Frail Blood by Jo Robertson

Author:Jo Robertson [Robertson, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9781475005912
Google: Td9xLwEACAAJ
Amazon: 1475005911
Publisher: CreateSpace
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

"And therefore think him as a serpent's egg, which, hatch'd, would as his kind grow mischievous."

– Julius Caesar

On her way to Alma's jail cell, Emma pondered what Malachi had said about impoverished women. He'd thrown her elevated station in her face as if it were her fault she'd been born to wealth.

He'd challenged her to investigate how women who hadn't been born to such privilege lived. Women not as fortunate as she.

No doubt he intended the wild suggestion to upset her, never imagining she'd consider such a venture. Malachi wouldn't wish for her to travel alone to such a dangerous section of the capitol city to observe the sad, mean lives of the women at the docks. Not only was the area replete with miners, ripe to unload their gold earnings, but with thieves, prostitutes, and other rough and unsavory characters.

Still, how else was she to learn firsthand?

She decided to risk a visit to the river when she finished speaking with Alma. Malachi thought of Emma as a spoiled, idle girl of riches who couldn't understand the dire circumstances of a woman like Alma Bentley. Going to the docks to determine for herself how impoverished women lived seemed a good idea, and in a hansom cab with a burly driver, she'd be well-protected.

Though she hardly understood what else she could learn from Alma, Emma visited the girl again at Malachi's request with the purpose of trying to persuade the girl to remember the exact events of the night Joe Machado was murdered. Emma approached the visit with trepidation, uneasy in the presence of Alma's clear admiration of her, uncomfortably attired in her fine clothes while Alma sat on a worn bed cover in her wretched and wrinkled clothing.

"Miz Knight, you've come to see me," Alma exclaimed, rising from her place on a single wooden chair, an addition to the cell that Malachi must've insisted on.

"Where's Mr. Rivers?" The girl peered around Emma as if she expected he were hiding behind her skirts.

"Mr. Rivers is working on another aspect of the case." Emma inhaled deeply and immediately wished she had not. The pungent odor of boiled cabbage and stale bread assaulted her, the remnants of Alma's lowly meal. Beneath the odor of food gone bad was the fecund smell of unwashed bodies and stale breath.

Emma rapped sharply on the wooden door behind her, summoning the bailiff who stood guard outside. "Please remove Miss Bentley's dinner tray." She glanced at the wash basin of scummy water. "And fetch fresh water."

The elderly Streetman grumbled as he hobbled across the tiny jail cell to retrieve the dinner bowl and utensils. "Think I'm a servant, d'ye? Old Jake's got better things to do than clean up after criminals, yessir."

Emma tossed a glare his way that should've withered the old man, but so embroiled in his own litany, he appeared hardly to notice her censure. "Ain't gonna live forever, no sir, getting' on in years, shouldn't hafta clean up after the likes of these."

Fighting the urge to pummel the man, Emma clenched her fists around her handbag and sat on the meager cot.

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