Mr. Lyndon exhaled sharply, but Nora refused to leave matters alone any longer.
“Tell me,” she said, stepping closer.
“I do not think your father cared for me very much. I was not…” His mouth tightened faintly. “Biddable enough for his liking.”
Nora scoffed. “You fled the moment he challenged you. That hardly makes you a pattern card for fortitude.”
The words sliced through the air with more force than Nora had intended, and she saw them land with brutal efficiency. Mr. Lyndon’s expression tightened, his shoulders drawing back, and a flush crept across Nora’s cheeks.
“I apologize,” she whispered, pressing a hand to her brow. “That was unfair.”
Mr. Lyndon gave a humorless huff. “No, it was not.”
Nora looked away toward the distant paths once more, struggling to shape her thoughts. Nothing remained where shehad left it. Every certainty she reached for shifted the moment she touched it.
“I am simply confused,” she admitted quietly. “My father loves me and is a good man. He is respected by everyone who knows him. Gentlemen trust him with enormous fortunes because he deals honestly with them. He has spent his entire life helping people. He must have believed you to be mercenary.”
But why had Papa lied about the ring? Lied to her about the bribe?
“Your father is honest when it suits him,” said Mr. Lyndon, though he glanced about as though expecting the man in question to emerge from the bushes. “And I do not believe he wanted a son-in-law who might challenge him. Heaven knows your brother doesn’t, despite working alongside him day in and day out. He must know what goes on there.”
“Are you suggesting my father is underhanded?” she asked, the question coming far easier with practice.
“I do not know anything for certain, Miss Eden, but my instincts say not all is right.”
The words settled in Nora’s veins like ice water, spreading outward in slow, miserable waves that left her hands numb despite the warmth of the afternoon. Her stomach tightened so sharply she almost folded her arms across it instinctively, and for one dreadful instant she could not draw breath.
“Why did you not tell me?” Nora demanded, the words emerging sharper now, grasping desperately for some explanation that did not leave the ground crumbling beneath her feet. “If you truly believed such things, why vanish without a word and allow me to believe—” Her voice caught, and she had to force the rest out. “Why allow me to believe you had simply stopped caring?”
Mr. Lyndon’s expression tightened painfully. “Because it would have destroyed you.”
“That was not your decision to make!”
“No, but I made it all the same.” With a sigh, the gentleman looked down the distant paths before continuing in a lower voice. “What could you have done? If I had said he was a fraud, would you have ignored it? Allowed him to continue lying and stealing?”
Turning his gaze back to her, Mr. Lyndon’s eyes pleaded for understanding. “It isn’t in your nature. And what would that do to you and your family? How would you live?”
A pair of ladies laughed somewhere nearby, their voices passing briefly through the trees before thinning into silence again. The sound belonged to another world—one still turning, still moving, still capable of ordinary pleasures—while Nora stood rooted beneath the weight of what she had heard. She swallowed, but the tightness in her throat did not lessen.
“Fraud?” she whispered. The word was too ugly and enormous. The accusation sat before her like a grotesque creature dragged unexpectedly into the daylight, so monstrous that her mind recoiled, unwilling to examine it closer.
Mr. Lyndon had to be mistaken. Fear had plainly ruled him years ago, and looking at him now with all his careful evasions and grim suspicions, the truth was far more likely that he had simply lacked the courage to fight for her and had cloaked himself in pretty excuses to ease his pride and his conscience.
Papa could be difficult. Domineering. Sharp-tempered. But that did not make him evil.
Before Mr. Lyndon could speak again, Nora stepped backward. The movement was unsteady, as though her limbs belonged to someone else entirely, and she scarcely remembered accepting the ring box back or the mumbled farewell that passed her lips. Only once she left the shelter of the trees and rejoined the broader paths did the air fully return to her lungs.
Mr. Lyndon was wrong. And she would prove it.
***
As the heart of the financial district, Lombard Street pulsed with life, spreading its wealth and power into the farthest reaches of the country. Behind polished office doors, fortunes were made, moved, secured, and lost with the shake of a hand and the flick of a pen. For many, it was gaming by another name, with contracts in place of cards and investments in place of stakes, yet the wagers were no less daring for being conducted by appointment and recorded in ledgers.
Eden & Co. stood proudly amongst the establishments, the broad windows gleaming above pristine stone, and like footmen of the grand estates, liveried porters stationed at the entrance managed the endless stream of gentlemen arriving for appointments. There was a reason people had taken to calling Mr. Virgil Eden “Lord Lombard,” for the fellow ruled this corner of the financial district as thoroughly as any nobleman ruled his piece of England.
Clerks occupied long rows of desks extending across the vast outer offices, the steady scratching of pens and murmured discussions blending into one continuous current of purposeful activity. Messengers moved briskly between departments carrying stacks of correspondence tied neatly in ribbon whilst somewhere farther within the building a telegraph clicked steadily away. Everything operated with astonishing smoothness despite the sheer volume of people and paperwork filling the rooms.
Jonathan slowed as he removed his gloves, taking in the endless motion surrounding him. The place radiated solidity. Permanence. Wealth so established and orderly that it seemed impossible to imagine anything within these walls evercollapsing. And he could hardly comprehend that he had earned entrance into such hallowed ground.
