Jane Steele(61)

My charge frowned. “I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps they could hide burns or marks?”

“Heavens, that would be awful.” She shrugged. “I almost forget they’re there. They must look awfully peculiar to an Englishwoman.”

Englishwoman, I thought warmly; now I knew more of their history, the appellation was magnificently sensible, as they all originated in the Punjab and regarded me as the foreigner.

“Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield seem like fast friends.”

“Yes, they grew up together!” Sahjara smiled, tapping the edge of her boot against my skirts. “Charles was born in Lahore, you know, and Sardar—well, that isn’t his name, but anyhow—Sardar’s family traded in indigo and jaggery. They were frightfully rich before the wars.”

“Sardar isn’t his name?” I repeated, mystified.

“Oh, no.” Sahjara hopped out of the window, idly twirling her skirts. “All that rubbish Charles was talking about Sardar being incapable of jokes couldn’t be further from the truth. Mr. Thornfield said that for us to live without much remark here in England, he would have to be the butler, and he changed his name not ten seconds later to mean ‘high commander.’ May I just run downstairs and see whether Dalbir’s hoof is any better? Mr. Sack’s visit left me so flustered that I might almost have forgot.”

? ? ?

This soup is delicious.”

I sat across from Mr. Thornfield in the dining room. After admonishing myself not to gape, I reminded myself you’ve never been here before, and then gaped as I pleased. Every placid English landscape in which the dogs had contemplated the sheep and the sheep contemplated the dogs was replaced with decorative mirrors. There were as many gilt-edged and silver-embossed mirrors as there were days upon a calendar, multiplying us ad infinitum until there were a thousand Jane Steeles and a thousand Charles Thornfields.

“Is it?” he answered.

Mr. Thornfield’s voice, I noted, sounded much the richer for what it did not say. It occurred to me that I wanted to know what his favourite summer had been like, whether it happened in England or the Punjab, hot desert sandscapes versus gleaming green afternoons, and then it occurred to me this topic was egregiously far afield from my true mission.

I waited for him to speak; no overtures were forthcoming.

“I think the weather will hold now the snow has stopped—don’t you?”

Mr. Thornfield chuckled. He wore a swallowtail coat and a thick rust-coloured cravat—which I thought hardly fair, since my best governess disguise was a drab thing of dove-grey satin striped with a cream pattern and topped with a high lace collar, and it is beastly to be seated across from a bluntly handsome fellow when one looks about as captivating as gravel. Had we been in London, and I my nefarious self, I would have found a secondhand dress of rose silk and filled my hair with tiny yellow tea roses.

“Though of course, your estate is charming covered in white—it looks like a fairyland.”

When again Mr. Thornfield said nothing, I smiled, my heart shivering in my chest; was he wary, even angry? He returned the amiable look, however, and I reached for a second helping of the blistered bread Mr. Singh had left.

“I imagined that you would be more talkative since you seemed eager to speak with me, sir.”

“Good Lord, no—that would be dreadful strategy.” Mr. Thornfield poured me more claret. “I’ve a knack for silence. I’ll remain quite closemouthed and simply await developments.”

“May I ask why?”

“Well, I’ve two topics on my mind—but if you truly would rather pretend all governesses carry knives, then I admit England would be the livelier for it. And if you won’t mention the fact that priggish Company executives aren’t often driven out of breakfast rooms with the same weapon, then I choose the topic of soup over snow.”

I wished that I could have been Jane Steele and laughed, and flirted; since I was Jane Stone, however, I chose my words with care. “I cannot explain the latter, but I will certainly explain why I carry a knife.”

Charles Thornfield’s sun-burnished face gave me the sly look of encouragement I have seen many rogues attempt, all having failed miserably by comparison.

I sat forward. “Mr. Thornfield, I am here under false pretences.”

The master of the house angled his bullish chin at me and took a generous sip of wine.

Lies, honest reader, are organic—they can shift from outright falsehoods into half-truths and even truths, generally when you like the person to whom you are lying, in the way wormlike creatures become butterflies out of sudden inspiration. I was inspired on that evening by knives and tiny paintings and the fond glances Sahjara and Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh all cast at one another.

“To boot, I am probably not fit to be a governess.”

Mr. Thornfield snorted sceptically.

“My initial letter to you was correct in every salient particular, of course—I attended a school called Lowan Bridge.” My heart beat a hornet’s-wing tattoo. “But I did not mention that, when I was young, I was accosted in an ungentlemanly manner by my cousin. I think his presumptuousness and later our headmaster’s cruelty may have endowed me with a certain fear of men. I go armed due to these experiences. I have been called many things, Mr. Thornfield—pigheaded, wayward, brazen—and yet, no one feels the grievousness of my shortcomings more keenly than I.” Unexpectedly raw-voiced, I stopped.