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I stood up.
“Here, sir.”
Rochester took me by the arm and led me along the gallery and onto the landing above the stairs. He stopped, placed the candle on a low table and clasped both my hands in his.
“I thank you, Miss Next, from the bottom of my heart! It has been a living hell of torment; not knowing when or even if my beloved Jane would return!”
He spoke with keen and very real passion; I wondered if Landen had ever loved me as much as Rochester loved Jane.
“It was the least I could do, Mr. Rochester,” I responded happily, “after your kind attention to my wounds that night outside the warehouse.”
He dismissed my words with a wave of his hand.
“You are returning straight away?”
I looked down.
“It’s not quite as easy as that, sir. There is another interloper in this book aside from me.”
Rochester strode to the balustrade. He spoke without turning around.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
“You have met him?” I asked, surprised.
“He has several names. You have a plan?”
I explained the use of a signal and made it clear that it would be safer for me to remain at Thornfield until the book had run its course. Then I would take Hades with me—somehow.
“The end of the book,” murmured Rochester unhappily. “How I hate the ending. The thought of my sweet Jane traveling to India with that poltroon St. John Rivers makes my blood turn to ice.” He bolstered himself. “But I have at least a few months of real happiness before that time. Come, you must be hungry.” He walked off down the corridor and beckoned me to follow, talking as he went.
“I suggest we try and trap him when Jane has left after—” he shivered slightly at the thought of it. “—the wedding. We will be quite alone as Jane takes the narrative with her to Moor House and those fatuous cousins. I am not featured again in the book, so we may do as we please, and I am best disposed to be of assistance. However, as you have guessed, you must do nothing that might disturb Jane; this novel is written in the first person. I can get away to speak with you when I am, to all intents and purposes, out of the story. But you must promise me that you will stay out of Jane’s way. I will speak to Mrs. Fairfax and Adele privately; they will understand. The servants Mary and John will do whatever I tell them.”
We had arrived at a door and Rochester knocked impatiently. There was a groaning and a thump and presently a very disheveled character appeared at the door.
“Mrs. Fairfax,” said Rochester, “this is Miss Next. She will be staying with us for a month or two. I want you to fetch her some food and have a bed made ready; she has traveled far to be here and I think she needs sustenance and rest. It would please me if you were not to discuss her presence with anyone, and I would be grateful if you could engineer that Miss Next and Miss Eyre do not meet. I hardly need to stress the importanc
e of this to you.”
Mrs. Fairfax looked me up and down, was particularly intrigued and shocked at the same time by my ponytail and jeans, and then nodded and led me off toward the dining room.
“We will speak again tomorrow, Miss Next,” said Rochester, a smile breaking out on his troubled face. “And I thank you once again.”
He turned and left me to Mrs. Fairfax, who bustled downstairs. The housekeeper told me to wait in the dining room while she brought me something to eat. She returned shortly with some cold cuts of meat and some bread. I ate hungrily as Pilot—who I thought had been let in when Hades went out— sniffed at my trouser leg and wagged his tail excitedly.
“He remembers you,” remarked Mrs. Fairfax slowly, “yet I have been working here for many years and I do not recall having laid eyes upon you before.”
I tickled Pilot’s ear.
“I threw a stick for him once. When he was out with his master.”
“I see,” replied Mrs. Fairfax, suspiciously. “And how do you know Mr. Rochester?”
“I, ah, met the Rochesters in Madeira. I knew his brother.”
“I see. Very tragic.” Her eyes narrowed. “Then you know the Masons?”
“Not well.”
