If Annabel’s friend had spotted Rokesby so easily in the hallway, she suspected he wasn’t wearing a costume. So she let her eyes sweep past the elaborately dressed royals and sailors. She spotted a few menin suits, but one of them had a beard. Another was busy necking with someone in an elaborate white wig at least half a foot high.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t Rokesby.XXwas as likely to be an affair he was having as it was anything else. Vivian tried to spot the couple again as her partner caught her around the waist to spin them in a tight circle, their steps slowing gradually as the music wound its way through the final bars of the song. If it was, that would mean he had been with someone the day Buchanan died, and if she could figure out who—
Vivian forgot what she was thinking as her partner slowed them to a stop. She ended facing the far side of the ballroom and a short gentleman in a loudly patterned checked suit, the sides of his hair combed over the bald spot on top. He had just extracted himself from a conversation, and she could see the scowl on his face from across the room.
“I was right about those fast feet of yours, pretty girl,” her partner was just murmuring as the applause died down and the band launched into a foxtrot. “What do you say we go for another—”
“Wish I could,” Vivian said quickly. “But I’m meeting some friends. Maybe another time?” She flashed him a smile as she slipped out of his encircling arm. Ithadbeen a fun dance, but she had other things to think about.
The little man in the checked suit was hurrying around the edge of the ballroom; Vivian expected him to head toward the main doors. But instead, he went toward one of the alcoves that were tucked along the walls. Most of them held chairs where dancers could rest their feet, watch the crowd, and steal a private moment or two. The one that the scowling man was heading toward was empty except for a silk screen, beautifully painted with birds and blossoming tree branches. Vivian, still trailing yards behind him, frowned in surprise as the man ducked around the edge of the screen and disappeared.
She stopped at the edge of the alcove, waiting for him to come out. When he didn’t, Vivian glanced around the room, wondering if anyoneelse had noticed his disappearance. But no one was watching; they were all too busy with their own business for the night.
Vivian waited a moment, wondering if she dared. But if he was the man who had been talking with Rokesby earlier, that was something to go on when currently she had nothing else. Gritting her teeth, she walked into the alcove and ducked around the screen.
The space behind it was deeper than she had expected, and there was a door at the end of it. When Vivian inched it open a crack, there was light coming up, and a staircase leading down. The building had a damn basement, she realized. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
She could hear faint voices from the bottom of the stairs, almost drowned out by the music from behind her. There was more than one person down there.
Vivian hesitated only a moment. Should she find Leo and tell him where she was going? If she got into trouble, it would be good for someone to know where she had gone.
But that might take too long. What if someone locked the door? What if the people down there left before she got back? What if Mags got too interested and decided to crash whatever private party was happening?
She didn’t want to just stand there, waiting for someone to find her. If she went down there and needed an excuse for appearing, she could always pretend to be a drunk partygoer who had found her way into the basement by accident. It wasn’t an unlikely story. She had gotten herself out of difficult jams before.
Vivian started down the steps, closing the door behind her.
There were electric lights in the stairwell—not too bright, but enough that she could see where she was going, even with the door closed. The noise of the ballroom grew more distant as she went down, the murmur of voices becoming louder. They weren’t angry voices, she was relieved to hear. And there were men and women both, which meant she hopefully wouldn’t be too out of place.
There was another door at the bottom of the staircase. Before she could talk herself out of it or think through all the things that could go wrong, Vivian turned the knob.
The voices were louder here, but the room was almost completely empty. It was also smaller than she expected, a passageway more than anything else. Opposite her was a doorway with a red velvet curtain pulled across it. The voices came from the other side, a polite murmur. Between her and whoever was on the other side stood a man in a black suit.
He watched her as she let the door fall closed behind her, his face impassive, not moving or saying anything. Just waiting. Vivian’s eyes darted from one end of the room to the other before settling back on him. Beside him stood a table shaped like a very short column with a black lacquered box on top.
Vivian swallowed, then decided that there was nothing to be lost by being friendly. “Hi,” she said, giving the man a big smile.
Was she imagining the little flicker of a smile around the corners of his mouth in response? God, she hoped not. “Good evening, madam,” the man replied gravely, giving her a slow, deliberate nod.
Another beat of silence. Vivian resisted the urge to bounce up and down on her heels. “Well?” she said at last, gesturing toward the curtain behind him. “Are you going to let me in?”
This time there was no smile. Instead, a frown appeared between his brows. “I believe madam has forgotten to give her passphrase,” he said, speaking with a deliberate pace that Vivian recognized. She had used it often enough herself with customers who’d had one drink too many and were having trouble following directions from the people trying to stop them from barging into the wrong washroom.
Passphrase. “Of course,” Vivian said, while her stomach churned with panic. “My passphrase. Golly, they’re hard to remember after a few glasses of champagne, aren’t they?”
“I can imagine they would be,” the man said. He was still firmly planted between her and whatever was happening behind that curtain.
She gave him another bright smile. “Don’t you think that, just this once, you could—”
“As always, madam, rules are rules,” he said, shaking his head. He gestured toward the door behind her. “Perhaps tonight you should—”
“Wait,” Vivian said quickly, cutting him off. If this was Corny Rokesby’sXX,there was no way she was giving up now. “I remember it, I promise.”
XX. EachXXentry in his appointment book had something written next to it.
“It was…”
Are those poems next to them?Mags had asked. Not poems, but…
