”

Slowly, Charles Thornfield pulled his gloves from his pocket and slid them back on; then, looking as flayed as anyone I have ever seen, he strode for the stairs and disappeared within the house.

Not such a very long period passed between his exit and my lifting myself from the cold floor where I had curled into the hard shape of a shell, my sobs buried in my skirts; soon enough my pride had reared its haughty head, and I dragged myself back to my room to pour the salty confessions into my pillow.

That Mr. Thornfield could not desire me would have been devastating, but a clean cut—that he
would
not desire me was a ragged gash indeed. I imagined that no night would ever prove worse, and thus it came as an unpleasant surprise when the following proved very much more hideous indeed.

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances; though much to create despair.

T
he next morning, I resolved to break through Charles Thornfield’s walls as if I were a battering ram; but gently, over the course of years, and in the meanwhile I might see his white head bent over a harness buckle he was adjusting for Sahjara, and hear him casually cursing. This plan greatly improved my spirits, and I set to filling Sahjara’s pate with horse-related facts, feeling quite myself again by the time we parted.

I ought to have noted something malevolent in the air, for the skies were heavy as lead. Still favouring my ankle, I went into the hall to sort through the mail and discovered an envelope postmarked from London, addressed to Miss Jane Stone.

The slender ivory packet crackled in my grip, but I made no move to open it; the missive could only be from my solicitors, and if they reported I had no claim on Highgate House, then nothing would change. Alternately, if I did own the property, I already lived here, and the thought of Highgate House without Mr. Thornfield was now as appealing as London sans Clarke.

“Have you a letter, Miss Stone?”

Mr. Singh approached, and his features beneath the wiry sweep of his beard were grave.

“Apparently so. No one ever writes to me, so I’m at a bit of a loss.”

“We missed you this morning at breakfast.”

“I was a trifle unwell.”

“Then I am glad to see you looking hale now. Miss Stone . . .” He hesitated, adjusting the cuff upon his wrist. “Did anything distressing happen last night?”

“I found the mortuary,” I owned. “I’ve no aversion.”

Provided I have ample warning every time Sam Quillfeather pays a call
.

“Oh, marvellous—we feared distressing you, and if you don’t mind failing to mention it to Sahjara, we are unsure how she’ll take it. When she is older . . .”

“Of course.”

“And nothing else occurred? Mr. Thornfield is not himself today.”

“Is he all right?” I felt stricken—if he were morose, I was culpable. The next instant I felt glad—if he were affected, hope was not lost.

“Yes,” Mr. Singh replied, but the word was too lengthy for one syllable.

“He told me about the, um. The penance. The gloves.”

“Ah.” A frown formed beneath his nobly hooked nose. “Did he elaborate upon why he abstains?”

I shook my head.

“The Guru contains passages about abnegation—fasting, meditation, the renunciation of wealth, but in my opinion, Miss Stone . . .” He lowered his voice. “Such a profound sacrifice is not required by God. The pair of us made a mistake long ago which led us into terrible circumstances, but Charles—I beg your pardon, Mr. Thornfield—”

“It’s all right. I know you’re not the butler.”

“Do you?” he exclaimed.

“I imagine you’re a sight better as a commander,” I teased.

“Well.” He made a small bow, after which his eyes crinkled in distress once more. “Charles, then, feels so culpable that he denies himself touch as a form of self-mortification. I have not yet directly attempted to prevent him, thinking he needed time more than any other balm—but his heart is wide, and bleeds from many hidden wounds.”

“So often the way, with hearts.”

Brushing a hand over his beard, Mr. Singh passed me, inscrutable, heading towards the front door. I remembered Mrs. Garima Kaur’s early assertion to me that he was good
,
and was grateful, for I knew no one else in whom I could confide.

“I am for the village to settle our bill with the mortuary workmen. Miss Stone, know that I do not take discussion of Charles’s heart lightly, and forgive me if I’ve overburdened you.”

“You haven’t. He has mine, you know.”

Mr. Sardar Singh lingered even as his hand pulled the ornate brass handle of the door. I could not read his face well in any light, so obscured was it by his beard, but now he was quite masked by the cold glow beyond.

“Yes, I thought he might,” he admitted. “I will charge him to guard it, Miss Stone. On my honour.”

“The Sikh people seem to me very honourable indeed.”

Though wintry gusts pelted us, Mr. Singh paused again, and a look steely as his
chakkar
sharpened his features. Since my initial conversation with Garima Kaur over his character, he had never frightened me; now, however, a chill shot down my spine which had nothing to do with the freezing draught.

“There you are mistaken. Which is worse, Miss Stone, if you will pardon my crudeness—a rapist or a pimp?”

“I . . . I can hardly answer that.” Crescendos of arctic air whirled into the house. “I should abhor either one.”

“Consider the East India Company the rapists, Miss Stone, and
the Sikh ruling class the pimps supplying them.” He pulled his collar up. “Forgive me . . . you’ve no desire for a history lesson. Keep yourself well. Charles and I will not return until tomorrow—he met Inspector Quillfeather at his home some miles distant to raise a glass to the mortuary’s completion, and we both plan to pass the night there. Thank you for being so free with yourself, as you have given me much to consider.”

The door closed, and I watched as the snowflakes turned into teardrops upon the floorboards. Something about this exchange nagged at me—something which I did not understand but felt like awakening in a lightless room with the fanciful certainty that one is not alone.

Soon, I walked upstairs with the unopened letter; it seemed a breathing creature in my hands, and in a way I have always thought that words are alive a little, for they can whisper sweet nothings and roar dragon flame with equal efficiency. After all that had taken place the previous night, I could not even imagine what I wanted it to say, and when I had closed the door to my room, I placed it on the table and stalked about it in circles as if contemplating a chained beast. If I learnt I was not the true mistress of Highgate House, would I prove so spineless as to simply accept Mr. Thornfield’s scruples and live as his lovesick shadow for the rest of my days? If learnt that I was the rightful heir, would I prove so horribly low as to use my power for leverage against his wishes? Both outcomes made me ill; one or the other must inevitably be contained in the envelope, scratching to escape with malicious claws.

At length, I simply hid the volatile missive in my bedchamber; I did not want it now, could not even look at it calmly, but I could not read my future in my teacup either. The remainder of the day was uneventful, closed by a hesitant spill of Scotch I poured for myself in the spreading silence and an hour spent in my bed over a book of Irish poems.

I ought to have been grateful for the tranquillity; tragedy would not strike upon that night, as it happened, until one o’clock in the morning.

•   •   •

T
here was no sound at first, merely a sense; I snapped awake,
feeling
him downstairs, my eyes stuffed with sleepy cotton.

Dread crawled over my skin an instant later when an unknown object audibly shattered.

When I remember these swift seconds, I was up almost before the china had finished splintering, knowing that Mr. Singh could never be so clumsy and that if Mr. Thornfield had staggered and fell, then he must be drunk, and it was my responsibility to see he was not hurt, for I must have been the one who hurt him; and even if what I was telling myself was nonsense I still yearned to be near him in every capacity, so I threw my dressing gown on and slipped my small knife into its pocket and flew for the ground floor.

If it sounds foolish to race towards a clumsy housebreaker, I had ample reason; Mr. Thornfield was all I had thought of for weeks of fever dreams and halfhearted plotting, and even if we were both poorly stitched together creatures made of scar tissue and regrets, I wanted only to find a way to live in his world more fully. So I tumbled into the front hall and came face-to-face with the remains of a vase and a man unlike any I had ever previously met.

I could not tell what race he was, for his eyes were dark and his skin burnished, side-whiskers bright red in the light of his portable lamp; his trousers boasted a loud check pattern and his secondhand coat was wine-coloured velvet. He swayed, emitting acrid whiskey clouds as he panted like the lousiest Company cur north of Calcutta, as Mr. Thornfield would have put it.

Unfortunately, Mr. Thornfield was not present.

“What are ye?” the ruffian snarled, sounding pleased.

The accent was nigh-impossible to parse, but I thought it might
have been the result of a Scottish lilt applied to already-musical Indian intonations.

“The governess.”

I considered screaming for once in my life; but Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield, who slept on the same floor I did, were from home, and the servants inhabited another wing. Apart from Sahjara three doors down from my bedroom, whom I prayed would
not
come downstairs, I was alone.

“D’ye always keep such midnight hours?” he purred, revealing yellowed teeth.

“Get away from here! I’ll call the master of the house.”

He slanted a canny look at me. “And why haven’t ye already? I suspect he ain’t here to come when ye do shout.”

Morbidity is not the same as stupidity, so I wheeled and made for the kitchen, intending to shriek my face off for whichever Singh or Kaur could hear me; but I found my throat caught in a vise, hashish-laden breath creeping across my cheekbones.

“I meant t’ question the half-bred lass, but ye might be a sight better,” the rotting relic of foreign wars spoke in my ear. “Tell me now where the trunk is and ye can sleep sound and safe.”

“They don’t have it!” I choked. “Let me
go
!”

How long we wrestled in that entryway I cannot recall, though I know I landed a number of ineffective blows. I was once more a being of edges and angles, fighting viciously to preserve not only the little girl upstairs I hoped was not roused by our clamour but the woman downstairs, making it.

“That’s the most whoreson lie I’ve heard since leaving Delhi,” his fat lips spoke against my ear.

Howling now, though to no one in particular, I fought to free my hands; he had caught both under one burly sweat-smelling arm.

If I could get to my knife.

I can get to my knife.

I
will
get to my knife.

Laughing in cruel wheezes like the rasp of a hacksaw, he shoved me facedown over the arm of the sofa in the drawing room after he had dragged me there, filling my nose with sweat and leather and lust, and I knew what happened next, had already faced the prospect. His bones bruised my wrists where they were pinioned, his other hand clumsily jostling at my skirts as he raised them.

“D’ye squeal like cows hereabouts, or just eat ’em?” he asked, rancid teeth brushing my neck.

I heard the approach of measured footsteps on the drive, and the front door opening.

Reader: I screamed, and if I could have screamed loud enough, I would have pierced him clean through.

“Damn ye straight t’ hell,” he growled.

A scorching pain blazed through my head as my assailant seized me by the follicles and led me into the shadows of the large chamber; the noises from the hall ceased.

“I’ll see the whole lot o’ ye vipers in hell,” my captor hissed.

He pressed pocket-warm metal against my gullet, and I had no choice save to follow as he dragged me by the scalp. When Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh burst into the room, I yet supposed the weapon a dull knife, but after the brute brandished the thing, I saw that it was a pistol in his hand.

Upon glimpsing my assailant, both men’s faces distorted as if a sword had met their bellies.

“How is it possible you’re yet alive?” Mr. Thornfield cried, unsheathing the blade he carried.

“Oh, aye, always so shocked when the rent comes due,” crooned the man holding me hostage. “Give me the small one who knows where the bounty is buried—or else the trunk, better still—and we’ll argue nae further.”

“We don’t
have it
,” Mr. Singh protested urgently. “And Miss Stone knows nothing of your monstrous intrigues. Let her loose or—”

“Or what?”

“They aren’t lying to you,” I croaked, still feeling the phantom clench of a fist round my throat.

“It’s nae in the Punjab.” He rubbed against my cheek, boar’s bristles abrading me. “It’s nae in jolly old London town. And ye claim it’s nae here, but mayhaps a bullet will jog someone’s faculties.”

“No!” Mr. Thornfield cried.

“Oh, d’ye prefer this aimed at you, then?”

The scorching grip against my hair blazed into a bonfire even as the
badmash
removed his gun from my neck and swung it in the direction of Charles Thornfield.

Mr. Singh, whose movements were generally so calculated you could have set your watch by them, lifted a futile palm in horrified protest; the master of the house looked endearingly relieved, as if having a pistol aimed at his forehead was preferable to its being aimed at mine. My immediate circumstances branded themselves upon my memory—the setting half-moon, the distant scuffles as the servants were roused, the fact Mr. Thornfield was gazing into my eyes rather than the barrel of the weapon now levelled at him. The sheer horror of the scene nearly finished me.

It did not, however—because the blackguard now had one arm devoted to a gun cocked at Mr. Thornfield and the other to tearing my scalp from its moorings; so I whipped out my knife and stabbed blindly backwards with all the fervour men devote to war.

•   •   •

I
do not know whether the casual reader of novels is acquainted with an anatomical curiosity known as the femoral artery; without too much medical meandering, although you might suppose that cutting
a man’s throat would be the fastest way to slaughter him, a good jab to the thigh will do.

Fainting in front of Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh was never my object, but faint indeed I did for the second time in my life. Not due to fright—pain swept me under its carpet. It must have been a brief respite, however, for when I came to, I was tucked deep in the settee with a blanket covering me, and Mr. Thornfield was shouting for towels, hovering over the pitifully whimpering brute. Mrs. Garima Kaur was there, looking haggard, twisting her fingers in violent worriment before running to obey the master of the house.