Chapter 9
Charming dress,” drawled the Honorable Blanche Ingram, giving me the full eyelash-sweeping up-and-down glance all Mean Girls are so good at. “Very exotic. How is it you are acquainted with Mr. Rochester, Miss Watson?”
“One of his American friends, from his last journey overseas.” I swirled my blue skirts.
“I suppose artistic dress hasn’t made its way across the water yet, at least not to such a provincial outpost as this.
” She smiled, all teeth. I smiled back, even more teeth, and I have to say my twentieth-century choppers really knocked me up a level in the looks department in this drawing room full of pre–dental care cavities.
Not to mention armpit sweat stains. Fluoridated water and powder-fresh deodorant for the win, Blanche Ingram.
The Librarian had margin-traveled our little trio direct from Arthur Conan Doyle’s London to Charlotte Bronte’s Thornfield Hall in search of our next Patron-in-distress.
I was firmly back in helpful-sidekick mode: I’d read Jane Eyre any number of times so I was well up on the plot, and after my opium den debacle I was determined to be an absolutely model Page.
“Keep an eye out for our Patron,” the Librarian had told me as we split up in the drawing room of Thornfield Hall.
“Blond, late thirties—if she responds to the name of Stephanie, just bring her to me, quietly.” And I’d nodded like a good soldier, not even asking if I was allowed to pull Jane Eyre aside for a little advice about falling for men who stash wives in attics.
“Good thinking,” the Librarian said, sounding considerably more approving of Sarah than she had yet to sound of me, but I was going to change that.
I’d marched obediently into the drawing room after my boss (who was now dressed up to match the other guests in huge lace-tiered sleeves, green ribbon–banded skirts, and an Apollo knot) and started looking for our missing blonde named Stephanie.
Only I hadn’t caught sight of her yet, and now I’d somehow gotten myself cornered by one of the biggest bitches in English literature.
Fortunately I can out-bitch any bitch out there, fictional or not. “I don’t see Mr. Rochester this evening—wait, is he over by the fire? Goodness, one would have thought he’d be hanging on your arm, Miss Ingram. Of course, one hears he’s been quite distracted lately by . . . others.”
Her smile hardened. “Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, a little bird. Excuse me—” Because I’d just seen another dark red card slide itself across the highly polished floor from under the door to the music room, and I hastily picked it up and stuffed it into my bag, but not before seeing the newest name.
Larry Barr/Lawrence Douglas; TAoTS by MT; orig.
checked out 2025. “Another one?” I muttered.
Just how many infuriated astral-plane-crossing assholes were out there trying to find us?
“What was that?” A tall dowager in red velvet swished up to inspect me through a lorgnette—clearly Blanche the Bitch’s mother; she had the same gimlet eye. “I don’t remember seeing you arrive. Are you with Colonel and Mrs. Dent’s party?”
I put her off with something or other, wondering why anyone would choose this particular world to live in.
Maybe Sherlock Holmes’s London had been a touch too eventful, but this just seemed like a snore.
Even if the Librarian’s Patron hadn’t gotten herself stuck in the servant class doing all the work in this grand house—the maids unobtrusively whisking around the edges of this bustling party, the liveried footmen trimming the wicks on all these sputtering wax candles—it seemed to me that it wasn’t all that much more fun being a titled guest: perspiring in this overheated drawing room in too many layers of clothes, droning small talk about the weather and being bitchy to your social inferiors.
Wearing a wedding cake like that too, I could imagine Beau hooting if he could get his eyes on Lady Ingram.
Tasseled red velvet and a gold brocade turban?
Oh, honey, no. I sipped the glass of the nasty sweet hock some footman had blandly handed me, wishing Beau was here.
He’d have had a blast making fun of all the giant leg-of-mutton sleeves at this party.
“Do be careful of your skirts, ma’am,” a quiet voice said, and I turned to see a slight figure in dove gray sitting at the edge of the room, watching the bright birds-of-paradise that were the fashionable people.
Jane Eyre, keeping her eyes away from Mr. Tall Dark and Brooding, currently a little bit heartbroken—but not for long.
By chapter 38 she’d be off to Reader, I married him, not that she knew that yet.
“I do hope you’re enjoying yourself, Miss Eyre,” I said, because I’d always thought we’d be friends.
Book-loving orphans the pair of us, who’d rather curl up with a novel than go for a walk.
I wanted to pull up a chair beside her, but the Librarian was giving me a look across the room, making for the door where I could see Sarah discreetly beckoning.
“Best of luck to you, Miss Eyre—Jane—and if you don’t mind a tip?
Mr. R’s a dish, really, he is, but before he offers to put a ring on it, ask for a tour of the attic. ”
I left her startled face behind me, whisking out behind the Librarian. “What did I say about trying to nudge the plot?” she murmured with one of her dark glares.
“Look, you just don’t leave one of your favorite book BFFs on the hook with a man keeping secrets. You just don’t.”
“Remind me not to take you to Rebecca,” muttered the Librarian, pulling us into the oak-paneled corridor, where Sarah stood with a worried-looking blonde in pink satin swagged with ribbon loops.
“I found her in the library reading, away from all the other guests,” Sarah said, casting a glance back at our second Patron. “She started hyperventilating the moment I told her what happened.”
“Is my father really coming to find me?” gasped the woman in pink, latching on to the Librarian like a drowning woman.
On closer inspection she looked maybe ten years older than I was, and her English accent sounded like the recently acquired variety.
Like maybe she’d picked it up from Downton Abbey.
“You told me no one could find me here, you told me—”
“You will come to no harm,” the Librarian said with that reassuring implacability of hers, but the woman continued to gasp.
“I can’t let my father find me, I can’t—” She sank down on the carpet in a billow of pink satin skirts, shaking, her face ashen, breath coming in sudden gasps as if she were choking.
“Are you having a fit, Miss Scopelli?” the Librarian asked sharply, but I shook my head.
“Panic attack.” One of the girls I’d shared a foster home with used to get them—hers lasted a good half an hour at a stretch, and I didn’t think we had that kind of time here.
Sarah was already crouching down by the blonde, rubbing a hand in reassuring circles between her shoulder blades; I crouched down on the other side.
“Breathe,” I said, “just breathe. Focus on your breath, in, out, in, out—”
“Can you tell me what color the carpet is?” Sarah asked quietly.
“Blue and red, that’s good. You’ve got this.
What did you have for dinner last night?
” Simple questions, grounding questions designed to pull someone out of the daze of panic and back into the world around them—clearly this wasn’t Sarah’s first rodeo either.
She kept asking questions and I took over rubbing the blonde’s back until the panicked race of her breathing slowed.
“Do you think you can walk now?” Sarah asked, as the Librarian gave her a nod and then moved to the end of the long corridor to see if the coast was clear.
“My father can’t find me here,” the woman whispered. “He can’t. He told me if I ever moved out from his house and left him on his own—” A gulp. “He’s going to be so angry.”
“Did he hit you?” There was a particularly taut look on Sarah’s face.
“No.” The blonde looked startled. “He said men who hit women were no better than animals. He said women have to be protected . . . he just . . . I had to ask permission for everything. The money, the house schedule, my shopping; I had to get approval for everything I bought, every book I took out of the library. I wasn’t allowed to move out, wasn’t allowed to get a job—”
I cut her off because she was dialing herself right back into another fit of hyperventilation.
“He won’t find you here,” I said in my most reassuring tones.
Sarah signaled me with a look, and between the two of us we eased the blonde to her feet.
The Librarian was returning from the end of the corridor in a rustle of green taffeta.
“Too many carriages and servants milling around out front to make a quiet getaway,” she decreed. “We’ll head up to the rooftop. Can you walk now, Miss Scopelli?”
I gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and she made a jerky little nod, managing to follow as the Librarian headed for the grand staircase. “You’ve dealt with a few panic attacks before,” I murmured to Sarah as we brought up the rear.
“Used to get them myself,” she said. “I certainly don’t miss that particular roller coaster. You’ve clearly handled your share.”
“Foster kid.” Sarah gave a nod at that, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d acquitted myself a little better in this book than the last.
We tiptoed our way up to the very top floor of the house, toward the roof and along a certain corridor that anyone who has read Jane Eyre knows is trouble.
As we passed That Door, a long malicious chuckle floated out from the other side just as I was pulling out the latest dark red card.
I jumped a little, but managed to hand it over to the Librarian.