My Mr. Rochester Read Online Free

I’d secretly followed Mrs. Reed when she came in here. She’d survived the experience, and I had too.
    I’d tracked her so quietly, half terrified she’d turn and discover me and half thrilled by the adventure. She unlocked a drawer in the wardrobe and rifled through several rolled-up parchments then withdrew her jewelry box and a miniature of her deceased husband, my dear uncle (with all my heart I believe he was dear).
    And that’s why the Red Room was so terrifying to me. That great bed, center stage, was my uncle’s deathbed. There he died. There he lay in state. For some reason, it had taken Mrs. Reed three days to find an undertaker to bring a coffin and bear away the body.
    The Red Room was a chamber of death and sorrow.
    Something did move beneath the grate. It couldn’t be smoke—more likely the wisp of a dark spirit.
    I strained against my bonds to no joy. John Reed’s violent tyranny, his mother’s aversion to me, the servants’ partiality—all the insults of my days grew in my disturbed mind, a pile of resentments I’d been long collecting.
    Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to even try to win anyone’s favor?
    John Reed was the cruel one, and I was tied here to this chair. “Unjust! Unjust!” said reason within me. Send me to the workhouse , I thought. Anything would be better than this.
    I was out of harmony at Gateshead. I was nobody. I might as well not exist. I had nothing in common with Mrs. Reed or her children. They did not love me. I did not love them. How could they feel affection for a Jezebel, as Mrs. Reed had so uncaringly called me?
    The key turned in the lock, and Bessie came through the door. Hurray! She’d taken pity and had come to free me.
    But no. John Reed was on her heels. He pushed past her and came directly at me, and I thought how his appearance, disgusting and ugly, so keenly matched his inner core.
    As if he read the review on my face, all at once he struck me. The room spun, and Bessie shrank against the door.
    “That was for speaking back to my mother,” he said.
    He hit me again before I could regain my equilibrium. “And that was for your sneaky way of getting behind curtains.”
    Again. “And that for the look in your eye just now, you rat!”
    A warm, salty taste filled my mouth. I looked down and saw blood on my white dress.
    “What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked.
    “Reading.”
    “I don’t believe you. My mother was right. You’re a Jezebel. You’re a wanton. You were doing nasty things in there. Looking at yourself. Touching yourself.”
    What was he talking about?
    “Master Reed!” Bessie exclaimed.
    Her utter shock stopped him a moment, as if he just took notice there was someone else in the room, witness to his manic ravings. “Get out.” His voice was like ice.
    “But Master Reed, should you…” Bessie’s protest faded. She withered under his glare and did as she was told.
    I was alone with the monster, and immobilized. He walked over to the corner, kicked my shoes away and pulled back the curtain. He stared out at the world, and I could see the wheels spinning in his brain. He turned back to me, his lip curled slightly as it did when he embarked on some new tease of his little sister or torture of an insect he’d caught.
    “What are we to do with you, Jane Eyre?”
    My hatred turned to fear. Instinctively, I strained against my bonds until the ropes burned my wrists and ankles.
    “My aunt—”
    “Never call my mother that!” He screamed at me.
    Pain seared into my cheek. The room tilted again. He slapped me so hard! I wasn’t breathing, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
    “She is Mrs. Reed to you, and you should thank God every day she had the kindness to take you in and keep you off the streets.”
    I choked and sputtered, desperately dragging air back into my lungs, as John Reed paced back and