My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(54)

He took a deep breath and began to read.

My dear friend Rochester, the letter began.

Alexander had been right; his father had known Mr. Rochester. They’d been friends. Not just acquaintances or passingly friendly, but dear.

The beginning of the letter was all formalities, updating Rochester on the activities in London and their mutual acquaintances. There was even a note about Alexander—My son is full of energy and curiosity. I fear I won’t be able to keep up with him—which Alexander read over and over, burning the words into his heart. He wanted to remember forever some of the last thoughts his father had about him.

Then: I know you and I have not agreed in the past about what to do about AW, but I’d still like to avoid violence if we can. We should meet in person to discuss how we might save the Society and bring this travesty to an end.

Alexander read the letter five more times. A hundred more times. Slowly, the pieces began to fall into place. Rochester had come to London to see Alexander’s father. To discuss something about the Society. To avoid violence.

But there had been violence. The explosion.

Perhaps the disagreement had been stronger than his father had realized.

What if his father had died at the hands of Edward Rochester?





NINETEEN


Charlotte

The candle was almost burnt out, but Charlotte kept writing. She’d felt a rush of inspiration ever since this morning’s conversation with Jane. It was a new story, a better one than she had ever attempted. The mystery of Mr. Brocklehurst had flown from her consciousness. This story she was writing now—the one she’d been waiting for—the one, she knew, she was meant to compose, was not a murder mystery. Murder mysteries were rather base, weren’t they? It was not a ghost story, either, although it may have supernatural elements, Charlotte supposed. No, this new story was a romance. It was drawn in large part from Jane’s situation. It had come to Charlotte all in a rush as she’d listened to Jane reflect on her relationship with Mr. Rochester. There’d been this gleam of love in Jane’s eyes. Jane Eyre—little plain Jane—was in love. She had no right to be in love, of course, a girl of her status, especially seeing as the man of interest was the master of the house. But in love, Jane was. And it sounded as if the love were, at least in some aspect, reciprocated.

Charlotte could imagine it all so well. Jane and Mr. Rochester were bound together, no matter how improper it appeared. She sighed. Someday, perhaps, she’d find love, too. Or it would find her, as it had with Jane. How was it that Jane had described it? “He made me love him,” she’d said, “without even looking at me.”

For now, Charlotte would have to be content to write her own version of their story. She’d already filled a quarter of her notebook with her tiny, laborious scrawl about Jane in love. At the moment, as the candle burned perilously low, she was trying to write the perfect description of Mr. Rochester.

The fire shone full on his face, Charlotte wrote, drawing her lip between her teeth and holding it there as her mind whirled with words. I—she’d been writing it so far in first person because it felt more natural to her to try to feel as she thought Jane must feel, and to give her a voice—not the voice of some wise, presumably male narrator, judging her, but her own, pure voice, speaking for itself. (And also, if we’re being honest, Charlotte could live through Jane a little, if she wrote that way.) I knew my traveler, with his broad and . . . She frowned . . . jetty . . . yes, jetty . . . eyebrows, his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. I recognized his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than for beauty. She smiled at the line, dipped her pen into the inkwell and carried on in trying to describe his face. His grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim and no mistake.

She paused. There was indeed something grim about Mr. Rochester. Something ominous. She’d felt it every time she’d been in the man’s presence. But this was the man Jane professed to love. Charlotte, as Jane’s friend, should try to be supportive. And love was blind, was it not? Mr. Rochester possessed all the qualities that a young lady should yearn for. He was rather old, she could admit, but not feeble or senile. He was wealthy. He had an amusing talent—he was a decent actor, she’d seen when they’d played charades earlier. And he owned a very nice dog.

He would do. And Jane loved him, which was what truly mattered.

Charlotte turned back to her work. His shape, now divested of cloak—I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though neither tall nor graceful.

She paused again. For some mysterious reason her mind drifted to Mr. Blackwood. Mr. Blackwood was graceful. In her mind she conjured the way he walked, so purposefully and yet light on his feet. How he folded his hands when he sat. His serious expression—but then there was the way he tried not to smile even when something struck him as humorous—the way his eyes would give him away and the tiniest upturn in the corner of his mouth would appear for a flicker of an instant before he’d banish it. She did like the smile, even though it meant that he might not be taking her seriously, she supposed. Lately when he’d told her to “Go home, Miss Bront?,” that hidden smile had been present, too, as if he were only saying it out of habit now, but he didn’t mean it. He wanted her there.

Charlotte brushed an errant curl from her forehead. Focus, she told herself. Back to Mr. Rochester. She concentrated on picturing the man’s face, his stern features and heavy brow, his eyes and gathered eyebrows looking . . . ireful and thwarted. Yes.