Jane Steele(120)

“What if my remaining here whilst you travelled the globe would rather hamper my contentment than enhance it?” he answered after weighty pause.

“Then . . . I should stay here,” I whispered. “With you.”

Mr. Thornfield dashed his fingers over his eyes. “You’ve had an inheritance, you say.”

“Sir?”

“An endowment, a legacy, a bequest, you contrary sprite.”

“Yes, and a generous one.”

“So you’ve no need of gainful employment any longer? You are an independent woman of means who requires no assistance to make her way in the world. Pressed duck served on fine china, Belgian lace edging your lowliest handkerchief, servants used as ottomans—all this, and without the necessity of drudgery. No longer need you talk horses for six hours daily to earn your bread and cheese.”

I saw what troubled him then, and thought to tease him; instead, I laughed, and drew a step closer.

“I like horses,” said I, lungs tight with feeling. “I always have done.”

“Do you like dreadfully draughty English country houses?”

“I did not always, but I have grown to.”

“What about curry?”

“Everyone likes curry, sir.”

“Could you like a former Company medic who keeps a morgue in the cellar?” He smiled with such tender sadness that it nearly felled me.

“I don’t like him—I love him. You aren’t wearing gloves.”

“So it would seem. Jane,” he said, and then neither of us was speaking, for his mouth was sweetly, reverently pressed to mine, his hands at my nape and on my cheek, and when my lips parted and I tasted all the affection he had kept so long buried, I knew that no words could possibly have served as well as his kiss did.

“You don’t know what it did to me.” Breaking away fractionally, he clenched a fold of my skirt in his right hand. “At least before, I could hear your step upstairs, or know you were riding, or catch your laugh when passing my study. One is not always directly regarding the full moon, Jane—but should it disappear, the oceans would rot. I was rotting already when you found me, and then your tide pulled, and you were gone so long. A mere matter of weeks, but still . . . how long till you leave me again?”

Kissing him once more seemed the right answer, but I could manage it only briefly. Realising as one that others’ needs should be seen to quicker than ours, we hastened out of the cottage where I grew up, and back to the main house, the sky a faint lavender like a bruise almost forgotten.

? ? ?

The following day, preparations had been made for Charles Thornfield and myself to travel to London with all possible haste; Mr. Quillfeather had made our position clear to us, the village doctor fetched to tend to Sardar Singh in the meanwhile. I breakfasted with Sahjara and Mr. Thornfield, all of us sombre despite our victories. When I laid down my fork, I looked up to discover blue eyes studying me as if I were some sort of miracle, and an irrepressible smile spread over my features.

After the kiss, we had parted, and I believe Mr. Thornfield sat up with Mr. Singh for most of the night. Still—there was a crackling in the air between us now, something electric and wanting.

“May I see Mr. Singh alone?” I asked him. “I feel I cannot leave without thanking him for my continued existence.”

“Of course. By extension I owe him my own, for I should have borne the loss of you with very bad grace.”

Sahjara looked up curiously, lips curving. “Are you staying, then, Miss Stone?”

“If Mr. Thornfield will keep me after we conduct an important conversation, then yes.”

“Naturally I’ll keep you, we’re all of us deuced keen to keep you—we’ve considered the benefits of shackles,” he huffed. “A conversation on what subject?”

“My name, sir. But first I must see Mr. Singh, and then we must be off, and after all is settled with Mr. Sack, then I must tell you a story.”

Charles Thornfield scowled, and shrugged, and said it was all very good if I wanted to play games with him, that I was incapable of changing his mind, and then he swept off to see our carriage was packed. I kissed Sahjara atop her dark head, and then I hurried upstairs to the bedroom where Sardar Singh lay recovering.

Knocking first, I entered; the injured man was propped upon pillows in his darkened bedchamber, his arm bound in a sling with copious bandaging at the end of it. I could smell herbs and wine from the poultice, incense from a small metal holder in the corner of the room. The walls here—my father’s old bedchamber, I realised, thought to be my dead uncle’s—had been converted almost entirely into shelves containing score upon score of books, many cracking like so many ancient stone tablets.

“You needn’t look like that, Miss Stone.” Mr. Singh’s voice was rusty but sure. “Charles stitched me up again, and I cannot imagine anyone taking greater care.”

“Without gloves, no less.”

“A triumph borne of misfortune, yes. He managed on the battlefield with far cruder measures, going so quickly from fallen to fallen.”

I perched upon the edge of the bed. Mr. Singh’s brow was strained, though not yet feverish, and his head was bare; his long hair glistened faintly, but seemed almost dry, and he smiled at my speechlessness.

“There was blood in it,” he rasped. “Highly dishonourable—it felt almost worse than my arm. One of the servants will be along shortly to tie it up again, for this . . .” He waved at his injured limb.