could never hope to meet.
“All right, Laney. What happened? You might as well tell me whatever it is you’re hiding behind that scowl.”
Sighing, she lowered to a brocade settee and gave up pretending everything had gone as planned. “I went to the Hotel Dupree to meet Judge Greene at the agreed upon time...”
She stopped midsentence, unsure how to continue. How could she tell Katherine about Marc Dupree and their strange run-in? “I don’t know if you should hear this, Katherine. You’re not like the rest of us.”
“Of course I am.”
“No, you’re not.” Laney softened her words with a smile. “Your mother only turned to prostitution after your father died. She never made you live among it. That alone makes you different. You’re also formally educated. You went to that prestigious school back East. What was it called?”
“Miss Lindsay’s Select School for Young Ladies.” Katherine sat beside Laney and set the reticule between them. “But that was my past. I’m here now, as much a part of Charity House as the rest of the orphans.”
“Not by choice. You’d still be living in Boston, probably married to a wealthy gentleman, if that school hadn’t expelled you when they found out about your mother’s profession. Even now, you could get a teaching job in any number of places.”
Eyes blinking rapidly, Katherine swiped at her wet cheeks. “But Charity House is my home. Where I belong. I’d do anything to keep this orphanage running.”
“As long as it was ethical.”
“Well, yes, that goes without saying.” Katherine took Laney’s hand. “All right, enough stalling. Let’s have the rest of it. You went to the hotel, and...”
Laney bit her bottom lip as she searched for the right words. Katherine might have been forced to return to Denver, but she was still a product of her years back East, educated, moral, raised with Christian values, an example for the others. Would she understand the desperation that had led Laney to withhold information from Dupree?
She didn’t want to find out. Not tonight. “And...the judge handed over the money. His debt is canceled. Charity House is saved. The end.”
“So, it’s that simple.”
Laney drew a quick breath of air. “Yes.”
“Don’t you think I deserve to hear the rest, the portion you’re hiding from me? Please, I’ve lived with the fear of losing Charity House just as deeply as you have. Maybe more.” A shadow fell over her face. “I have no skills, no real life experiences to speak of.”
“You have an education. You could teach school, just as you’ve taught me.”
“Who would hire a woman like me, an infamous madam’s daughter?” Katherine shut her eyes a moment and sighed heavily. “I have nowhere else to go. Now convince me I have nothing to worry about.”
Taking a deep breath, Laney began her tale, but Katherine cut her off almost before she begun. “The hotel owner witnessed the transaction?”
“It gets worse.” Laney proceeded to tell her friend the rest.
When she reached the end, Katherine gaped at her for several long seconds. “He confiscated the money? But why?”
“He runs a proper hotel, Katherine, something I can’t fault him for.” Dupree, for all his other unsavory characteristics, was clearly a man of integrity. Hard on others, true, but probably just as hard on himself.
Before she started sympathizing with the cad, she shook her head and continued. “When he saw me speaking with Judge Greene and then witnessed money changing he hands, he thought...well, he thought the worst.”
“Oh, Laney.”
“I never admitted to any wrongdoing. Why would I? I’d done nothing improper. But I couldn’t reveal my reason for meeting with Judge Greene, per his adamant request. Nor did I try to dissuade Dupree’s misconception of my character.” And that had been wrong of her, dreadfully wrong. “When he locked me in his office—”
“He didn’t.”
“He did.”
“But I don’t understand.” Katherine shook her head. “How did you get the money back?”
She touched the reticule, pulled on one of the strings, then the other, toyed with them. The gesture reminded her of the way Dupree had captured her hair around his finger, how he’d stared at it for an endless moment, and how—
She cut off the rest of her thoughts and focused on answering Katherine’s question. “I had to...um...climb out of his office window, hence the change in attire.”
“Oh, Laney.”
She glossed over the part about breaking into his safe, making sure to tone down her use of physical violence to make her final escape from the alleyway.
“Oh, Laney.”
“Would you stop saying ‘Oh, Laney’ in that disenchanted tone of yours? You sound like a shocked, elderly aunt instead of a young woman barely twenty years old.”
“Well, someone needs to think like an adult.” Katherine jumped to her feet and paced through the room. After her second pass, she turned back to face Laney. “Tell me more about this hotel owner.”
A shudder quickened Laney’s pulse. Dupree had been a formidable foe, far more clever than the banker she’d sparred with this morning. Prescott incited only disdain in her heart. While Dupree called up a mixture of emotions that confused her, and blunted the edge she usually relied on to aid her in sticky situations.
“I never want to see that man again. He’s judgmental, arrogant and enjoys jumping to conclusions without a shred of evidence.”
Eyebrows traveling upward, Katherine wrapped her arms across her waist and said, “Not a shred?”
Laney broke eye contact. “All right, maybe I sent his mind in a few wrong directions.”
“I read in the Denver Chronicle that he’s impossibly handsome.”
“You have no idea.”
Silence fell over them as each considered the events of the evening from their own perspective.
“Laney?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think Mr. Dupree will leave the situation alone now that you’ve taken the money?”
“I...” A shudder of apprehension passed through her. “I don’t know.”
“Will he still try to confront Judge Greene without the evidence in hand?”
She could lie. She could pretend matters weren’t as dire as they really were. Their long-running friendship deserved better. “He might.”
Hands trembling, Katherine sank back on the settee.
