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 hadbraced 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 thespeculation, 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 whippingboy 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.
Chapter 48
The room did not erupt, for the Old Court was too tightly governed for such theatrics, but dissatisfaction moved through it all the same. A swell of murmurs rose from the gallery, sharp and disbelieving, spreading from bench to bench until the judge’s call for order cut across the room with practiced force. Reporters bent furiously over their notebooks, already making a meal of the public’s displeasure.
Five years. Countless fortunes vanished, families broken, and reputations ground into powder, and the man behind it would be free in a few short years. Even that sentence, significantly harsher than those handed down to other fraudulent financiers of late, was strangely inadequate when set against the scale of what Virgil Eden had done.
Yet Jonathan knew, with a bitter certainty that sat poorly in his stomach, that men like Virgil Eden had a talent for exploiting weakness within the system. He would charm someone. Impress someone. Convince some official that he was more useful, more respectable, more wronged by circumstance than the common criminal beside him. Good conduct, influence, bribery, health, sympathy—Jonathan did not know by which door the blackguard would slip through early, only that he would look for one. And likely succeed.
