Jane Steele(60)

“I accept your invitation with great enthusiasm, sir.”

Mr. Thornfield crossed his arms as I limped towards the hall.

“There have already been multiple moments which cause me to suspect your true self a giant deliberately casting a small shadow,” he reflected just as my crutch passed the threshold.

Pausing, I struggled to reply.

“Oh, never fear the ramblings of a former soldier, Miss Stone.” He drew a hand over his neck exhaustedly. “We’re cracked to a man. Go on, I’ve business to attend to.”

So I shuffled, step-thunk, step-thunk, out of the room and away, reflecting upon the three most immediate tasks before me:

—comfort Sahjara and learn what you can of what threatens this household

—navigate dinner with Mr. Thornfield

—learn to walk silently upon a sprained ankle and thereby perhaps learn a very great deal indeed afterwards

? ? ?

I lay atop my quilt for twenty minutes, taking tiny sips of laudanum, fretting that not only did I understand nothing of the workings of Highgate House but also that I possessed no precedents to guide me.

Are small girls always as formidable as Sahjara? I wondered.

Perhaps they were not; but I had been. The fact that we shared a particular home at a particular age was accidental; how then did I find it so binding, as if she were my responsibility not due to the lie which had brought me here but the truth I was discovering—that I liked these people and wished for them to like me in return?

When is a butler not really a butler?

Gingerly, I flexed my foot. My experience apart from London and Lowan Bridge School, each savage places, was limited to Mamma’s midnight picnics beneath the rustling leaves. At the thought of a butler ejecting a guest, however, and all the happy times Sardar Singh had sat with Sahjara and me whilst Mr. Thornfield was gone—something irregular was afoot. And what was Mr. Singh, if he was not the butler?

What has Mr. Augustus Sack to do with a trunk missing from the Punjab?

This seemed a rather more dangerous question, but one which required answering—and to that end, I sat upon the edge of my bed and shifted my weight until I stood fully.

“Bugger,” I gasped.

Hobbling as far as my mirror was excruciating; leaning against the edge of the dressing table, I examined myself. At twenty-four, I had not gone far towards matching my mother’s undomesticated beauty, and thus I did not often seek my own reflection. My dark hair still undulated irregularly no matter how much care I took in pinning it up, my eyes were as large as a feline’s but still the same plain brown, and my face still invited comparisons to the enchanted creatures which left England long ago.

I pinched the colour back into my cheeks, as I had no wish to alarm Sahjara further . . . not when I was so badly in need of answers and she the best purveyor of that precious, perilous commodity. The past, no one knows better than myself, is a silent stalker, and I headed for the schoolroom with the express intention of seeing her pursuer more plain.





EIGHTEEN



“I see, at intervals, the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of the cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”


Oh, that was so dreadful—and I didn’t understand what Charles meant by joking that you had a knife, but I hope you aren’t vexed.” Sahjara had put on a brave face, but I insisted that we were too rattled for lessons; so we sat in the bow window, pillows stuffed behind our backs, our feet tangled together like schoolmates, gazing at the grounds.

I pulled the small folding blade from my pocket and tossed it once, quickly returning the weapon to its hiding place. “It wasn’t a joke—London is dangerous. As for Mr. Sack, he was most insolent to your guardian.”

Sahjara rolled her head against the wall tiredly. “He is not Sikh like Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield and myself, only an East India Company man.”

“I meant to ask whether knives were de rigueur for your people,” I teased.

“Oh goodness, yes! The pure ones wear five articles of faith.”

“Your comb is a religious symbol? And the metal bracelets as well?”

“Yes, these are the kanga and the kara—the comb and the wristband. We’re also meant to wear a short sword called a kirpan, but here in England we find knives more convenient because even though the wars are over, we must remain invisible. And Charles says that if we have to hide in plain sight, then we must make allowances over what will make us look noteworthy to Britons, and fix the symbols to suit us here in England. At first Sardar was a bit uncomfortable over changing tradition, but later he agreed since the kachera—those are our knee breeches—would make us look absolutely ridiculous here, Charles says, and God is in the Guru after all, not in outward forms.”

We must remain invisible, I thought, wondering at her words. We have to hide in plain sight.

“You said five?” I asked aloud.

“Oh yes, long hair—kesh.”

“It looks more natural on you and Mr. Singh than it does on Mr. Thornfield.”

Sahjara regarded me with the eyes of a kitten tracking a string. “I’ve never seen him without it, so I couldn’t say. But I do think Charles handsome—don’t you?”

“He’s everything a gentleman ought to be, I’m sure.” Unsettled, I cast my eyes out at the lingering snowfall, the spun-sugar dust coating the bare limbs of the trees. “Are his gloves also religious, then?”