The door closed, and I watched as the snowflakes turned into teardrops upon the floorboards. Something about this exchange nagged at me—something which I did not understand but felt like awakening in a lightless room with the fanciful certainty that one is not alone.
Soon, I walked upstairs with the unopened letter; it seemed a breathing creature in my hands, and in a way I have always thought that words are alive a little, for they can whisper sweet nothings and roar dragon flame with equal efficiency. After all that had taken place the previous night, I could not even imagine what I wanted it to say, and when I had closed the door to my room, I placed it on the table and stalked about it in circles as if contemplating a chained beast. If I learnt I was not the true mistress of Highgate House, would I prove so spineless as to simply accept Mr. Thornfield’s scruples and live as his lovesick shadow for the rest of my days? If learnt that I was the rightful heir, would I prove so horribly low as to use my power for leverage against his wishes? Both outcomes made me ill; one or the other must inevitably be contained in the envelope, scratching to escape with malicious claws.
At length, I simply hid the volatile missive in my bedchamber; I did not want it now, could not even look at it calmly, but I could not read my future in my teacup either. The remainder of the day was uneventful, closed by a hesitant spill of Scotch I poured for myself in the spreading silence and an hour spent in my bed over a book of Irish poems.
I ought to have been grateful for the tranquillity; tragedy would not strike upon that night, as it happened, until one o’clock in the morning.
? ? ?
There was no sound at first, merely a sense; I snapped awake, feeling him downstairs, my eyes stuffed with sleepy cotton.
Dread crawled over my skin an instant later when an unknown object audibly shattered.
When I remember these swift seconds, I was up almost before the china had finished splintering, knowing that Mr. Singh could never be so clumsy and that if Mr. Thornfield had staggered and fell, then he must be drunk, and it was my responsibility to see he was not hurt, for I must have been the one who hurt him; and even if what I was telling myself was nonsense I still yearned to be near him in every capacity, so I threw my dressing gown on and slipped my small knife into its pocket and flew for the ground floor.
If it sounds foolish to race towards a clumsy housebreaker, I had ample reason; Mr. Thornfield was all I had thought of for weeks of fever dreams and halfhearted plotting, and even if we were both poorly stitched together creatures made of scar tissue and regrets, I wanted only to find a way to live in his world more fully. So I tumbled into the front hall and came face-to-face with the remains of a vase and a man unlike any I had ever previously met.
I could not tell what race he was, for his eyes were dark and his skin burnished, side-whiskers bright red in the light of his portable lamp; his trousers boasted a loud check pattern and his secondhand coat was wine-coloured velvet. He swayed, emitting acrid whiskey clouds as he panted like the lousiest Company cur north of Calcutta, as Mr. Thornfield would have put it.
Unfortunately, Mr. Thornfield was not present.
“What are ye?” the ruffian snarled, sounding pleased.
The accent was nigh-impossible to parse, but I thought it might have been the result of a Scottish lilt applied to already-musical Indian intonations.
“The governess.”
I considered screaming for once in my life; but Mr. Singh and Mr. Thornfield, who slept on the same floor I did, were from home, and the servants inhabited another wing. Apart from Sahjara three doors down from my bedroom, whom I prayed would not come downstairs, I was alone.
“D’ye always keep such midnight hours?” he purred, revealing yellowed teeth.
“Get away from here! I’ll call the master of the house.”
He slanted a canny look at me. “And why haven’t ye already? I suspect he ain’t here to come when ye do shout.”
Morbidity is not the same as stupidity, so I wheeled and made for the kitchen, intending to shriek my face off for whichever Singh or Kaur could hear me; but I found my throat caught in a vise, hashish-laden breath creeping across my cheekbones.
“I meant t’ question the half-bred lass, but ye might be a sight better,” the rotting relic of foreign wars spoke in my ear. “Tell me now where the trunk is and ye can sleep sound and safe.”
“They don’t have it!” I choked. “Let me go!”
How long we wrestled in that entryway I cannot recall, though I know I landed a number of ineffective blows. I was once more a being of edges and angles, fighting viciously to preserve not only the little girl upstairs I hoped was not roused by our clamour but the woman downstairs, making it.
“That’s the most whoreson lie I’ve heard since leaving Delhi,” his fat lips spoke against my ear.
Howling now, though to no one in particular, I fought to free my hands; he had caught both under one burly sweat-smelling arm.
If I could get to my knife.
I can get to my knife.