Jane of Fire Read online

  I made it back to Thornfield late. All the staff was gone and the house was shrouded in silence. I wandered around until I found Edward tucked away in his study surrounded by papers. I had never seen Edward work before. I tiptoed into the room and set my books down quietly on a table in the back of the room. He didn’t seem to notice me. I walked up behind him and kissed him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked quietly.

  “I’m working,” he growled.

  “What on?” I asked.

  “Homework. I have to go back to school soon. I hate to leave you, but I’m falling behind.”

  I hadn’t thought about Edward’s classes. He’d seemed so laid back about school, it was easy to forget he was at Yale. He seemed anxious and stressed, so I curled up in the big chair in front of the fireplace and lost myself in my own work. It was easy to forget about Edward’s moods when I had so much studying to do.

  After an hour or so, Edward got up and stretched. The fire was beginning to sputter out and Edward threw another log into the flames. The fire crackled and hissed. Sparks spat out of the darkness. I stared into the flames and watched Edward blow on the fire until it glowed. Warmth filled the room, but I shivered.

  “We’re collecting glasses for a medical mission,” I said as I stared into the flames. “Would you like to donate any?”

  Edward walked to his desk and wrote a check. He handed it to me and sat down beside me. The check was made out to cash and it was for $100,000. I couldn’t breathe. I had never held a check with so many zeroes.

  “This can definitely buy a lot of glasses,” I said. “It’s too much, Edward.”

  He shrugged dismissively. “I’m sure you can find something the medical mission can use the money for.”

  Edward leaned over and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him to me. He took my face in his hands and kissed my forehead and then my lips. He let his hands slide down my arms as he kissed my neck. I sighed. “She walks in beauty like the night,” he said as his hands slid down around my waist.

  “Don’t,” I said softly. “Don’t call me beautiful. Don’t pretend I’m a Blanche. I’m just Jane. I will never walk in beauty like the night. Poets will never write sonnets for me.”

  Edward pushed a stray lock of hair out of my face. “What happened to you when you were young that you are so terrified of being beautiful, of standing out? You are beautiful. I can’t pretend you aren’t and, no matter how much you hide yourself behind your hair or baggy clothes, your beauty shines through. Who hurt you so much that you can’t let anyone see the beauty in you?”

  I flushed and closed my eyes. I tried to hold back my tears. I could still see Helen in my mind’s eye. I could hear her telling me to cut her pretty hair. I could hear her screams. I wished she was still with me. I missed her so much it hurt. I missed her lovely face and good heart.

  Edward kissed my tears away, “Tell me.”

  “When I was very young, I was in foster care. I had a foster sister and I loved her like she was my own sister. Every night our foster father came for her because she was so beautiful. I had to watch and listen to what he did to her, but he never came for me because I wasn’t beautiful. I was safe because I was ugly.”

  Edward pulled me to him and I wrapped my arms around him and sobbed into his shirt as he stroked my hair.

  “Men like that don’t hurt little girls because they are beautiful,” he said. “They hurt little girls because they can. They are evil. It wasn’t your ugliness that saved you. It was your strength. You are a survivor and you are beautiful. Never forget that.”

  I reached up and touched his face. He knew everything about me. I was stripped bare before him, but I didn’t know him. “Why can’t you tell me what you’re hiding from?” I asked him.

  He looked away from me, into the roaring fire. “Oh Jane,” he said. “I wish I could tell you everything.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I love you.”

  He smiled down at me and kissed my forehead. “I have to leave tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be all right, in the house, by yourself?”

  “I’ll be fine. I have so much work to do I probably won’t be here that much as it is. I’m sure I’ll be living at the library at Huntington until the end of semester.”

  “Sweet Jane,” he whispered. “Don’t ever change.”

  Edward kissed me again. His hands slid up under my shirt and I jumped backward. So far, I had been able to hide the thing that was on my back, but I knew the closer Edward and I got, the harder it would be to avoid him seeing my body. Edward misinterpreted my reaction.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel pressured. I don’t want you to ever feel like you have to do anything you aren’t ready for. I can wait forever if I have to.”

  I smiled and kissed Edward. “Thank you.”

  I guess I was still keeping secrets too.

  Chapter 16

  There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range.

  ~ H.P. Lovecraft

  I missed Edward terribly while he was away. I missed his arms around me at night. Thornfield Hall seemed all the more haunted when he wasn’t in it. The laughter tormented me and I spent most of the week falling asleep in the library. I did everything I could to avoid Thornfield’s ghosts. I even invited myself to a party at Mary’s apartment. Mary, Sara, and Sinjun all shared a huge apartment, just off campus. They all split the rent. It wasn’t really an apartment, more of an old Victorian mansion that had been cut up into apartments. They had the first floor.

  The party was small and intimate and it made it much harder for me to hide in the corner. Mary and Sara kept introducing me to everyone. Almost everyone there was pre-med and I found myself drawn into conversations about MCATs and medical schools and what people wanted to specialize in. I even had a small glass of wine. I found myself laughing and opening up. It wasn’t like a high school party where everybody split off into cliquess. It wasn’t like Edward’s party, filled with beautiful people. Everyone at the party was like me. They had interests. I didn’t feel like a weirdo or a freak. Everybody wanted to talk to me and include me.

  Sara got quite drunk by the end of the night and she and her boyfriend, Billy, sat curled up on the couch. Her boyfriend was a senior and an art major. He seemed to be Sara’s opposite. He was a bit of a hippie, but the two of them seemed happy.

  “I heard you live at Thornfield Hall,” Billy said to me.

  “I do,” I answered. My cheeks were flushed from wine and attention. The room grew quiet and all eyes fell on me.

  “Is it true?” Billy asked. “Is Thornfield haunted? I heard that the Rochester men keep the bodies of their dead wives in the basement.”

  “I think the house would smell bad if there were that many corpses rotting in the basement,” I said, trying to make light of where the conversation was headed.

  “But is the house haunted?” Mary asked.

  I looked into my glass of wine. I didn’t want to admit that I had seen ghosts, but the wine loosened my tongue. “It is,” I answered.

  “What have you seen?” a guy in the back of the room asked. “Do the Rochester men murder their wives?”

  “No!” I laughed. “I started working there to take care of one of the Rochester wives, who is in her 90s. She outlived her husband.”

  “What’s Edward Rochester like?” Sara asked. “I heard he gets around.”

  “Maybe he used to be, but he’s always been a gentleman with me. He’s…” I couldn’t find the words to describe Edward. They eluded me and I found myself blushing and stammering.

  Mary giggled. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you? I can see why. He’s gorgeous and filthy-stinking rich.”

  I shook my head. “He’s more than that.”

  “What about ghosts?”
Sinjun asked.

  “I’ve only seen two,” I said. “One is dressed in white and she wanders the halls at night. She’s not scary, she’s very sweet. The other is a girl, all in red, and she scares me.” I paused. My breath caught in my throat. “There is something else there, too.”

  “Something else?” Mary asked. She leaned forward, hungry for more information.

  I’d been drinking and my tongue was looser than it should have been, so I continued when I knew I should have stopped talking. “There is some old evil there. There is a curse. Sometimes, it’s terrifying to be there alone. There are so many ghosts that the house feels more alive at night than during the day.”

  “You see,” Billy said. “They’re the ghosts of the murdered Rochester wives.”

  “I heard that it was haunted by the ghost of a maid who killed herself when one of the Rochester men left her broken-hearted,” a girl from the back shouted out.

  Sinjun picked up his glass of ginger ale and retreated to his room. I left everybody to discuss which ghost haunted Thornfield to follow him.

  “Have I done something wrong?” I asked him.

  “No, Jane, not at all,” he answered. “I just have a headache.”

  “I got the donations for the glasses.” I handed him Edward’s check.

  He turned a little pale when he saw it. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Edward Rochester just gave us $100,000 for the mission? Just like that?”

  “He’s very generous.”

  “Shit. That’s more than the actual grant.” Sinjun shook his head and put the money on his desk. He sat down on his bed. “I really need to get some sleep. Do you mind, Jane?”

  I left Sinjun to his headache and went back out into the party. Everyone was beginning to leave. It was very late and almost everybody was drunk.

  “You should stay, Jane,” Mary said.

  “I should?”

  “Yeah. You look like you’ve had quite a bit to drink and it’s a long walk home in the dark. You can stay in the guest room. I’ll get you some PJs to sleep in.”

  I took the pajamas and collapsed into the bed. It was nice to sleep someplace that wasn’t tormented by ghosts. I slept better than I had in months. I awoke to sunshine bathing me in warmth. It drifted in through the lace curtains and filled the room with light. I stretched and yawned. I felt completely rested for the first time in as long as I could remember. It didn’t take me long to climb out of the comfortable bed and clean myself up. I got dressed and tied my hair back into a neat ponytail. I washed my face and put on a little lip gloss and emerged to a very messy apartment.

  Beer bottles, empty plastic cups and paper plates with remnants of pizza crust were scattered all over. I tiptoed around the mess and made my way into the kitchen. The apartment was quiet. Everyone else had had a lot to drink, and I assumed they were still sleeping off their hangovers. I knew how to be quiet around drunk people. Living with Mrs. Blankenship had taught me that. I didn’t expect to find anyone awake. I snuck into the kitchen to make coffee in hopes that I could leave before everyone woke up from their drunken cocoons. I wasn’t lucky enough to get my wish, however. I had forgotten that Sinjun hadn’t had anything to drink.

  Sinjun was sitting at the breakfast table with a massive book on Physiology spread out in front of him. The coffee was already brewed and Sinjun had a cup larger than his head. I poured myself a mug and sat down across from him. He stopped reading and looked at me intensely.

  “Are you really living with that jerk?” he blurted out. “You are way too young to be living with a guy.”

  I took a sip of the coffee and stared into the blackness of the bitter brew. “He’s not a jerk,” I said. “He’s wonderful and I’ll be seventeen in March.”

  “I don’t think you know him as well as you think you do. You are too young to live with anyone and you’ve only known this guy for less than a year. What do your parents think about this?”

  “I don’t have parents.”

  Sinjun shifted uncomfortably and looked back at his book. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I just think you’re really smart and you are going to be an amazing doctor. I would just hate to think that some guy would get in the way of that.”

  I blushed. “Thank you,” I said. “It means a lot that you think so highly of me. You’re a good friend and I don’t have many friends. It’s nice to have someone who worries about me.”

  Sinjun cracked a smile. He put his hand on mine. “Of course, I worry about you.” His face was usually so serious, but when he smiled his eyes lit up.

  “I promise I won’t let my living arrangements get in the way of my studies. Edward is a good guy. I get free room and board at Thornfield and I’m going to be working part-time organizing and preserving the old documents and artifacts in the attic since Miss Adele is in a nursing home now.”

  Sinjun’s smile faded. He shook his head and looked back at the pages of his book. His hand left mine. “That guy has a rep. Just be careful,” he warned. “You’re only sixteen.”

  “Of course, I’ll be careful. I may be young but I’m an old soul,” I answered firmly. “Where have you decided to go for med school?” I asked, changing the subject. “You got into five schools, right?”

  He shifted and looked at me again. “I’m going to Vanderbilt. It’s a good school and it isn’t too far from home for me.”

  “I got a scholarship to Vanderbilt, but I decided to come here instead when I found the job at Thornfield. Besides, I’m not a fan of country music.”

  “It’s not like everyone who lives in Nashville likes country music. I hate country music and my family’s from the South.”

  “I never would have thought so. Where’s your accent?”

  “We’re from Atlanta. We don’t have accents,” he said with a wink.

  “Do you need help cleaning up?”

  Sinjun looked out at the mess around him. It was like he was just noticing it. He seemed like the type of guy that wouldn’t notice a spider if it was crawling up his nose. He just focused on the work in front of him and ignored everything else.

  Sinjun shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. The girls will clean it up. They make the messes. They clean them up.”

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at the meeting?” I said as I stood to leave.

  Sinjun grunted in agreement and returned to his work. I couldn’t bring myself to leave without helping a little, so I cleaned up the living room, tossing out the cups and paper plates and lining up the empty beer bottles on the counter. The place was still pretty messy, but I had at least cleaned up most of the party garbage before I left.

  Chapter 17

  At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there com inspirations and capabilities impossible at an less magical and quiet hour.

  ~ H.P. Lovecraft

  Edward came back on Saturday. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed him until he found me in the library. He sat down beside me and put a carefully wrapped box in front of me. He was smiling. He seemed so pleased with himself. He looked more laid back than usual. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that showed off his biceps. He looked like he had gotten a little sun. His skin was bronzed.

  “You must have had a few good weeks,” I commented from over my Physics book.

  “I tied up a lot of loose ends,” he said with a devilish grin.

  “You look awfully sun-bronzed for someone who’s been in class for the last month,” I said.

  He pushed the gift toward me. “Open it.”

  “You don’t have to buy me things.”

  “I don’t have to, but I want to. Would you open it?”

  I took the gift reluctantly and carefully peeled the gold paper from the box. Beneath the paper, there was a brown bo
x labeled Kindle. I opened the box and saw the newest edition of the most popular e-reader on the market. It was shiny and new and said it had 4-G and Wi-Fi and all the other bells and whistles. I held the sleek back device in my hands. It felt wrong. I loved the smell of old books and paper. I loved the way the pages of a book sounded when they turned. This electronic device felt like it would slowly suck the joy from the pages of the books.

  “Do you love it?” he asked. “I know you don’t like jewelry or clothes, but I thought that this would be perfect. I put an ungodly amount of money on your account so you can have any book you want anytime you want it. You literally have the entire library at your fingertips. The best part is that you can download your textbooks, so you won’t have to drag those enormous books around with you everyplace. You can just take this and a few notebooks with you to class and you are set.”

  He seemed so pleased with himself. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything negative about his gift. I smiled and kissed him. “I love it,” I said.

  He took it from me and fiddled with it. “I already downloaded all your textbooks.” He handed it back to me. The screen had the exact page from the book I was reading on it. It did seem kind of amazing.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Edward pulled me into his arms and kissed me so hard I felt my breath leave my body with him. I put my hand on his arm and slid it up his bicep and under his shirt. I ran my fingers over the tight sinews of his chest. He drew a deep breath and let his hands slide down my back. He slowly eased me down to the floor and lay on top of me. He lifted the bottom of my shirt and ran his hands over my naked skin as he kissed my neck. I gasped for breath. I wanted him so badly, I knew that all he would have to do was ask and I would be his, but he stopped. He sat up and looked down at me. I reached out to him, but he shook his head.