Jane Steele(80)

“Miss Stone, there is nothing I can do to relieve your pain over what just occurred. But I had a sister once, and in a way—in a very English way,” he amended, “you remind me of her. I don’t think that anyone who reminds me of my sister ought to feel so melancholy about herself, though I understand you must be in a state of extreme distress.”

You really cannot imagine what sort of state I am in.

“Did I kill him?”

“Yes,” said he.

I bit my lip, that sharp hurt dulling the ache in my chest. “Was your sister beautiful?”

Mr. Singh smiled. I have visited many churchyards, both as inspiration for gallows ballads and for perverse pleasure, and it was the smile I had found on the carved angels’ faces—peaceful but eroding.

“Indeed she was. Her name was Karman, and do you know, that sealed her fate, I think.”

“What does it mean?”

“‘Doer of deeds.’ Charles will never tell you this, but I was always a pacifist at heart. Oh, I am a skilled warrior, as is our honour and the will of God. But ‘Let compassion be your mosque,’ the Guru states, and if you were to discuss compassion with a Khalsa naik* today . . .” He shrugged.

I tucked my arm under my pulsating head. “But your sister was a fighter?”

“The great Maharajah Ranjit Singh would have been hard-pressed to win a battle with my sister,” Mr. Singh reflected. “Karman, from the time she was small, was wildly passionate. She loved the Khalsa in the new ways, with sharp swords and fat jewels and daring feats, whilst I loved it in the old ways, with meditation and acceptance. ‘Whom should I despise, since the one Lord made us all?’ If you were to have asked Karman, she would have spat, ‘The British and the Bengali strumpets who service them.’ Then she would have laughed and shouted, ‘Khalsa-ji!’ and you may have thought it merriment, but there was war in her eyes from the age of five, and later, men adored her for it. I did not blame them. I loved her before they did, after all.”

“You were a good brother to her.”

“Oh, yes,” he scoffed. “I taught her to fight with the tulwar, the chakkar, just as I did Charles, when I ought to have taught her meditation.”

“Did it grieve you, that you were so different?”

“A little—but people cannot help being who they are.”

“They can help the things they do because of who they are, however.”

“Are you merely shaken, or are you often distressed by who you are?” Mr. Singh inquired gently.

“Either.” I laughed. “Both, perhaps. I don’t know.”

“‘If I say I am perishable, it will not avail me; but if I truly know I am perishable, it will.’ Miss Stone, pardon me for asking, but . . . do you ever think about death?”

Only of the many deaths I’ve caused, and my mother’s, and my own, and every day.

When I held my tongue, Mr. Singh pressed my wrist. “You do, I see. Then you are far closer to God than you think you are. I must go help Charles.”

“Mr. Singh,” I called after him with tears in my eyes, “will you tell me what your name was? Before?”

Hesitating, he replied, “Aazaad was my name. It means ‘free of care.’”

“And why did you change it?”

This time, he did not pause.

“Because it did not suit me anymore, Miss Stone,” he replied, shutting the door softly as he went.

Rolling onto my stomach, I buried my head in my arms and wept. I have seen, employed as a literary phrase, that characters wept as though the world were ending; the world ending, I thought, would be better than continuing to deceive compassionate people, lying from dawn to dusk because to stop lying would mean ceasing to be entangled with them.

? ? ?

When I awoke, I felt perfectly at ease though my pate shrieked with pain, and someone was tenderly cleaning the wound with a damp cloth.

I think Mr. Thornfield sensed my wakefulness due to my stilling rather than stirring. A knee was wedged behind the curve of my lower back, and the quilt covered me from neck to toe. I quickly realised it was impossible for him to work with such delicacy of touch whilst still wearing blood-crusted gloves.

The sea could have parted in the centre and it would not have felt as open as I did then, the whorls of his fingertips parting my already scattered tresses.

“Jane, please speak a word if only to berate me. You’ve done a damn sight more than I tonight, but grant me this single further favour.”

I could think of nothing to say, however.

“Darling? Jane, for heaven’s sake, only live and let fly at me with all the abuse you like and you’ll make me a happy man.”

My lungs produced a frightful sound, and he crossed one arm over my torso diagonally, as if protecting me from falling.

“Will you pardon me for murdering someone in your drawing room?” I breathed.

“Oh, Jane.” His voice was wracked, vibrating through me, but I shook for more reasons than I liked to think about.

He handled my hair with bare hands, though he never brushed my skin, and I registered sharp hurts, and glass draughts smelling of herbs and strong spirits against my lips and my head. He dried the tear in my scalp, and washed the blood from my locks in a porcelain bowl, and as dawn approached he lifted a tendril of my hair up to his lips even as I fell asleep in his arms, kissing it as though his heart were breaking.