The Recipient of Secrets by LeAnne McKinley

Author:LeAnne McKinley [McKinley, LeAnne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

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The task of consoling my weeping cousin was not prolonged, for Mary had soon mastered her emotion and gone to her bed, I hoped, to rest. But I feared her tender and placid nature had been much disturbed by the unwelcome necessity she felt in breaking her engagement.

Once more in the quiet retreat of our room, I dressed Mr. Rochester for bed, and myself also.

“Mr. Rochester.”

“Jane?”

“I do not think I much care to know what happened to Tanner.”

“No?”

“His wife is better off without his tyrannical presence. The neighbourhood in general seems to benefit all around.”

“Then you would reward his poisoner with the privilege of success? Confirm his suspicions that he may freely administer poison to whomever he happens to despise?”

“Oh, sir.”

We were in our chamber. I hung over the little fire, prodding it needlessly with the poker. Mr. Rochester walked across the room, window to bureau, bureau to window, for the room was small and familiar enough for him to traverse without confusion and he grew tired of sitting about.

“But supposing the criminal hand was driven by great need, and now that such a desperate course has achieved its end he is able to resume a peaceable existence.”

“A winsome dream indeed! An appealing ideal to find in human nature one who, once tasting the power of dominion over life and death, now happily resigns it forever.”

“Did not Cincinnatus lay down his military might, to live quietly on his own farm? Does not the battle-hardened soldier or knight at last relinquish his arms and live among his neighbours without violence?”

“But they have acted with the consent of society. They are within the boundaries of the law, with the approval of their neighbours and countrymen. They are motivated by honour, and thus held to a higher standard.”

I left the fire and stood up. I was hot from stooping over the flames and felt my blood to be tempered with the heat of it. “Perhaps our murderer, too, was duty and honour-bound. When one has no recourse to the law, there is still justice and duty to be regarded.”

“Can it be honourable to break the law of the land? Is not that a bending and breaking of the very laws that bind our society together?”

I said nothing.

“Your own husband once decreed the law of man to be unjust, malleable, a mere guide rather than a firm and immutable hedge to his own behaviour. Would you now abandon principle, after adhering to it so assiduously in your own case? It is unlike you. The fact is, my little Jane, you think it was Stephen who did him in, who poisoned him in cold blood to spare his sister. Unless it was Grace herself. You do not like to declare either of them guilty.”

Still Mr. Rochester paced before me, while I stood by the fire, my hands folded in front of me.

“In your case, Mr. Rochester, you wished to please yourself. You sought escape, relief, from your private unhappiness.”

“Oh God, did I not!”

“But you were not at risk of bodily harm.

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