William Monk 12 - Funeral in Blue

that for a moment she was not sure if she had heard him correctly. She turned to face him, and the pain and the anger she saw in him startled her. It was as fresh as if it had only just happened, and yet from the picture, it must have been a quarter of a century ago.
    “You think I can’t mean it, don’t you?” he asked with a sharp gesture at the room around him, which was obviously that of a wealthy man. “My family had money. My father died quite young, and he was generous to Amelia as well as to me. She was an heiress when she married.” He left the conclusion for her to draw, a challenge in his eyes, hard and bright.
    Of course, when she married everything she owned would automatically have become her husband’s. It was the law; everyone knew that. Only unmarried women owned anything.
    “I see,” she said very quietly.
    “Do you?” he demanded. “He took her to Europe, first to Paris, then to Italy. We did not know that he spent everything and left her with barely a roof over her head, or that she was living on the few meals offered her by compassionate friends, most of whom had little more than she did. And she was too proud to tell us that the husband she adored was a wastrel and had deserted her in every practical sense. She died in Naples, alone and destitute.”
    She felt the loss as if he had been able to transfer it to her physically. Her imagination painted a terrible picture of the woman in the portrait being thin to gauntness, racked with fever, lips bloodless, skin flushed and sweating, alone in an ill-furnished room in a foreign land.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said in little more than a whisper. “I’m not surprised you cannot forget it . . . or forgive. I don’t imagine I could, either.”
    “That’s why I fight for women to retain some rights in their property,” he said harshly. “The law is blind. It gives them no protection. We speak publicly as if we honor and cherish our women, give them safety from the ills and strife of the world, the dark and the sordid battles of trade and politics, the uses and abuses of power—and yet we leave them open to being mere vehicles for gaining money that was intended for their protection from hunger and want, and the law offers nothing!”
    “A law for married women to keep rights in their own property?” she said, filled with a sudden blaze of understanding.
    “Yes! Both inherited and earned. That swine sent Amelia out to work to provide for his extravagances, but the law gave him the right to her wages even so.” The outrage in him was palpable, like a thing in the air.
    She shared it—not the passion, because she had not been touched by it personally as he had, but in her mind the injustice was as great, and the need to amend it. “I see,” she said, and she meant it.
    He drew in breath to argue, then looked at her more closely. “Yes, perhaps you do. I apologize. I was about to deny that possibility. I know you have also fought for reform, and often against extraordinary blindness. We are both seeking to protect those who are vulnerable and need the strong to defend them.” There was fury in his voice, and also a ring of pride.
    Callandra was glad to hear it. The willingness to fight and courage were exactly what she needed, and her pity for his loss was now touched with admiration as well. “Do you have hope of achieving such a thing?” she asked with some eagerness.
    He smiled very slightly. “I’ve worked towards it for the greater part of my career, and with the recent change in government I believe that it is within sight. There is a by-election coming up. If I can do this, I will have benefited both men and women, though they may not at first accept that. But surely justice is a boon for all.”
    “Of course it is,” she agreed wholeheartedly.
    There was a momentary interruption as the maid brought in the tray with the tea and set it out on the low table for them. She poured and then left.
    Callandra was surprised how welcome the hot, fragrant drink was after all, and the tiny sandwiches of cucumber, and egg and cress. It gave her time to compose her thoughts.
    She must address the purpose of her visit. He could not for a moment have thought she came simply to talk of good causes, however urgent.
    She put down her cup. “As you know, I have engaged Mr. Monk to learn all the truth he can as to the events in Acton Street.” It was a rather overdelicate way of phrasing it, and the moment it had passed her lips, she