Night in Eden by Candice Proctor

say, "You wrong me, Miss Baxter. Mrs. Marsden here was giving us her opinion of Elizabeth Fry's recommendations for prison reform, and you said you'd actually attended one of her lectures in London. Are you interested in reform work?"
    "Good gracious, no," exclaimed Miss Baxter with a tinkling little laugh. "I went there with my mother's sister, who would take me. She thinks the woman's ideas are all nonsense, of course, but she says it's important to keep abreast of current trends."
    Hayden eyed her over the rim of his glass. "And do you think her suggestions are nonsense? That women prisoners should be separated from the men, and supervised by female jailers?"
    "Well, as to that, I don't know. But she went on ad nauseam as to how the wretches' crimes are a result of their poverty—as if everyone were not already aware of that."
    Hayden slowly swallowed a mouthful of wine. "Is everyone aware of it?"
    "But of course." She laughed again. "What I fail to see, however, is why I should feel sorry for the degraded creatures, simply because their indolence has made them poor."
    "Ah. But then I believe Mrs. Fry argues that their poverty is the result, not of indolence, but of lack of opportunity."
    "Preposterous." This came from the Reverend Samuel
    Marsden, on the opposite side of the table. Reverend Marsden was a stout, bald-headed man with beady eyes and a sour mouth, who managed to be both a man of God and a magistrate without any apparent sense of incongruity. "Everyone knows that the criminal classes are a race apart. Irreclaimably and genetically predisposed toward indolence and violence."
    Hayden leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Is that why you do your best to rid the world of them, Reverend?"
    From the head of the table, their host grunted his approval. Sir D'Arcy Baxter was a powerfully built, handsome man with silvered black hair and a dark, sharp-featured face. "How many was it you hanged last week in your magistrate's court, Samuel?" Sir D'Arcy asked. "Seven?"
    "Five." The reverend helped himself to another serving of roast beef. "The other two I let off with five hundred lashes each."
    "They've started calling dear Samuel the Hanging Parson now, you know, rather than the Hogging Parson," said the reverend's short, homely faced wife. She smiled at her husband with obvious pride.
    "Should have hanged all seven of them," said Marsden, motioning to a servant to bring him a platter displaying a glazed goose. "They were all obviously incorrigibles. The authorities should have hanged them in England and saved the taxpayers the expense of transporting them out here."
    "But, then, where would you get the laborers to clear your farm for you, Reverend?" interposed Hayden.
    "True," agreed Sir D'Arcy Baxter, draining his wineglass. "It's a sad quandary. Where I believe the authorities make their mistake is in transporting so many of the scoundrels for only seven years—or even fourteen. It ought to be for life. There's getting to be a sight too many emancipists around these days."
    "And the pretensions they give themselves," agreed Lady Priscilla Baxter, from her end of the table. She was a fair-haired woman, in her early forties but still slim and handsome. She frowned, drawing down the corners of her mouth in a way that accentuated the length of her face and made her look considerably less attractive. "Why, the last time I saw Dr. William Redfern, I swear he behaved as if he had never been transported, and were in some way my equal. I felt compelled to remind him that my father was a Devonshire squire."
    Hayden raised his hand and coughed. Lady Priscilla Baxter always found some way to remind people that she was the daughter of a Devonshire squire.
    The ladies soon withdrew, leaving the men to their port. They talked for a while about the price of wheat and the conditions of their herds, then Sir D'Arcy Baxter said, "Before we rejoin the ladies, Samuel, I'd like to bring in one of my servants and have you sentence