Jane Steele(125)

“Only insomuch as your history makes you who you are today. I dreaded your knowing mine, sir.”

His eyes, so wistful seconds previous, narrowed in amusement. “Had you not better call me Charles?”

Laughing, I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you, Charles Thornfield.”

He placed his hand over my heart, and I could not help but wince at the sting; where once he had been about to speak, he stilled in chagrin, and I realised any further intimacy would reveal the injury inflicted by Mr. Sack. This was distressing. I wanted no words on the subject of the Company to distract us; I wanted fewer articles of clothing between, and ideally a bed, though the nearby sofa would do, or the rug barring that.

“It’s nothing, only a scratch.”

“A scratch from what manner of animal?” he demanded.

Clearly I was to be thwarted in any attempt to keep the injury secret; I unbuttoned my dress at the neck a few inches, and then several inches more than was necessary, and watched as my love’s heated gaze darkened to black. The gash was indeed an ugly one, a crusted purple line.

“Very well, precisely whom am I meant to murder this evening?” he snarled.

“I thought I was the expert on that activity.”

“Jane, I demand satisfaction!”

“Might we employ other avenues in our search for satisfaction?” I said in his ear.

“There have been too many outrages upon your person in our brief acquaintance, and it will not be tolerated a moment longer, not while I have breath, do you hear me?”

I placed my hands along his stony jaw, set upon having my own way.

“Charles,” said I. “While you have breath in your body is, I hope, a long period of opportunity. Now, if you will forgive me for being coarse, I should like your breath on my body. I am a wicked woman, and I should like for us to go upstairs and wash this blasted scrape, and see that my head is mending well—because that will please you upon a professional level, and because you enjoy being tender with me—and then I should like for you to express that tenderness in positively filthy fashions.”

The scowl did not vanish, but now his sculpted mouth and eyes both softened at their corners. “Is that truly how you wish to pass the night?”

“Oh, I do, sir.”

“Had I not better ask you to marry me?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to?”

Finally, he chuckled and drew me closer, pulling slack lips over the hollow of my throat. “Yes.”

I shivered. “I don’t see any ministers here, do you?”

“Drat, we seem to have run dry of prelates. Happens at the worst possible times. Jane, we are doing this all out of order.”

“Are we?” My nose crinkled in confusion.

“Indeed so.” His voice lowered, its warm burr scraping over me softly. “I love you, Jane Steele. I love you. I’ve loved you since you fell from my horse. I love you, and I’m a damn fool. That should have been said by this time. Now, I’ve a confession to make.” He rose easily to his feet, and I rose with him, for he had slipped his arms round my back and under my legs. “You, my darling, must vow to me on your honour never to fall down another staircase. But you’ve no idea how cruel it was to have you in my arms like this every night, thinking you should only ever be my friend Jane, so I shall indulge your desire to shift our plans from murder to other sins.”

We did exactly so.

At first there was great tenderness, and kissing until our lips were supple and rosy whilst he was still learning for himself that I was all right; and if later there was passion, and muffled cries, and Charles’s No, I want to hear you, please let me hear you, and expanses of skin being tasted until we were both panting with exertion and simple love, then it is not the polite place of autobiography to address the subject.

When we had more than once exhausted ourselves, however, and Charles in sleep rolled to his belly and I spent long minutes tracing the scar marring the muscles of his back, I thought that this would be the memory I would treasure best, and I was right. As soon as I could leave off stroking his skin, I touched the mark at my own neck and blessed it; for we are doers of deeds, he and I, and as such lose parts of our flesh along the way, and can only pray to meet friends and lovers who can help to stitch us back again, and that we can make them whole in turn.

? ? ?

I did not marry Charles Thornfield until some few years after I began sharing his bed.

I am today Jane Thornfield, née Steele—but I am also, though few outside the household saving Mr. Quillfeather know it, Jane Kaur. Sardar Singh performed the ceremony in June, in the garden at midnight as my mother would have wanted, as Charles and Sahjara looked on proudly. Mr. Singh filled a ceremonial iron bowl with clear water and then poured into it a quantity of sugar; this he stirred with one of the swords from the billiards room, a double-edged one, as he called out in his lion’s voice, “Sri Wahe Guruji Ka Khalsa, Sri Wahe Guruji Ki Fateh.”

The passage is a pretty one, even in English: “The Khalsa belong to God, and God’s truth will always prevail.”

Charles says that he does not care what sort of Jane I am so long as I am his Jane; Sardar says that he does not care what sort of Jane I am so long as I am my own Jane; Sahjara says that she does not care what sort of Jane I am so long as she is my Sahjara. Thus I am daily three Janes, and so the luckiest of all.