Free Ironskin by Tina Connolly

next! Men dropping dead at their feet!” She staggered dramatically to Jane, sank to her knees, and laid her head in Jane’s lap. “Now come eat something.”
    The tea was delectable—little cream-filled cakes, slices of crisp hothouse cucumbers, chocolates and sugared almonds piled in silver bowls. Helen replenished Jane’s plate faster than Jane could empty it. She cradled a warm cup of black tea and tried not to think of Mr. Rochart’s past affairs. Of course men had them. Eyeing her sister’s frothy nightclothes—of course people had them.
    Helen caught Jane’s eye. “Are you still thinking about me living here? I was perfectly well chaperoned, I promise you. Everyone knows I have no family. Where was I supposed to live?”
    “By yourself, in our flat,” said Jane. “I would’ve sent you money.” Most governesses lived with their families, of course. But Jane’s school had refused to let an ironskin board there with the pupils. Helen’s family had agreed to let her share a flat with her sister so Jane wouldn’t have to live alone. But they had insisted it be a nearby flat, and in that part of town it had taken both girls’ scanty salaries to barely cover the rent. Though Jane could be cross, she suspected that deep down Helen was grateful not to have to live with her charges. Helen was never the mothering type.
    “In our empty flat I wouldn’t be chaperoned,” said Helen. “Positively much more scandalous, I assure you. Not to mention dull as dirt. No Jane to fuss over me and keep me from spending all my earnings on shoe buckles and fizzy wine. Why does it bother you?”
    “It doesn’t,” said Jane. If she probed deeply, it was probably because she felt guilty at leaving Helen to make her own decisions, manage her own life. Which was ridiculous. She’d only left Helen because Helen was leaving her. Well, that and the no-job thing. She’d been fired from the Norwood School over winter holidays, and hadn’t that just made them pleasant. “Forget I said anything.”
    Helen carefully took apart a cream cake and licked the insides out. “Can you remember when we used to have this sort of thing at home?”
    “Just,” said Jane. “Never every day though.” Father had died in the Indis of brain fever when Jane was eleven. Though the estate went to Charlie, there had been no family money left, except what Father had earned by his wits. After the dust and the debts had been settled, they were left with Mother’s tiny annuity. Still, even those times had had joy in them. Jane had seen the terrible conditions at the Norwood School, and that had just been as a teacher. If both her parents had died when Jane was eleven, she and Helen might have ended up as charity pupils at a school just like that, cold and hungry and at the mercy of typhus or polio. She could scarcely imagine how that Jane would have turned out—equally scarred, perhaps, equally angry.
    But when Jane was thirteen, the war started, and the poor-but-happy time grew fainter, thinner as the terror dragged on and on. Until one day on a battlefield her brother was gone and it was all over, all of it.
    After the war, after no Charlie, the estate went to the cousins, and Jane could not even keep Mother in her own home while she wasted away. All she could manage was huddling in Niklas’s foundry, lost and confused and trying to recover from a wound that would never heal.
    But down that road lay guilt and rage. Jane blinked back the orange fire that warmed her mask, doused it with thoughts of lakes and streams and pure cooling rain. She refused to be angry today.
    “No, not cream cakes every day,” Helen was saying, “unless Father sailed home with a windfall. But better than never. Better than grubbing in the gardens, and depending on neighbors’ charity, better than watching Mother take in tatwork and ruin her eyes by hoarded candlelight. Tatwork! Do you hear how old-fashioned that sounds? No one wears lace now. Mother wouldn’t know