Jane Steele(115)

I had not thought of that nightmare in years; but Garima Kaur’s expression brought it immediately to mind.

“Mr. Singh,” said I, stepping two paces away from her.

“Whatever is the matter?” he asked, frowning. “Have I interrupted you?” These questions were followed by what I assumed was the Punjabi equivalent.

Garima Kaur waited to see what I would say, her attention flicking rapidly between us.

For the first time in my life, I decided that truth was preferable.

“She speaks English,” I announced. “Very well indeed, and she has the treasure—look in the garret of the cottage, under the false bottom in the crate of records.”

Several expressions fought for supremacy on Mr. Singh’s face, the winner proving disbelief. “Miss Stone, I cannot imagine—”

“You don’t have to; you can find it yourself. She wanted to protect your sister’s fortune, but now there are Company soldiers in the village, Mr. Quillfeather is keeping them at bay, and she killed David Lavell in Amritsar all those years ago. I know you won’t mourn him, but she’s the reason Sack was here—she sent him a letter in your name.”

Garima Kaur’s fleshless face reacted not at all to my betraying her secrets, but she swayed slightly. I had told only a fraction of what I knew, and only what I thought Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield might forgive. Slanting my gaze, I willed her to understand me.

I will never tell them you killed John Clements, nor that you sent Jack Ghosh—not if you and I can both survive this.

Sardar Singh stood there motionless, taking in my words with eyes wide; I saw the exact moment when he believed me, for he flinched. Then I remembered that—unlike Mr. Thornfield, who seemed to expect trouble to find him magnetically—Mr. Singh had always known that the key to the conundrum lay in how Mr. Sack came to be at Highgate House in the first place.

The fact of his being here was, I agree, the greatest mystery of all.

“Garima, is what Miss Stone says accurate?”

“Yes.” The tears spilled down her bony cheeks. “But it was all for you, for us. Why should I have told you I speak English? You would talk of your problems to Charles, and I solved them without your ever asking me to—I was your djinn, your secret granter of wishes. You used to need me. How can you think you don’t need me any longer?”

“We all of us need one another,” he said softly, but she was a rudderless ship close to capsizing.

“Sahjara and I were fine, we were all fine, until she came!” Garima Kaur may as well have been brandishing the knife, for her words slashed through the air between us. “So you didn’t seek me out any longer, banished me to the servants’ quarters, and never thought to visit—none of it mattered whilst I still had our sweet girl to tutor. But you took even that pittance and gave it to her, and never noticed I was fading away right in front of you.”

Mr. Singh raised his hands, seeming as contrite as he was appalled. “We shall set all this right. Do you hear me, Garima? Please—I am to blame, you are correct, but as to Augustus Sack’s coming here—how could you even consider bringing such a plague upon us when he had thought Karman’s treasure lost in the Punjab?”

“Because the only time you ever loved me was when I was fighting beside you!” she cried.

A ghastly silence fell. I took in her terrible scar, her posture like prey caught in an iron trap. I did not blame Mr. Singh for being celibate, nor for being stupid, because I am apparently remarkably dim-witted myself where Clarke is concerned. Imagining the eternal desert Garima Kaur had walked through all her life, however—next to the man she loved but never near him—repelled me on her behalf. I had chosen to leave Charles Thornfield, and she had locked herself in a prison with a view of paradise through the window.

Mr. Singh, meanwhile, seemed to have forgot his own mastery of our language—any language—regarding Garima Kaur as if he had never truly set eyes on her previous.

“There were five of them, and they came on us, thirsting for blood and spoils, and you’d no heart to take their wretched lives, but I was there, and so we lived,” she said brokenly. “We survived, Sardar, and for two terrible, magnificent minutes, I wasn’t invisible. And after it was over, after they’d marked me and my chances at marriage to anyone else had vanished, I disappeared again the same way my hopes did. So courteous you were, so distant—I may as well have been your shaving mirror.”

Had she whipped the blade from her skirts and slit his belly, I do not think Mr. Singh’s expression would have differed.

Then I did something entirely brainless, and thus set a number of dreadful events in motion. What I ought to have done was to bolt whilst her attention was fixed on the object of her affections; I ought to have sprinted to the main house shrieking for Charles Thornfield, and many ghastly consequences would have been avoided.

Unfortunately, I scarcely ever scream when I am meant to.

“I think we must—”

The instant I opened my lips to offer an unsolicited opinion, Garima Kaur bellowed in rage and swung her knife at my throat.

There was not enough time.

Had there been enough time, I could have evaded her; had there been enough time, Mr. Singh could have drawn a weapon. Had there been enough time, Garima Kaur would not have been almost unhampered in her decision to send me to hell.