Charlie shook her head at me. “E. coli and salmonella?”
“What street rat doesn’t know enough not to eat spoiled meat?”
“A hungry one, or one with others to care for,” Charlie said.
I took a sip of my coffee. “Do you think we’ll see her again?”
“She’s prickly, and proud, and fiercely independent. She has no trust for us, but I do think she wants to, much as I did when you and Saira found me.”
I straddled the bench and drew Charlie to me, her back fitted against my chest, my arms around her waist. She leaned her head back to my shoulder, and I inhaled the lilac scent of her hair.
“I’ve never heard that argument against stealing from the merchants before,” she murmured.
“I did quite a lot of reading about the Victorians, as we’re called in history books, when I was at Elian Manor. Did you know that just two percent of England’s population is the aristocracy? Their ancestors figured out long ago how to avoid taxation, despite controlling most of the country’s real estate and much of its wealth. The middle class, including the captains of industry at the upper end and the merchant class like the ones our friend Jess feels targeted by at the lower end, comprise only about fifteen percent of the people, and the rest are the working poor and the poor. The middle class and the working poor endure the vast majority of the tax burden, yet combined, they only own fifty percent of the land.”
“That seems grossly unfair,” Charlie said as she turned to look at me. “How does one effect change?”
I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. “We don’t.” I said. “I shudder to think what sort of changes we’ve already accidentally wrought, doing what we do, and knowing what we know.”
She searched my face with those glorious, knowing eyes, and I continued. “Yesterday, for example, I went to a luncheon at which, historically, I hadn’t been present. Whether one person, more or less, at that table could have changed something significant about the outcome of the meeting, I don’t know, but I had to actively bite my tongue to keep from saying anything at all about Sherlock Holmes.”
Charlie tried to hide a smile that threatened, but I saw it, and I shook my head at my own dramatics. “And today, telling a street urchin about E. coli? She already mentioned the strange locks, and I’m pretty certain a French press hasn’t been invented yet …” I trailed off in disgust at myself. “I’m hiding here. I’m afraid to know what I know in case I say or do what I shouldn’t. It’s no way to live, Charlie, but I don’t know how to do any differently.”
She reached out and touched my face, as if to wipe away the tight stress around my eyes and mouth. “My darling, the history that makes the books is written by the victors. The poor never were and never will be victorious in any version of history, and change comes so slowly that individual contributions are always lost in the great gradual tide. So my advice, for what it is worth, is to stop hiding. You have skills and knowledge that can help people, Ringo. Take what you know and make a difference to individual lives, and trust that whatever ripples might be created in the fabric of time can be absorbed. Introducing a French coffee press a few years before someone else invents it won’t change history, nor will having a conversation with men over a luncheon. Give yourself permission to participate in our community. In the end, it’s our connection with people that matters most to us.”
I looked at her a long moment, and heard the echo of her words travel from my ears to my heart. Then I took her face in my hands, and I kissed her with every ounce of my soul. “I love you with all my heart, Charlie Devereux.”
She smiled and squeezed my hand. “I love you too. Now let’s go upstairs and see what furniture we can move to make proper bedrooms out of the third floor.”
“Bedrooms – plural?” I asked.
Charlie turned her deep blue eyes to mine, and said with perfect confidence, “If she returns, she won’t be alone.”
I laughed out loud. “Dear Mrs. Milliner would have a conniption to learn we’ve opened a halfway house for orphans.”
“They won’t be orphans. They’ll have us,” my very wise wife replied.