Page 5 of Tempting Mr. Vincent

“Miss?” Mrs. Curry stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Stratmore has come to measure you. She’s waiting upstairs.”

Laurell’s stomach dropped. “Measure me for what?”

“Your wardrobe, dear.”

“I don’t need a wardrobe.” She rose, smoothing her ill-fitting skirts with hands that had gone cold. “I have this.”

“You have that,” Mrs. Curry agreed placidly, “and it don’t fit you, and it come from that woman’s house. Come along.”

The pink room had been transformed. Bolts of fabric lay draped across the bed—wool in a deep forest green, a blue so dark it was nearly black, a soft dove gray, muslin and lawn and something shot through with a rose sheen that made Laurell’s throat ache to look at. A tall woman with iron-colored hair and a tape measure round her neck was holding a length of the green up to the window, frowning at the light.

“Ah.” Mrs. Stratmore turned. “There you are. Take off that dreadful thing so I can see what I’m working with.”

“Mrs. Stratmore, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“There hasn’t.” The seamstress was already unwinding the tape. “The mayor sent a girl round at nine o’clock this morning offering me double, and I sent my two apprentices home from another job to make room for it. Arms out, if you please.”

Laurell didn’t move. “I can’t accept this.”

Something in her voice must have carried, because Mrs. Stratmore’s hands stilled and her sharp gaze softened by a fraction. “Child. I’ve dressed half the ladies in this city and a fair number of the women in Storyville, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. There’s no shame in a dress. The shame belongs to whoever put you in a position to need one.” She flicked her fingers. “Arms.”

Laurell raised her arms.

It went on for the better part of an hour, and every minute of it made her feel worse. Six day dresses. Two evening gowns. A walking dress, a coat with fur at the collar, boots to be ordered from a man on Canal Street, gloves, stockings, three nightgowns, a wrapper. Petticoats. A hat. When Mrs. Stratmore knelt to take the measure of her waist a second time and said briskly, “I’ll leave the seams generous, shall I,” Laurell felt her face go scalding, and knew Remy had told her.

He knew. The seamstress knew. Mrs. Curry surely knew. In a week the whole city would know, and none of them had been paid for their silence, as Mrs. Stratmore had been paid for her thread.

By the time the woman packed her things and swept out, promising two dresses by Thursday, Laurell’s hands had begun to shake.

She found Remy in his study. He looked up from a stack of correspondence, and the pen went still in his hand.

“You mustn’t buy me those things,” she said.

“Good afternoon to you as well.”

“Mayor Vincent—”

“Remy.”

“Remy.” The name still felt too large in her mouth. “I don’t know what’s to become of me. Neither do you. You said as much last night. In a month, or a week, you may have found somewhere to send me, and then you’ll have spent a fortune dressing a woman you’ll never see again.” Her chin came up, though it cost her. “I won’t have it on my conscience. I have enough there already.”

Remy set down his pen. He rose, came around the desk, and leaned back against the edge of it with his arms folded, studying her with an expression she couldn’t read at all.

“Do you know what I paid Giselle?”

She flinched. “Eight hundred dollars.”

“Eight hundred dollars,” he agreed. “Against which a winter coat is a rounding error. Now. Two things, and then we’ll have no more of this.” He held up a finger. “The first is that you are not going back to that house. Not next week, not in six months, not if the mayor’s office burns down around me. Whatever else is uncertain, that isn’t.”

Laurell’s breath caught.

“The second”—a second finger—“is that when you do leave this house, whenever that may be and wherever you may go, you will not walk out of my door wearing something Madam Giselle put on your back. I find I have strong feelings on the subject.” He tilted his head. “Consider it vanity, if it makes it easier to swallow. I’m a public man. I can’t have it said I let a guest go about in a dress two sizes too small.”

It was so plainly a kindness dressed up as pride that Laurell felt her eyes sting, and she looked hard at the carpet until the feeling passed.

“Thank you,” she managed.

“You needn’t thank me every quarter hour, either. It’s exhausting for us both.”