Of course, I had no intention of dueling the Baronet.

I find myself imagining you, whoever you are, reading this; sometimes I think you are my Queen, no matter that I know she is dead. Sometimes—now, as I scratch these words on parchment, and my girls have sleepily gone away to their own bed, and my tea has gone cold and it is too late to ring for more, though the summer’s night is cool and rain blows through the open windows and I am filled with too many memories—my imagination turns bitter, and I see you as you most likely are: a tight-lipped priest of my Lord Codlatan, with a sour disposition and a paunch in your belly, mopping the disapproving sweat from your brow as you catalog the sins within these pages before they are burned. (And I hope your yard has stiffened at least once as you read, perhaps so much you had to pull and stroke it for release, and that the shame of spilling your seed has driven you to mortify your flesh, perhaps with a whip, or a hair shirt; I would hate to think my words have no effect.) I fancy now I hear you gasp, as I tell you: though I accepted the Baronet’s challenge in the hall, I would not be seeing it through. “But,” you say, your voice choked and flustered, “what of honor?” Perhaps you stammer. —“Ah,” I say, lifting the cup of cold tea to my lips, “what of it?” I sip. “I have no need of it.” And your face flushes with outrage, and your lips screw up in a sneer. —“How,” you say, “like a woman.”

Indeed. Well, I say this to you: Women in this hateful world cannot afford morals, or honor, not with the way you treat them, you men and all your talk of “honor.” And if, through the deception I began so long ago, I have avoided more than my share of what you deem a woman’s lot— What of it? I still learned the lesson long ago, as every girl who hopes to grow into a woman must. Let