My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(82)

“And is she safe now?” Wellington asked.

Alexander nodded. “She was forced to flee Rochester. You wouldn’t believe what he’d attempted to do.”

Wellington’s face shifted into curious dread, exactly what Alexander would normally expect. “What?” he said. “Don’t hold me in suspense. What was that nefarious villain going to do with Miss Eyre?”

“He was going to marry her. He had her possessed.”

“Oh.”

“The talisman was a—” Then, standing here in the library, a discussion of the pearl necklace rushed back at him. They’d spoken of it before. Here. Years ago. It had been the very set of pearls with which he’d captured that opera singer, Selene, and brought the string to the duke. So how had the pearls reached Rochester?

Unless.

Unless Wellington had given the pearls to Rowland; Rochester had called his brother Wellington’s lackey.

“Oh.” Wellington’s expression fell. “I see the understanding on your face. You just remembered the pearls, didn’t you?”

“What pearls?” Alexander said as he hopefully scanned the room for a weapon, but there was nothing within reach. “You’ve been lying to me all this time. You’re a lying liar who lies.”

Wellington sighed. “Of course I’ve been lying. I’m a politician.”

“But why?” Alexander’s heart sank as his whole world began to crumble apart.

“For money. For power. To silence those who try to move against me.”

“Like my father?”

“Your father lacked vision, and then he decided to stop me, along with the foolish Rochesters. I had to take care of it.”

And with those simple words, Alexander’s entire world was shattered.

“Your father was the easy part. It was those Rochesters who’ve given me trouble all these years, even after I had him possessed and her locked away. But I don’t need them anymore, now that I’ve got Miss Eyre.”

“Have you got Miss Eyre?” They would have reached Haworth by now, Alexander thought. Unless Wellington had somehow intercepted them.

“No, but I soon will.” And at that moment, Wellington bashed Alexander over the head with the lockbox. Stars popped in his vision, and blood poured from a gash. And though Alexander scrambled to fight, he went down quickly.

Over the next several moments, he drifted in and out of consciousness, aware just enough to realize he was being dragged through an unfamiliar hall—tinged bright red with blood leaking into his eye—before the stink of the river overwhelmed him.

“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” Wellington said. “I did care about you. I hoped you would see things my way, since I’m the one who raised you, but you’re too much like your father.”

Then, the traitor rolled Alexander over and dumped him into the Thames.

Alexander’s last thought was this: at least Miss Bront? and Miss Eyre are safe.





TWENTY-EIGHT


Charlotte

“We’re going in circles,” observed Jane.

“We can’t be.” Charlotte lifted a hand to shield her eyes and gazed out at the windswept moors, which spread around them on all sides. There was no town or house or even the merest sign of human activity to mar the landscape. Not that Charlotte could actually see the landscape. Sometime during the scuffle back at Thornfield Hall, she’d misplaced her glasses. (We’d like to pause here to observe a moment of silence for Charlotte Bront?’s tortoiseshell spectacles, which met their untimely demise when she’d dropped them as she was fleeing Thornfield and been subsequently stepped on by Mr. Rochester, inadvertently saving Alexander’s life.) So all Charlotte saw of the moors was a reddish/goldish blur . . . and the unusually large rock that was jutting out of the hill on one side of them. “I know this moss-darkened granite crag may seem familiar,” she said to reassure Jane, “but it’s not the same moss-darkened granite crag we passed an hour ago. This is a different crag. I’m fairly certain of it.”

Jane just stared at her. “Helen says she cannot go any farther,” she said hoarsely. “She must rest.”

Charlotte did not have the energy to point out that Helen was deceased and incorporeal and therefore could not rest more than she was already doing. But Charlotte’s legs ached, and she could barely keep her eyes open. So she nodded, and the tragic little group stopped next to the familiar (yes, it was definitely the same one; she saw that now) moss-darkened granite crag and sat for a moment in the marshy grass.

How had they come to such a desolate place? Things had gone well enough, the first day. After fleeing Thornfield they’d walked until they’d reached a road, where a carriage had just happened to be passing by. They’d waved to it, and the driver had stopped. They’d asked where he was going, and he’d named a town not far from Haworth, where Charlotte had told Alexander to meet them. Haworth was Charlotte’s home, sort of, even though she hadn’t spent much time there, and it was safe, and Father and Bran would be there. The carriage driver said he’d take them for thirty shillings. Between them, Charlotte and Jane had been able to scrape together but twenty. On that meager amount, the driver had taken them as far as Whitcross, which was not a town but merely a place where four roads met at a crossroads. But it was reasonably close to Haworth, and Charlotte had assumed they could easily walk the rest of the way. And it would be quicker, she’d suggested, to go straight across the moors instead of taking the long way by road.