My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(111)

“Outside of Wellington and the Rochesters, you’re the only one who knows the truth.”

She smiled. “What’s your middle name? I bet I can guess.”

He bent his head. “You’d never guess.”

“No, but I think I might. Alexander . . . Bell. It feels there’s an obvious middle to that.”

He tried not to grin. “My middle name is Currer.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “You’re right. I never would have guessed.” She held out her hand to him. “Then I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Alexander Currer Bell.”

He took her hand. “And I yours, Miss Charlotte . . .”

“I have no middle name, I’m afraid. The only one of us who received a middle name was Emily. Emily Jane.”

“Miss Bront?, then.”

“Mr. Bell. Although I suppose I must go on calling you Mr. Blackwood.”

“You could call me Alexander, if you wished.”

Her eyes widened behind her spectacles. “And you could call me Charlotte.”

Indeed.





Epilogue


The morning was dawning bright at the Bront? residence. Jane and Charlotte could already be found, even at this early hour, in the garden behind the house. Jane was wearing a painter’s smock over a pale blue dress and an expression of fierce concentration as she made a series of rapid yet delicate brushstrokes onto the canvas before her. Charlotte was perched on a bench a few paces away from Jane, wearing her new spectacles—the kind that she could see out of without having to lift them, as in permanent, over-the-ears glasses. Which was a fortunate thing, as she was hard at work herself, scribbling away furiously into a new notebook. (One without a bullet hole.)

That notebook was almost full to the very last page of the most engaging story.

“Read that last part back again,” Jane instructed.

Charlotte cleared her throat delicately.

“Reader . . .” she began.

Jane’s brow furrowed. “Are you certain you should address the reader that way? It seems forward.”

Charlotte smiled and said stubbornly, “I’m sure the readers like to be addressed. It draws them into the narrative, makes them part of it. Trust me.”

“All right, then. Continue.”

“Are you sure?” Charlotte’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “No more suggestions for improvement of that one word I’ve read to you so far?”

Jane laughed. “No. Proceed.”

“Ahem. Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of married life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done. I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am. I know no weariness of Mr. Rochester’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together.”

Jane gave a wistful sigh. “That’s so good, Charlotte.”

“It’s not too much? I think it might be too much.”

Jane shook her head. “It’s a little long. But it’s romantic. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a story that’s so perfectly romantic. Your readers will eat it up.”

Charlotte bit her lip nervously. “I don’t have any readers, currently. Except family. And Alexander.” She felt greatly embarrassed sometimes when she thought of Alexander reading the story, because so much of what she’d written about Jane Eyre’s feelings for Mr. Rochester had been inspired by what she herself felt for a certain Mr. Blackwood.

But then she smiled at the thought of Alexander.

Jane smiled at the word family. She was part of Charlotte’s family, you see, and not just because she lived at Haworth now, too, but officially. (And no, this was not because Jane Eyre had married Branwell Bront?.) No, the way Jane had become family to the Bront?s was the result of a funny coincidence, actually.

Some weeks after they’d all returned from London, smoky and slightly singed but still victorious, a lawyer had arrived. He’d informed them that he was acting on the behalf of the estate of Arthur Wellesley, the recently and tragically deceased Duke of Wellington. Who had been the estranged uncle to the Bront?s, didn’t they know?

They did know, it turned out.

Their estranged uncle Arthur had left behind quite a fortune when he’d passed, the lawyer had informed them. In the sum of twenty thousand pounds.

“To us?” the Bront?s had asked incredulously. That seemed unlikely. Considering.

“Well . . . no,” said the lawyer. To a mysterious person the duke didn’t know he’d ever met. The duke, it turned out, had another sibling—a lost sister who’d died in childbirth long ago, who’d left behind an orphan, who’d been missing this entire time, who’d been reported as deceased herself, but it had recently come to the late duke’s attention that this girl was not, in fact, deceased. She was very much alive. A teacher at Lowood school. And to this modest little teacher, the duke had left his entire fortune. So the lawyer had gone searching for the girl at Lowood, and he’d tracked her to Haworth. Where he was now seeking none other than—you guessed it—our very own Jane Eyre.