Notes: baby farming/farmers: In 1908, the British government finally passed the Infant Life Protection Act & Children Act. Under this law, foster care was placed under government auspices. Prior to 1908, an informal practice of women - the working poor primarily - leaving their children in the care of other women. Because it was a transaction done for money and the care was typically being done in crowded urban areas, many infants died in care from disease, malnutrition or neglect. Some unscrupulous baby farmers would even go as far as selling the infants in their care to families looking to adopt. Newspapers of the time often ran stories about baby farms, particularly after the death of an infant. These stories would be graphic & sensationalistic in their details. gilt-edging: For books, it is a metallic foil (traditionally gold, sometimes silver) placed where the book block has been trimmed (the outer edges.)

As soon as Sanji woke up, he went to work gathering up the only thing of value he did own. He did not think his family would notice if his books were missing, but to be prudent and not to overburden Cossette, he only chose half a dozen.

The manor was quiet as he tread softly to the kitchen. New staff would be arriving in the next couple of days, but for now, there were too few hands for too much work. His own family would lay about until hunger drove them from bed, especially after a night of indulging with company.

Cossette was busy in the kitchen. The smell of dough filled the air.

Uncertain of how to begin, he coughed, causing her to turn.

She dropped a quick curtsey, "Lord Sanji, are you hungry? I'll have something ready for you -"

"No, my dear. It's not - " Sanji paused and then held out his stack of books. "Here. These are for you. To sell." He looked her directly in the eyes. "So that you have a choice. You don't have to - "

Cossette wiped her hands on her apron and took the top book off the proffered stack. She opened the cover, peering at the front piece. "So, I don't have to what, sir?"

"I didn't mean to hear, but I did." He set the rest of the books down on a sideboard. "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee. Please, don't go through with this. The pages on the books, they're properly gilt-edged. I can send you more, a book or two at a time, so that it's not noticed. Surely you can find a place to stay until, until the child is born."

Instead of looking pleased or relieved, Cossette's jaw tensed. "And then what, sir? Is your supply of books endless? Do you not remember this?" She turned the book she was holding to face him. "Your mother signed this book to you. That's your name written right there. I would get called a thief as soon as I tried to sell it."

"I could sell them for you then!" Sanji pressed. "You understand, this choice cannot be undone. This will buy us time to figure out our next steps."

His hand, of its own volition, went to the top of his scalp and he tugged on his hair. "There are, there are women who will nurse and care for your child while you work. You could have your child and then come back. Or I could write you a letter of reference for a new position. I would make - "

Cossette pushed the book against Sanji's chest. She tilted her face downwards and Sanji watched her shoulders stiffen. "You would have me, sir, carry my child in secret? Give birth to it as an unwed mother, living in whatever lodgings would rent to one such as myself? And then, give up the child to a baby farm?"

She looked up at Sanji, tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. "I thought your brother was cruel." She again thrust the book at Sanji and this time he took it, letting his hand drop feebly to his side.

Cossette pivoted away from him and he watched her wipe her fingers across her eyes. "Please, sir. I have work to do. If there's nothing else, it's a busy morning."

"I'm sorry," Sanji apologized, watching Cossette keep her back to him as she laid flour down on the work table and turned out her dough on top of it. "I didn't mean to cause you more distress. Please, just allow me more time. I am certain I can find a solution."

"You are clever, Lord Sanji. You always have been as long as I've known you. But are you more clever, more resourceful than all the girls like me? Need and desperation are the harshest teachers and yet we still haven't found the magical answer you seem to think is within your grasp."

Cossette slapped the dough down forcefully. "Men, they go about hurting you. And then those that can't save you, it's their feelings that are hurt."

Sanji had entered the kitchen with a small flame of hope and the warm sense that he could, for once, play savior to the fair damsel. He left carrying his books that seemed to have tripled in their weight, the stories of the heroes inside written, it seemed, as an impossible standard he could never hope to meet.

As he placed his books back upon his shelf, Sanji could not help but think of the police constable. He wouldn't have tried to hand over fairy tales to a desperate maid and tell her that life would suddenly become kinder. The way he had handled the little girl, it had been straight forward.

There had been kindness wrapped in truth. An understanding of what she needed and not a false promise of more than could be given.

Sanji's father abused the phrase "steel sharpens steel," acting as if his mettle had ever been truly tested. Lord Vinsmoke often boasted of his time on the Gold Coast during the Ashanti wars, but Sanji had found his military paperwork secreted away behind a false book in his father's study.

Lord Vinsmoke had been in charge of overseeing road building and tree clearing.

All his medals and commendations had been for efficiency, for fiscal servitude, for pressing the men under him to meet difficult deadlines with the least amount of resources.

His father, Sanji decided, would never last in the streets of the East End. For all of his talk of steel against steel, it was men like the police constable who were truly testing their character on a daily basis. It was men like the constable who were risking their very lives as well.

Sanji had no doubt the constable faced down hard characters and saw grim outcomes every day. Even from his brief time there, Sanji saw more misery, more ugly poverty than he could have imagined.

He saw children on the edge of starvation and women half sensible from drink, sitting with legs wide open in alleys. There was a man walking about with his scalp bloody and what looked like a piece of bone jutting up and out of the left side of his skull. And nobody gave him a second glance.

It broke his heart and he thought how much easier it would be to harden oneself against the gentler feelings of compassion when faced with so much misery.

Touching the spine of the last book he placed on the shelf, Sanji realized what a fool he had been to think he of all of God's creatures could have thought to save Cossette and her unborn child. He knew nothing but stories from books, where the author could easily ignore the ugly truths or rewrite them into something much prettier to look at.

Cossette was not living a life of make believe. And her choices were bleak and unmalleable.

Notes: Every generation likes to think they've advanced past the abuses of the previous ones, but I can only think how far the US is backsliding, especially when it comes to women's reproductive health and the care of the most vulnerable in our society. Both Kansas and Florida have significant levels of privatization in their foster care system, mostly handing over significant oversight & employment functions over to private (for profit) entities. History repeats itself; the Victorian Era was run on greed and our society is just as corrupt.