Caroline smiled. “You know very well I don’t intend to change the world. But I do want to make a difference, help the women who are forced to sell themselves and make their world a better place. For them and their families”
“It’s commendable. And will you also teach the women needlework and marry them off one by one?” Malvina hid a grin.
“I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps we can have some sort of auction. Each girl can wear a different colored handkerchief and the men can bid on their favorite?” Her grandmother asked as she continued to knit.
“A sort of slave auction for a wife?” Caroline asked her with a serious face.
“It might work, my dear.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Caroline accused.
“Well maybe just a little,” Malvina confessed smiling at last.
Caroline shook her head and sat back against the sofa. “It was awful today.”
Malvina shrugged.
“Admit it. It was awful. I think the only reason you joined us was to watch me squirm,” Caroline said.
Malvina was instantly serious. “Never that Caro. Let me tell you this. We may come from different times, and be raised very differently, but you are a force. You never cease to amaze me. Even when you were a child. When I sat here and listened to them, it reaffirmed two things for me. One, you have nice but silly women as your acquaintances. Not stupid just silly; ignorant.”
“And two?” Caroline asked.
“Two.” Malvina stopped knitting and placed the yarn and her needles away in her blue knitting bag. “Two is that my granddaughter is beautiful, intelligent and whatever she decides to focus her energies on she will undoubtedly succeed.”
Caroline felt the tears in her eyes. “Gran.”
“I may not always understand you. But I don’t have to. You make me very proud,” Malvina said. “Decide where to focus your energies and do it. Good night my dear,” she said as she kissed her granddaughter goodnight on the forehead and retired to bed.
???
Valentine Pierce sat with a glass of scotch in his hand and his mind deep in another place. He had reviewed the three files of the women with Felix, as he knew it was necessary to keep the details of the case fresh in his mind, but he didn’t like thinking of Aida. It had been a painful, traumatic end to their engagement and when she had died her family had blamed him. It was unjustified and her mother had lashed out which distressed him all the more.
He had dreamt of her after her death and the dreams had always been disturbing and unsettling. Before her death, his dreams had been commonplace and uneventful, but when he spent time with the memories of her, his dreams turned dark and twisted. When he dreamed of Aida now, she disappeared often in the dream, and though he searched and searched he was never able to find her. When he awoke, the heaviness of her death fell across him like a weighty garment, and he felt like a failure all over again. He was plagued by thoughts of her and it was the reason he pushed himself and Felix. He didn’t want anyone else to feel the pain he felt and must find and stop the killer before he killed again.
He felt himself sink further into the red leather chair as he gazed into the fire that burned brightly before him. He was comfortable and at ease which is why he enjoyed coming to his club periodically. The Royal Lochnagar whisky scotch warmed his insides and he sighed a small sigh of pleasure.
“Val!” He heard his name being called and turned to see his brother strolling toward him.
Though they were both sons of the Earl of Banham, it was Rowland who would inherit the title when their father Abram passed away. Val hoped for the family’s sake that their father left everything in good working order because, though he loved his brother, Rowland was a bounder.
He spent much of his time in the different gambling halls in the city racking up debt, and spending time with their Uncle Edgar, their mother’s brother, who was a bad influence. Rowland vowed never to marry and it was a source of irritation between he and their father. He spent his time in the company of several other eldest sons who would inherit their own titles, and who were equally idle. The men seemed to favor actresses and dancing girls and women of questionable reputation, and Val wondered if Rowland led the life he did to annoy their father.
“I haven’t seen you in ages, old man. How are you?” Rowland said patting his knee.
“I’ve been working on a very difficult case and my room at the boardinghouse doesn’t encourage guests,” Val told his brother.
Rowland ordered a gin from a steward who walked by to take their orders and then settled in another red leather chair facing his brother.
“A boardinghouse? You don’t say! Is it complete with the old spinster woman running the establishment and her equally spinster daughter she’s trying to push you into marrying?” Rowland smiled.
Val smiled lightly at his brother’s jest. “The boardinghouse is perfectly respectable and the people that live there are equally so.”
“Indeed.” Rowland took a long swig of the gin he had been handed. “And what is respectable?”
Val thought for a moment and then replied, “Well there is a bank clerk, a factory worker, a milliner’s assistant and a governess.”