THE GOVERNESS WHO INHERITED A GHOST
Jane Eyre inherited Thornfield Hall on a Tuesday, three weeks after the obituary.
The letter contained one condition: DO NOT OPEN THE WEST WING AFTER DARK.
Jane had never been good at obeying men she had not met.
At midnight, a bell rang from the sealed corridor. She carried a candle past portraits of the Rochester family, every face turned toward the wall.
At the end waited a door carved with a single word: JANE.
She opened it.
Edward Rochester stood inside, older than the memory she had been allowed to keep. One hand rested on a cane. The other held a key blackened by fire.
“You’re dead,” Jane said.
“Not convincingly.”
His voice still found the place beneath her ribs.
Jane kept the candle between them. “Your funeral was paid for.”
“By my brother.”
“Your brother is the reason I’m here?”
“He is the reason you must leave.”
Rochester stepped closer. The room smelled of rain and smoke.
Jane saw the scar at his collar and the hunger behind his eyes.
“Why did you summon me?”
“I didn’t.”
The mirror behind him reflected a woman in a bridal veil.
Jane turned. The woman touched the glass from the other side.
Rochester caught Jane’s wrist. “Do not let her see your face.”
Jane looked at him. “You have spent your entire life giving orders.”
“And you have spent yours refusing them.”
“Then we understand each other.”
His grip softened. “Tell me to let go.”
She did not.
The veiled woman struck the mirror. A crack raced through the glass.
Rochester’s key began to glow.
“She wants the house,” he said.
“What does she want from me?”
He met Jane’s gaze.
“Your name. Your inheritance. And the child you have not yet imagined.”
The mirror broke.
The ghost stepped into the room wearing Jane’s face.
![[Moving to Galatea] What We Never Healed](https://cdn-gcs.inkitt.com/vertical_storycovers/ipad_b00b828931c645f2eccdf3396cb15498.jpg)
