eyes on me like a set of hot pinpricks; when the adults abandoned decorum in favour of spitting false compliments and heartfelt censures at each other, he launched his offensive.
“I’ve a new bow and arrows I should show you, Jane,” he murmured.
For a child’s tones, Edwin’s were weirdly insinuating. The quick bloom of instinctual camaraderie always withered upon the instant I recalled what my cousin was actually like. Meanwhile, I wanted to test his new bow very much indeed—only sans Edwin or, better still, with a different Edwin altogether.
My cousin was four years my elder, thirteen at the time. Our relationship had always been peculiar, but as of 1837, it had begun to take on a darker cast. I do not mean only on his behalf—I alternately ignored and engaged him, and was brought to task for this capriciousness by every adult in our household. I let them assume me fickle rather than snobbish when actually I was both. Granted, I needed him; he was closer my own age than anyone, and he seemed nigh drowning for my attention when no one else save my mother noticed that I breathed their cast-off air.
Edwin, on the other hand, was what his mother considered a model child; he was brown-haired and red-faced and sheepdog simple. He chewed upon his bottom lip perennially, as if afraid it might go suddenly missing.
“Have you seen the new mare yet?” he inquired next. “We might take a drive in the trap tomorrow.”
I maintained silence. On the last occasion we had shared a drive in the trap, the candied aroma of clover in our noses, Edwin had parted his trouser front and shown me the flesh resting like a grubworm within the cotton, asking whether I knew what it was used for. (I do now; I did not then.) Other than gaping dumbly as he returned the twitching apparatus to its confines, I elected to ignore the incident. Cousin Edwin was approximately as perspicacious as my collection of feathers, which made my own cleverness feel embarrassingly like cheating. It shamed me to disdain him so when he was my elder, and when the thick cords of childhood proximity knotted us so tightly to each other.
Just before arriving home, he had asked whether I wished to touch it next time we were in the woods, and I laughed myself insensible as his flushed face darkened to violet.
“You are a wicked thing to ignore your own kin so, Jane,” Edwin persisted.
Kin, kin, kin was ever his anthem: as if 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?”