I screamed. Not in pain. Not in shock.
I screamed in abject terror.
I screamed the world down to our feet. I screamed all the red of the Red Room into a swirling ball of rage and screamed that rage into John Reed’s fat face. The door flew open and I saw his backside lumber away as he fled. The chair I was bound to tipped, and the hardwood floor came rushing toward my face.
« Chapter 4 »
Brocklehurst
It felt like coming out of a nightmare. Someone lifted me to a sitting position and propped me against my pillows. I was in my bedroom, dressed in my nightgown. It was daylight, but I couldn’t tell if it was morning or well into afternoon.
On one side of my bed Bessie watched me anxiously. I turned my face away, unwilling to accept her false show of concern after she abandoned me to that monster John Reed.
The gentleman who’d lifted me hovered over me, examining my eyes, and I felt a rush of relief. A stranger in the house, guarantor of safety and civil treatment. Not truly a stranger—I knew who he was—but someone not belonging to Gateshead Righteous, and therefore not Mrs. Reed’s creature.
Or John Reed’s creature either. I had to consider that now.
“Well, do you know who I am?” the man asked.
“Dr. Lloyd,” I said, and he smiled at my correct answer. “But why are you here, sir?”
A dull ache nagged at my right temple, and my wrists and ankles were sore, but I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Reed calling in a doctor. She’d never called one for countless other wounds and scrapes I’d suffered under her guardianship.
“Bessie asked me to see you as long as I was here,” Dr. Lloyd said. “I was called to attend poor Mrs. Reed and her brood.”
I smiled at the way he said brood, drawing out the oooo sound. My resentment of Bessie eased somewhat.
“Something they ate, I believe.” Dr. Lloyd shook down a thermometer and stuck it in my mouth. “Someone dropped a picture book into the oven fire while the bread was baking. Fumes from the burning ink did no wonders for the loaves, I daresay.”
He winked at me, as if it was a joke only he and I could understand.
“She’s to have liquids only,” he told Bessie. “Broth, tea. A little brandy.”
“Dr. Lloyd!” she said, scandalized, and my eyes grew wide.
“No brandy?” the doctor said jovially. “I suppose not. The tea then, with honey and lemon.”
“Yes, sir.” Bessie smiled. She appreciated his good nature too. She was really quite pretty when the sweet side of her personality held sway.
Dr. Lloyd seemed pleased with the thermometer results. “Well, Jane. I’ll come again tomorrow, how is that?”
“Oh, sir!” I grabbed his arm. “What is to become of me?”
I couldn’t let him go. I wanted—no. I needed—to feel this pleasant conviviality for a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes! Even if only to discuss my dreary fate.
He squeezed my hand. “I’ll tell you what’s to become of you, Jane. You are to eat what Bessie gives you and sleep all day and the whole night through. You’ve had a slight concussion, but nothing that won’t be put to rights by this prescription. Tell me you’ll be a wise young lady—”
So glad he didn’t tell me to be a good girl.
“—and do as I say.”
“Yes, Dr. Lloyd.”
At that moment the bell rang for the servants’ meal. It was noon then. Bessie anxiously looked at the door then back again. Dr. Lloyd understood her dilemma. If she didn’t eat on time with the others, she would get nothing until late tonight. “Go ahead, Bessie. I’ll talk with my patient a few minutes more and let myself out.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Lloyd.”
“Now Jane,” he said when we were alone. “Has someone hurt you? Are your injuries not from an accidental fall? Tell me what’s truly troubling you.”
Never.
If I told the world John Reed had accosted me in…in that way, I’d be called Liar and Tease (which how could both be true at the same time?). I’d be branded fallen for the rest of my life. John Reed and Mrs. Reed had both already called me Jezebel.
Still, I was sorely in need of sympathy.
“I was knocked down,” I admitted. “But that’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost.”
He smiled then frowned to cover it. “Ghost. So you’re a child after all, afraid of ghosts.”
“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost. You may not know this, but my uncle died in that room. He was laid out there. No one will go into the Red Room at night if they can help it. It was cruel to shut me up there. I’ll never forget it.”