“I always know, my girl. The servants are my eyes and ears,” he murmured. “What did you find, precisely?”
Forcing herself not to touch the place where the folded paper now resided, Nora sent out a silent prayer of gratitude that she had not left it where those spies might uncover it.
“I saw the fraudulent records,” she said. “You manipulate people like Mr. Sampson and Mr. Hatcher, who are desperate to provide for their companies and their families—”
“Oh, my dear, silly girl.” With a scoff, Papa straightened and tucked his hands behind him. “You think there is anything altruistic about men? It is greed, pure and simple, that drives them, so do not paint them as something virtuous.”
Papa’s expression softened in that awful, pitying manner again, and in a tender tone he added, “Do you truly believe youunderstand my business well enough to interpret a few papers on my desk?”
Crouching down beside her, he rested his hand upon hers. “Nora, you have lived your whole life beneath my roof, protected from every ugly necessity that keeps families like ours comfortable. You read novels, attend parties, and spend your days doing little beyond pursuing your own pleasures. You do not comprehend how the world functions.”
The words slid beneath her skin, each one seeking some weak place to settle. Nora’s free hand tightened in her lap, but she forced herself to remain still.
“You see a report, a name, a figure or two, and suddenly you imagine yourself capable of uncovering wickedness where men with decades of experience have seen nothing?” Papa gave a soft, pitying laugh and shook his head. “My dear girl, that is not discernment. That is vanity dressed up as virtue.”
Nora’s throat tightened, but she lifted her chin. “I know what I saw.”
“You know what you think you saw,” he corrected gently. “There is a vast difference. Finance is not knitting, my girl. It is not a pattern one may glance at and comprehend what the final design shall be. My business is beyond anything you can comprehend from a few out-of-context scraps of paper. And rather than admit you may not understand the matter, you leap at once to condemning your own father.”
His gaze held hers steadily, his eyes dimming as they pleaded with her to listen, and for one dreadful moment Nora felt her certainty fray beneath the force of his calm.
In a quiet voice, Papa whispered, “I have spent my life ensuring you are protected and have everything your heart desires. How can you think so poorly of me? How can you ignore everything you know of me? All the good I have done? Have I not earned your trust?”
Nora’s breath grew shallow, each inhale stopping high in her chest, as though it could not move past the paper she kept hidden beside her ribs, and her gaze dropped despite every effort to hold firm. Papa’s hand rested warm and familiar upon hers, bringing with it memories of sitting on his knee, of laughter over family dinners, of gifts and kindnesses, and of all the many times he had looked at her as though she were more precious than his investments. Though her hand twitched, Nora could not pull away.
Had he not earned her trust? Had he not loved her? Had he not given her ample reason to believe that even if the whole world crumbled beneath her feet, Papa would remain solid and steadfast? The stolen paper began to crumble beneath the weight of all those years, the ink and figures she did not fully comprehend blurring in her mind as her father pleaded for her trust and affection.
Nora swallowed, but it only made the tightness in her throat worse. “Papa…”
His hand tightened around hers, not painfully, but with enough pressure to warn. “And even if some portion of what you believe were true, what then? Have you thought beyond the grand satisfaction of your righteous action? Have you considered what follows when a daughter turns upon her own father and drags his name through the mud before all of London?”
“If?” Nora’s mouth went dry.
“I am simply speaking of the hypotheticals, my girl,” he said, waving away the semantics as he rose and returned to his seat. “Let us assume you bring your unfounded fears to the wrong sort of person who broadcasts that libel to all and sundry. What do you believe would happen?”
Papa rested a hand upon the glass that he’d abandoned on the side table, his finger tracing the rim. “It would destroy you and everyone you hold dear.”
Pouring himself another drink, he considered the liquid. “We would lose everything. Assuming my business could weather such a scandal, the family wouldn’t. We would require credit to survive the initial blows, but who would give that to an accused swindler? Friends vanish quickly and doors close when scandal abounds, my dear.”
The room receded, the lamplight blurring faintly at the edges as he laid out each unhappy future.
“Even if you were content to see me and your mother out on the streets, would you be so cavalier with the rest of your family?” he asked. “Lionel’s children would carry the stain of it before they were old enough to understand what had been done to them. Your brothers would never be able to secure professions as long as they bear the Eden surname.”
Swirling his glass, Papa continued, “And it isn't as though the ladies in this family have any skills with which to earn their bread. You and your sisters would be lucky to secure positions as scullery maids for ladies who once smiled at you across the dinner table—assuming desperation doesn’t drive you to work in the street like so many penniless women before you. Heaven knows, no charity would give a farthing to people so stained and despised.”
With a sip, Papa considered that. “And of course, people like your Mr. Hatcher would be forever tarnished by association. What do you believe would happen to his business if it is known that he is keeping company with the likes of the Edens? The lad is struggling already. It would destroy him.”
Nora felt the blood drain from her face so swiftly that her hands turned to ice. And Papa saw it. Of course he saw it. Settingdown his drink, he leaned forward, that concern touching his features once more as he studied her.
“I know you, my girl,” he said. “You cannot bear to watch everyone you love crushed beneath Society’s bootheel because you misunderstood a few scraps of paper and the poisonous insinuations of bitter men. Think carefully before you act. Once the damage is done, no apology can put the pieces back together again.”
Papa rose from his chair in a slow, weary movement as though Nora had left a physical wound. Crossing the short distance between them, he paused before her, and for a terrible moment she could not force herself to look up. His words sifted through her heart and mind in awful succession, each lodging somewhere deep and painful until she could scarcely tell her thoughts and feelings from his.
Then his fingers touched lightly beneath her chin, lifting her face just enough for his gaze to meet hers.
“After all these years and all I have done for you, I would think that I have earned your trust,” he said softly.
Nora’s throat worked painfully, but no answer came. The report remained real. The ring remained real. Yet so did the father she knew and the future that might unfold. Every argument she had gathered seemed small and childish compared to the image he had laid before her.
