Jane Steele Read Free

we were more than related, as if we were
kindred
. When I failed to cooperate, he stared as if I were a puzzle to be solved. My dawning fear was that he might think I was
in fact
a puzzle—inanimate, insensible. Though I no longer presume to have a conscience, I have never once lacked feelings.
    “But perhaps you are only glum. I know! Will you play a game with me after tea?”
    Games were a favourite of my mother’s, and of mine—and though I was wary of my cousin, I was not afraid of him. He adored me.
    “What sort of game?”
    “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 mustoffer 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,