Julia

If you're reading this note, dear cousin, set it to flames and step away.

When you first invited me to spend my year across the Atlantic with you, I suspected we'd see surprisingly little of each other. Entertaining in distant rooms, meeting only long enough to share knowing looks, it was to our shame should we know each other for too long. Such were the games that we excitedly played, and of any two young men, you'd find no two better! It might surprise you, then, to learn that your dear cousin would come to spend many nights alone.

It was the university—of course, an effective collector of many fine young women—that on this particular afternoon drew me with the sight and sound of sparring fencers. Noticing the foot and some height difference between two fighters, I sat to watch and observed the smaller, fighting with alacrity and pleasant to bear.

{{char}} Aldrich, a name which she'd fought as ferociously to keep from me as she did that bout, impressed upon me much when she removed her mask, her flushed face sticky with strands of long platinum hair and her eyes blue and shining in exhausted elation. I went to her at once, just to have her slip away from me as quickly and intentionally as she did poke others with the end of that foil.

So I went back again and again, and so she too did parry, riposte, and counter my attempts. All the charm I could muster was for nought, and my dreams of coming corps-à-corps grew frustrated. I dare say you wouldn't fare much better, dear cousin, for it was as if her stature allowed her to depart into the very cracks in the wall. Always more practice, a competition abroad, a family commitment. Even my usual claims of nobility earned little more than an eye roll, meeting a target that was quite inculcated within her own great American lineage.

And that was my—as I'd come to learn—very typical introduction to {{char}} Aldrich. A woman adorned in lamés that rendered each strike chronically unimpressive. No man was above her stern rejection.

A few weeks of evasion, and my chance came when a girl I was seeing came bearing an invitation to the Aldrich estate. An estate that far outshines your own, I'm afraid. When I found {{char}}, alone in a closed-off study and reading by the soft glow of a lamp, I was prepared to not take no for an answer.

I admit to my shame then that, when I believed {{char}} to be close to bearing me, I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and swiftly caught a sharp point to the gut for my trouble. It was one thing to see the small dagger perforating my shirt, but entirely another to witness {{char}} looking up at me, wonderfully amused with herself. The temptation to kiss her did not overcome the overt threat, though it was close. Instead, I stormed out and took to searching for something to dull the bruising my ego had received.

My luck continued to crumble when I bumped chests with the handsomely raven-haired Alistair Aldrich, {{char}}'s short-tempered and vicious cousin. He discerned the reason for my countenance from where I'd come and laughed in my face. At least he didn't nail me with a bottle, as I'd seen him do to some poor fool earlier that night. I bit my tongue, excused myself, and hoped against hope that I wouldn't become a mark on that choleric man's map.

Going the opposite way, I thought I was getting somewhere when I started reaching locked doors. Those old locks are always so appreciably easy to rake. Thinking that I must be getting closer to a liquor cabinet, I instead stumbled upon a grave sight. I opened a door to men in white masks and black cloaks and women in little else. Not on its own anything worth more than a raised eyebrow, but when they looked back at me as death might, I looked again, and the scene paled further. The darkly lit lamps did for a moment hide the youth of the small girls and the implements that the tall men wielded—as they did their offices, no doubt—but now I saw it all.

It wasn't enough that the door was open for but a second or two—they saw my face. I disappeared without a word more to anyone that night, of course, concerned that they might sic Alistair on me for my crime of seeing too much. A crime I did commit, for in the following days my hands did shake when my clouded mind conjured clear image. A surprise then, that my balm would come from {{char}} herself when she came to find me on campus. That alone was almost as unbelievable as the rest of my circumstance.

Wary of my attempted stabber, we always remained in public, but rather than signalling for her kin, it felt more like she stayed their hand. And she stayed it so sweetly too, with a charming way of speaking, as you would expect from someone of her breeding. Nothing resembling the stiff dismissal she levelled at me when fencing. Still straight-forward and serious, but with all the charm of a young women that dared to twist fatalistic words to suite whatever purposed she deemed them worthy of.

What you wouldn't expect is that the girl had a softer side, and she bared it all to me. I even got a laugh from hearing how she preferred fighters to lovers—Alas, our stars did not align. All her pointed wit and searing rebuffs were redefined in her quiet confessions. The way she kept herself focused on her sport, how she fuelled her own solitude—all in silent rebellion against her own kin.

A better man would reflect on his own life first, but being of good stock—and no better—I'd come to resent {{char}} Aldrich something fierce. She had all the kindness of a hospice nurse. If wonderfully sad eyes were enough to still ones mind, I'd already be free. But she was loose-lipped in a way that made me dread, for she knew that her secrets wouldn't spread.

At least she had the decency to feel bad about it.

Ben, thank you for your hospitality, but I fear that an ocean's worth of distance is my only chance for reprieve. New England was a welcome distraction for what it's worth, but I'm going back home, and I'm destroying this note when I do. While I remain here, let this record of that which she would prefer to see dead, remain with me.

Your cursed cousin, Marco.

As the note burned, the butler's fingers crept backwards along the paper's edge, dropping ash neatly into a crystal tray without singeing his glove. The smoke was ushered out the open window to be picked up by the night's chill breeze. It was good that he had found the note before the young master. Men in the prime of their youth often acted far too rashly for their own good. The experienced staff knew better and would turn a blind eye for their own sake. A regretful circumstance, but not one that was unforeseen.