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Tara Brent the evening was already a nightmare. Short, pudgy little Eastwood was going on and on about how late she was, about how he needed her on the floor.
    She had made a mistake. Oh, God, she had made a mistake coming here!
    But she was desperate for money. Money was her only escape. Money was passage aboard a steamer, somewhere north, anywhere north, far away where she could hide for a lifetime.
    Where
they
could never find her.
    New Orleans, she had heard, was the city to come to first. It was a place to find work without questions being asked. There were all manner of folk in the city, Creoles, Spanish, English, southerners, and northerners.
    It was the gateway to oblivion.
    And so she had come, and an old hag-woman in the street had directed her here, and Eastwood had given her work immediately, a job running whiskey and food around to his card-sharking customers. He’d told her that she could make good money taking the gentlemen up to the tiny room he’d given her in the attic, and she’d firmly told him that she didn’t take gentlemen anywhere. He laughed and told her that she’d get to it eventually, but he didn’t really care, he’d take her on just because she had a classy look about her. Maybe he’d even convince her that he’d make a good “gentleman” for her to take up the stairs eventually himself.
    She’d be drawn and quartered first. But she didn’t have to say so, because he had hired her, and so far, the few nights she’d been here, he’d left her alone. She shouldn’t have spent so long wandering the flower markets and gazing at the Mississippi. She wouldn’t have been late coming in for the night, and he’d probably notbe yelling at her now. If she wasn’t careful, he’d be pressing the issue of her usefulness.
    But a number of people had assured her that it was a reputable place. If she had just been either a little less naive—or desperate—she might have realized that these reassuring people weren’t all that reputable themselves!
    And if this was an establishment of any respectability whatsoever, she shuddered to think of what was not so reputable down by the docks.
    She gasped as Eastwood suddenly clutched her by the arms. “Are you listening to me! I run this place,
you
don’t! You’ve already told me in your high-handed way that you won’t have men up the stairs. And I went ahead and figured you were so good looking that it didn’t matter. But—”
    “Get your hands off of me!” she said icily, her words low, but still a dead-set demand.
    Eastwood obeyed her. His hands fell from her arms. “Get out there!” he roared. “Get to work if you want wages from me!”
    Wages! Slaves probably received more for their efforts!
    But she
was
going to work for those wages. She had to get away. Working for Eastwood was better than going back. Anything was better than going back.
    Death might be better than going back.
    And going back might well mean death, she reminded herself.
    She slipped off her cloak and hurried into the kitchen. Eastwood was a tyrant, but his two Creole cooks were wonderfully nice men, and Emma, the plump Irishwoman who ran the kitchen, had a way with her that somehow made working tolerable.
    It didn’t matter, did it? As soon as she had earned her passage, she was gone!
    And all that she had to do was pray that
they
didn’t find her first!
    “There you are,
ma belle chérie!
” Gaston told her, pulling bread from the oven. Like Emma he was as plump as a pillow. He liked his own cooking. But he was exceedingly kind, and she offered him a shy smile. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
    He waved a hand in the air with Gallic philosophy. “We are fine on the food. However, there is a table of card players shouting for whiskey. Four men. You will find them.”
    She nodded, turning about to obey. She crashed into Marie, one of the pretty little Creole girls who worked the downstairs—and the upstairs.
    “I’ve men shouting from every direction!” she