Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin Page A

drive. There was a light in the porter's lodge. When we reached it, we found the porter's wife just kindling her fire. My trunk, which had been carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door. It wanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after that hour had struck, the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach. I went to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.
    "Is she going by herself?" asked the porter's wife.
    "Yes."
    "And how far is it?"
    "Fifty miles."
    "What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust her so far alone."
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    Trust? I did not say that she had little reason to trust me, nor did she. Her need to be rid of me exceeded her interest in her protection from what I might say out in the world. She certainly had no concern for my fate. Once I left her gates, she would most likely breathe a sigh of relief. I had no doubt she would risk standing in a window at dawn just to see, with her own eyes, that I would get on that coach and go.
    The coach drew up to the gates with its four horses and its top laden with passengers. The guard and coachman loudly urged haste. My trunk was hoisted up. I was taken from Bessie's neck, to which I clung with kisses.
    "Be sure and take good care of her," cried she to the guard as he lifted me into the inside.
    "Take care, Bessie Lee!" I shouted back, though we were already pulling away, for I did not doubt that she was the one more in need of protection in continuing to live with the Reeds.
    Thus was I severed from Bessie and Gateshead, thus whirled away to unknown and, as I then deemed, remote and mysterious regions.
    I remember but little of the journey. We passed through several towns, and in a large one the coach stopped. The horses were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine. I was carried into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments. I walked about for a long time, feeling strange and mortally apprehensive of someone's coming in and kidnapping me; for I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured in Bessie's fireside chronicles.
    I wouldn't have been surprised had Mrs. Reed hired someone to do the vile deed of capturing me and killing me before I could get to the school and spread stories of life at Gateshead. To what lengths would she go to protect her secret from exposure? But if she'd meant
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    to do me in, it would have been easier to do it at home, if not for fear of being tainted by my common blood. For the first time that morning, I felt my lips curl up in a smile. I should be happy, after all. I had finally made my escape.
    Instead, my stomach felt more twisted than the French horn that was left abandoned against the gallery wall. Something wasn't right. If not kidnappers, who--or what--might be lurking about? I heard someone approaching and I moved quickly to stand in the dark corner behind the door. I saw a fellow passenger, the woman who had boarded the coach some miles past Gateshead, being led by the hand. Her guide was an older man with a ridiculous mustache.
    "This way, my beauty," he said. "I can show you such things as you never imagined."
    "As I never imagined? I only wanted to see the crystal you mentioned for sale. I could probably resell it for double the price in town."
    He took her in his arms. "You won't be getting to town."
    That's when I saw his bared fangs. I started to cry out in warning, but the guard returned and the vampyre hid with his prey behind the gallery.
    I stepped out of the shadows.
    "There you are," the guard said. "Come along. We'll be getting back on the road."
    "But my fellow passenger." I wish I had known her name. "She's there!"
    I pointed to the gallery and reached in my pockets, prepared to pull out a stake in case the vampyre