Page 10 of Zenith
“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 could 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.
