When Mr. Crudgers came to the door for the rent, Maureen was still at work, and Katie Rose was two dollars short.

“You’ll have to make it up before the month is out, little missy.” He stepped over the threshold and leered, his tobacco-stained teeth and liquored breath too near her face. “Unless you want to work for it.” And he fingered the stand-up collar of her shirtwaist.

But Katie Rose, her senses screaming, pretended to see her neighbor from across the hall, just beyond his shoulder. She waved and called, “Mrs. Kaminsky! I’ll be right there. Mr. Crudgers is just collectin’ the rent.”

He stepped back into the hall then and turned. Quickly, Katie Rose slammed and bolted the door in his face.

“You little minx! You think you’re clever,” he shouted through the door. “You get me that two dollars, or you and your sister get out!” He thumped down the stairs to the bar below.

Katie Rose wrapped her arms around her torso, going weak in the knees, and slipped, her spine against the doorframe, to the floor. In the minutes it took for her breath to come evenly and for her heart rate to steady, she tore the collar from her waist and threw it on the floor. Then she made three decisions:

First, I’ll demand that Maureen take Olivia up on her offer for us to move into Morningside.

Second, if Maureen refuses, I’ll go without her.

Third, I’ll ask Joshua for help and company, no matter what Maureen says. He has demonstrated himself a protector—completely trustworthy and every bit a gentleman. A gentleman I’d be proud to walk out with . . . proud to marry. She felt the heat race up her arms and face at her own confession but did not repent the thought. Perhaps he’ll notice me more if I’m not forever standin’ in Maureen’s shadow.

“Absolutely not!” Maureen fumed that evening. “You’ve no idea what you’re sayin’.”

“He wanted to touch me!” Katie Rose shouted. “Do you hear me? That filthy, lecherous man wanted to touch me!”

Maureen pushed her tea away and leaned her elbows on the table, her hands covering her face.

“He said that we could ‘work’ for the rest of the rent! Do you know what he meant?” Katie Rose demanded.

Maureen felt the weight of the world descend. “Yes, yes, I know. Do you know?”

“Don’t be stupid! Of course I know. I told you on the ship that I would never have done it in Ireland, and I won’t do it now.” Katie Rose stood before her, hands on her hips, but Maureen could not bring herself to speak.

How has it come to this?

Katie Rose slumped into the chair across from her and clasped Maureen’s hands in her own. “We can’t go on like this, Maureen. You must go back to your old wages and your old job.”

“They’ll not take me. I don’t even know if I’ll have a job at the end of my ‘probation period.’”

“We’ll never pay the rent at this rate, let alone eat. It’s plain as plain we have to move somewhere, and Olivia’s offered to take us in—rent free.”

Maureen ran her fingers through her hair in frustration. “Yes, I know we have to move, but not there. We can’t make ourselves beholden to her or her sister—none of them. We can’t trust them. We must make it on our own.”

Katie Rose stood again and pushed her chair beneath the table. “I thought you’d say that. And I’m tellin’ you now that I won’t move to someplace lower and cheaper and dirtier, with who knows what or who livin’ above or beneath or beside us. Vermin live with vermin, and that’s what we’ll become if we go on like this. We’ve barely enough to keep body and soul together now—to keep ourselves clean and respectable enough to stay employed.”

“It will only be for a short time, until I can find a different position.” Maureen sat up. “What about the Triangle Factory? I could learn the sewing machines too. And I’m fair with fittin’—you said they needed more fitters. You could put in a word for me.”

Katie Rose colored. “They need more fitters, but girls are standin’ in line for those jobs. They pay better than runnin’ the machines, and they’ll not appreciate someone waltzin’ in off the street and snaggin’ the position from them—especially not Irish.”

“Does it matter what they think?”

“It matters to me. Those girls are my friends. They and their families need the work as much as we do. And I think it’s best if we don’t work at the same place.”

“But I’m your sister.”

Katie Rose turned and crossed the room. She pulled back the tattered curtain and looked into the darkened glass. Maureen watched her sister’s reflection as she waited, watched her features change, wondered what brewed in her thirteen-year-old head. She sighed at last, unable to guess. “Come away from the window.”

“I’ve decided.” Katie Rose spoke quietly. “With you or without you, I’m goin’ to Olivia’s. We came to America for a different life, and I mean to have it. I won’t become like you. I won’t crawl, and I won’t do the things you’ve done to get what you want.”

“The things I’ve done? What I want?” Maureen could not believe her ears.

Katie Rose faced her sister. “I saw you do it in Ireland. I know you took money from that man at Ellis Island—you told me yourself. And now, now that we can’t make ends meet, you’d rather move into some deeper, darker hovel than take the decent hand that’s offered us.”

Maureen gasped, anger and shame both rising within.

“Well, I’ll not do it, and if you persist, I’ll not have anythin’ to do with you.”

Maureen stood. “What I did in Ireland I did so you and Mam could keep a roof over your heads and food in your bellies! I did it so you wouldn’t be sleepin’ in ditches and barns after Da died or be driven off to the poorhouse.” She shoved the chair between them aside. “I did it because Lord Orthbridge was bigger and stronger than me and I had no other choice. And I did it with no thanks or pity from you or Mam! Not once!”

Katie Rose’s face took an ugly, grim turn. “That’s a lie, Maureen O’Reilly. May God strike you for such a lie!”

“Did you think Lord Orthbridge let you both squat in a cottage not our own because he took pity? He was not well acquainted with pity!”

Katie Rose began to tremble and shouted back, “He did it because Mam paid him with her body and soul, regular as clockwork every Monday and Thursday night that he stumbled home from the pub. She paid him in her bed, to keep us and to keep you in your fine, grand life—you with your feathered bed and painted walls and clothes and shoes and more food than we saw all the year!”

Maureen felt a rush of waters through her body, a dinning in her brain.

“So don’t tell me that you did anythin’ worth anythin’! Mam did it all, and you did whatever you did because you wanted it. You wanted him crawlin’ over you and whatever luxuries he gave you for it!”

Maureen knew her head moved from side to side in sick denial. She knew that Katie Rose had it wrong—terribly, terribly wrong. Unless . . .

“And now you want to pull me down with you—when I’ve a chance to be good, to lead a good life, and an offer to help me have those luxuries you enjoyed. Only I’ll have them without your sin!”

Lord Orthbridge played us all for fools, two ends against the middle, knowin’—bankin’—that we’d never confess the horror of our shame to one another. “It’s not true . . . I never knew he went to Mam.”

Katie Rose glared as though she didn’t believe her.

“Those nights he frequented the pub—they were my only nights of reprieve after Lady Catherine died. But I never suspected he—he never told me, and Mam never did. He took my wages for your rent and food all those years, and he took me after Lady Catherine died because he said the money wasn’t enough for—Oh, why didn’t she stop him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Mam made me swear.” Katie Rose turned her face to the wall; Maureen could not tell if she cried.

“But how could she keep such a secret in the village?” Everyone knew what he did to me. They never let me forget!

“They knew.”

“But they treated Mam with respect.”

“Because ‘a husband has his rights’—that’s what Mam said.”

“A husband . . . his rights?” Maureen could not believe her ears. “He had no rights to force her! Mam was Da’s widow, alone and defenseless. He took his liberties because he was landlord and powerful, not his rights!”

Katie Rose stared blankly at Maureen a long time, so long Maureen whispered, “Katie Rose?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“That he was Mam’s lover—long, long ago.”

Maureen felt the blood drain from her face. “What?”

“Before she and Da—your da—ever married. They’d bed and wed in a makeshift ceremony in the woods. But Lady Catherine wouldn’t have it, Mam being a country girl and no title, no dowry—a nothin’. Lady Catherine cast her out.”

Maureen stood, the room falling around her.

“And so she married Da. But Mam said she still saw Lord Orthbridge from time to time.” Now Katie Rose cried. “She said she could not help herself.”

“No.”

“And that’s how it was that Da had his stroke—when he found them together. He’d not known before. All the village had known, Mam said, but Da had been too grateful to have a family of any sort to heed, and they’d had the decency not to openly shame him.”

Maureen could not believe the slander, and yet it forced itself with steel-edged clarity into her brain.

“And that’s how I was born.”

Maureen sat down again, her knees weak, her stomach broiling, her wits seeking a mooring.

“Lord Orthbridge is my father, not Da. That’s why Aunt Verna insisted you take me away. Because Gavin Orthbridge is my brother—my half brother.” Katie Rose faltered, then went on. “Lord Orthbridge wouldn’t touch his daughter, but there was no tellin’ if he’d keep his son away or be able to.”

A minute, two minutes passed as Maureen tried to put the tale in order, but it swirled and tumbled through her heart, her mind, her limbs.

“Did you not notice that my hair and eyes were nothin’ like yours and Da’s—nor even Mam’s? Did you never wonder?”

Maureen swallowed, trying to push down the bile in her throat.

“Have you nothin’ to say, then?”

“I didn’t know.” All that time, all that time he used me night after night, he was sneakin’ off to do the same to my mother—but no, he didn’t rape her. She willingly went to him, let him come to her. She carried his child. Katie Rose is his child—and Da found them together! Da found them together, and it brought on the stroke that shaped the rest of his days! She couldn’t bear the tale; she couldn’t bear to take it in but, unable to grasp it, did not dare to let it go. Aunt Verna’s words coursed through her veins: “She was not a good wife, my sister.”

“I won’t allow myself to be caught in that tangled web that you and Mam wove—which is exactly what will happen if we stay here. We’ll be workin’ for Mr. Crudgers or someone like him. I won’t do it! I won’t!”

Yes, a web—so tangled, so convoluted. But I must protect her. She’s his daughter . . . she’s not Da’s girl, but . . . I must protect her.

“You suit yourself, Maureen. I’m goin’ to—”

“You can’t,” Maureen whispered. “You can’t,” she pleaded more loudly. “Don’t you see that you’d become beholden to them as well? The Meitlands are the Orthbridges of New York City!”

“What I see is that you don’t want to go—you and your pride—and you don’t want me to go without you. You fear I’ll come above you. And you don’t like that, do you? You don’t think I’m equal to you.”

“Katie Rose! It’s not like that!”

“You despise Mam’s love for Lord Orthbridge. And now that you know I’m not Da’s daughter like you—you so noble and high . . . but I’m the daughter of a lord! But to you, all you can see is that I’m his dirty leavin’s! That’s what you think, isn’t it?” Tears streamed down Katie Rose’s face.

“No! I never thought such a thing!”

“Are you goin’ to tell Olivia?”

“Tell Olivia? Why would I—?”

“Are you goin’ to tell her I’m not Da’s daughter, that I’ve no rights to her protection?”

“Of course not. I’m just tryin’ to take it all in—”

“Well, I don’t care. I’ll deny it. I’ve as much right to the Wakefields as you do—not by Da’s blood, but by all Mam did.” Katie Rose picked up her plate and threw her meal into the slop basin. “I don’t know what to believe about you anymore, Maureen. You say one thing—as if you’re so concerned about doin’ what’s right, what’s best for us—and then you go and do another. You made us beholden to that Jaime Flynn, and you got us stuck in this hovel! You forged a letter and you lied about the Wakefields.” She glared at her sister. “You lost your good job, and you refused to take the Lord’s Communion, for pity’s sake! You’ve spurned the best man we know, the man I . . . I love, and turned your back on good and decent people. And now that horrid man is comin’ to our door for—for—” But she couldn’t finish.

“Katie Rose, we’ll move. I promise. But the Meitland man is mixed up with the disappearin’ women; I’m sure of it. I don’t want you near him!”

“So you said before, but you’ve no proof of it.” Katie Rose stepped back. “How do I know that you’ve not spun that tale? People don’t just disappear with no one cryin’ the alarm.” She tilted her head and looked squarely at Maureen. “You’re tryin’ to scare me. You are, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You’re tryin’ to frighten me from acceptin’ Olivia’s offer so I’ll stay with you. Well, it won’t work, and I won’t stay.”

Maureen saw the light of decision in her sister’s eyes. Whatever I say she will discount. Whatever I say will add fuel to her fire. Maureen sighed. Her head splitting, she turned away, knowing that only a miracle could heal their breach.