Free Wild Island by Jennifer Livett

21st Regiment, had dealings with Mr Rowland Rochester fourteen years ago in the West Indies when Booth was a Lieutenant there. Would the Colonial Secretary be so kind as to ascertain whether Captain Booth has any knowledge of Mr Rowland Rochester’s subsequent or present whereabouts?
    Booth sat for a few moments and then read the letter again, although the meaning was plain. He had been expecting something like this for a decade—not about Rowland Rochester, his conscience was clear there—but about Caralin and the children. If questions were asked about Rowland Rochester, then knowledge of Caralin was bound to come out—which would probably end any idea of marrying Lizzie. But why did Montagu ask him not to reply directly? Could the Colonial Secretary have some personal interest in the matter? In these small colonies the webs of kinship, loyalty and enmity could be as intricate and invisible as those in a country village. It had been the same in India.
    Booth began a reply to Montagu and half an hour later had thrown two attempts in the fire. There was not even the distraction of mending his pen. Three days ago he had given up his quill and begun to use the new Government-issue steel nibs. The faint scratching of pen across paper made the dog Fran, asleep in front of the fire, open her eyes in hope of mice or rats. But she was growing accustomed to the noise and soon let them fall closed again. She was a brindle terrier, square and sturdy, Booth’s favourite among his half a dozen gun-dogs. Better behaved than half the Regiment.
    In the end he wrote four lines saying he was due in Hobarton in three weeks’ time for the Hammond trial, and if the matter could wait until then, he would on that date give himself the pleasure of waiting on the Colonial Secretary. Nil desperandum , as Char would say. Perhaps it could all be mended. Except for Caralin and the children. Nothing could mend that.

4
    THE DAY AFTER THE FAILED WEDDING AT ‘ THORNFIELD ’, I LEARNED from Dr Carter that my patient, Bertha, was in fact the sugar heiress Mrs Fairfax had spoken of, Miss Anna Cosway-Mason. She had married Edward Rochester in Spanish Town fourteen years before. Dr Carter’s grey, tufted eyebrows twitched as he told me. He was one of those portly, elderly babies with a soft halo of white hair through which his pink scalp glowed.
    ‘You did not know it?’ I asked. I thought he might have been in the secret. He shook his head.
    ‘I had formed the idea,’ he said, ‘as perhaps I was intended to do, that she was the unfortunate mistress of old Mr Rochester. Edward brought her here when his father was dying. I was called in to examine her and instructed that her presence was to be kept a perfect secret.’
    ‘And Mrs Fairfax?’
    ‘Much the same, I think. She knew you were the nurse, of course, but did not allow herself to know more. Did she never speak to you about your patient?’
    ‘Never.’
    Dr Carter had spent an hour attending to Rochester’s head wound after the melee in the attic. He learned, then, that Edward Rochester’s marriage had taken place in 1824 when Anna was said to be eighteen.But the Mason family had lied about her age, Rochester claimed, and about her mental soundness. She had gone stark mad within a year of the marriage. Carter shook his head, whether in sympathy for Bertha or Rochester, or in perplexity at the whole condition of wedlock, I did not ask. As he spoke he examined Bertha. After the struggle she had seemed half-stupefied, had fallen into a heavy sleep and stayed so ever since. I was troubled because her condition did not seem natural to me, but Carter said he would reserve judgement until the following afternoon, when he would call to see her again.
    Next day there came another blow to Rochester. Jane Eyre had left the house during the night, telling no one. He scoured the house and grounds, then rode off immediately in search of her—but could find no trace. I was more concerned with Bertha,