He was correct, so I laughed. “Did you really find me a wheelchair, sir?”
Mr. Thornfield straightened, advancing. I have written that he was a man of medium height, not so tall as Sardar Singh, yet it seemed there was not sufficient space for him in this wide room, so great was his effect on me.
“It took rather more reconnaissance than I’d have liked, but the village physician had one in his attic, positively wreathed with cobwebs. One could scare tell it was a chair at all. Mrs. Garima Kaur has dusted it, naturally.”
“I’m so glad you’ll be downstairs with the rest of us!” Sahjara exclaimed, throwing her arms round my shoulders.
Blushing is not a habit of mine, but I am unused to raw sentiment being lobbed in my direction. As Mr. Thornfield took in this awkward scene, his ward clinging to me and then unselfconsciously racing away to do whatever Sahjara Kaur does when she isn’t on horseback, he looked uncertain whether to be delighted or dismayed, drawing a hand over the back of his neck in what I was learning to be a habitual gesture.
“She’s spontaneous,” I offered. “It means nothing, I’m well aware.”
“It doesn’t mean anything like nothing, not to anyone who knows her.” Mr. Thornfield shook off whatever uneasy thought plagued him. “I could carry the chair upstairs, but then there remain stairs when we reverse course—should we carry Mahomet to the mountain instead?”
“Whensoever you like,” said I.
Again I was lifted—respectfully, more’s the pity—by my employer. The journey, reader, was too brief for my liking; but once I had arrived at the ground floor and saw the charming vehicle, all wicker and softly curving wood painted a demure black, with carefully placed cushions, I positively glowed as I was set into it.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this.” I looked up at Mr. Thornfield, who surveyed the results of his labours with satisfaction.
“Yes, well, do let me know if I should retain possession of it, supposing you decide to fly out the attic window.”
“No, I mean . . . thank you. Hardly anyone has ever bothered to take care of me.”
I paused to reflect, scarce registering that I had just confided an intimate fact to a near stranger. A list emerged:
—Agatha
—Clarke, when I was not taking care of Clarke
It may seem strange that I did not include my mother; but my mother was a butterfly’s wing, too fluttering and fragile to take care of anyone, and though we loved each other . . . she had left me, had she not?
Mr. Thornfield’s rough features smoothed into disbelief. “Whatever circumstance you’re speaking of, there ought to have been fifty lined up for the job.”
I sliced a look at him, unsure if he actually believed such nonsense; but he strode behind me, gripping the handles of the chair. Admittedly I might have wheeled the thing myself, but since Mr. Thornfield pushing me meant Mr. Thornfield a foot distant, I should have been a dunce to defend my independence.
“Where to, Miss Stone? I admit I had not thought so far, only feared that you were like to suffocate if you stayed in the same room any longer.”
“May we go to the morning room?”
“Think of this not as your chair but as your chariot, Miss Stone,” he proclaimed sarcastically, and I could not help but wonder whether Mr. Thornfield, on occasion, hid truth in falsehoods just as I did.
? ? ?
The master of the house and I forged a pattern when I was not at lessons with Sahjara; in the mornings and evenings, he would carry me downstairs so I could dine with what I was coming to understand was the family—the aforementioned individuals plus Mr. Sardar Singh—and after Sahjara had been led off to bed by Mrs. Garima Kaur, and Mr. Singh had adopted an introspective look and excused himself, the pair of us stayed up later and later and progressively later. I loved these strange sessions, for Mr. Thornfield, despite his prickliness, seemed to love them too, though it was a hard push not to blurt out What crime did you and Mr. Singh commit in the Punjab? or Why should the dead speak to you?
One night five days into my convalescence, Mr. Thornfield wheeled me into the drawing room after supper, I having confessed that good Scotch and I were not strangers, and when we were both equipped with this lovely commodity, I ventured to ask him a question. We should have been the picture of English domesticity, the firelight in Mr. Thornfield’s pale hair and I nestled into my cushions, if only I held a needle in my hand and not a glass of whiskey.
“Is Mr. Singh really the butler?”
Mr. Thornfield’s chin shot up. “By the Lord, is she actually interrogating me now?”