Jane Steele(104)
“Madness?” I echoed, stricken. I quickly corrected myself. “Do you mean to say I was living under the authority of a . . . a lunatic?”
“Oh, but then you don’t know what happened to Charles Thornfield at the Battle of Sobraon,” Mr. Sack crooned. “Clements did, and so do I, you see. We were there.”
TWENTY-NINE
The answer was evasive—I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs. Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She averred that they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to drop the subject; which I did accordingly.
Reader, I did not drop the subject; and I confess that, greatly as the letter from Mr. Singh had disturbed me, all thought of him was crowded out at the prospect of Charles Thornfield’s bloody biography being revealed at last.
I hardly needed to feign my agitation. “Won’t you please explain? It would soothe my conscience so to know that I am right in coming to you.”
“Let there be no doubt whatsoever about that, Miss Stone!” Mr. Sack exclaimed. “David Lavell was a friend, and his treatment at the hands of these reprobates—shocking, simply shocking.”
I recalled Mr. Thornfield’s account of the same circumstances and gritted my teeth into what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
Sack wasn’t his superior, and anyway he was winning a fortune off Lavell at poker—Karman’s fortune. Lavell couldn’t sink low enough for Sack’s taste.
“Oh, do make all clear, I beg—he unnerved me, but I never thought him mad.”
Mr. Sack puffed air into his rosy cheeks; he made a show of considering, checking his watch against the richly gilded clock, whilst I channelled my real anxiety into breathless anticipation. Thankfully, I knew I had him, for he was the breed of braggart who enjoys imparting salacious information to delicate-seeming females.
“There really is no putting off a lovely young lady when she makes a fair request of me,” he concluded with a sudden air of gallantry.
“Only you can ease my mind, Mr. Sack.”
“In that flattering assessment you are correct, Miss Stone,” he simpered, and I could see the half-humble, half-preening attitude he took with foreign dignitaries and their wives. “Though I must confess part of my knowledge comes secondhand—my former colleague John Clements helped to nurse Charles Thornfield and was thus the audience to his most ghastly ravings. I am of such a tenderhearted nature myself that I can hardly bear to see anyone suffer, and yet . . . sometimes, I think God visits punishments upon the living as well as the dead, and Charles Thornfield was greatly culpable regarding his own disastrous circumstances.”
At least fractionally, this was true, for Mr. Thornfield had told me himself—an infected slash across the back of his shoulder, a long convalescence spent in Clements’s company.
“Any man who would rob his closest friend’s sister has much to answer for,” I agreed.
“Aye, there’s the crux of it!” Mr. Sack’s ability to swagger whilst stationary cannot be exaggerated. “Between you and me, Miss Stone, Charles Thornfield was desperately in love with Sardar Singh’s sister, Karman Kaur. I shock you, I see—forgive me. Jealousy of her husband, David Lavell, caused him to take the crudest measures, and ones which led, as crude measures so often do, to tragedy.”
I folded my hands primly. “I gathered that Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh preferred to rob their own loved ones than allow them to live as they pleased.”
“Precisely so, Miss Stone.” Mr. Sack ran a fat finger over the lip of his wineglass, reflecting. “Lavell was a dear friend as well as a colleague—a handsome devil with an adventurer’s appetites, and his wife adored him. Oh, we sowed a few wild oats in the Punjab, but you must understand, reputations abroad shatter if a gentleman cannot keep pace with the local elite! The Director knows this to be true. What are a few card games, a few harmless flirtations, when failure to carouse with the natives leads to their instant censure?”
Nodding, I twisted my lips into a gracious frown.
“Thornfield couldn’t stomach it despite being born and bred there,” Mr. Sack huffed. “Pitiful really, how he doted on Karman Kaur when she would have none of him. She was a goddess, Miss Stone, a warrior queen, and all hell broke loose when those miscreants stole what was hers to share with her husband as she pleased. What, allow him to default on his gambling losses? What self-respecting woman would dream of such a thing?”
“Strange that a woman so loyal to the Khalsa should marry an Englishman.”
“Not at all! She had grown up with the Thornfields, and Lavell had nothing but praise for the Sikhs—a political of the highest order, he was, and the first man to say that the East India Company didn’t stand a chance against the Khalsa on their own ground. These bastards made their own artillery, you understand, based on English designs, and when you’ve your own foundries, you’re your own master. All the better if your army is a hundred thousand strong! As I recall, the line Lavell took was that once the Khalsa had trounced John Company, the world’s greatest armies would join forces and rule the territories from Calcutta to St. Petersburg. He was very popular in Lahore, and not just with Karman Kaur.”