All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy) - By Maureen Lang Page 0,28

the male persuasion.” Then she frowned as quickly as the laughter had erupted a moment ago. “Though I did have a baby once. A long time ago.” She studied Dessa with a tilt of her head, eyes narrowing to reveal new wrinkles. “Would’ve been about your age by now, I guess. Twenty years?”

“I’m twenty-four.”

“Hmm. That old and no husband? You the sportin’ kind yourself, girlie?”

Dessa shook her head, approaching the bread and other items the woman had left out on the end of the table. She’d just as soon join her as have the woman eating in front of her. Taking a plate from the nearby cabinet, she returned to the table to assemble her own sandwich.

There was a single slice of tomato left, but before Dessa could add it to her cheese and bread, the woman grabbed it. She ate it in one quick bite, smiling afterward without a trace of compunction.

Dessa lifted a brow but said nothing, settling for the cheese and bread alone. “How did you hear about Pierson House, Miss . . . ?”

“You can call me Belva. It’s what everybody calls me here in the city.”

Dessa wondered if Belva kept her identity a secret to protect a family somewhere, or to keep anyone she once knew from finding out how she earned money. Or was it more personal than that? Sophie had once mused to Dessa that some women might hide their names to protect that secret part of themselves they never wished to sell.

“Did you find one of my applications?” Dessa poured herself a glass of lemonade from the pitcher Belva had taken from the icebox. “I’ve left them in the kitchens of every house that would let me, but I’m afraid they weren’t very well circulated or I’d have had more response by now.”

Belva laughed again, though this time it seemed more with derision than amusement. “I heard about them applications. You think any of them you sprinkled here and there actually got passed to the people you want? You know what would happen to a girl who tried to get away from one of them houses, let alone take someone else with her?”

“I see the girls on the street all the time. They seem free to do as they please.” Sophie had once told her about some foreign women, mainly Chinese, who had been brought in for the Chinese men working on the railroad. Slaves, so it was rumored. But that didn’t happen in other areas as far as Dessa knew. “Aren’t they free?”

Belva pushed away her napkin, now empty of her own sandwich, then leaned back in her chair as if to find a fuller picture of Dessa. “Is anyone? Free, I mean?”

Dessa offered a quick, silent, barely noticeable prayer of thanksgiving for the food before biting into her sandwich. Then she allowed another moment of silence rather than acknowledging the question she doubted Belva thought answerable anyway.

The journal Sophie had left behind, one chronicling information she’d gathered from other institutions that helped fallen women, said that the older the woman, the less likely she was to reform. Dessa didn’t know if that was true, or true in every case, but somehow because of that, she’d never expected someone older than herself to seek her help. Was this a person Dessa could help?

She pushed away her doubt. Belva was here, wasn’t she? That meant she must want to try what Pierson House had to offer, and Dessa wasn’t about to refuse anyone.

Besides, it might be that Belva could help Dessa as much as the other way around.

“How do I reach more women, then?”

Belva looked surprised by the question. “You want my help? Ha.” But even as she revealed her surprise, she hung one arm on the back of her chair and folded her hands like a swing. She leaned closer, and the ruffle of her bodice fell onto the soiled napkin on the table. “This is what you do, girlie. You pack up and leave. Ain’t nobody gonna come here; you may as well know it right now.”

“You came. Aren’t you here to stay?”

Belva laughed again.

Dessa placed her sandwich on her plate. “But why not? Why would women rather end their sporting career by poisoning themselves with a dime of morphine or throwing themselves from the fifth-floor staircase at the Windsor than come here?”

“At least either one of those is permanent.” Her words, harshly spoken, were followed by a lift of her brows and a look around the kitchen. “Say, you