Jane Steele(48)

Pausing, I asked, “Sahjara is . . . her daughter?”

Mr. Singh turned on the landing, his candle illuminating the edge of his tall turban and the hollow crescent of a smile. “Ah, no indeed. Sikh men take the name Singh, as I do, and Sikh women the name Kaur. It is our custom.”

“Are all the domestics Sikhs, then?” I asked innocently, my heart tensing for his answer.

“Indeed we are, Miss Stone. I hope that will not prove a problem.”

“Oh, of course not,” I assured him as I thrilled with satisfaction. “I hope to learn a great deal more.”

We continued up the staircase from which the oil portrait of my uncle Richard Barbary had used to stare cunningly. At last, Mr. Singh swung a door open. They had readied Aunt Patience’s room for me. It was not Aunt Patience’s room any longer, however; the silver lamps gleamed, the corners were full of ferns, the heavy velvet hangings on the bed replaced with magical violet and lilac ones in such dye shades as I had never before seen, and where once a few niggardly coals had gasped for breath, the hearth laughed and crackled.

Wrenching my stupefied gaze from the silent white tiger skin roaring at me from the floor, I turned to thank Mr. Singh.

“Oh, and . . .” I added. He stopped, raising his chin. “Mr. Thornfield spoke of limits regarding where I’m allowed to go within the house?”

Mr. Singh’s beard bobbed. “The cellars are under construction, and it is hazardous to explore them. The rest of Highgate House, including the attics should you require storage, is at your disposal—it is only the underground which is kept locked whilst alterations are in progress.”

Obviously, the house was much changed; and yet, the back of my brain still prickled at this. When Jane Eyre first tours her new home and hears the tragic laugh she supposes Grace Poole’s, the author writes, but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. I was not afraid; but the fierce possessiveness I felt for Highgate House made me long to relearn it from plaster cracks to stone foundation. Being barred from a portion felt galling.

“I shall conduct all remaining introductions in the morning—say, after Sahjara has shown you the stables?” Mr. Singh prompted when I said nothing.

“Yes, of course. Here I stand peppering you with questions which can wait for the morrow—though of course those questions will likely only lead to fresh ones.”

“So often the way,” said he, and this time I knew it for a subtle jest, “with questions.”

A key reposed in the lock and, dizzied at the prospect of experiencing genuine privacy for the first time in my life, I turned it.

Revolving as I crossed the room, drinking in pillows edged with seed pearls and the filigreed birds hanging upon the walls, I suppressed a shudder.

The last time I was here, I requested to be placed in the hands of Mr. Munt.

So much had changed; I now knew myself a thousand times better, as if I were a textbook I had studied, but being at Highgate House conjured everything from the graceful dips above my mother’s clavicle to Edwin’s damp palms.

One memory at a time would be a welcome diversion: so many together are agonising.

With arms of lead, I tossed some water on my face from the pitcher and braided my erratic waves of hair, donning my nightdress. On an impulse, I went to the window and drew back the sheer amethyst curtains—there was the diagonal line of our cottage’s gable in the moonlight, seen through silhouetted trees. Biting my knuckle, I studied it until I knew that I must turn away or else pretend to have caught a head cold come morning.

As my eyes shifted, they snagged upon the drive, a ribbon of heather within the slate, and I thought of Charles Thornfield.

Indeed, once my mind latched upon him, I stood for several more minutes, wondering what business my mortal enemy had that would take him away from his clearly beloved ward; I at last collapsed, worn to a bone shard, upon my deceased aunt Patience’s feather bed.





FIFTEEN



It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world: cut adrift from every connection; uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted.


I have no doubt but that you will find your way,” Mr. Singh assured me, pouring a cup of clove-scented tea at the kitchen table. “We cannot be what you expected to find.”

The December morning had been frigid, a pristine lace veil draped bridelike over the grounds. Sahjara had met me before the stables, wearing her riding habit, raven’s-feather eyes gleaming. Her enthusiasm for equestrianism was no hardship—I felt pure satisfaction when I tugged back the familiar wooden gate, splinter prone and rust smelling, and entered the stable. After Sahjara gathered that horses were neither averse to me nor I to them, she blithely wondered did I always look so happy when I stood beside a stallion’s muzzle, smiling at its single visible eye?

The answer was yes, of course, but then Sahjara departed to work with her riding coach, and I rendezvoused with Mr. Singh in the kitchen only to behold the entire domestic staff.

Agatha, I thought, suppressing a fresh gush of panic despite assurances the household was entirely foreign. She would say nothing, surely—she would never betray my confidence, once she learnt I meant to claim what’s mine.

Agatha, however, was nowhere to be seen.