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wasn’t a dream. The train was stopped. Someone had truly called for me. “I’m here!” I cried, afraid he’d leave me.
    Lowood Halt had no ticket house. It was no more than a rectangular platform with train tracks on one side and a cobblestone road on the other. At one end an iron bench sat beneath a three-sided rain shelter. Beyond the platform waited a one-horse cart.
    “Well?” A man walked by with my trunk. A boy, really, not much older than John Reed. “Get in.”
    I climbed into the back of the cart beside my trunk on the flat bed. The driver jumped up to his bench and urged his horse on. The sun was low in the west, hidden by clouds. What sights had I missed, sleeping the day away? My stomach growled. I wished I’d eaten more than two bites of toast.
    “Go a little faster, please,” I told the driver. “I don’t want to miss supper at Lowood.”
    He looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. I prepared for an insult, but his face changed. He had the same look as John Reed did when I was tied to the chair in the Red Room.
    I instinctively clutched my cloak at my throat. He grinned—not nicely—and turned back to his horse. “Git, Daisy,” he said with a chuckle. “Walk along sprightly there now. Madam don’t want to miss her supper.”
    We traveled miles and miles through remote foothill country. Occasionally we’d pass a private lane, and I might spot a grand house set up the hill well away from the road. The clouds followed us, and a few sprinkles came down. We stopped at an iron gate in a stone fence at a turnaround where the cobblestone road ended. Without ceremony the driver dropped my trunk at the gate then pushed a button recessed in the wall.
    I climbed out of the cart, stiff from the jolting ride. Beyond the gate, a long drive led to a cottage, and behind the cottage two mansions faced each other, each as big as Gateshead.
    “How marvelous!” I stuck my head through the gate’s bars, hardly believing my eyes. At the end of the drive near the cottage was a powered limousine automobile.
    My Uncle Reed had owned an automobile, though not one so large. I never saw it—Mrs. Reed sold it after he died. But John Reed had its picture. I believe the only reason he wanted Anointed status was for the privilege of owning and driving such a vehicle.
    “Droppin’ off.” The cart driver spoke to the wall. “I got one Jane Eyre here for you.”
    “Why do we stop here?” I said. “The drive is plenty wide enough for the cart.” I blinked away a single fat drop of rain.
    “No man is allowed past this point.” He absently pulled his hat brim forward to shield his eyes from the rain. “Not if he ain’t a choker.”
    I smiled inwardly. How it would irritate John Reed to hear this driver of low rank using his same slang.
    The driver walked over to me and leaned close, his moist warm breath on my neck. “I could come to you the back way, if it gives you pleasure.”
    I wanted to slap him, though he was twice my size. We were interrupted by the sound of locks turning, and the gate began to open of its own accord, a wonderful remote mechanical trick.
    The driver uttered a nasty laugh and jumped into his cart. “Git, Daisy,” he said to his horse. “You don’t want to miss your supper.”
    From somewhere near the gate, a disembodied female voice said, ‘Enter, Jane Eyre!”

« Chapter 6 »
A Bishop’s Charity
    Dusk descended suddenly as the sun dipped behind the trees. In the intensifying rain, I ran up the drive with my trunk. I couldn’t resist looking at the limousine, but its windows were darkly tinted and covered with beading raindrops. I couldn’t see inside. While I debated which building to enter, the voice from the gate again called out to me.
    “Come, Jane Eyre.”
    This time the voice was contained within a human being, a stout dark-haired woman. She beckoned to me from the cottage door. I followed her inside to a small parlor where there was a fire. “Take off your hat