Chapter 47
The elder Mr. Hatcher’s attention turned to her, and Nora forced herself not to blush as his gaze drifted between her and his son.
“No doubt you think me a fool,” she whispered, unable to say precisely what the foolish matter was, for it felt clear enough. Especially when his son was watching her with such warmth that Nora’s cheeks heated.
It was a long moment before the gentleman answered. “In truth, I admire you greatly, Miss Eden. Not many would do what you did—both with your father and my son. That you put his well-being above your desires says much about your character.”
Nora embraced those words, allowing them to strengthen her as readily as the note in her reticule.
“But you are forgetting a very important detail,” he added after a moment of silence.
Turning her gaze to meet his, Nora raised her brows in a silent question.
“The Hatchers are not the Edens,” he said, a thread of steel woven through his tone. “We shan’t fall apart because of a scandal. Even this one.”
Nora’s gaze drifted back to the gallery (or rather, a specific man there), turning the words over with care because they had been offered with such certainty. “The Hatchers were not the Edens.” There was no questioning that statement, for Nora wasn’t certain hers had ever been a proper family.
Yet a faint ache moved through her as she thought of the letters returned unanswered, of callers who had ceased calling, of whispers that followed her every time she stepped into public view.
Mr. Jack Hatcher spoke of standing firm, but it was easy to speak in absolutes when living in the realm of the hypothetical. Nora’s reality proved far different.
The words were kind. Brave, even. But kindness and bravery did not keep newspapers from printing names, nor investors from fleeing at the first hint of taint. And if her Mr. Hatcher or his family suffered because of her—
“A scandal threw my wife and me together, and it has served us both well,” added the gentleman with a pensive tone. “Perhaps it is a good start for you and my son.”
Nora’s gaze jerked to him, but before she could think of a response, movement stirred through the court, spreading from the officers near the doors to the spectators crowded behind and above them.
Voices lowered. Papers gathered. Men straightened in their seats whilst the restless shifting settled into a strained anticipation.
The brief softness Mr. Hatcher’s father had created around her vanished when the machinery of the court whirred to life once more. The room drew its breath as barristers and clerks in their pale wigs and dark gowns took their places, their attention sharpening as the prisoner was escorted in.
Nora straightened as she watched Papa step through the doorway.
Being banished from the family’s seats below, the gallery afforded poor views of the dock and allowed one to see only the top of his head when he stood, but near the body of the court, Nora saw him plainly for the first time since his arrest.
And Virgil Eden remained unchanged. No visible remorse.
No harried desperation etched into the lines of his face.
Not even a wrinkle in his suit. His hair remained carefully brushed, his posture upright, his coat as orderly as if he were going to pay a call on his club.
Only a slight pallor touched his skin, and even that might have belonged to any gentleman who lingered indoors too often.
Then Papa’s gaze shifted, and Nora braced herself as his eyes met hers.
No fire burned there. No accusation or appeal.
He looked at her as one might look upon a chair placed awkwardly in a room, something noticed in passing for it mattered little.
Nora could not have said how long the moment lasted, only that his gaze lingered past comfort, holding her in place with its terrible emptiness whilst the trial resumed—until his eyes flicked to the figure at Nora’s side.
It was a small change. The faintest tightening at one corner of his mouth, followed by a look that came perilously close to a scoff before Papa stifled it. Nothing dramatic enough for the gallery to notice, perhaps, but Nora saw it.
Beside her, Mr. Hatcher stilled. The gentleman hardly moved to begin with, yet Nora felt his muscles hardening and his breath stilling until he seemed carved from granite.
When she glanced toward him, his gaze was fixed fully upon Papa as though nothing else in the room existed.
There was no anger in Mr. Hatcher’s expression.
Nothing so uncontrolled. Only a cold, unyielding barrier that met Papa’s irritation and refused to bend beneath it.
For a long moment, neither man looked away.
Then Papa surrendered. It was slight but unmistakable. His eyes darted away, dismissing them both with the same blank indifference he’d worn upon entering. And his attention did not return.
Barristers rose, their voices carrying through the close-packed room, and The Old Court grew more stifling as the morning dragged onward.
Too many bodies filled the space and the August sun beat through the windows until Nora could hardly breathe.
Fans fluttered all around, and someone coughed repeatedly behind her.
Reporters bent over their notebooks with tireless hunger, while the spectators leaned forward whenever a barrister’s tone sharpened, eager for one last morsel before the matter passed from argument into judgment.
Nora tried to listen. Truly, she did. But exhaustion made her feel as though she were watching from a great distance, and the words could not quite reach her there.
Her gloves were too tight. Her spine ached from remaining upright.
The packed benches, the dark robes and pale wigs, and Papa’s still figure in the dock all blurred together into a mass of movement and noise.
Only the elder Mr. Hatcher kept her from feeling entirely unmoored. He did not speak, and for that she was grateful, as questions required answers. Instead, he remained solid and watchful at her side whilst the hours crawled on, a steady barrier between Nora and the worst of the room’s attention.
And then there was his son, watching her far more than the proceedings, his eyes holding hers when she dared to look at him.
By the time the final speeches drifted to their end, every nerve inside her was drawn tight.
After months of waiting, the verdict had existed in some distant future for so long that she’d ceased believing it would arrive.
Yet here it was, and Nora kept her eyes fixed ahead as the judge motioned for the foreman to speak.
“Guilty.”
After all the testimony, all the ledgers, all the witnesses called to speak of fortunes vanished and statements falsified, no other answer was possible.
Yet some small, frightened corner had braced itself for the impossible all the same.
The world was a twisted place, and Virgil Eden was a master at bending it to his will.
A rush of air left her so quietly that she scarcely recognized it as her own breath.
The verdict did not mend anything. It did not return the money to those who had lost so much.
It could not restore her fractured family.
Yet it set one solid stone beneath Nora’s feet at last, undeniable and public and spoken in a room full of witnesses: Papa was guilty, and she hadn’t been mistaken.
Nora’s eyes darted to him, catching the barest flicker, swift and fleeting, that passed over his features, displaying for all the world to see that despite it all, Virgil Eden had thought he would charm his way out of this trouble.
Then the mask settled back into place, smooth and unreadable, before the celebrating crowd noticed.
The judge’s gavel rang out, and order returned by degrees, but the verdict remained. It hung over the room as tangible as the fog that had become so synonymous with the city.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” asked the judge, looking over his glasses at the man standing in the prisoner’s dock, and attention fixed once more upon the proceedings.
“Before sentence is passed,” said Papa, his voice carrying through the court with startling steadiness, “I should like to know how many men in this room will follow me into this dock? How many others will be publicly flogged as well?”
A stir moved through the gallery, but Papa did not look at them. Instead, his gaze passed over the barristers and jury as though they were assembled for his judgment rather than he for theirs.
“You call me guilty because I gave men precisely what they demanded. Returns. Dividends. Prosperity without patience. Wealth without risk. Every gentleman who placed his fortune in my hands did so with the same hungry expectation: spare me the speculation, and grant me the reward. When I did as they asked and placed money in their pockets and sent their wives to dinner tables glittering with diamonds purchased from my actions, not one man among them thought to question the impossibility of my promises.”
Papa smirked, his eyes sweeping over the gallery.
“No. They praised me and brought me their brothers, their widowed sisters, and anyone else they could catch. They called me brilliant when the money came and indispensable when I paid out what lesser men could not. All they wanted was the money—no matter where it came from.”
Another murmur passed through the room, sharper this time.
“If I stand here guilty, then bring in every client who accepted returns he did not trouble himself to understand. Bring in every man who looked away because they cared more about profits than their honor. Bring in every fellow who urged me to do more, risk more, promise more, and then threatened to withdraw the instant my efforts proved less obliging than his greed. This fraud—if you can call it that—was not the work of one man, yet I stand here alone.”
Gaze hardening, Papa’s voice sharpened. “They were not innocents. They were men of business, and rumors have circulated for years about my methods, yet my clients were quite happy to ignore them as long as I fattened their pocketbooks. They wanted gold without getting mud upon their boots, and now they howl because they have discovered someone had to walk through the mire to fetch it.”
Papa drew himself up straighter, his expression coldly composed.
“So pass sentence if you must. Make me the villain, if that comforts the city. But do not pretend that I alone created the hunger that brought us here. I merely satisfied it. Speculation is always a risk, and I am being made the whipping boy for those greedy little hearts that are shedding tears now that they finally lost.”
The words rolled through the court with all the cool confidence Nora knew so well.
And it was met with considering murmurs; one gentleman leaned toward his companion with a speculative raise of his brow as though Papa had offered some startling wisdom rather than another excuse that was polished until it shone.
Even now, convicted and standing in the dock, he knew precisely how to find the vulnerable places in another’s heart. And did not hesitate to press them.
Nora’s teeth ached, and she forced her jaw to slacken, only then realizing how hard she’d been clenching it.
She knew this performance—had lived beneath it all her life without understanding its shape.
First came the injury, as though he were the wounded party.
Then the contempt for those too small-minded to appreciate him.
Then the careful scattering of blame until everyone but the guilty party was flogging themselves.
For years, she had mistaken that certainty for strength. Believed his refusal to yield was courage. Now she could see only the hollow place beneath it all, the empty chamber where conscience ought to be.
Not once did he bend beneath the weight of what he had done.
Not once did he look toward the ruined families, the vanished savings, the futures he had ground down to feed his own grandeur.
Even now, with the law’s sentence hanging over him, Papa could not say the simple truth without wrapping it in complaints and laying it at another man’s feet.
And Nora relaxed her jaw once more as her teeth ground tight. Something bitter rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard against it as a sick, crawling sensation moved beneath her skin, as though Papa’s words had left something unclean in the air around her.
Her father was a monster.