I might have quailed, but Mr. Thornfield’s tone remained a happy one, a low instrument playing in a major key, as was ever the case when he spoke of his ward.
“She gushes with the substance when the poor girl remembers anything of those days; but in this case, she is entirely correct. Mad as a crate of ferrets, Sardar, and if he was going into domestic work, by gad, he meant to do it in style. What could I do but shrug my shoulders and call the man Commander?”
“Mr. Singh possesses a magnetic presence. He seems a very decent sort.”
“He’s a saint is what he is, and we were very close as boys, and after I returned to the Punjab, we didn’t fancy the notion of parting. Have you ever had a friend, Miss Stone, and thought that if this particular person were absent, you should forever miss a piece of yourself?”
I remembered my quiet, quizzical Clarke and nodded.
“Well, Sardar may not have always called himself Sardar, but he has always been extraordinarily good to me. He took great pains to see the stuffing wasn’t thrashed out of me when I was a stripling in Lahore—and he has made certain that Sahjara was safe, always, no matter the circumstance.”
“Was it during the wars that Mr. Singh took risks for Sahjara?” I asked with care.
“Yes. We were not at war, however, when he took risks for me.” Mr. Thornfield smirked, tapping the tablecloth with gloved hands. “I’m not certain whether fighting or fornicating is the skill Sikhs have mastered the better, but they work terribly hard at both, y’see, and thus as a young wilayati,* I had plentiful scuffles to survive.”
“Do not Easterners wish to befriend the British in the interests of trade?”
Mr. Thornfield twisted his lips. “Nothing like a friend for a knife in the back.”
“Is that true of Mr. Augustus Sack?”
Mr. Thornfield hesitated; but at last he bit the inside of his cheek, shrugging.
“Fair play, Miss Stone—it’s only proper etiquette to explain sudden confrontations with knives, as you have so kindly done for me. Mr. Sack and our dead friend Mr. Clements and Sahjara’s father, Mr. Lavell, were all Company men when the conflict with the Sikhs broke out. So was I, nominally anyhow. To say the Sikh empire was rich is to say the sun does a jolly decent job at lighting the planet. Mr. Sack figures that some ripe booty which scarpered off God knows where can be found if only he plunders the Young Marvel’s head, and I won’t have it. Neither will Sardar, as you saw. And that’s all I have to say on the blasted subject. Oh, look, here’s Mrs. Kaur with the roast.”
The cover was lifted, the air flooded with cinnamon-spiced mutton, and not another word would Mr. Thornfield speak regarding adventures abroad. Instead he spoke of the new mare, and warned me lest Sahjara knock her head off, and pretended that he had just told me everything I desired to know.
Through it all the gloves remained; and I watched him, riveted.
My instant fascination with Charles Thornfield puzzled no one so profoundly as myself. I had taken enough lovers to know that he was not conventionally handsome, his visage too worn with crags of care to compare with my strapping young working lads. Come to that, he was acerbic and peculiar in equal measure, and he could raise an eyebrow as if raising a middle finger.
I had already borne firsthand witness to his capacity to love, however, thanks to his ease with his ward and the heightened circumstance of Mr. Sack’s visit, and as a needy, greedy thing, I was curious as to how one would go about stealing a fraction of it.
“Good night, Miss Stone, and do take care with your ankles,” was his send-off when we had finished. I think courtesy—even his rough version of it—had exhausted him. “Should you ever desire a bigger knife than that hatpin you’re carrying, seek out the billiard room.”
Smiling, I returned his farewell and made a great racket with my crutch as I went upstairs.
For Mr. Thornfield intended to meet with Mr. Singh after supper; and I knew every inch of Highgate House, the creak of each stair and the groan of each floorboard. If I was going to solve the twin mysteries of the forbidden cellar and the missing trunk, I was going to have to add eavesdropping to my vices.
NINETEEN
“A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly.”
My boundless affection for the protagonist of Jane Eyre has already been established; and yet, I cannot resist stating that she made the most dismal investigator in the history of literature.
Consider: she discovers Edward Fairfax Rochester practically in flames. Upon the morrow, whom does she meet but Grace Poole, the assumed culprit; and when Jane suspects the vile Grace of sounding her out over bolting her door? Jane, wise woman that she is, proceeds to deliver all her intentions regarding door-bolting to the dour nurse, in detail, upon a silver platter.