“Well outside of London—not far from Waltham Abbey?”
I must have tottered on my way to the door, for Mr. Quillfeather gripped my waist with hands that looked absurdly long wrapped round it and swung me to the ground. We were in a stable yard outside a hostelry, and I blinked against the glare as my captor released me from the rust-scented handcuffs.
“I take it the plan worked.”
“Never did I doubt it would, but may I admit to some initial anxiety, Miss Steele?” Mr. Quillfeather dropped the darbies into his satchel and swung shut the door. “Happily, my fears were unfounded. You were most convincingly distraught as we left the Weathercock, and I observed two men who seemed, as you suggested, to be keeping a watch on the boarding house? They conferred quickly and departed in haste after you were shut in the conveyance.”
They will go straight to Sack with news of my arrest, I thought with dark satisfaction. He will search all the London gaols, and when he comes to the division which liaisons with Inspector Quillfeather when they need him in London, the sergeant will confirm my arrest.
I would not, however, be allowed any visitors; I pictured the apoplexed face of the Company diplomat when told by a placid bobby that he could under no circumstances see Miss Jane Stone before she had been thoroughly questioned, and could not help but smile.
“We’ve bought ourselves a bit of time,” I said, “but how long?”
Mr. Quillfeather called for the constable to drive off; gesturing to a much faster one-horse trap, my ally helped me into it.
“Enough, Miss Steele?” he answered gravely. “It does not matter precisely how much time, provided it is enough.”
Nodding, I watched the hedgerows blur as we quit the hostelry at twice the speed we had employed upon arrival. We covered our laps with layers of wool nearly as thick as my finger; silently, as if we had long been close companions, we shared bread and cheese from Mr. Quillfeather’s satchel. Keeping a fast pace, stopping once to change horses, we could be at Highgate House by dawn.
It only remained to determine whether I was more frightened of the accursed treasure I would encounter there, or of its keeper.
? ? ?
As it happened, our trials were to commence before we so much as set foot upon the property.
Mr. Quillfeather had at first met my suggestion of driving with resistance; but when I pointed out that a man yawning every ten seconds surely could not mind the roads closely, he thanked me, wondered aloud if there were a finer woman in all of England, tipped his hat brim over his eyes, and commenced snoring. Our horse was sturdy country stock which needed little minding, so I allowed my thoughts to drift; a fox barked mournfully in the distance, and I heard the soft hooting of owls, but these nocturnal companions were as nothing compared to the friend in my mind’s eye.
You are about to see Charles Thornfield again.
How would he look, after these weeks apart? Identical to the way he looked before, I thought, but then questioned the assumption. Jane Eyre, when leaving her fiancé to find her own way, writes:
As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter—his pride; his redeemer from misery; perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast: it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when Remembrance thrust it further in.
Charles Thornfield and I had only skimmed the rippling surface of an attachment which went, on my part, deep as the Atlantic; despite his refusals, I could not pretend my departure had affected him not at all. Mr. Singh had begged me to return, and even Mr. Quillfeather had sensed an “awareness” of me on the part of my former master. To this I could add the evidence of my own experience. Mr. Thornfield, upon learning I planned to leave Highgate House, had neither wept nor blustered; he had shrunk, this impossibly large presence curled in on himself as if acknowledging I was right to seek elsewhere for happiness and affection, for loyalty and love.
He had been wrong—but did he know as much? Would the absence of my face at the dinner table cause him to push his plate away? Would he have wasted, would he have—wonder of wonders—missed me?