I should have known in the first instant: the hair, oiled and curled, and the bold blue eyes, the insolent mouth, but it was as if my mind wanted to deny the reality.
“Rowland,” was all I could think to say.
Rowland was still seated—of course he would be. It would have been a gesture of respect for him to have stood at the introduction. He was looking me up and down, and I felt quite out of fashion, with my plain brown coat and trousers, compared to his tight, cream-colored pantaloons and shirt of cream silk with cravat, and his moss-green cropped jacket and darker green waistcoat.
He said nothing, and I felt compelled to say, “I thought you were in Jamaica with Father. When did you return?” The only answer he gave was a slight shrug. It had not yet occurred to me that it was nearly eight years since the two of them had gone to the West Indies, and they both could have been there and back a dozen times since then.
It was Mr. Wilson who rescued me. “Your father sent him,” he said. “He wanted a report of your progress, and I was just telling your brother that you are doing fine, that you make a good account of yourself, that except for a still slight timidity, you are growing into a quite competent businessperson.”
It was the most complimentary statement I had ever heard from Mr. Wilson in the two and a half years that I had been at Maysbeck Mill. It was true I worked hard, but he mostly just nodded, as if anything I did was only what he had expected of me. I knew I was not the best he could have asked for, but I had already become aware that countinghouse work was not what I wanted. It was too routine—old man’s work, I thought—though I had no idea what else I would have preferred.
“Well,” Mr. Wilson said, rising. “I should imagine you young fellows have much to talk about, a great deal of catching up with each other’s lives. The Crown is just down the road there, and a fine place it is for a roast or a stew. Why don’t the two of you spend a bit of time together?” Then he turned to Rowland. “I think we’re finished here. I shall write out a report for your father and send it off to your lodgings. The Royal Oak, is it not, in the High Street?”
“Yes, it is,” Rowland said. “I shall be looking forward to it.” He rose and reached for his hat, but before he placed it on his head he tipped it in the direction of Mr. Wilson, and walked out the door, which I had already opened. I did not take from the rack the cap I usually wore, it seeming suddenly too childish, or, worse, too much like those the workmen in the mill wore. With my bare head and my ordinary clothes, I felt myself to be Rowland’s inferior in every possible way.
We had scarcely started down the road when I turned to him. “It is not necessary, you know, for the two of us to dine together. We can certainly go our separate ways.” (I was proud to have thought to use the more formal dine rather than my more common eat, though at the same time I hated that I had done it only to impress him.)
Rowland laughed. “Of course we must! Why not? We shall put it on Wilson’s tab—I’m sure he has one. He would be disappointed if we did not do so, I should think.”
I shrugged at that. I could not imagine what Rowland and I could talk about for the full course of a meal. It might seem that I, who had fallen in love with Jamaica since that first day at Black Hill, would be overflowing with questions about the island. But I somehow did not want Rowland to suspect my infatuation, for I knew he would have enjoyed nothing more than dispelling my fantasies.
He ordered a roast with all the trimmings, and I would have liked the same, but to show my independence I ordered a venison stew, which turned out to be surprisingly good.
After his initial attack on the roast, Rowland lifted his eyes to mine. There was an expression in them I couldn’t read, and I steeled myself for what was to come. But even so, I couldn’t have been more surprised. “I believe I have a friend with whom you are acquainted,” he said casually.
I was unable to imagine whom I might know that Rowland would as well.
“Thomas Fitzcharles,” he said, but I shook my head. The name meant nothing to me. He frowned. “You were not at Mr. Lincoln’s establishment? A ginger-headed fellow?” He shoveled another forkful of potatoes and meat and gravy into his mouth.
Carrot? I stared at him, openmouthed.
Rowland laughed. “You do remember. He called you ‘Jam,’ insisted on it, despite that I told him your proper name. It seems rather a childish name: Jam. It reeks of the nursery. Still”—he gazed directly at me then—“perhaps it’s a fitting name for you after all. Jam.”
I ignored the taunt for a more important question. “But how do you know him?”
He shrugged. “We met at some hunting party or another. Or perhaps it was a race. Something in the neighborhood, you know.”
“What neighborhood?”
“Why, Thornfield, of course.”
“You were at Thornfield?”
“Of course I was—I am. Where else would I be?”
“I thought you were in Jamaica.”
He laughed. “Oh my lord, you don’t think I would want to be in Jamaica any longer than I had to be. The place is a cesspool, people dying around you all the time, the slaves revolting, the Maroons making the interior impossible. One is lucky to get away from there with one’s life.”
My mouth hung open; I could not think what to say. I suppose it registered somewhere in my mind that Jamaica might not be all I had dreamed it was, but a more vital thought crowded that out: Thornfield had been occupied all this time—or much of it—while I was at Black Hill and at the mill. I would have tried going home for a visit if I had known.
“Did…did he ask about me—Thomas Fitzcharles?” I asked. The name seemed odd on my lips and in my ears. Surely this was not Carrot.
“Oh, once, I think. Where you were, that kind of thing.”
“What did you tell him?”
He smirked. “I said I didn’t know.”
But surely you must have, I thought.
“Oh, come, Jam—yes, indeed, I like it; it suits you, Jam. But come now, you surely do not think that the nephew of the Prince Regent of England is really interested in what became of a clerk in a countinghouse in Maysbeck, do you?”
There was nothing I could say in response. He was talking about a grandson of King George III—even if illegitimate—and I was talking about Carrot, who was more a brother to me than Rowland had ever been. Never in his life would Rowland understand that.
The rest of the meal was drudgery. The venison turned dry in my mouth, the beer stale and overwatered, the raucous sounds around us irritating. I was glad for it to end. We parted in the roadway outside, he going toward the High Street, I heading back to the mill. He did not encourage me to come to Thornfield, nor did I expect him to. We might as well have been strangers.
*