Birgit sat on my sofa, her gloved hands twisting in her lap. When I entered the parlor, she looked up, her young face caught in an expression of vulnerable hope…which vanished after a few seconds, replaced by a calm facade of polite impassivity. I thought of her father—a stern older man with a reputation for rigid Teutonic morality—and decided she probably often had to hide her most vulnerable feelings, her most tumultuous ones. Martjin van der Sant did not seem like the kind of father who would indulge in displays of emotion.
She stood as I walked to her, and we clasped hands and exchanged kisses.
“Miss van der Sant,” I said, sitting and indicating she should do the same. “I’m quite pleased to see you, although I confess I’m a little surprised. How can I help you today?”
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth for an instant before releasing it, a childhood habit superseded by conscious control of her mannerisms, girlhood being subsumed by adulthood. For some reason, that made my heart squeeze, in nostalgia and regret all at the same time.
“You remember, the day before last, when you said to tell you if Mr. Cunningham asked to speak with me alone?”
My chest squeezed again, with anger this time. I kept my voice even as I answered. “Yes, I remember.”
“Yesterday evening he invited Father and me over for supper at his house. We went…and after the meal, when the ladies were retiring to the parlor, he caught me in the hallway.”
I tamped down the urge to fly out of my seat and start throwing things, but the strain showed in my voice when I asked, “Did he touch you?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, Miss O’Flaherty. I kept myself a respectable distance away from him at all times.”
“I hate that you feel it’s your job to maintain that respectful distance,” I said. “Please continue.”
She looked down at her gloves, her cheeks blushing a sweet shade of red. Shame colored her words when she spoke again. “He said that he enjoyed my company very much and wanted to see more of me while I stayed here in London. I said something about how Father and I would be happy to accept any invitations he might offer, but then he interrupted and said, ‘I think you understand that I am not talking about your father.’
“I felt sick with his words, because I knew then that you had been right. I made my excuses and left, and then I found Father and told him I was ill and that I needed to return to the hotel.” She took a deep breath, and I breathed my own quiet sigh of relief. She’d kept her wits about her and escaped unscathed. Thank God.
I put my hand over hers. “You did the right thing, Miss van der Sant. And you also did the right thing coming to me. I’ll make sure Cunningham can’t bother you again.”
“Excuse me, Miss O’Flaherty, but I’m not finished,” Birgit said in a soft voice. “Because he found me this morning. Father had meetings early, and so I took breakfast with my hired chaperone in the hotel dining room. She saw acquaintances across the room and went over to say hello…and once she did, Mr. Cunningham sat down at my table.” Her chin trembled. “He said he’d been waiting for me.”
I peered into her soft gray eyes, mosaics of fear and shame and the hidden iron kernel of strength every teenage girl carries with her. “What did he say to you, Birgit?”
The use of her Christian name seemed to comfort her a little. “He said that he wanted…me.” The shakiness with which she pronounced me made it very clear that she understood Cunningham’s meaning. “And he said that he was going to have me. And that if I tried to stop him, he would tell my father I’d been behaving loosely in London with several young men, and he would see to it that not only would I lose Father’s love, but that I would lose any chance of making a good match.” She swallowed.
“Mother Mary,” I whispered. I had thought there was no level of depravity that Cunningham could sink to that would surprise me…but here I was, surprised. I shouldn’t have been—with both Birgit and me, he had used our love of our fathers as leverage.
“He named a time and a place. I—” She broke off, fumbling in her small lace bag, fishing out a card with an address scrawled on the back. I recognized that address: The Hedgehog, his gentlemen’s club. I took the card and studied it, and then she admitted in a quiet voice. “I managed to escape my chaperone and come here to you.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I assured her. “We will make sure that you stay safe.”
A shine of tears in her eyes. “But I couldn’t help it. I agreed to meet him.”
“Oh, Birgit,” I said.
“How can I say no, Miss O’Flaherty? When if I don’t do as he asks, he will tell all those terrible lies to Father?”
Even though I already suspected the answer, I had to be sure. “And would your father believe him? Over your own word and what he knows to be true of your character?”
“Father is a good man,” she said slowly. “And he loves me. But like many good men, he is quick to believe the worst about others.”
We sat for a few moments without speaking, her words lingering in the air as I turned the card over in my fingers, the card stock scratching gently at my skin. I wanted to tell Birgit that she must not go, under any circumstances. That whatever else she had to endure, however hard it was to prove her innocence to her father, that everything would be so much better if she refused Mr. Cunningham outright. That even if she didn’t have the belief and trust of those around her, she could still cling to the certainty that she’d done nothing wrong. Because that was the genius of Cunningham’s manipulations—he made you feel complicit in his depravity. It didn’t matter how cerebrally and intellectually I knew that I had been just a girl, that I had been innocent, that the way he’d forced my body to respond did not negate the horror of what he’d done. Because as soon as I would repeat those thoughts to myself, as soon as I would comfort myself with the knowledge that he was the monster and that nothing I’d done made him any less so, then I would move on with my day and my thoughts would gradually drift to other matters, and soon enough, those ugly whispers in my mind would resurface again. It was an un-winnable battle.
I wanted to spare Birgit that.
But I couldn’t ignore the very real threat Cunningham had laid before her. His actions would have real consequences, consequences that could ruin Birgit’s life. And even if, miraculously, her Puritanical father believed her over the word of another businessman, Cunningham could still undermine her chances for a good marriage.
“We must tell your father about this plot, you and me together,” I said. “Before anything else transpires. We have Cunningham’s card, and I will tell your father my own story. That should be enough to cast doubt on his character.”
Birgit was already shaking her head. “He will dismiss it as a story. My father is a good man, Miss O’Flaherty, but when it comes to matters of the carnal…” She paused and blushed at the word carnal. There was no way I was allowing her to endure Cunningham’s touch. It had nearly broken me—as sensual and sturdy as my soul was. It would shred this delicate flower. She forced herself onward. “When it comes to those matters, Father can be quite…traditional. He feels that women are the weaker sex on many levels, especially when it comes to things like lying. And he abhors deceit.”
“So he would not consider this sufficient proof of wrongdoing on Cunningham’s part?” I held up the card. “He would assume you were lying simply because you are female and because he cannot imagine a fellow businessman capable of such horror?”
