“Either.” I laughed. “Both, perhaps. I don’t know.”
“‘If I say I am perishable, it will not avail me; but if I truly know I am perishable, it will.’ Miss Stone, pardon me for asking, but . . . do you ever think about death?”
Only of the many deaths I’ve caused, and my mother’s, and my own, and every day.
When I held my tongue, Mr. Singh pressed my wrist. “You do, I see. Then you are far closer to God than you think you are. I must go help Charles.”
“Mr. Singh,” I called after him with tears in my eyes, “will you tell me what your name was? Before?”
Hesitating, he replied, “Aazaad was my name. It means ‘free of care.’”
“And why did you change it?”
This time, he did not pause.
“Because it did not suit me anymore, Miss Stone,” he replied, shutting the door softly as he went.
Rolling onto my stomach, I buried my head in my arms and wept. I have seen, employed as a literary phrase, that characters wept as though the world were ending; the world ending, I thought, would be better than continuing to deceive compassionate people, lying from dawn to dusk because to stop lying would mean ceasing to be entangled with them.
? ? ?
When I awoke, I felt perfectly at ease though my pate shrieked with pain, and someone was tenderly cleaning the wound with a damp cloth.
I think Mr. Thornfield sensed my wakefulness due to my stilling rather than stirring. A knee was wedged behind the curve of my lower back, and the quilt covered me from neck to toe. I quickly realised it was impossible for him to work with such delicacy of touch whilst still wearing blood-crusted gloves.
The sea could have parted in the centre and it would not have felt as open as I did then, the whorls of his fingertips parting my already scattered tresses.
“Jane, please speak a word if only to berate me. You’ve done a damn sight more than I tonight, but grant me this single further favour.”
I could think of nothing to say, however.
“Darling? Jane, for heaven’s sake, only live and let fly at me with all the abuse you like and you’ll make me a happy man.”
My lungs produced a frightful sound, and he crossed one arm over my torso diagonally, as if protecting me from falling.
“Will you pardon me for murdering someone in your drawing room?” I breathed.
“Oh, Jane.” His voice was wracked, vibrating through me, but I shook for more reasons than I liked to think about.
He handled my hair with bare hands, though he never brushed my skin, and I registered sharp hurts, and glass draughts smelling of herbs and strong spirits against my lips and my head. He dried the tear in my scalp, and washed the blood from my locks in a porcelain bowl, and as dawn approached he lifted a tendril of my hair up to his lips even as I fell asleep in his arms, kissing it as though his heart were breaking.
Volume Three
TWENTY-THREE
Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it.
I did not awaken for many hours, though neither did I sleep; my consciousness thinned into a filmy half-awareness, and when I did feel the slow burn of sunlight drifting across my face, I heard a chair creak.
“Jane?”
“Is there water?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Thornfield seemed never to have quit the room. Thirst quenched after the glass had been held to my lips, I discovered I was not as hurt as I had supposed. Yes, I had killed a man in front of two respected friends; yes, I had then acted like an abominable weakling; but, no, my cranium had not cracked, only torn, and I found myself staring glassy-eyed at a haggard Mr. Thornfield.
It would do him discredit to pretend he was unmoved, but I hesitate to set down how distressed he was in fact, his countenance as pale as if he were the one who had been strangled.
“I thought when I saw you with that pepperbox* against your throat . . .” He made an abortive movement. “Jane, I hardly know how to speak to you.”
“As the governess would suit.” I sighed, shifting my knees.
“No, it bloody well would not. As the woman I acted a cad towards in the morgue downstairs, or the woman who saved my skin last night?”
“Please don’t, sir. You never acted a cad, and I never saved you.”
“You saved me sure as God saved Isaac.”
My mind could not seem to light upon important subjects, only trivial ones. “How do you know that story?”
“Sardar could write a book entitled A Thousand and One Useless Meditations. He knows all when it comes to retribution and forgiveness.”
“Not all, or he’d have taught us both to stop hating ourselves. Who was it I killed?”
“Jane, I am hesitant to—”
“Don’t I deserve to know? Sahjara and I both were at risk, and had you not arrived when you did . . .”
His flinch told me he knew I was right, but he took his time: pouring a pair of neat Scotches, passing me one.
“I am all attention, sir.”
Mr. Thornfield’s chest gave a small heave, and then he abruptly drew his hand over his mouth and sat down close beside me on the divan.
“Where should I begin?”