#30 - St. Valentine's Day
14 February, 1889 London, England
"It will have to be returned, of course," Isabel looked at the monstrosity she held in her gloved hand.
"Why ever for?" Porzia asked her. "He seemed a perfectly nice young gentleman. It cannot hurt to accept the token."
Isabel shook her head at the ghoul. "It won't due to mislead him, Porzia. It's been an uphill struggle to regain Prince Mithras' trust in the city again and I won't risk that by encouraging him. In any case, we return home in a few days and it wouldn't be seemly for me to embolden him to follow. That and I find his company tedious."
"I think we should leave for home now. This cloying society is rubbing off on you, Donna Isabel. Mithras and his Masquerade hold no sway in Venice. If you played with him properly, he'd be much less tedious."
Cloying society? Yes, Porzia had the right of it there. Isabel wasn't normally prone to wild thoughts or flights of fancy that seemed more suited to be thought by a Malkavian than a sane Cainite. Yet, as the hansom clattered down the cobblestone street, she held in her hand a florid bit of cardboard and ink that sent her mind reeling into dark fancy. Perhaps it was due in part to the tension and fear that still gripped the city, mortal and Cainite alike. It had been little more than three months since Saucy Jack's last victim was found. Theories still ran quicker than wildfire through both mortal and undead circles alike. Would he strike again? Was there a pattern? Was he human or demon?
Was the Ripper all that was wrong with this era made manifest? Isabel looked at the Valentine that her ghoul Porzia had delivered after she had awakened for the night. Only this society could take the martyrdom of a holy man and twist it into overly-sugared sentiment stripped of all human passion.
Behind the facade of gentility and civilisation, maybe all the denied animal passions of the city formed from the darkness to coalesce into a living shadow, breaking loose to show the city that even within the heart of the Empire, animal desires lurked and could only be ignored for so long.
She made a show of thinking over the merits of Porzia's idea as her thoughts drifted back to the more practical. "That's true. People die of cholera every summer in Italy," she winked at the ghoul. "Very well, I shall keep it." Not that she'd entertain any notions of playing with him as Porzia suggested. No, he was far better suited for necromantic rituals that required a living element back home in Venice. Where they didn't have troubles like Saucy Jack or over-wrought, cloying sentiments being expressed in this foreign fashion.