all, and so must promise that your reputation as well as my own rests in my careful palms—safe from the censure of a prurient world, I assure you. I only hope that you can help to absolve me now I have disclosed my desires, and that we may unite forever as one flesh, or else live as forthright and forgiving siblings in Christ.
In brotherly love,
Vesalius
After blinking for what seemed hours, I edged under the desk beside the sour-smelling metal lamp with what I have subsequently learnt was a pile of ripe erotica.
Reading the second letter took me ten minutes, as half my body physically shrank from looking; reading the remaining thirteen took half an hour; I was, in this as in all other vices, a fast learner. I hoped that subsequent missives would deplore his initial one, but they were all of a kind, save that vocabulary like breast and cunny and arse and rut liberally seasoned later disclosures.
When I had finished, I scrambled out and leant over the desk, feeling a profoundly strange admixture of nausea and high-pitched excitement like the sensation of dismounting after a hard gallop.
Had this been what Edwin had meant?
You’re every bit as bad as I am. You liked it.
I did not like this feeling, this unsettled tingling wrongness; I felt it with Clarke sometimes at the edge of the rooftop when I thought, How easy it would be to simply step off, and my heartbeat soared, and I flinched away from the edge, unspeaking and ashamed of myself and giddy with quicksilver nerves which fired from scalp to spine and lower.
I did not strictly dislike the sensation either, however.
I stole the letters and stole back to our dormitory. Crawling into bed next to Taylor following questionable excursions by now carried no risk, and she snored through my manoeuvres; Clarke, however, was aquiver with attention in the next bed, her eyes dancing over me in the grey not-light as I pulled back the coverlet.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked.
At a loss for words, I passed Clarke the letters and curled up with my back to her golden curls.
This was not my first mistake, but would prove to be the most careless—no matter how confused I was by the strange pulse of blood in my groin. Sharing my findings with Clarke seemed the only option; the thought of digesting those letters alone, without her to partake in the disgusting yet exotic meal, revolted me—I girlishly wanted someone else to be as agitated as I was.
And yet, it was more than that. Clarke made me mindlessly, achingly happy. I wanted us to share in everything; I wanted us to sail to faraway China, for us to attend a lavish costume ball, for her to be threatened with a pistol and for me to throw myself in the path of the bullet. Often as I fell asleep I fantasised she had been forced to name me as a murderess in a Reckoning, so that I might be sentenced to starve in a frigid straw-lined aerie, and as I lay dying she would visit and we should watch the stars fading through the window and I should whisper in the shell of her ear with my last breath, Never mind.
I forgive you.
I didn’t mind.
That never happened, but apparently the worst things I can imagine still fall short of reality.
• • •
At the next daily Reckoning, we were witness to an act akin to watching a tree sprouting from the sky, or rains bursting forth from the grounds like perverse fountains. I have never been so shocked; and were you, reader, to suggest greater surprises are in store for me, I should suggest you invest in the purchase of a strait waistcoat without delay.
“I name Mr. Munt,” Clarke said soberly.
The remark was so unreal that I laughed, choked, and then planted my palm firmly over my lips.
To say that Clarke turned heads would be an understatement. The announcement slammed into my chest like a physical blow. I have been thrown from a horse, attacked by multiple men, fallen down a flight of stairs; none of these events ever struck me so hard, because none of them so explicitly announced, this is your fault.
Mr. Munt initially could not believe his own ears. “Whom do you mean to name, Clarke?” he inquired.
“I already did. You’ve subjected Miss Lilyvale to unwanted attentions, Mr. Munt. Say you’re sorry.”
Mr. Munt’s handsome face paled. He glanced at Miss Lilyvale, who was not looking at him,