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Damn it. That’s what I get for taking Jack at her word. At least we have another lead to pursue. I just don’t like where that one is heading. I might not be fond of Annis, but I really don’t want Gray and Isla dragged into a scandal.
I start to say that I’ll go do some of my chores, but that sounds as if I expect a pat on the head for doing my damn job. I’ll just do it.
I head off in search of Alice, to be sure she isn’t covering my chores, but she’s in her room, working on her lessons. The Victorian era has a reputation for dumping kids into the workforce before they’re old enough to attend school. That’s not entirely inaccurate. The poorer the family, the more likely they’ll need those kids pulling in a few pence as soon as possible. But Victorians value literacy more than I expected and Victorian Scotland values it more than Victorian England. Literacy rates here are high enough that I have to wonder whether there’s a reason Catriona couldn’t read and write, possibly a learning disability. I’m not sure what Alice’s level of literacy was when she came to work here, but she’s at what I’d consider a middle-school level now, under Isla’s tutelage, Alice’s afternoons being almost exclusively for lessons.
To someone from my world, the very fact that Alice needs to earn her keep at all is repugnant. At first, did I judge Isla and Gray for employing a twelve-year-old child? Hell, yes. But as Isla confessed, she’d actually wanted to adopt Alice. McCreadie stopped her, and she’d been outraged… until she realized he was right. To her, for a ten-year-old pickpocket to be adopted by a wealthy family would be a dream. The musicalAnniecome to life. But that’s fiction, and the reality is that Alice doesn’t want what she’d consider charity. She wants to earn her keep, and the best Isla can do is make sure she’s housed and fed and paid as well as she’ll accept—again, too much would feel like charity—and to insist on these lessons in hopes Alice won’t be “in service” her entire life.
I pop in on Alice and give her a break under the guise of helping with her lessons—she’s doing math, and honestly, the kid is far better at it than I was at her age. Then I hear Isla come in, and I zip down to tell her that Jack hasn’t stopped by and Gray is still out.
“Then you shall teach me to use a knife,” she says as she pulls off her gloves.
“I’ll… what?”
“Teach me to use a knife,” she says. “That is what we discussed, yes?To alleviate my brother’s concerns over my safety, I must learn to defend myself. We’ll start with knife work.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’ll make him feel better. How about we start with defensive walking?”
She pauses, fingers on her boot buttons. “I hope that is a joke, Mallory.”
“Nope. If you’re going to walk around the Old Town, there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. Well, I shouldn’t say ‘wrong’—that implies if you’re attacked, it was your own fault—but there’s a better way to do it. You need to act as if you belong there while also being aware of your surroundings at all times. We’ll—”
“I am a Victorian widow who travels alone. I am well aware of the posture to strike and the need to remain alert to all dangers, whether they be pickpockets or gentlemen who wish to keep me company, for my own safety.”
“Okay, then we’ll move to physical self-defense. I’ll show you a few ways you can grab someone, even throwing a man twice your size.”
“That sounds delightful. And how well does it work in a corset and long skirts?”
“Er…”
She shakes her head. “I would certainly like to learn such things, but for now, I have obtained this.” She pulls a four-inch blade from her boot. “And I believe I ought to know how to use it.”
“Where did you get…? Jesus, Isla. Seriously? That is—”
“A knife. Like yours.”
“Uh, no.” I take out mine and show her. “That is twice the size of mine, and you’re lucky you didn’t slice off your foot. How did it even fit into your boot?”
“With difficulty.”
I shake my head.
“So you will show me how to use it?” she asks.
“I…”
“Good. Let us take this lesson out-of-doors.”
Here’s the thing. I don’t actually know how to fight with a knife. I studied martial arts as a kid—judo, karate, and aikido—and that’s my go-to form of self-defense, along with some basic pugilism I picked up in middleschool when a friend and I decided to challenge the fact that the boxing team was for boys only. I actually really enjoyed boxing… until I reached the age where the boys were so much bigger that I gave it up.
As a cop, I also know how to shoot, but thankfully that’s not a skill I’ve ever had to employ. My experience is all on the range, and I enjoy that, too, as a sport.
Now here I am in a world where my attire means I can’t kick, and I can barely punch. I’ve joked about a gun, and I wouldn’t turn one down, but I’m hardly going to pull it in a street fight.
My only option is knives. Okay, fine, the other option would be: Don’t get into street fights.
Had someone ever suggested I’d one day find myself in Victorian Scotland, I might have envisioned all the things I would do there. Nowhere on that list would I expect to find “bare-knuckle brawling,” but little about this world is what I expected.
Catriona had a knife—a little switchblade that I’ve become rather fond of. But I’m painfully aware of how badly I use it. Knife fighting just wasn’t a thing in my suburban Vancouver neighborhoods.
