Thornfield Hall by Emma Tennant

lacking something in her head; and she is no taller than I am, as we stand together by the big stone sink. She has one eye that is always closed, poor Bella, and she has to skew right around to try to tell me that the housekeeper, who controls all our lives here at Thornfield, wishes to speak to me straightaway.
    Everyone stares as I go to the inner window, and Madame F says I must follow her upstairs, no dawdling about it. But as she speaks the stern words, I see she favors me, just as Papa does these days. And because of their affection for me, Adèle is popular in Thornfield Hall. “Come now,” Madame F says; and when we are up in the boudoir, she gives me a mug of the sweet pink drink she says is made from the rose hips that come plump and red on the rosebushes in the garden, when the flowers have died. As I sip, she sits me on a low velvet pouffe, of a grassy green that I think goes very well with the pantalettes I like to wear. She hands me a letter. My heart gives a violent leap when I see that it is from Jenny Colon—she who has not written for so many months, she who knows the whereabouts of Maman. “Your Parisian friend has written to me, as you see,” says Madame Fairfax, and her voice is gentle. “She informs me that Madame Varens will come here this month. You will be pleased to see your mother, little Adèle, I have no doubt.”
    This time I cannot keep the hot tears from streaming down my face. I do not listen to Madame Fairfax as she goes on. Maman comes here; the bad part of the fairy tale has come to an end; we shall live happily ever after, Maman, Papa, and I.
    â€œSo you will be able to continue your life in Paris when yourMaman has taken you back there,” says Madame F—but I do not hear her at all when she says this over and over, for the room is filled with the bright light of my happiness, and I no longer care if the plain Yorkshire sky outside the window has as many animal-shaped clouds as a Noah’s ark in an infant’s dream. And, for all the strictness she has shown me in the past, I now feel only love for Madame Fairfax, and I promise myself I will be une sage petite fille and do whatever the good housekeeper asks of me.
    For what Madame Fairfax does not yet know is that Maman comes to this great château to marry Papa. He knows she comes, and he has canceled the betrothal party with Mademoiselle Ingram for that reason. They will marry in the chapel, and I shall wear the organdy that is the color of the peaches in Papa’s greenhouse up beyond the kitchen garden.
    We shall all live together at Thornfield. And Miss Eyre may stay to continue my education—if Maman approves it, that is to say.

seven
    Grace
    H ere’s the story of how a good plan can misfire—a plan, that is, that would have made Grace Poole rich and would have rid the master of his problem, if nature had been allowed to take its course.
    This is what took place: I went down to the master’s room this morning and told him his wife was gone again—gone and not coming back this time by the looks of it—and good riddance to her as far as you’re concerned, I wanted to say, though it didn’t pay me to do so.
    It was early, for gentry at any rate, with Leah still cooking the breakfast for Mrs. F. “Oh, I’ll just take a little porridge, and no cream whatever you do,” the silly old woman says, and then I catch her guzzling the preserved plums in the master’s silver box on the sideboard. “Oh, Leah, the cambric pillowcases weren’t properly ironed yesterday—surely that nincompoop of a maid can learn how to use a steam iron?I don’t want Miss Ingram with damp or creased dresses.” And so on and on, while I’m waiting right up in the eaves for the plain stuff Mrs. R gets given, and me along with her. “No, you cannot cook for yourself up there,” Mr. R says when I ask for a small pantry—surely it