Jane Steele(2)

“It hurts,” I insisted, thinking, It may have been better to cry after all.

“Then it is most profoundly serious to me,” she proclaimed, again in French, and proceeded to kiss me until I was helpless with giggling.

“And I lost all the berries.”

“But consider—there is no harm done. We shall go and gather more. After all, have you anything of consequence to do?”

The answer was no; there was nothing of consequence to do, as this garden party took place at midnight under a wan, watchful moon. Having spent my entire life in my mother’s company, I thought nothing amiss herein, though I was vexed I had not seen the root which had tripped me. Surely other little girls donned lace-trimmed frocks and enjoyed picnics featuring trifle and tea cakes, sitting with their mothers under the jewel-strewn canopy of starlight, never dreaming of sleep until the cold dew threatened and we began to shiver.

Do they not? I would anxiously ask myself.

It is relevant that my beloved mother, Anne-Laure Steele, was detested throughout our familial estate, and for two sound reasons. First, as I mentioned, she was—tragically and irrevocably—French. Second, my mother was beautiful.

I do not mean beautiful in the conventional, insipid fashion; I mean that my mother was actually beautiful, bizarrely so, in the ghostly, wide-gazed sense. She possessed a determined square chin, a chin I share, so that she always looked stubborn even when meekness was selling at a premium. Her hair was dark with a brick-red sheen and her almond-shaped eyes were framed beneath by pretty caverns; her wrists had thin scars like pearlescent bracelets which I did not then understand.

At times she screamed under the indifferent moon in French for my dead father. At others she refused to budge from the bed until, groaning at the slanting afternoon light, she allowed our combined cook and housemaid, Agatha, to ply her with tea.

What’s the matter, Mamma? I would ask softly. Now I am grown, I comprehend her answers far better than I did then.

Only that yesterday was so very, very long.

Only that my eyes are tired and nothing in the new novel I thought I’d like so well means as much to me as I imagined it would.

Only that I cannot think of a useful occupation, and when I do, the task daunts me, and so cannot attempt it anyhow, sweet one.

Never could I predict when her smile would blaze forth again, nor earn enough of the feathery kisses she would drop to my brow inexplicably—as if I was worthy of them for no reason at all.

In short, my mother and I—two friendly monsters—found each other lovely and hoped daily that others would find us so as well.

They did not.

? ? ?

I shall explain how I embarked upon a life of infamy, but first what my mother told me regarding my inheritance.

When I was six years old, my mother announced in French, in August, in the shade-dappled garden, “One day you will have everything, chérie, even the main house. It all belonged to your father and will always be yours—there are documents to this effect despite the fact inheritance for girls is always a highly complicated matter. Meanwhile, our cottage may be poor and plain, but you understand the many difficulties.”

I did not fully understand the many difficulties, though I assumed my aunt and cousin, who lived in the estate proper, did so because they were haughty and wanted the entire pile of mossy stonework, complete with dour servants and tapestries hanging sombre as funeral shrouds, to themselves. Neither did I think our cottage, with its mullioned glass and its roaring fireplaces and its cheery bay windows, was either poor or plain. I did, however, understand particular difficulties, ones regarding how well we got on with our relations.

“You see the way your aunt looks at me—you know we cannot live at the main house. Here we are safe and warm and friendly and ourselves,” she added fretfully, worrying at the cuticle upon her left thumb as her eyes pooled.

“Je déteste la maison principale,” I announced.

Passing her my ever-ready kerchief, I dried her tears. I plucked wild sorrel to sprinkle over our fish supper and told everyone who would listen—which amounted only to my mother and frayed, friendly Agatha—Let us always live just as we please, for I love you both.

Such was not to be.

? ? ?

My aunt, Mrs. Patience Barbary—mother of Edwin Barbary—was, like my mother, a widow. She had been wed to Mr. Richard Barbary; Mr. Richard Barbary was the half brother of my own father, Jonathan Steele, whose claim to Highgate House was entire and never called into question in my presence. I presumed that our Barbary kinfolk resided with us due to financial necessity, as my aunt could not under any circumstances be accused of enjoying our company.

In fact, one of our visits to the main house, shortly after my ninth birthday, centred around just such a discussion.

“It is so very kind of you to have us for tea,” Anne-Laure Steele said, her smile glinting subtly. “I have said often to Jane that she should better familiarise herself with the Steele estate—after all, she will live here when she is grown, and mon Dieu, to think what mismanagement could occur if she did not know its—I think, in English—intricacies?”

Aunt Patience was a sturdy woman wearing perennial mourning black, though she never otherwise appeared to regret her lack of spouse. Perhaps she was mourning something else entirely: her lost youth, for example, or the heathens in darkest Africa who perished in ignorance of Christ.