“I don't care how much you try to beautify this business, it is still prostitution!” Robert protested. “Surely there must be something else you can do to support yourself and your child, Miss Bouchard.”
“Don't you think I have tried, Mr. Campbell?” Brielle's blue eyes flashed. Frustration and a sense of helplessness were clearly causing her to lose her temper. “Ever since my parents died when I was fourteen, I have attempted to live up to the standards they set for me throughout my childhood.”
“What happened to your parents, Brielle?” I asked.
A look of pain crossed her lovely face. “They—” She glanced helplessly at Madam Valentine.
“Go on, Brielle,” the madam told her. “Miss Woolson and Mr. Campbell are here to help you. I believe they have a right to know about your past.”
That this was a distressing subject could be clearly read on the girl's pale face. With a force of will, she explained, “My parents migrated to the East Coast from Sweden several years before my birth. Father worked for a prominent accounting firm who, unbeknownst to him, was embezzling from their clients. When the crime was discovered, the major partners responsible for the fraud fled the country, leaving my father as one of the primary suspects. Shortly before his trial, my mother and father were—” She swallowed hard, attempting, I was sure, to keep from crying. “They were killed in a carriage accident. My father's name was never cleared.”
“What did you do?” asked Robert, regarding the girl with genuine sympathy.
She sighed. “The authorities took our home and all the money my parents had saved to repay those who had been swindled. I was left with nothing.” She paused as if gathering her thoughts, as well as her emotions. “For two years after my parents' deaths, I worked as a governess. When my pupils' father became rather too friendly toward me, I was forced to leave that employment. After that, I attempted to work as a seamstress, a laundress, a cook, and even a shopgirl. Unhappily, I lacked the skills necessary to succeed in those occupations. While providing me with an excellent education for a girl, my poor parents did not foresee a time when I might be in need of such training.”
Brielle paused. I spied the glimmer of repressed tears in her eyes. “It was only when I was no longer able to buy food, and had been evicted from my modest lodging, that a friend suggested I visit Madam Valentine.” She smiled at her benefactor. “This dear lady was good enough to take me in that very day.”
Robert harrumphed. “You are a beautiful young woman, Miss Bouchard. I don't imagine it posed any great hardship for Madam Valentine to accept you into her, ah, establishment.”
Before the lady in question could voice the retort I saw forming on her lips, I asked Brielle, “Have you no other family then? No aunts, or cousins, perhaps, who might take you and little Emma in?”
“Except for my daughter, I have no living relations, Miss Woolson,” the girl replied, once again in command of her emotions. “I am quite alone in the world. I regret if I have offended your sensibilities, Mr. Campbell, but my first responsibility is to support my little girl, and see that she receives the best upbringing I can manage.”
Beside me on the sofa, I felt Robert bristle, but thankfully he managed to keep his thoughts to himself, perhaps realizing for the first time the difficulty women face if there is no one else to provide for them.
Although Brielle appeared resigned to her fate, and was doing her utmost to depict her circumstances in the most advantageous light, her sensitive face could not mask the hopelessness she was obviously feeling inside.
“You have been through a great deal in your young life, my dear,” I told Brielle. “And I understand that this is one of the better houses of its kind in the city. I mean no offense, Madam Valentine, but once a girl has chosen this life, she carries the stigma with her for the rest of her days. And you must agree that a brothel, even one of this quality, is no place to raise a child.”
Madam Valentine, who continued to dart angry looks at Robert, had puffed out her ample chest and seemed about ready to take umbrage with this comment, when Brielle broke in, her angelic face set in resolute lines of determination.
“Your concern is understandable, Miss Woolson. However, needs must. Unless you can find a way to persuade Mr. Knight to honor our contract and support his daughter then, as I say, I am left with no choice but to accept Madam Valentine's generous offer. If I am frugal, it may be possible for me to eventually set off on my own and settle my daughter in more traditional surroundings. There are a great many young women in this city who would be delighted to face such a hopeful future.”
Before I could respond to this, Madam Valentine cleared her throat and said, “I appreciate your kind words, Brielle, but it wouldn't do for Miss Woolson and Mr. Campbell to leave here with the wrong impression. All this talk about mothering my girls is all well and good, but I am first and foremost a businesswoman.”
She gazed from one of us to the other, obviously determined that we should take her meaning. “My sole reason for running this house is to provide my clients with a pleasurable and discreet experience. In return, I expect to turn a good profit, for myself as well as my young ladies. they're treated well because it's in my best interest to keep them healthy and content. This is a transient business, and as you can see I put a great deal of time and effort into training my girls. If I can keep them happy, I find that they tend to stay here longer before moving on.
“Moreover, I run a respectable house. Drunkenness, profanity, and violence are not permitted inside these premises, either from my gentlemen or from my girls. Other than these few rules, however, my clients are free to do pretty much as they please. I'm a long way from being a puritan, and I know what men like. And what they like, they get. I'm proud to boast that Madam Valentine's Parlor House enjoys the finest reputation in the city of San Francisco.”
Robert shifted in his seat and said, “Yes, but surely that sort of reputation is not—”
“I have not yet finished,” she interrupted, darting my befuddled colleague a look which could have halted a herd of stampeding elephants. “It is because of this reputation that my girls may, if they're careful with their earnings and guard their looks, retire after six or seven years. Very few continue in the business beyond the age of thirty. You'd be surprised how many of them marry, often with respectable gentlemen, and go on to raise families.” She looked steadily at Robert. “As Brielle pointed out, Mr. Campbell, there are far worse situations a girl might find herself in than my parlor house.”
As Madam Valentine spoke, Robert had sunk back onto the sofa beside me. His earlier anger was turning into unease as she presented arguments in favor of a house of pleasure, her own house in particular. From the dazed expression on his craggy face, I was beginning to think that he was as much a neophyte when it came to these establishments as was I.
“That may be, Madam Valentine,” he said when she seemed to have come to the end of her discourse. “But not all your ladies enjoy such a happy ending, do they? Once their youth and beauty is gone, some of the lasses end up in—” His face reddened and his voice trailed off as he searched for an inoffensive way to describe the fate of girls reduced to these tragic circumstances.
“They end up in the cribs or cowyards of the Barbary Coast?” Madam Valentine smiled as Robert could manage only a brief nod of his head. “Yes, Mr. Campbell, I am all too aware that some girls are reduced to that unhappy state. My young ladies, however, are advised to set aside a portion of their earnings each week. In fact, several of them request that I perform this service for them. By exercising a bit of frugality, they often find a tidy nest egg awaiting them when they make the decision to move on with their lives.”
“Even so,” Robert said, unwilling to give up the argument, “they're still engaging in, er, that is, you can hardly describe their activities as, well, respectable.”
The older woman met his eyes without flinching. “That depends on your definition of ‘respectable,’ Mr. Campbell. If longevity
is any measure, then we have the edge on most occupations. After all, many would agree that we are engaged in one of the world's oldest professions.”
Robert sputtered, but seemed unable to find words to dispute this statement. I was growing weary of this discussion; no matter how long they argued, neither Robert nor Madam Valentine were likely to change the other's opinion on the matter. Moreover, I had come here to find Brielle Bouchard and ascertain that she was unharmed. Now that I had successfully completed that duty, it was time to discuss her lawsuit.
“Miss Bouchard,” I said matter-of-factly. “Let us proceed to the matter at hand. Have you any further interest in pursuing your lawsuit against Mr. Knight?”
Brielle hesitated, then said, “I would like nothing better than to compel Gerald to honor his responsibility toward our daughter. But as you said yourself, it is impossible to prove that he is Emma's father.”
“That's true,” I admitted. “However, I still have one or two ideas I'd like to try before we give up on the matter entirely.”
The sudden blaze of hope that lit her eyes nearly prompted me to take back these words. What right did I have, I thought, to suggest there was the smallest chance Gerald Knight might change his mind and accept Emma as his child? Still, I could not bring myself to allow the man to win so easily.
I was well aware of the time constraints faced by my client. If we were to succeed in helping her, we must do it soon, before Brielle committed both herself and her tiny daughter to years of life inside a brothel—even one as grand as Madam Valentine's!
When we exited the house some few minutes later, we could find no sign of Eddie. The brougham remained standing in front of the parlor house where we had left it, and the dappled-gray horse stood contentedly munching a bag of oats.
“I thought you told the boy to stay with the carriage?” muttered Robert, opening the brougham door to peer inside. “He's not in here. Where do you suppose he's run off to?”
Just then, Eddie came scampering around the house and onto the street. “Sorry, miss,” he said, slightly out of breath, and stuffing the piece of bread he was carrying into his mouth.
Endeavoring to chew with his mouth closed as I had taught him, he opened the carriage door and reached out a hand to assist me onto the step. I paused to instruct him to drop Robert off first at Joseph Shepard's law firm, then gathered up my skirts and stepped inside.
“So where did you take yourself off to?” Robert asked the lad before ascending into the cab behind me.
The lad swallowed his bread, then explained, “Annie Watkins—you know, my friend what's a maid here?—she gave me some fresh bread Cook just took outta the oven. And a cuppa hot coffee. It's almighty cold out today, ain't it?”
“Eddie, I swear you could find three square meals a day if you were stranded on a cement island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” Robert said, not bothering to correct the boy's grammar. Stepping into the extended brougham, he settled himself in the seat across from me. “Judging by the amount of food that boy puts away every day, he should be as round as a pork barrel. Instead, he's thin as a matchstick.”
“He works hard, Robert, and rarely sits still longer than five minutes at any given time. I'm convinced that he no sooner ingests food, than it transforms into the energy required to keep him going all day. Food acts as a fuel to run his internal engine.”
As Eddie clicked the dappled-gray forward, I happened to glimpse a man crossing Montgomery Street, heading in the direction of Madam Valentine's parlor house. My heart skipped a beat as I noted that he was short, overweight, and wore a brown cap pulled low over his eyes. Good Lord, I thought. The man looked for all the world like Samuel's nemesis, Ozzie Foldger. Had he seen us coming out of the brothel? Was I to be tomorrow's lead story in some disgusting gossip tabloid?
We were jostled in our seats when Eddie pulled in front of a carriage as he joined afternoon traffic. Looking back, I strained to see where the man was going, but he was no longer in sight. Had he entered the brothel? I wondered, heart pounding in my throat. If he had, would Brielle and Madam Valentine keep my secret? I silently prayed that the discretion the madam afforded her customers would extend equally to a female attorney whose reputation might well be ruined if it were known she was visiting brothels!
“Sarah, you're not listening.”
I came back to the present to find Robert staring at me as if I had suddenly gone hard of hearing.
“I'm sorry, Robert, what did you say?”
Before he could answer, the brougham swerved to avoid a pedestrian, causing one of the wheels to fall into a deep pothole, and we were very nearly jolted out of our seats. Never wholly at ease when riding in Eddie's cab, Robert leaned tentatively back onto the leather-upholstered bench, hands clutching his seat, ready, if it became necessary, to hold on for dear life. When he was finally settled, he favored me with an annoyed look.
“I asked if you would please enlighten me about this so-called brainstorm of yours. How do you propose to coerce Gerald Knight into admitting that he fathered Brielle Bouchard's child?”
“I'm not sure,” I admitted, still unsettled that the man crossing the street might have been Ozzie Foldger. “I need to discuss the matter with my father over the weekend. And I may have a word or two with Samuel when he gets back in town on Monday,” I added, not mentioning that I would also inform my brother that I might have seen Foldger outside the brothel.
“I'm not sure about your brother, but your father is a sensible man,” said Robert, seeming relieved to find that I wasn't planning any sort of drastic action. “No doubt he'll agree that this is a hopeless case. It's understandable that you want to help Miss Bouchard, but you would better serve her by calling a spade a spade. You must make her understand that she hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of proving that Gerald Knight fathered her child.”
“I know only that I must give the matter further thought,” I replied a bit sharply. “I do not plan to give up until I have exhausted all of our options.”
“All of what options, Sarah? You know there is no way you can uphold that ridiculous contract. I can't think of a single judge in this city who wouldn't laugh you out of his courtroom, if you were foolish enough to try to file this lawsuit.”
“I didn't say I planned to file suit, at least not yet. There may be other ways to protect Brielle and her baby without taking the case to court.” Even to my ears I sounded a good deal more confident than I felt.
“Oh, aye? Well, I wish you luck if that's the route you plan to follow. Believe me, you're going to need it!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was nearly noon when Eddie's carriage reined up in front of my Sutter Street office, and I ascended the stairs to my rooms above Fannie's shop. I took a seat at my desk, opened my briefcase, and removed the papers I had taken from Robert's office earlier that morning. Sorting them into neat piles, I searched for the documents I had, perhaps foolhardily, promised to finish by the end of the day. When I finally located them, my heart sank. I had indeed bitten off a great deal more than I could chew—at least in four short hours!
Unfortunately, the case in question was a good deal more tedious than the one I had completed for Robert the day before. I honestly couldn't understand why he put up with it. One of the main reasons Robert had left Edinburgh was to distance himself from his father's position as one of Scotland's foremost defense attorneys.
By coming to America, he had hoped to establish his own reputation as a trial lawyer. He had now been with Shepard's law firm for over five years, yet he had rarely been accorded the opportunity to sit second chair, much less been entrusted with the responsibility of trying a case on his own. More often than not, he was required to research and write briefs concerning the most dreary litigations that crossed Shepard's desk. As far as I was concerned, it was a terrible waste of a first-rate mind. It would have given me immense pleasure to say this directly to Joseph Shepard's face!
I had invited Robert countless times to join me
in my practice. He invariably refused, stating sarcastically that he had become accustomed to eating three meals a day and living with a roof over his head. It was his decision, of course. For myself, I think I would have chosen starvation, rather than continue on as Joseph Shepard's overworked and unappreciated lackey!
Rising, I went into my back room library to brew a fresh pot of tea, then returned to my desk and settled down to work in earnest. So intent was I on completing the documents before Robert called for them at four o'clock, that I lost track of time. When they were finally finished, I was surprised to see that it was well past that hour. And there was no sign of Robert.
Gathering his papers into a neat pile, I crossed to the window and looked out over Sutter Street, which was already growing dark. Christmas was just over two weeks away and the shops along the street were brightly decorated, while the sidewalks were crowded with holiday shoppers. As it was a Friday, vehicular traffic was also heavier than usual. I fervently hoped that Robert wouldn't be too late, as Pierce would be calling for me at seven o'clock. If I were to be ready when he arrived, I would soon have to change my clothes and see to my toilette.
Hearing the newsboys at the corner hawking the evening's newspapers, I threw on my cloak and dashed downstairs. Making my way through the throng of people purchasing papers, I bought not only a copy of the Tattler, but of every evening edition.
Back in my office, I quickly scanned each newspaper, holding my breath for fear I might find my name in bold print, along with the story of my visit to the brothel that morning. When I could find no mention of either myself or Madam Valentine's parlor house, I settled in with a fresh cup of tea, and read through the papers more leisurely.
To my intense relief, it appeared that I had dodged the bullet, at least for the time being. It was always possible that I had simply imagined the man outside the brothel to be the reporter. Or, if it truly had been Foldger, perhaps his presence on Montgomery Street had been just a coincidence. Of course I wouldn't be able to truly breathe freely until I saw tomorrow's papers.
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