My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(27)

“Jane landed a position as a governess. She’s gone from Lowood.”

“She left last week,” Anne said mournfully. “She was my favorite teacher.”

“Charlotte’s been moping for days,” Emily added.

Charlotte swallowed. It was all so obvious now, what was ailing Jane. Jane Eyre could see ghosts. She must have died once. She, like Bran, was a seer. This was why Mr. Blackwood had attempted to recruit her. It was also why Jane so often appeared to be talking to herself, Charlotte realized. She must have been speaking to figures that others could not see.

Why had Jane not told her? She’d thought they were friends—best friends—so why would Jane keep something so vital from her?

Perhaps, Charlotte thought, she didn’t know Jane Eyre at all.

“I should inform Mr. Blackwood of this news at once.” Bran was grinning again—Mr. Blackwood would be pleased with him for bringing this vital information. And Charlotte had given this information to Bran. She’d been somewhat useful, then.

The girls took turns hugging and kissing their brother. Bran slipped out the window, shimmied his way awkwardly down an adjacent tree (but miraculously avoided injury), and disappeared into the fog.

Charlotte walked her sisters back to bed.

“Bran looked well, didn’t he?” Anne sighed drowsily as Charlotte tucked her in.

“Yes, dear. He did.” He did, Charlotte thought. His eyes had been bright, his cheeks flushed with excitement. It was good to see her brother with a purpose. But it made her all the more keenly aware of her own lackluster future.

She tried sleeping, but after a time gave up and went to her hiding place in the stairwell with a candle and her notebook. A series of rapid thoughts were cycling through her brain, and she felt compelled to write them down. Mostly on the subject of the sheer injustice of being withheld from all the truly worthwhile forms of employment simply because she was a girl.

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do, she wrote, her pen flying across the page. They suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

She took a deep breath and felt some of the tension drain from her. Writing could let out the pent-up emotions the way a doctor might bleed his patients. But it also made her feel empty, like this writing was all that she would ever be permitted to have. Could she subsist on only these thoughts and dreams, these hastily scribbled wanderings of her mind? A shiver worked its way down Charlotte’s spine. No. No. She would not tolerate it. She would—how had Jane put it?—she would imagine a different life. She would seek it.

She hurried back to the bedroom, dressed quickly, and slid a carpetbag out from under her bed, in which she packed her meager possessions.

“What are you doing?” Emily whispered.

Charlotte was unable to keep the quiver of excitement out of her voice. “I’m going to work for Mr. Blackwood. He wanted Jane, but he’s going to get me, instead.”

“You think he’ll accept you?” Emily sounded both worried and envious. “Didn’t he already refuse?”

“I will persuade him.”

“But what about school?”

“I have learned enough here.” Charlotte laid her notebook, a tightly sealed bottle of ink, and a handful of pens on top of her clothes and shut the carpetbag. The handle was broken on one side, but she could manage it. She smiled.

Emily sat up. “But it’s not proper, Charlotte. You’re a girl. It’s not dignified to run about begging for a job.”

Charlotte’s chin lifted. “I would always rather be happy than dignified,” she said, her cheerful tone returning, and out she went.





EIGHT


Jane

“You must put on your finest dress,” Mrs. Fairfax said, combing through Jane’s wardrobe, which consisted of two gray dresses, so the combing consisted of choosing the dress that looked the least worn. “I guess this one will have to do.” Jane had been called down to the parlor to “be presented” to the master of the house, and update him on her progress with Adele.

Mrs. Fairfax laid the dress on Jane’s bed and then fluffed the pillows and shook out the bed skirt. Mr. Rochester had been away for a few days, and his sudden return had put the housekeeper in a state of flurry.

Jane’s cheeks flushed, partly because of her lack of fine things, but partly, she suspected, in anticipation of seeing Mr. Rochester again. With his dark eyes. And his tall ways.

“I hope Pilot will be there,” Helen said, pretending to admire herself in the mirror, even though she had no reflection. “I think he likes me.”

“Do not be late, Miss Eyre,” Mrs. Fairfax said. “The master values promptness above all else. Except order. And discipline.”

“I will not be late,” Jane said.

Mrs. Fairfax flurried out of the room, dusting as she went.

A full fifteen minutes early, Jane was sitting in the parlor, waiting, with Helen by her side. Moments later, Mr. Rochester walked in carrying a satchel. Jane’s art satchel. Jane had given it to Adele to look at, but somehow Mr. Rochester had it.