Page 6 of Tempting Mr. Vincent

She laughed. It was small and startled and the first sound of its kind she had made in a fortnight. Remy’s eyebrows rose, and something flickered across his face before he smoothed it away.

“There,” he said. “That wasn’t so difficult.”

Remy had just settled into the papers he needed to read before Thursday’s council meeting when Winston appeared to announce that Baron and Baroness Kilnworthy had come to call.

Of course they had. Remy had known James Kilnworthy for exactly eight days, and in that time the man had involved him in a kidnapping, a threat against the most profitable brothel in Storyville, and the purchase of a young woman he now had no earthly idea what to do with.

“Show them into the front parlor,” Remy said. “And ask Miss—” He stopped. Laurell had no name he could safely use in front of the servants, and half the staff still believed the woman upstairs was called Rachel. “Ask Mrs. Curry to bring our guest down.”

The baron came in on a gust of cold air with his wife on his arm, and Remy found himself the recipient of a handshake considerably warmer than the one he’d received at their first meeting.

“Mayor Vincent. I hope we’re not intruding.”

“You are, and I’ve nothing better to do.” Remy gestured them toward the fire. “Baroness. You look a great deal better than the last time I saw you.”

Lilian Kilnworthy laughed. She was small and dark-eyed and rather lovelier than he’d registered, in the chaos of that night. “The last time you saw me I’d been carried out of a brothel over my husband’s shoulder, sir. It would be difficult to look worse.”

“Ann is settled?”

“In the kitchens,” James said. “Cook has decided she’s a personal gift from the Almighty. The child hasn’t stopped eating since Tuesday.”

“And she will not be moved from the kitchen window,” Lilian said. “It looks up the street toward your corner, and she has appointed herself a sort of sentry. She can tell you which of your neighbors goes out at what hour.”

The door opened and Laurell came in, and Remy watched the baroness’s whole bearing change. She was on her feet before Laurell had crossed the threshold, both hands out.

“You’re Laurell.”

Laurell stopped. “I—yes.”

“I’m Lilian.” She took Laurell’s hands as though they’d known each other twenty years. “Ann talks of nothing else. She says you gave her your supper when Giselle wouldn’t feed her, and that you told her stories through the wall.”

Color rose in Laurell’s cheeks. “She’s safe? Truly?”

“She’s safe. She has a bed and a wage and a horrible little cat she found in the alley, which my husband has permitted to live in the house.”

“It catches mice,” James said mildly.

“It catches nothing at all. It’s the laziest animal in Louisiana.” Lilian drew Laurell toward the settee and sat her down as though the room belonged to her, and Remy, watching from the hearth, felt something in his chest ease at the sight of Laurell’s shoulders coming down from around her ears for the first time since she’d entered his house.

The two women had their heads together within a minute. He caught fragments—the second floor at Giselle’s, the woman called Marguerite who’d been kind, the balcony Lilian had climbed down. Whatever passed between them, it was a language he didn’t speak, and he was glad enough to leave them to it.

James joined him by the fire, warming his hands.

“That’s a weight off her,” the baron said quietly. “Lilian’s hardly slept since Ann told us. She kept saying that girl’s in that house because we got out.”

“The girl is out of the house.”

“And into yours.” James glanced at him sidelong. “What do you mean to do with her?”

“That,” Remy said, “is the question of the hour. She can’t go home. Her father owes Giselle a gambling debt and would sell her again by Sunday. She has no money, no husband, and no skill on earth beyond running a household she doesn’t have.” He paused, then decided the baron had earned the truth. “And she’s carrying a child.”

James went very still. “Whose?”

“Some young buck who promised her marriage in a garden and denied every word of it when the consequences arrived. She won’t give me his name.” Remy heard the edge come into his own voice and disliked it. “She was to be handed to Abelard Gauthier in three days’ time. In that condition.”

“Christ.”

“Quite.”