Jane Steele(4)

“Trading secrets,” he rasped. “I’ve loads and loads. Awful ones. You must have some of your own. It’ll be a lark to exchange them.”

Considering my stockpile of secrets, I found myself reluctant.

I tell Agatha every night I’ll say my prayers, but ever since I skipped them and nothing happened six months ago, I don’t.

I tried my mother’s laudanum once because she said it made everything better, and I was ill and lied about it.

My kitten scratched me and I was so angry that I let it outside, and afterwards it never came home and I feel sick in my belly every time I imagine my kitten shivering in the dark, cold woods.

I did not want Edwin to know any of these things.

“Fiddle! You aren’t sharp enough to know any secrets worth having,” I scoffed instead, pushing crumbs around my plate.

Edwin was painfully aware of his own slowness, and hot blood crawled up his cheeks. I nearly apologised then and there, knowing it was what a good girl would do and feeling magnanimous, but then he rose from the table. The adults, still merrily loathing each other over the gilt rims of their teacups, paid us no mind.

“Of course I do,” he growled under his breath. “For instance, are you ashamed that your mother is no better than a parasite?”

My mouth fell open as I gaped at my cousin.

“Oh, yes. Or don’t you hear any gossip? Doesn’t anyone come to visit you?”

This was a cruel blow. “You know that they don’t. No one ever does.”

“Why not, Jane? I’ve always wondered.”

“Because we are kept like cattle on our own land!” I cried, smashing my fist heedlessly against a butter plate.

When the porcelain flew through the air and shattered upon the hardwood, my cousin’s face reflected stupid dismay. My mother’s was equally startled, but approving; I had only been repeating something she slurred once during a very bad night indeed.

Aunt Patience’s face practically split with the immensity of her delight, as it is no unpleasant thing when an enemy proves one’s own point gratis.

“I invite you for tea and this is the way your . . . your inexcusable daughter behaves?” she protested shrilly. “I should beat the temper out of her if I were you, and lose no time about it. There is nothing like a stout piece of hickory for the prevention of unseemly habits.”

My mother stood and smoothed her light cotton dress as if she had pressing obligations elsewhere. “My inexcusable daughter is bright and high-spirited.”

“No, she is a coy little minx whose sly ways will lead her to a bad end if you fail to correct her.”

“And what is your child?” Mrs. Steele hissed, throwing down her napkin. “An overfed dunce? Jane does not suffer by comparison, I assure you. We will not trouble you here again.”

“You will not be welcome here again,” Aunt Patience spat. “I must offer you my congratulations, Anne-Laure. To so completely cut yourself off from polite society, and then to offend the one person who graciously allows you to sit at the same table—what an extraordinary effort on your part. Very well, I shall oblige both our tastes. If you cannot control that harpy you call a daughter, do keep entirely to your residence in future. I certainly shall to mine.”

My mother’s defiance crumbled, leaving a wistful look. Aunt Patience’s plodding nature would have been forgivable had she been clever or kind, I decided; but as she was common and gloating, I hated her and would hate her forever.

Mamma softly pulled her fingers into small fists.

“Please in future recall my daughter’s rights, all of her rights, or you will regret it,” Mrs. Steele ordered, giving the table a single nod.

She departed without a glance behind her. Mamma often stormed away so, however—ferocious exits were decidedly her style, so I remained to assess what damage we had wrought this time.

Aunt Patience, though purple and fairly vibrating with rage, managed to say, “Would you care for more cake, Edwin and Jane?”

“I goaded her, Mummy. I’m sorry for what I said before,” Edwin added to me, his tooth clenching his lip. He wore a stiff collar that afternoon, I recall, above a brown waistcoat and maroon jacket, and his neck bulged obscenely from its confines.

“That’s all right, Edwin. Thank you for tea, Aunt Patience.” Like most children, I loathed nothing more than embarrassing myself, and the sight of the fragmented china was making me physically ill. I rose from the table. “I had better . . . Good-bye, then.”

Aunt Patience’s eyes burnt into me as I departed.

I went to the stables that evening, where I could visit the docile mares and peer into their soft liquid eyes, and I could stop thinking about my cousin. Thinking about Edwin was a private class in self-loathing: I hated myself for indulging his mulish attraction, yet it had been a tidal pull for me over years of reluctant camaraderie.

Flattery, I have found, is a great treat for those born innately selfish.

For the hundredth time, the thousandth time, I stood listening to soft whinnies like lullabies, pressing my cheek against sinewy necks; whether the horses at Highgate House liked me or my sugar cubes I have no notion, but they never glowered, nor warned me I teetered upon the hair-thin tightrope of eternal damnation. Smelling sweet hay and their rich, bristly coats always calmed me—and I calmed them in turn, for a particularly fidgety colt often stilled in my presence.