Then my brother crossed me again, and I couldn’t help myself. He was the oldest, best-loved, do-no-wrong Ned, but I knew his secret. My fingers clenched the gathered corners of the kerchief I took from his room and now I stole past the village gates, Betsy cantering beside me. When the bare kiss of spring grazed my cheek, I set down the tied kerchief, pried off my boots, and peeled away my worsted stockings. I knotted them twice around my waist, wondering why all clothing was cumbersome to me, my chemise like a winding-sheet, never mind my practice corset, my skirts. My spaniel crouched, then lunged at my feet, beckoning me to keep walking. Papa had tried for a year to make her his hunting dog, but she’d yelp at the blast of gunshots, bury her nose in the hedgerow, and run away when he raised his boot. Betsy was mine now, as loyal a friend as I had (perhaps my only friend, if Jane didn’t prove true), and freed from the necessity of recovering dead birds, she’d become an enthusiast in all things, even tromping on the year’s first columbine, worried about nothing at all.

I started off again, my rage at Ned propelling me, and counted my steps, which is how I measured whether my legs had grown, because there was talk in town of a desirable height for a woman, and I was sure I’d end up too short or too tall, but never just right. My body changed like a brewing storm, every day something new and unwelcome. Not so Jane Arden, whose skin had not a mark on it, where I was a map of imperfections: knobby knees, great white knuckles, freckles all over. She was the open, rolling countryside of those Yorkshire Wolds; I, the bulbous rocks and uneven ground beneath my feet. I imagined her parlor the best in all of Beverley. Even her French was impeccable, her grammar irreproachable, and I, a pretender, with dull pens my brother Ned refused to fix for me.