My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(84)

“The house will have to be sold,” said the first. “We’ll probably have until then.”

Their voices were familiar. Charlotte had the mad thought that those sweet voices belonged to her sisters, Emily and Anne, which of course was impossible, as her sisters were still at Lowood. They were angels’ voices, she decided.

“We should knock,” croaked Jane.

But they were too exhausted.

“You knock, Helen,” Charlotte said. But no knock sounded.

So for the moment they lay on the doorstep next to each other, getting more and more drenched by the rain, until there were sudden footsteps on the path that led up to the door, followed by a muffled exclamation of surprise. And when Charlotte opened her eyes again, Bran’s face was looming over hers.

She hadn’t expected an angel to look like Bran.

“Charlie!” Bran cried. “And . . . Jane—Miss Eyre! What are you doing home?”

She gave a strangled laugh. They were still alive, apparently. And home. All this time wandering aimlessly and now she’d landed on her own front doorstep. She laughed again, then groaned.

“Em! Annie!” Bran called. “Come quick!”

The next few minutes went by in a blur. Emily and Anne—yes, her sisters were here—came running and helped Bran half carry, half drag both Jane and Charlotte into the house and in front of the parlor fire. Then Bran retreated to the kitchen while Charlotte’s sisters retrieved fresh and dry clothes for the unfortunate pair. There was a thin soup spooned into their mouths. Blankets were wrapped around them. A spot of brandy administered. And after a while Charlotte found that she had recovered enough to talk.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Emily and Anne first off. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. Emily and Anne should be at Lowood. There was no reason for them to be here at Haworth unless . . .

“Father has died,” Annie said gently.

“It was very sudden,” said Emily. “His heart.”

“He was buried yesterday. We would have sent for you, of course,” said Bran, “but you weren’t at Lowood, and I didn’t know where to find you. You were supposed to go back to school, Charlie, after I left you at the train station. Why did you not go back?” He pressed his lips together in a way that reminded Charlotte of her father’s scowl. Which made her chest hurt. She and Father had never been particularly close—he’d been a distant, almost cold figure for much of her life. But still, he’d been her father. And now he was gone.

“I was diverted,” she said to Bran.

“Never mind,” he said, patting her hand. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m here now. And you’re here. In charge of everything.”

He nodded bravely. He seemed to have accepted this sudden change in his life’s calling. A parson. The man who’d see to the religious needs of the community. She wouldn’t have believed him capable of such a thing. But in a mere week since they’d parted ways at the train station, her brother seemed to have changed. He was sixteen now—he’d had his birthday, which she’d also missed. But he was looking and acting like he was twenty, at the least. Somehow, in the time since she’d last seen him, her brother had grown up.

“Have you heard from Mr. Blackwood?” she asked him.

“Mr. Blackwood?” Bran’s expression tightened slightly like the mention of Mr. Blackwood still brought up embarrassing recollections of his time in the Society. “No. Should I have heard from Mr. Blackwood?”

“He distracted Mr. Rochester so that Jane and I could make our escape,” Charlotte explained. “He said he would meet us here.”

“No, I have not seen him,” Bran said.

A shiver made its way down Charlotte’s spine, like a remnant from the cold she’d suffered on the moors. “Well. He should be here soon, then. We can expect him any time now.”

A week passed, but Mr. Blackwood didn’t arrive. The first few days Charlotte jumped at every footfall she heard outside, sure that he had finally come, but it never turned out to be the illustrious Mr. Blackwood. And slowly it began to dawn on her that something had gone wrong, to delay him so. Something had happened.

“Mr. Blackwood can handle himself,” Bran kept telling her, but Charlotte still worried.

“He probably returned to London to report to the Society,” Jane said as they were walking out in the garden.

“But he said he’d come find us,” Charlotte argued. “He said, and I quote, ‘I will find you.’”

Jane shrugged. She’d been a bit on edge these last few days. They all had. The entire company—Bran and Charlotte, Emily and Annie, Jane and even Helen, apparently, from what Jane reported—were all feeling a sense of impending doom. They were, at the very least, in for a change. The house at Haworth was going to have to be sold, as the sisters had been discussing the night Charlotte and Jane arrived. Their father had left them no inheritance to speak of. Just the parsonage, which Bran would be taking over.

So Emily and Anne were going to be sent back to Lowood. Charlotte couldn’t bear the thought of returning, so she’d secured herself a teaching position in the town, which came with a tiny little room attached to the schoolhouse. It wasn’t a very glamorous job. But it was something.