“Don’t be dumb, they never show up to these—”
“Did you steal something?”
The chorus of voices was overwhelming. But they weren’t sending her packing, at least not right away. Vivian tried to decide who to answer first. Her ankle throbbed, and she wished she hadn’t had that drink downstairs, no matter how much she had needed to blend in.
“It’s a fella, isn’t it?” the blonde asked, cutting through the clamor of her friends’ questions. Her mouth twisted as though she had tasted something sour. Her walking stick rested, point down, on the floor, and she spun it from the top with quick, deliberate flicks of her fingers in between her words. “You’re hiding from him.”
Vivian swallowed, not even trying to hide her nervousness. “Yeah.” Her voice came out in more of a whisper than she intended.
There was a murmur from the others, but the blonde, who was clearly the ringleader, gestured them into silence. She gave Vivian aconsidering look. “Someone you know, or someone who decided to give you a bit of trouble?”
“Second one,” Vivian said, feeling less shaky in the face of what she hoped was sympathy. “He and one of his pals… Well, I was trying to shake them, so I tagged along with all of you. I don’t know if I fooled ’em or not, but…”
A wild thought was forming in her head. Almost no one in the room of gamblers could have seen her face, could they? The two men chasing her would have seen her dress, and maybe remembered what her hair looked like. But beyond that, they’d have a hard time finding a single girl in a place like this.
If they didn’t have an easy way to recognize her anymore, she could disappear into the crowd and get far away from the lodge ball.
The women were still chattering in low voices, trying to decide whether someone should peek out the door or venture toward the stairs to see if someone was waiting.
“But even if we don’t see someone, that doesn’t mean the coast is clear,” one pointed out. “They could be just waiting for her to come downstairs.” A murmur of agreement went among her friends, and Vivian cleared her throat.
“Well, here’s the lucky thing,” she said, as all the faces turned toward her. “They don’t really know me. They just… I got a bad feeling, you know? So I tried to leave, and they didn’t like that.” She was relieved to see heads nodding around the room. “One of them tried to grab me, so I ran, and he and his pal came after me.”
“Lord almighty,” the blonde muttered. “Don’t they have better things to do with their time than chase a girl who’s clearly not interested?”
“You’d think,” Vivian said, letting them hear the shakiness in her voice. “But since I don’t know how good a look they got at me… I think, if one of you could switch clothes with me…” She trailed off, glancing hopefully around the room.
There was a painful moment of silence, and Vivian wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake. The blonde eyed her consideringly, and Vivian held her breath. She knew exactly who in the room she needed to convince.
Finally, the blonde turned toward her friends. “All right, girls. Who wants some new glad rags for the night?”
An eager, approving babble of voices began chiming in with suggestions about who was the right size for the swap. “It’s a shame you already bobbed your hair,” one said, shaking her head in disappointment. Vivian wasn’t sure if she should be offended or not until the girl added, “If it were long, we could have chopped it all off for you, and they’d never recognize you then!”
“Leila,” the blonde said at last. “I think you’re probably closest in size to our new friend here. What did you say your name was, sugar?”
“Vivian,” she replied, then bit her lip, wondering if she should have given them a fake name. But who were they going to tell?
“Vivian. All right. You and Leila swap.”
“I guess that makes the most sense,” Leila sighed, but she was smiling. “Easier to get home without a hassle in your getup, anyway. It’s a pretty dress. Though I was feeling all kinds of eye-catching in this one!”
Leila had golden-red curls pinned up around her head like a crown, topped with a spangled and feathered cap. Her costume was a stunning confection of silk and gauze, shimmering with so many rhinestones and glass pearls that Vivian’s fingers ached with the thought of sewing them all into place.
And it only covered about a third of Leila’s body.
Vivian nodded, hoping that her eyes weren’t as wide as they felt and trying not to look shocked. Judging by the giggles around the room, she wasn’t succeeding.
She had never been half-naked in public before, and she wasn’tlooking forward to the thought of the attention she could get, strutting through the lodge in an outfit that a vaudeville dancer would wear on stage. But they were right: there was almost no chance that the men from the gambling ring would recognize her in that getup. And they’d never look twice at Leila, with her bright hair, even if they did notice that her dress was the same color as they one they were looking for.
Vivian nodded. “There’s a tie in the back,” she said, gesturing over her shoulders. “Will someone help me with that?”
The blonde had chosen well; the burlesque costume fit Vivian like a glove. Her dress—she’d have to pay Bea back for it, but there was no way around that—was a little too short on Leila. But it wasn’t bad enough that anyone would notice.
Vivian stared at herself in the mirror. She had never thought of herself as prudish, but now she had to resist the urge to cross her arms across her midsection. She didn’t even want to think about how much would be exposed when she walked and the silk panels of the skirt fluttered around her legs.
But she barely recognized herself in the costume, especially when the pirate queen, who was taller than the rest—he had shed his hat and wig for the moment and introduced himself as Archie—helped her pin Leila’s feathered cap on top of her hair. That meant the people searching for her—God, she hoped they weren’t still searching for her—probably wouldn’t recognize her either.
“There you go, sweetheart,” Archie said, smoothing down her bob with expert fingers before settling his own hair and hat back in place. “You look smashing.”
