A soul-shattering crack of thunder rent the air, making them all start, and the accompanying flash of lightning illuminated them: their ghostly-white faces captured in contortions of fear. The storm had begun in earnest. Rain beat down upon the house in torrents, like the fulfillment of some meteorological vendetta, but nothing – not the ear-splitting clamors and peals of the tempest, nor the specter-like appearance of Mason's face before him – could surpass the tumult Edward felt inside him. His mind reeled. Fate reached out to claim him and he was plunged into his nightmare in full consciousness – the nightmare that even five years of marriage to Jane had not yet dispelled.

"She's not here, Richard." His voice was hollow; he sounded unconvincing even to himself. "You cannot see her."

It always began the same way, with three low knocks on the door that echoed ominously, reverberating through the house. And it was always he who opened it – never John or Mary – as though he alone had heard the summons and knew instinctively they were for him.

"Where is she? What have you done with her?"

The surprise was always the same, too – coming face to face with an oddly faceless stranger, the shock of the man's communication never diminished despite the dream's frequent recurrence: Bertha Mason was still living, and the law had come to collect him at last. He was to be imprisoned for bigamy.

"Done?" he echoed stupidly. "Done? I've done nothing. She did for herself." In his mind's eye he could still see the hapless form of his first wife, splayed gruesomely on the paving stones, eradicated from the world of the living – and from his own pointless existence – in an instant.

The worst part of the dream – worse than his own fate as a condemned man, than the dank, despair-infested cell that awaited him – was the glimpse of Jane's face at the end. The mingled agony and betrayal in her eyes, the tears of hatred that streamed from them, and the terrible silence with which she turned her back and walked away from him, her love extinguished in a heartbeat.

Numbly, he watched as Mason turned white, doubt and fear creeping in like a disease.

It finished much like it began. Someone, or something, was knocking, a strangely loud sound in a world that had suddenly gone silent. Gradually, he realized that he was hearing the pulsing of his own heart, and that slowly, little by little, it was slowing. Soon it would stop. The dream ended with the faceless man of the law reaching out to drag him from the house, fingers outstretched like claws. And in the instant before that hand seized hold of him, Edward, standing on the threshold of the house, understood he was dead.

An audible, childish whimper, a miraculous sound in the tomblike foyer, reached them. Edward surfaced with a gasp.

"Jane!"

She had emerged from the corridor, a bright vision amid the darkness that had shrouded him. In her arms she held their son.

Adam was crying, clinging to Jane, his little body shaking with fright and alarm. Edward looked at them – his little family that he had thought to keep so safe, so untainted by his former life – then at Mason, who had been complicit in all that he despised about his past, about himself. In Mason's hated presence they seemed more pure and more vulnerable than ever: a glass ball tossed into the air, hovering for a moment at that perfect, parabolic pinnacle. If he did nothing, it would plummet and shatter.

The anger came from deep within him. "Get upstairs! Get away from here, I don't want you here - go!"

Surprise lightened Jane's eyes, which widened at him, but offered no challenge. Without a word, she turned from him and was gone.

Mason stared after her, frowning, his head cocked slightly to one side. "That girl! I remember that girl. She is… your mistress?"

"No, Richard, she is my wife."

Mason gaped at him. "You lie!" he gasped.

"I have been married to Jane five years – we are bound in the eyes of God and the law."

Mason was silent. He stared, fish-mouthed, at Edward, confusion momentarily rendering him mute.

"The charade is over, Dick. You nearly had me for a moment, but I've rallied, and I'll see you damned yet. What do you mean by coming here with the demands of a madman, disturbing my household, frightening my wife and child?" His tone was low and deadly. Anyone with sense would have recognized the imminent danger latent in his voice, but Mason was beyond reason. He began to back away slowly.

"You've finally done it!" His voice trembled, but his eyes blazed with conviction. "You've killed my sister, haven't you? I always knew you would!" He seized his hair in the anguished, deranged manner of one driven to frenzy by his own mistaken conclusions.

"Your sister killed herself. It was the only sane thing she ever did."

Mason shook from head to toe, but there was no tremulousness in his words.

"Curse you, Rochester! Curse you!"

Edward's heart pounded wildly, like a thing independent of the rest of him. His body felt like stone. It took every ounce of will he possessed to face his former brother-in-law, now backed against the wall, with an unfazed, icy countenance.

"You disgust me," he sneered. His single, flashing eye fixed him with a stare that bespoke murder. "Get out of my house."

Moving like an automaton, he went to the bell-pull and tugged it vigorously. When John appeared from the kitchen, he said in a soulless voice,

"See this gentleman out. If he shows his face again, you have my permission to shoot him."

And without bothering to look at Mason, Edward left the room.

Upstairs, Jane was leaving the nursery, having seen Adam calmed and settled down in the care of his nurse reading a picture book. She stopped outside in the hall, listening to the muffled sounds of her son's childish prattle, one hand pressed over her heart as though she could slow its frantic thuds, quell the sinking sensation in her stomach. All she could think of was Edward – the sight of his face in the hallway, livid with fury, but somehow empty, as though he had lost the essence of himself. Biting her lip against the welling anxiety within her, Jane absently lifted a finger to smooth back her hair, only then realizing that at some point in the chaos the fairy flower had fallen out of the braid in which she'd secured it. Though she could not herself have explained why, this upset her beyond reason and after scouring the floor all along the passage with her eyes for several minutes in vain, she fell to her knees and cried as if her heart would break.

Sometime later, she raised her head, gathered herself up, and crept to her chamber to bathe her face. In the water of the basin, still half-full, her ring glittered on her finger: a lifetime's love in one small band. For a moment she allowed herself to watch it, turning it this way and that in the watery light, until the clamor of the wind rattling a window drew her back. She glanced in the mirror and was satisfied that she'd succeeded in washing the tears away. Feeling refreshed, she decided to go in search of her husband. If he could not save himself, she would. If he greeted her with anger, she would stand her ground. She did not fear him. With this resolve, she quitted the chamber.

Jane had no sooner reached the kitchen by the back stairs than Mary bustled over to her, wringing her hands.

"Madam! Thank heavens!"

"What is it, Mary? What is wrong?"

"Master has ordered John to turn Mr. Mason from the house and has gone upstairs, but Mr. Mason is still within, wailing and making terrible threats, Madam! He and Master quarreled something terrible, and now he's saying he'll have lawyers to come a-calling and haul Master off to the gaol, and my John declares he does not know what to do! He does not dare send Mr. Mason away, but he is afraid to disobey Master..."

Mary spoke very hurriedly and in great distress, her chin quivering with worry. Though the communication alarmed her, Jane forced herself to behave with composure.

"Where is Mr. Mason now, Mary? Perhaps I can calm him."

"Oh, I wish you would try, Madam! I believe he is still in the foyer."

"Thank you. I will go and speak with him directly. Tell John not to worry, all will be well."

Edward paced the library, stopping from time to time to look out the window at the storm. Their blissful tea in the garden that afternoon seemed an age ago, a time out of keeping with the chaos that his life had suddenly become. He wished he had never left Jane and Adam there, wished he had never insisted on going in alone. He could scarcely recall now what had been his purpose. Ah yes, the handkerchief for Jane. She had been feeling unwell. That sensitive, attentive gesture was all but blotted out, now, by his cruelty to her in the foyer. He had ordered her to leave, but the truth was he knew he could never survive this alone. The upheaval of Mason's arrival had all but unmanned him. He needed Jane more than ever.

Then find her, you fool.

He burst from the library with energy born of the single-minded nature of his purpose. He went upstairs, searched the passage, their chamber, the nursery (where Adam was napping, his trauma forgotten). No sign of her. Where had she gone? The vision of her face in his dream flickered a moment before him. He shook it away with a shake of his head. No, she would not truly leave him.

He returned downstairs, and it was there that he saw her, slipping out from the drawing room. His darling.

"Jane!" For the second time that day he spoke her name in surprise, as though the visible proof of her presence in his life was a near miracle. This time, though, he felt dizzy with gratitude toward her for simply being; gratitude and remorse at having spoken so harshly earlier – the first sharp words to her that had passed his lips since their wedding.

He went over and immediately flung his arms around her, holding her like a lifeline.

She accepted the apology of his embrace as he gave it – without words. But, when at last they drew apart, he seemed unable to meet her gaze.

"He has found us; hunted us and now found us. How can he have found us?" Edward addressed the question to the void, his good eye scanning the wall opposite as if it might find the answer etched there. A poisoned, sardonic smile twisted his face.

"And I, like a fool, thought myself safe here – thought us all safe here."

"Ferndean is not the end of the world, Darling, but we are as safe here as anywhere." Her words came out calmly, reasonably, trying to penetrate his frantic fear with sense, yet as she spoke the dark, column-like figure flashed again before her eyes, its ever-increasing recurrence in her thoughts dulling its power to shock her. She added softly, "It was bound to happen, that is all."

"What can we do? What can we do?"

"Edward." Jane took his face in her hands. It was bloodless, yet his skin burned as though with fever, and she could feel his entire body trembling. "Edward, look at me."

He obeyed, helpless, a man overcome.

"Mr. Mason has found us, yes. But he has not hunted us, and he will not claim either of us. We are not his to possess."

"You don't know Mason."

"I know he is a weak man. I know he follows where he is lead. You must lead him again. You must lay this to rest."

"How can I? He has taken leave of his senses – I fear the affliction of his family has claimed him at last. He ranted as though he had believed her to be alive."

"I think," Jane said very quietly, "that until today, he had."

"How can that be? Surely that is madness." But then, Edward saw how it could have been – how it must have been.

"He never received the letter… did he?" Jane shook her head.

"You do see, don't you – that you must explain it all? You must tell him everything. Then he will understand that there is nothing left for him here."

"I told John to see him out, and not to let him return."

"I know," Jane said gently, "but I asked him to stay. He is in the drawing room now, and is a great deal calmer." She touched Edward's arm. "Don't be cross with me."

"No, you acted as you should have – as I ought to have." He raked his fingers through his hair and attempted a smile. It was a weary, resigned expression, but a far cry from the horrid grimace that earlier had so distorted his beloved face.

"Go and speak with him," Jane said. "Let it end."

Edward sighed. All the nervous energy had left him, and taken his strength with it. Without saying more, she took his hand.

They went to the drawing room together, pausing instinctively outside the door, each turning to look into the other's face.

"I said to you once that my life was uncertain, did I not?" Edward began, as if in atonement for all that had been, and for the confrontation that would soon follow.

"Don't say that, Darling."

"You are the only thing that makes sense," he murmured, staring at the door, the final barrier. "Don't leave me, Jane."

She squeezed his hand. "I'll be right behind you."

He loosed his fingers from hers to reach for the handle. Grasping it tightly, he wrenched open the door in one swift, determined motion, and strode through to face his past.