“But…” I tried to decide which of the thousand questions vying for space in my brain should be voiced first. “But…”
“Why would I keep someone like that on staff? Why would I let her live in the house?”
“Why would you?”
Nico inhaled and exhaled heavily. “It’s a long, complicated story. She’s a relative of mine. I keep her on here under my protection, because what else can I do? Send her to a mental institution?”
I tried to speak as gently as I could. “Maybe that would be safer. For her and for us. For Maddy.”
“Do you know what those places are like?”
I had to admit that I didn’t. We had reached the edge of the pine forest, far out of sight of the house.
“Jane, you’re right. It hasn’t been very safe to let her stay here. I’ve taken risks with your life and Maddy’s, and I could never have forgiven myself if” — he seized my shoulders and drew me close again — “if anything had happened to you.” He kissed me fiercely as if afraid that any second I might disappear in a puff of smoke. I felt my knees weaken. When he finally released me, he continued: “But today we’re getting married, and in a few days you, Maddy, and I are out of here. We’ll be out of the country and away from Thornfield Park — for months. I promise, I’ll think of something in the meantime. Either I’ll find another place for Brenda to stay
or… even better — why didn’t I think of this before? — I’ll build us a whole new house, any kind you like. A cottage? A log cabin? A castle with ramparts and a moat? You name it. We’ll start fresh.”
You’re going to leave behind an entire estate just because you want to get away from Brenda?
I thought to myself. The idea seemed absurd, crazy, wasteful. But Nico bent to kiss me again, then he ran his lips down my throat. He reached up under my blouse, and I felt myself melting like candle wax in his warm hands. Without knowing how I got there, before I could object or worry whether someone might come looking for us, I was lying in the soft fragrant bed of pine needles. We were kissing, and he was unbuttoning my blouse. Every question, every reservation I had, flew from my mind as I lay there — tingling all over, my hands tangled in the softness of his hair — and let him unmake me into a thousand glittering pieces.
We had scheduled the wedding for noon. Nico had made an appointment with a justice of the peace at the courthouse the next town over. I outfitted Maddy in a pink taffeta dress and white patent leather shoes; she was especially excited when she held the little basket of rose petals that she would soon scatter before me. I tied the last of six ribbons in her hair and handed her off to Linda with barely enough time left to get ready. Lucia helped me dress — a blessing, since my hands were shaking. That morning she had ordered a simple white veil from a local bridal shop to replace the torn one. All patience, she smoothed down my hair and pinned the veil in position; then she fastened the many tiny buttons that ran up my back. She even made me up — a little mascara, a touch
of blush. As soon as she’d finished my lipstick, I hurried for the door.
“Stop!” she said. “At least look at yourself in the mirror. You haven’t even taken a peek.”
I complied. The dress fit perfectly, and the veil was understated but pretty. Still, it seemed that a stranger was looking back at me from the mirror.
“Jane!” Nico called me from the foot of the stairs. “What’s taking so long?” He watched me make my way downstairs and kissed me lightly when I reached him. “You look amazing,” he said. “Let’s roll.” And then, to my surprise, he turned abruptly and hurried toward the front door with a stride I could hardly match. Lucia stood in the hallway as we passed. I wanted to speak with her, but Nico hurried me along. Maddy was already in the car, clutching her white basket of rose petals. The twenty-minute ride to the courthouse was oddly quiet. I glanced over at Nico only once; the frown on his face was enough to keep me still, on my side of the backseat, eyes glued to the view out the window, Maddy between us.
What is the matter with him?
I wondered. It seemed like more than just a case of nerves. He said nothing for the duration of the ride except to command Benjamin to drive faster. When we pulled up to the courthouse, Nico was out the door before the Range Rover came to a complete stop. I helped Maddy out, the two of us struggling to keep up with her father.
Inside, Maddy played her part prettily, walking slowly and solemnly toward her father, scattering rose petals on the floor. I followed. It wasn’t much of a walk: the office wasn’t large, and my dress and the whole rose-petal idea seemed a little ridiculous.
Worse — much worse — when I reached Nico, I expected to see the usual warmth in his eyes, but instead I saw impatience. As tightly wound as my emotions were that day, I surprised myself by my reaction to Nico’s hard look. Tears sprang into my eyes.
Regret crossed over Nico’s face like a ray of light breaking between storm clouds. “I’m sorry, angel. I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m not angry… just eager.” And he turned to the justice of the peace, whose name was Donahue, and asked him to begin.
“Dearly beloved,” Mr. Donahue intoned. “We are gathered here to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony…”
A door slammed, I could hear footsteps, running toward us from the hallway. Then shouts. For a moment I thought one of Nico’s desperate fans had somehow learned of the wedding and was here to throw herself between the two of us. Someone pounded on the door. “Let me in.” To my surprise, it was a man’s voice, a slightly familiar one. “Stop this wedding!”
“Keep going,” Nico told Mr. Donahue through gritted teeth, his gaze steady, as though he were completely unfazed by this turn of events. Maddy looked terrified. I grabbed her hand, as much for my own comfort as for hers.
“Let me in,” the voice from the hall repeated, louder this time.
Mr. Donahue gave Nico a warning look and crossed the room. In through the open door came a man I recognized: Ambrose Mason. “What’s this about?” Mr. Donahue asked.
Mason looked as pale as I remembered, as nervous as he had been the night Nico had saved his life. He hesitated a moment under Nico’s steely glare, then said his piece. “Nico Rathburn already has a wife.”
Nico didn’t flinch. His face flushed a shade I’d never seen before. He continued to stare down Ambrose Mason as though trying to intimidate him into silence.
“Is this true?” Mr. Donahue turned to Nico.
“I have proof.” Mason withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. “A marriage license…” — he handed it over — “between Nico Rathburn and my stepsister, Bibi Oliviera.”
“That piece of paper means nothing. It doesn’t prove the woman I married is still alive.”
“She was alive less than a month ago,” Mason said.
Nico’s fists were clenched. He made a move toward Mason as though to hit him. Mason flinched. “I should have left you to die,” Nico said under his breath.
Mr. Donahue cast an admonishing glance at Nico. “I could have the police here in thirty seconds,” he said. “I don’t care
who
you are. You’d better watch yourself.” Then, to Mason: “And you need to explain. Where is this alleged wife?”
“Bibi Oliviera Rathburn is living at Thornfield Park. I saw her three weeks ago.”
“Didn’t you divorce her years ago?” the justice asked Nico.
A grim smile contorted Nico’s lips. He said nothing.
“He never divorced Bibi,” Mason said. “He’s trying to commit bigamy… with this girl.” He pointed at me.
“Bigamy.” Nico laughed bitterly. “That’s an ugly word. Not untrue, but still, ugly.” Then he grabbed my hand. “
This girl,
as you call her, is completely innocent. Leave her out of this.” He dropped my hand unceremoniously. “Come on, all of you — you’re in for a treat, an inside look at the freak show I call my life. Be sure to bring
your camera phones. I’ll give you something you can sell to the tabloids for half a million dollars. An exclusive!”
Maddy looked stricken. Though she couldn’t have understood half of what the grown-ups around her were saying, she knew something had gone terribly wrong. She was hurt and scared by this new defiant tone in her father’s voice. I held her hand as we walked to the car, then wrapped her in my arms on the long, silent ride back to the house. For once, she didn’t ask a single question. Nico didn’t even look at me. Perhaps I would have fallen completely apart if it hadn’t been for the need to comfort Maddy.
As Benjamin pulled into the drive, Lucia and the rest of the staff ran out onto the front steps to greet us, bags of rice in their hands. At the sight of the train of cars behind us, they fell silent. “Never mind,” Nico told them. “There’s nothing to celebrate.”
He went into the house and strode toward the back staircase with Mason. I hurried behind with the police detective Mr. Donahue had sent in a patrol car to investigate. I’d left Maddy on the doorstep clinging to Lucia’s legs. When we reached the landing of the second floor, Nico grabbed my hand and beckoned to the men who were lagging behind us. We proceeded to the third floor. The low black door, opened by Nico’s key, admitted us to the dark room with its heavy sleigh bed on which I’d stanched Mason’s wounds.
“You’ll recognize this room, Mason,” Nico said. “She bit and stabbed you here.”
Brenda sat in the armchair in the corner of the room, heating something over a hot plate. She was startled to see our small procession and jumped to her feet.
“Good afternoon, Brenda,” Nico said with overstated cheer. “How are you? And how is she doing today?”
“She’s having a good day,” Brenda said warily. “Cranky but not off the charts.”
“You’ll let us into the turret, Brenda?” Nico asked, though it wasn’t really a question. She undid the heavy latch, fished in her pocket for her keys, and unlocked the door. The round room on the other side was dark but for the light that bled in through a small window. In a far corner of the room, in deep shadow, a figure rocked back and forth, muttering and grumbling. Brenda snapped on a switch, the light revealing a tall, broad-shouldered woman with wild white hair covering most of her face. Though it was midday, she wore the same long nightgown she’d had on the night before; it was stained and smelled musky. Her bare feet were long, the toes slightly gnarled. The skin of her arms was covered with scratches, but I could make out the familiar coiled snake tattoo. At the sight of us, she reared back a bit, startled, and uttered a choked cry. “Nico?” I heard her say. “Nico?”
“You’d better not stay,” Brenda said. “You’re going to upset her.”
“Only a few moments,” Nico said. Arms outstretched, he stood between us and the woman, Bibi Oliviera. I could now see a resemblance to her former self. Her long legs. Her dark eyes and full lips, half-hidden by thick, matted hair. She was heavier, her skin raw, and she looked nothing like a model anymore. Still, I could imagine the beautiful woman she had once been.
“Be careful,” Brenda warned Nico. “I wouldn’t get too close.”
Bibi tipped her head to one side, studying Nico. Then her gaze
traveled across the room to me. She turned back to him. “You cocksucker,” she said in a low voice. “Motherfucking piece of shit.”
“No need to be afraid, Mason,” Nico called out behind us, where Mason cowered in back of the burly police detective who was ready to draw his gun. “She doesn’t have a knife this time. Right, Brenda?”
“You never know,” Brenda replied. “She’s gotten so good at hiding things in her clothes. I can never be a hundred percent sure she’s not armed.”
“We’d better leave her,” Mason whispered.
“Go to hell,” Nico replied.
Nico threw himself between me and the woman — his wife — as she sprang at him, grabbing for his throat. Brenda grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me toward the door, out of the way. Bibi was taller than Nico and probably as heavy. The two of them struggled. He could have knocked her away with a well-planted punch, but he didn’t. Instead, he grappled with her until he managed to grab her arms and twist them behind her back. She screamed — a horrible, chilling cry. “Cocksucker! Cocksucker! I’ve seen that whore you’re with. That one.” And she gaped at me, her dark green eyes peering between the hanks of her wild white hair. She bared her teeth. “You. You know what you’ve done.”
Behind me, I could hear Brenda rummaging through the chest of drawers beside the bed. She produced a hypodermic needle and, with incredible speed, plunged it into Bibi’s arm. Bibi flailed a minute, still cursing.
“Shhhh,” I heard Nico say. His voice startled me. It was gentle, even loving. “Calm.” A moment later, Bibi’s body relaxed in his arms.
She looked up at him with love in her eyes. “My Nico,” she whispered.
Nico stroked her hair. “There, there, angel.” After a few moments, she went slack, and her eyes closed. He dragged her backward to a bed pushed against the wall. “Don’t just stand there,” he called. Mason and the detective didn’t move, so I went to him. But there wasn’t much I could do but watch. With help from Brenda, he lifted Bibi’s long, limp frame onto the bed. I stood beside Nico while he unfolded a thin blanket — sky blue, a hopeful color that made me suddenly sad — and covered her. Though she was out cold, he patted her hand and brushed back her tangled hair.
Then, over his shoulder, he addressed the men in the other room. “This is my wife,” he said. “A schizophrenic. You’ve probably heard that schizophrenia is treatable with the right prescriptions, and it’s true most of the time, as long as the patient takes her medication —”
“I do the best I can,” Brenda interrupted, sounding defensive. “You wouldn’t believe how wily she is. She must hide them under her tongue or between her teeth and her cheek. When I try to check, she bites me. I find stockpiles of pills under the rug, in the closet, in the toes of her slippers.”
“Sometimes she takes her medication a few days in a row,” Nico added in a choked voice. “Just enough so that I get a glimmer of her old self, so I get hopeful that she’s coming back to me. She lets Brenda comb her hair. She stops hearing voices. She makes sense. But then she falls apart again.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I guess I deserve every bit of bad luck I’ve been given. So many times I’ve thought my wife was coming back to me, she
was almost back, and then she was snatched away, replaced by a maniac who accuses me of terrible things and tries to kill me any way she can.”