Chapter 41
Kate was in the brothel on Friday night when Mr. Edwards came in and beckoned her over. She looked to Melanie, who nodded for her to leave her current customer and go to Edwards. When she got over to him, he said, “You’re coming with me to my house.”
“I’ll have to ask Mel…”
“No time for that. Just come on,” he said, and he pulled her by the arm out of the brothel, out to the street, and into his carriage. There was something different about him tonight, Kate thought, but it was that drunken moodiness he sometimes had. She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but she was afraid of his getting angry.
“I hear you have been seeing a lot of the blacksmith,” he said after a few minutes’ silence. She looked at him, but he was looking out the opposite window.
“A little,” she said, knowing from the past that there was no point in lying to this man who seemed to know everything that was going on in the city, no matter how trivial.
“I need you stay away from him from now on.”
“What? Why?”
“I just need you to do it.”
“Not without a reason.” She was angry that he thought he could control her life outside of his use of her as a prostitute.
“It’s for your own safety.”
“I’m perfectly safe with him. Damned more than I ever am with you,” she said, and now he did look at her.
“You think you are safe with the Dolocher?” he said, and there was no sneering smile, which made what he said all the more scary. Mullins was the Dolocher? He had the build and the strength? But…no! Why was she letting Edwards make her think like this? She knew who Mullins was and what he was.
“What are you talking about? He is the most gentle creature there is.”
“That’s what’s so suspicious. When he is working and sober, he is as meek as a mouse. But when he gets a few drinks in him or his anger is up, he is vicious and loses control at the drop of a hat.”
“I know he has fights in the taverns sometimes, but what man doesn’t do that?”
“Listen, Kitty, I have thought him innocent along the way, but I have my doubts now. I can’t shake the idea that you are in danger around him.”
At this, her heart jumped, and she grew nervous. Did Edwards have feelings for her? It was more than she was capable of not to think of herself living in the warmth and opulence of his home. And at once, she felt she was betraying Mullins, for whom feelings had grown over time and much to her own surprise. Her heart was pounding and she didn’t hear what he said next, but she knew he was saying something. She looked at him, saw his mouth move and his eyes as he looked on her—was there anything in those eyes? There was, but what would have been impossible to detect and decipher.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I said I will get you into the brothel full time so you won’t have to walk the streets anymore.”
“I don’t want to be in the brothel seven nights a week!” she said, and for the first time she understood that she had assumed Mullins was going to take her as his wife someday and that she wouldn’t have to work as she did now, and that the brothel was now something that filled her with pure revulsion.
He was regarding her now with an odd look, as though she were mad or had said something totally unexpected. “You are happy to walk the same streets where people are being killed all the time?”
“No,” she said but didn’t know where to go from there.
“I see,” Edwards said. Now he did smile, that sarcastic smile that tinged on evil and made him so unpredictable.
“What do you see?” she asked, insulted.
“You think he will marry you.” He was right, and though she said no with her face, she knew he knew he was right. “You think anyone would marry a prostitute?” His sneer thickened momentarily and then fell into a piteous face.
“Plenty have before,” she retorted lamely.
“If this blacksmith is as good a man as you claim, then why on earth would he marry a common tart?”
“I think you better let me out here,” she said, not looking at him. She was furious because part of her knew that he could be right, probably was right. She knew what was intimated between Mullins and herself, but it was something that had gone unsaid, something that didn’t necessarily have to come to pass, a future unwritten. He could decide that he couldn’t marry a streetwalker despite how he felt right now; he was clouded by the first woman of his life, and Kate knew that love or the illusion of it can be thicker than any winter fog and could lift just as quickly.
“I’m not finished with you yet,” he said.
“I don’t care; I want to get out.”
“If you leave this carriage, you will never work in that brothel ever again, or any brothel for that matter!” he snapped at her.
In that instant, she saw a light open up, and the beams of chance came shining through. If she was put out of the brothels, would that not be the first step to being something else, someone else? She would have no choice but to do something else; she couldn’t live with what she made on the streets alone. She could see herself telling Mullins that she was quitting the life she led; he didn’t have to know she was being forced out of it or that she was doing it in the hope of a better life with him. Should she get out or stay and degrade herself with this wild and dangerous man to keep sure of food on her table? The light was too strong. “Let me out, please.”
Edwards looked at her with what she read as disappointment before tapping the roof of the carriage and shouting for the driver to stop and let the lady out (he called her lady). When she stepped down to the ground, he caught her arm, and she turned to look at him.
“Be careful. Nobody knows who the Dolocher is.” There seemed to be genuine concern in his face and his voice. He was so hard to understand.
“I will be, Mr. Edwards,” she said quietly, and she stood there a moment as the carriage pulled away into the night, towards the Liffey, to that house where she’d had fleeting fantasies of living, where she would have been warm and safe tonight. She looked around and wondered what to do, and then she walked briskly along the most populated routes back to the brothel.