Zenith (The Thornfield Affair Book 3)

by Amity Cross

  “Thank goodness for that!” he exclaimed with a relieved laugh. “You are not the kind of woman I am used to being acquainted with, Jane. It’s quite refreshing.”

  “Nor are you the kind of man I am used to conversing with.”

  “Then it is settled. The past is where it belongs, and only the future is of any worth!” He smiled and offered his arm. “Shall we?”

  Relieved the situation had been defused quickly and things were back to where they’d begun—an amicable friendship—I slid my arm through his. “Now about that dinner…”

  5

  The event at the art gallery seemed to have been forgotten a few days after it happened.

  I’d taken to viewing Rivers’s progress with his modern abstract landscapes when I left in the morning and returned at night, utterly entranced at how they changed throughout the day. He didn’t show it, but I was sure he was pleased I was showing such an interest in his work.

  It wasn’t until almost a week after the incident at the gallery when he approached me with a perplexing question, and certainly one I’d never expected him to ask me.

  “Jane,” he said, standing beside me as I surveyed his latest progress on a silver-toned landscape. “May I ask you something?”

  My hackles began to rise, but I nodded, wondering what he of all people could want from me.

  “You have a beauty I desire to capture,” he murmured. “You have no doubt seen the context of my work? You were the inspiration, and the crowning jewel in the series would be a grand portrait of you, Jane. You must sit for me.”

  I fidgeted nervously, not knowing how to discourage him. I longed for Edward then, knowing he would put a finite stop to Rivers’s advances, but I had run from him even as I had run from dealing with the full force of my broken heart. I had no one but myself to blame for this turn of events. Even Adele had warned me, and she did not even know a thing about me!

  “I’m afraid I cannot,” I replied, my voice wavering slightly.

  “You must,” he said more firmly. “I’m afraid I cannot paint you from memory and do your features justice. Nor would a photograph suffice. A camera cannot capture the same light as the naked eye, and it would do you an injustice.”

  “Why me? I know you said… I… I’m not an adequate subject.”

  Rivers frowned, his brow creasing as he swept away the shock of unruly hair that usually hung in his eyes. “I see I have made you uncomfortable.”

  I wrapped my arms around my waist and shied away from him. “It seems rather…intimate.”

  “In truth, it is,” he murmured. “I have an uncanny ability to bring out the true nature of my subjects even as they attempt to hide it.”

  “Are you still worried about that?” I inquired. “I have told you everything, Rivers.”

  He smiled, his eyes lowering. “No, not at all. I believe you are quite sincere. I merely mean to say that I wish to paint the real Jane. The one I see below the quiet exterior, the one behind the insecurities. The one marked by the very landscape I have spent months painting.” He watched my reaction, but I had closed myself off, remaining passive to his attempts to draw me out. “For it has marked you, has it not?”

  “All life’s experiences mark people, though not as deeply as you may think.”

  He smiled, his lips curving into a knowing expression, and he raised his hand. Brushing his fingers along the curve of my neck, I began to tremble, alarm bells ringing shrilly in the back of my mind.

  I shrank away from his touch and turned to the side.

  “Consider it,” he said, the tenor of his voice changing. “It would make the collection so much more than it is. I’m sure some rich businessman would snap it up in an instant and hang it in his living room. Jane Doe… You suit your name very much, do you know that? You are as elusive as a wild doe in the forest.”

  I swallowed hard, angling my face toward the darkness. “Then let me disappear as such, for I cannot sit for you, Rivers. I do not wish to be subject to such whimsical desire. I fear I am too delicate for it.”

  He nodded, his face etched with his troubled thoughts. “If you wish, but the offer still remains.”

  I backed away hastily, leaving him to ponder his painting in solitary silence. Rivers had been a good friend to me these past weeks, but no matter what I attempted to do, he seemed besotted with the chase. I would not allow the friendship to grow into romance, for despite his rugged charm, I did not feel attracted to him. Any union would be hollow on my behalf, and we would both be left hurting at the end of it all.

  I did not know what to do next to keep the friendship intact, but one thing was certain above all else—I needed to separate myself from him as soon as possible. I needed to find someplace else to live.

  The next morning, I decided I had to chance accessing my bank accounts if I was to find my own place to live away from the studio.

  Sense told me if Edward was looking and he was able to find my name, the next course of action he would take was to trace the activity on my bank accounts. So I took a bus across the city and found myself on Oxford Street in Soho. Entering the first HSBC bank branch I found, I set about my business with haste.

  Mr. Briggs had given me all the details I needed to access my accounts, and I had logins and passwords for the bank’s online systems. Not having access to a computer, I hadn’t used them yet, so I slipped in front of one of the self-service terminals to see what I could learn about my financial situation. It was one thing being told, but to see it before your very eyes was entirely another.

  Typing in the information, I was glad for the screen that had been placed over the monitor, affording privacy from prying eyes. When the accounts loaded, I hesitated, waiting for the moment a siren would wail alerting staff to the wealthy customer in their midst, but nothing happened.

  I must have stood there for five minutes in a complete daze before a member of staff approached me.

  “Can I assist you with anything, Miss?” the man asked, lingering too close for my liking.

  I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

  He smiled and retreated, leaving me be. I did not like that I was so jumpy, constantly wondering if someone was watching and plotting some grand scheme behind my back. I suppose I could not be blamed for such thinking after the things I’d been subjected to in recent weeks, but I still did not see it as an excuse. Pull yourself together, Jane Eyre!

  Focusing on the screen before me, I read the totals and discerned which account belonged to investments, a term deposit, savings, and a regular everyday account. There was a notice saying I was eligible for an exclusive credit card, but I didn’t like the sound of that even though I could afford it. There was a few thousand pounds waiting in the everyday account, the one I had a card for in my pocket, so I decided I would withdraw the cash I would need to secure a deposit on my own apartment or a short-term houseshare. It wouldn’t be forever, but only until I had worked out what I was going to do.

  Realizing I was overthinking my position, I logged out of my online accounts and went to the cash machine, withdrawing the money I needed. Sliding the wad of notes into my little purse, I thrust it into my jacket pocket and zipped it closed for safekeeping.

  I’m not sure why I glanced up at that moment, but I did. Outside, stood a face I never wanted to see again in my entire life, the cause of such heartache and suffering, Blanche Ingram. The perpetrator in my attempted murder—for that is what was intended when Bertha struck me with the very same knife Blanche herself had brandished at me.

  My heart leapt into my throat, but she didn’t turn and see me staring at her through the bank window. Edging back into the shadow of the cash machine, I watched her closely, waiting to see which way she would go.

  I was positive Blanche Ingram would never change outwardly if she could help it. Her hair was black as ink and styled to perfection, her clothing refined and elegant, the camel colored trench she wore over her outfit most likely costing more than all my belongings combined. I cou
ld probably purchase a thousand of them now, but it seemed like a waste to me. What a curious culture humans had made for themselves.

  Blanche smiled and embraced another woman who had appeared from the side, and I realized it was her sister Mary. I hadn’t had much to do with the other Ingram when they had been in residence at Thornfield the prior summer. She had been content to allow Blanche to take the spotlight and followed accordingly, remaining silent until she was called upon to reinforce an opinion.

  I watched the pair greet each other, my blood thrumming through my veins, fueling my fear and throwing vivid memories of the stabbing to the forefront of my troubled mind. I dreaded to think what Blanche would do if she discovered me here.

  “Miss, are you okay?”

  I glanced away from the window and found that the man from earlier had approached me.

  “Yes, yes,” I said hastily. “I’m well. Just a little faint.”

  “Can I offer you some water?”

  I shook my head and told him I was on my way to lunch, and that seemed to pacify him, but my stomach still rolled with waves of nausea.

  Is this what my life had become? Fear and loathing? I was too afraid to access what was rightfully mine, I hid from the man I loved, and I cowered from the woman who tried to see me dead. The last, I could be excused from, but it was not what I wished to do. No, I wished to stand up to Blanche Ingram and see to it that she did not cause anyone harm again, but I was at a loss as to how to achieve it. How did one outwit a murderess? I was alone, clueless and out of my depth. Honestly, there was nothing I could do.

  Watching the sisters walk away, I realized I was now free to leave the bank unseen, so I slipped out onto the street, my gaze following their backs. Perhaps I could study their movements and stumble across a way to disembowel their reputations, for those were as precious to them as their own lives. Should I follow them and see where they were going? Could I do it without raising suspicion? Was it the right thing to do?

  I’d been scorned and trodden upon one too many times, and my conscience all but failed me at that moment. I was overcome with the need for revenge as a surge of passionate loathing swept through me, so in lieu of walking in the other direction, I followed them with a similar kind of social slaughter in my heart.

  The women walked arm in arm along Oxford Street, carving a path through the throngs of people hurrying to and fro along the footpath. They did not even move aside for an elderly woman with a walking stick, and the poor dear was almost forced to the ground. She dropped her stick, and I rushed forward to retrieve it, handing it to the woman, my eye still on the backs of the Ingram sisters.

  Did they not care for anyone but themselves? It was a pointless question to ask, as I knew the answer firsthand. The marks on my chest were the proof in the pudding.

  The woman thanked me profusely, and I parted ways with her as the sisters entered Selfridges, the upmarket department store. I was hardly surprised at their destination, though I had not been inside before. The prices were out of my league, and besides, the items they carried were out of my range of experience.

  I lingered by the perfume counter, watching as the two women looked over the handbags in the next department. Thankfully, the saleswoman left me alone. She’d taken one look at me and decided I had no money to spend and turned up her nose. I hardly noticed as my attention was otherwise engaged.

  I watched as Blanche bullied a salesman in the bag department, then as she verbally pushed around a woman at the skincare counter, and then the miniature scene at a jewelry display when they did not have an item she desired in stock.

  All Blanche had done was shop with her sister and bully sales assistants, hardly what I’d been looking for when I decided to stalk the pair through the streets. Looking at her now, I could not see the woman who was capable of pushing me down a set of stairs or of putting a weapon into the hand of a madwoman with the instruction to murder. Blanche Ingram was an expert manipulator, her mask so firmly fixed upon her face, it was likely to never come off. She was shallow, callous, and cruel. Waiting for her to take a misstep could take eons.

  Knowing I would never best her, not like this, I retreated out of the department store, hurried across the street, and disappeared into the nearest tube station, embarrassed I’d followed her in the first place.

  Even I knew revenge was empty, which was why I’d never sought it on people like Aunt Sarah or Mr. Brocklehurst. The best thing I could do to irk them was to find happiness. Perhaps when I had come to terms with Edward’s betrayal, the best revenge on Blanche Ingram was to come clean to the world about who I was and what I had, and the good things I could do with it.

  For the time being, all I could manage to do was return to Rivers’s studio and prepare for work that evening. The future would come one step at a time.

  6

  I wasn’t sure what triggered the thoughts in my mind the next morning, but I pondered upon my cousin Georgiana.

  The night had been late, my shift running into overtime when a group of drunken men had soiled the floor in quite a spectacular fashion. The day had progressed while I’d slept, and the apartment was silent, Rivers already installed downstairs in his studio. I still harbored an apprehension toward him and pushed away the uneasy feelings. I would take action soon—that very day, in fact.

  I thought upon the mobile phone I never switched on and wondered if I should call Georgiana to see how she was faring at Gateshead in the months after her mother—my aunt Sarah—passed from the stroke, which had left the woman’s health in tatters.

  Curiosity won out, so I slid the phone from the inside pocket of my duffel bag and switched it on. When the screen lit up, messages began to scroll down the screen, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. I never thought anyone would miss me when I stepped onto that train three weeks ago, but it seemed they had. I’d given the number to Alice before I’d departed, so she, my cousin Georgiana, and my lawyer Mr. Briggs were the only people who knew it.

  There was one missed call from Alice dated the day after I’d fled Thornfield, but the rest of the messages were from Georgiana.

  They were all written in increasing stages of panic and concern, and as I scrolled through them, I began to feel guilty about closing myself off so completely. I had thought nothing about other people, only my own need to escape. No matter how terrible my circumstances had been, it was selfish of me to think there were no people who genuinely cared for me. It seemed I’d made a mess of everything.

  Pressing her number, I placed the phone next to my ear and waited to see if she would pick up. It only took a minute until I heard the call connect.

  “Jane?” came my cousin’s voice.

  “Georgiana,” I replied. “I’m sorry, but I’ve only just received your messages.”

  “I suppose you never turn on your phone,” she said with a huff. “I’ve never met anyone so adverse to technology as you, Jane.”

  “I’ve never needed it.”

  “Never mind that now,” she said dismissively. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days.”

  “Is something the matter?” I inquired, beginning to feel concerned. She was alone in that big house after her mother died, and no doubt, she would have some teething problems managing the property with the National Trust.

  “A man came to see me the other day,” she said. “He was looking for you, but when I told him you were working at Thornfield, he said you were gone.”

  Her declaration was the last I was expecting to hear, and my thoughts went to Edward. Was he searching for me? I didn’t want to see him, but I longed for his touch all the same. I was tumbling around and around in the chaos of my own making, not knowing which way to turn. Each direction had its sacrifices, and I was thrown out of my depth entirely.

  “Who was he?” I asked, my heart thrumming and my palms developing a sheen of sweat. “What did he want with me?”

  “I can’t believe you left your job and didn’t tell me,” she said, ignoring my que
stions. “I’m starving for action these last months. Why did you leave?”

  “Georgiana,” I said firmly. “Who was the man?”

  “He said his name was Briggs,” she retorted. “He said some surprising things, Jane.”

  As my pulse returned to normal, I thought over the consequences of what he must have told her.

  “Whatever he said, Georgiana—”

  “He seemed quite concerned,” she interrupted, not seeming to care what I had to say. “I was quite shocked to hear you had disappeared!”

  “I had to leave quite suddenly,” I replied haltingly. “It was unexpected.”

  “As unexpected as finding out your family name, I suppose! Oh, he let it slip, Jane. I’m sure you’re glad to have it.”

  “Though I have no living family,” I said, my temper rising to match hers. “Your mother was humble enough to give it to me on her deathbed once she knew everyone had perished.”

  Silence greeted me on the other end of the phone, and I was not surprised. Georgiana felt slighted I did not tell her what I had told no one, but I wasn’t sure what she wanted to achieve by berating me for it. Did she know of my inheritance? All I was certain of was I had to be careful who knew of my financial situation lest they attempt to extort it away and leave me hurt. Being rich sounded fabulous, but I was fast learning it was a burden and then some. No wonder Edward was always so sour.

  Georgiana huffed once more, then said, “Mr. Briggs asked me to tell you to contact him as soon as you are able.”

  “Georgiana…”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me,” she declared. “I’m quite put off by it.”

  “I don’t even understand what it means to me,” I replied, annoyed she assumed I would confide all my secrets in a girl who never lifted a finger to assist me as a child. Trust took time, and we hadn’t had very much of it together at all. “I haven’t even had a moment to research who and where they came from. I would dearly love to know my parents, but I do not know where to start! My life is in chaos right now, and I thank you for attempting to contact me about Mr. Briggs.”