“May I hope you’re happy, Mitzi?” he asked, pulling himself from his thoughts when he realized he’d been silent for far too long.
“Ecstatically so,” Mitzi said. “I have two daughters and three boys who keep me on my toes.”
“You have five children?”
She sent him a wink. “Proof that I do, indeed, love my Thomas.” Giving his arm another squeeze, Mitzi hurried off, calling over her shoulder that she expected a dance at some point that evening.
Realizing he needed to get back to the receiving line before his mother noticed he was missing, Arthur spent the next thirty minutes greeting guests and checking the doorway time and again for signs of Eunice, but to no avail.
“I think that’s the last guest,” Lloyd said, taking hold of Arthur’s arm. “Hazel told me to tell you not to worry about Eunice. She went through the line right after you disappeared with Mitzi.” He arched a brow. “May I assume things were finally sorted out between the two of you?”
“If you’re asking if I realized I was an idiot about all that happened with her, yes. But returning to Eunice?”
“Eunice arrived back at the boardinghouse before Hazel, Doris, and Alice left to come here.”
“What was Hazel doing at the boardinghouse?”
“Making certain Eunice was going to show up, per my request.”
“You are an extraordinary grandfather, you know that, don’t you?”
Lloyd beamed. “Of course I do. So don’t worry because she’ll be here soon.”
Exchanging grins, Arthur walked with his grandfather into the ballroom, spotting Daphne and her husband, Herman Henderson, standing next to a beautiful woman with black hair who was withMr. Nicholas Quinn, a gentleman Arthur was casually acquainted with because they’d once belonged to a few of the same clubs.
After getting introduced to Gabriella Goodhue Quinn, Nicholas’s wife, and then watching her sprint out of the ballroom, saying something about time being of the essence, he turned to Daphne, who sent him a sad shake of her head.
“Unlike me, Gabriella still finds herself tossing up her accounts at the oddest of times.”
After congratulating Daphne on her upcoming addition to her family, which Daphne said would arrive in the spring, Arthur excused himself to check on the other Bleecker Street ladies. All of those ladies had been given invitations to attend the ball as guests, but many of them had refused, instead agreeing to attend dressed as servants in order to preserve their identities in case a day came when they needed to infiltrate a society event and couldn’t risk being recognized.
He stopped beside Ann, who had come as the companion of a society matron but who was, at the moment, in the company of Cooper.
“You’re looking beautiful tonight, Ann,” he told her, kissing her gloved hand and earning a scowl from Cooper.
“Don’t mind Cooper,” Ann said. “He’s grumpy.”
“Because?”
“I can’t settle on a date for our wedding.”
Arthur blinked. “You’re getting married?”
Cooper rolled his eyes. “I asked her, she said yes, but now she can’t pin down exactly when she has time to get married.”
“I don’t want to leave the agency in the lurch, and if I get married, I won’t be able to be a paid companion anymore, which will limit the gossip I’ll have access to.” She leaned closer to Arthur and lowered her voice. “Phillip and Elsy, not that this is well known, are engaged and are planning on getting married in the near future. That means she’ll no longer be able to be a paid companion, which means we’re going to have to find more agents to take over roles we outgrow, but roles that are imperative to the agency.”
“I’ll be drafting an advertisement for more inquiry agents tomorrow,” Cooper said firmly. “And it was hardly fair of Phillip not to give me adequate notice about what he was intending because then I would have asked you before he asked Elsy in order to avoid this particular problem.”
“Since Phillip ended up abandoning his grand scheme after he realized Elsy was growing impatient and simply popped the question out of the blue one day, I doubt he had the foresight to give anyone adequate notice. I’m relatively convinced his proposal surprised him as much as it did Elsy.” Ann smiled. “Elsy was thrilled, of course, and burst into tears, and Phillip had to take the reins because Elsy was driving the agency’s carriage at the time and inadvertently let the horses have their heads. They apparently ended up a few miles from where they were going before Phillip was able to bring the horses under control again.”
Arthur nodded to Cooper. “Perhaps you should add a position for another carriage driver in that advertisement you’re going to place.”
“Elsy would have my head if I did that because she enjoys driving the carriage,” Cooper said right as Georgette and Douglas entered the ballroom, which immediately erupted in polite applause from all the assembled guests.
“I told my grandfather I’d help him present the lovebirds to everyone,” Arthur said, exchanging grins with Cooper and Ann before he strode away.
He reached Georgette’s side and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
