Two
“Mrs. Buchanan’s not here.”
Vivian Kelly, twenty-four years old and feeling three times her age, her feet aching from trudging twenty blocks between deliveries and her arms limp from the weight of three dress boxes, bit the inside of her cheek. The housekeeper didn’t deserve her impatience or her anger. And the woman who did—the one who had insisted that her gowns be completed and delivered a week early—wouldn’t see anything but a polite shopgirl when she finally arrived, either. Not if Vivian wanted to keep her job.
She arranged her face into a smile. “Does she want me to leave the dresses? The hem and shoulders need to be checked, but if she wants her own maid to do that—”
“I don’t know,” the housekeeper said, already distracted by the sound of an argument in the next room.
Vivian stood in the tradesmen’s entrance, shivering from the wind that snaked around her ankles and crept up her stockinged legs. It could snow tonight, judging by that wind. She didn’t want to trudge back here in the snow.
“Just come in. You can wait a bit, can’t you? God willing she’ll be back soon.” The housekeeper cast a glance over her shoulder as the sound of the argument grew louder. “You, with the red hair! What’s your name, Lena? Take this girl to the upstairs parlor. And tell me the minute Mrs. Buchanan is back. She needs to—”
The shouting grew, along with something that sounded like a whole stack of pots toppling to the ground. “Lord almighty, I hate opening a new house,” the housekeeper muttered. “Go with Lena, young lady. I can’t be bothered figuring out what to do with you just now.”
Lena, a maid with brilliant red hair and the expected number of freckles scattered across her nose to go with it, pulled a face as the housekeeper disappeared. “Sounds like the new cook won’t last any longer than the first one,” she said, shrugging. “Hurry up, will you? I’ve got better things to do than play nursemaid.”
Quiet descended as they made their way upstairs, the sound of servants concealed, like their presence, behind closed doors. Vivian hid a yawn behind her hand as she followed.
Delivering dresses instead of making them meant she no longer spent hours hunched over a sewing machine or a tray of beads. But her days still started early, and her nights often didn’t end until two or three in the morning. She stumbled a little as her feet sank into the plush carpet that ran up the stairs, and she blinked rapidly, looking around to keep herself alert.
The Fifth Avenue mansion was like so many she had visited, deliveries in hand: sweeping ceilings, marble floors, glass windows like works of art. Most of them were gilded, decorated, and filled to within an inch of their lives, temples to success and excess both. But this one felt half-finished, its tables bare of ornaments, paintings leaning against the walls instead of hung on them.
Lena caught her glancing around. “New house,” she said, by way of explanation as they made their way to the second floor. “Well, old house, but new family in it. They’re still settling in.”
“Did you come with them?” Vivian asked, glad the other girl was willing to make conversation. She hated walking through big houses in silence. It reminded her too much of life in the orphan home.
Lena shook her head as she swung open a heavy, paneled door. “Most of us are new, too. Which is why they’re all shouting at each other downstairs.”
“Are they at it again?” a mild voice asked from inside the room.
Both girls jumped, and a stricken look crossed Lena’s face as she dropped a quick curtsy. “Beg your pardon, Mr. Buchanan. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s all right.” The older gentleman didn’t move from the wingback chair where he was installed, legs propped on a footstool and a cigar between two fingers, the window behind him cracked to let fresh air in and smoke out. But there was a smile on his face as he winked at the maid. “God knows we’ve been a mess since the house was opened, and we likely will be for several weeks yet. D’you think the new cook will last?”
Lena giggled, her blush nearly as bright as her hair. “Not if Mrs. Mulligan has anything to say about it, sir.”
“And even I don’t dare cross Mrs. Mulligan.” He made a little shooing motion with his free hand. “Off you go. I’ll keep our guest company.”
“Yessir.” Lena curtsied. There was something sly in her sideways glance, something that made the back of Vivian’s neck prickle warily. Lena smiled. “I’ll tell Mrs. Buchanan you’re waiting when she arrives.”
“Thank you,” Vivian said. But she only glanced at the maid briefly as she said it, not wanting to take her eyes off Mr. Buchanan after seeing Lena’s smile. There was a tray on the table in front of him, with a silver carafe that was still steaming and a cut-glass decanter of some amber liquid. The smell of strong, good coffee filled the air, and Vivian had to hold back another yawn. Buchanan set down his cigar long enough to take a drink from his cup as he looked her over.
Judging by appearances alone, he was the sort of man she often saw at the Nightingale, the kind who waited for an old-fashioned waltz to ask pretty girls onto the dance floor. Their shoulders were still broad, and their gray hair made them look distinguished instead of stooped and tired like the men where Vivian lived. They wore expertly tailored clothes, the fabrics so luxurious that she wanted to rub her cheek against them like a cat while they danced. They threw a little money around because it made them feel important, drank and danced because it made them feel young.
Buchanan smiled, beckoning her forward with a hooked finger as he took a puff from his cigar. Vivian stepped farther into the room.
Plenty of men like him were polite—harmless, even—gallantly trying to recapture the feel of their youth.
And some of them she wouldn’t trust farther than a Charleston kick.
“You’re very kind, sir, but I’m not a guest. I’m the dressmaker.”
“I can see that,” he said, still smiling as he nodded toward the boxes she held. “You can put those down if you like and take a seat. I promise I won’t think you’re shirking. I’ve no idea when Mrs. Buchanan will return.” He shook his head, looking a little embarrassed, as he stood and glanced out the window.
Vivian set the boxes on the table, then perched on the edge of the velvety sofa. She clasped her hands in her lap to keep from stroking the soft nap of the fabric and shivered a little.
He noticed. “Oh, my apologies, my dear.” Stubbing out the cigar in a crystal ashtray, he closed the window against the cold air before turning back to her with another smile. “There, that’s better, isn’t it? Shall I pour you something against the chill? Coffee, perhaps? Or…” He smiled, almost like a mischievous boy. “Something stronger?”
“No, thank you.” She liked a good time as much as the next girl, but she preferred it on her own terms.
Buchanan chuckled as he refilled his own cup. “Really? I wouldn’t have expected a girl with hair like yours to say no to a drink.”
Vivian resisted the urge to reach up and touch her bobbed hair, which fell like a straight black curtain to just below her jaw. “No, thank you,” she repeated. “Sir.” He sounded like he meant it as a joke, but she had to go in and out of too many houses like this one to risk word getting around that the delivery girl from Miss Ethel’s shop was fast.
Buchanan gave her a shrewd glance, then sighed as he returned to his chair. “My apologies, again. I’ve made you uncomfortable. But I promise, my philandering days are long behind me, if you’ll forgive my bluntness.” This time, the smile he gave her was self-deprecating. “I’m just an old man hoping to enjoy a little conversation to pass the time.”
“You’re not that old,” Vivian said without thinking, though she regretted it right away. She didn’t want him to think she was flirting.
But he only laughed before taking another drink. If she took a deep breath, she could smell the whiskey in it, floating just under the scent of the coffee itself.
“Thank you, but age is a fact we must all face eventually.” His expression grew distant as he stared down at the cup in his hand. “If we are fortunate. Not everyone lives to face it.” He cleared his throat, then looked her over with a critical eye. “Your coat is too skimpy for a girl who must be out in this weather. Allow me to provide you with coffee, at least, while you wait. It would be a great kindness to me, so I don’t have to worry about you.”
He spoke politely enough, and his smile was disarming—fatherly, almost, as if he had sensed that his tone needed to shift to something less playful. It made Vivian wary, that he could read her so clearly and change so quickly. But the coffee did smell good, and she was already fighting back another yawn. “Well, all right then. For your sake.”
He chuckled as he poured her a cup. “What have you brought for my wife, then?”
Here she was on safer ground. Vivian glanced down at the boxes. “Three very pretty dresses for the spring.”
“And very expensive, I don’t doubt,” he said, smiling as he handed the cup over. He wasn’t wrong, but Vivian wasn’t about to agree with him out loud. A man could make fun of himself for spending too much money if he wanted, but the girl delivering his wife’s dresses would keep her mouth shut if she was smart. “Did you make them yourself?”
Vivian shook her head as she accepted the coffee. “I used to do the dressmaking. Now I just handle deliveries. But I know the girls who did the sewing. One gown has over a thousand beads stitched onto it.”
She took a sip. It tasted even better than it had smelled—rich and sweet, which her coffee at home almost never was because sugar was an expense she could live without. The heat was a welcome pain against her chilled hands, and she took another sip, her eyes closing for a moment in pleasure.
“Thank you,” she said as she opened them.
Buchanan was looking at the door, a frown pulling down his brows. “Well, I am sorry Evangeline is keeping you waiting.” He stood, his own cup in hand, and paced toward the window once more. “She’s new money, I’m afraid, and still likes to make people wait for her. She’ll move past such games eventually.” He shrugged, crossing to the sofa where Vivian perched. To her relief, he sat at the other end, so most of the expanse of velvet was between them. “Or not. Many do not.”
It was an odd comment to make about his own wife, and not entirely kind. Vivian wondered whether their marriage was as new as the house. It was on the tip of her tongue to say he, at least, didn’t seem like new money, but she stopped herself just in time. Being tired was no reason to get careless and say something he might take as an insult to his wife.
“I don’t mind the wait,” she said instead, giving him a smile that was friendly but not too familiar—the sort of smile she employed on the dance floor at least once a night. Buchanan seemed decent enough, but she knew the assumptions he might make about a girl like her. Still, she didn’t want to offend him. Miss Ethel would throw a fit if she lost his wife’s business. It was a delicate balancing act. “The company and the coffee both are nothing to sneeze at.”
He lifted his cup to her in a small toast, the slight wobble in the gesture making her think that he had been sitting there enjoying his whiskey-laced drink for longer than was typical on a Monday morning. She thought there was something sad, though, in the look he gave her. But whatever he might have said next was interrupted by a knock at the door. Vivian started to her feet, quickly setting her cup down on the side table.
It wasn’t Lena this time, but an older woman—closer to Buchanan’s age, her cheeks and shoulders both beginning to sag with time and fatigue, with the sandy-gray hair of someone who had probably been a fiery redhead in her younger days. She kept her eyes turned toward the floor, and Vivian felt a lurch of sympathy in her chest. Working in service was an endless carousel of early mornings, late nights, and few rests, and most folks didn’t stick it out after forty unless they had moved up in the ranks. To still be running your feet off as you spun toward sixty was a rough life for sure.
The maid barely glanced at Vivian as she stepped into the room, her face still turned toward the ground. “Begging your pardon, Mr. Buchanan, but there’s someone in your office asking to see you.” Her voice dropped, as though she was nervous to pass on the visitor’s message. “Said it was a business matter, and that you’d know what it was about.”
“Hmm. Yes, thank you.” Buchanan barely spared her a glance, lifting one finger in careless acknowledgment as he refilled his cup with a splash of coffee and a large pour of whiskey. “Tell him I’ll be there in just a moment, please.” He turned to Vivian, and she wondered but didn’t ask what sort of business he was in. “Here,” he said, leaning over to refill her cup. He gave her a little wink as she met his eyes. “Have to keep off that chill, young lady.”
Vivian cast a quick, worried look toward the maid, hoping she wouldn’t get the wrong idea. But the woman had already hurried out to deliver her employer’s message. Just when Vivian was about to breathe a sigh of relief, Buchanan caught her chin, lifting her gaze toward him.
She froze, anxiety prickling down her spine like a warning. But the paternal look was still there as he looked her over, a sad smile on his lips. “You know, you remind me of my daughter. She’s a bit of a hellion, from what I’ve heard. I wouldn’t be surprised if you are, too.”
Vivian leaned back, unnerved by the casual assumption of his touch. To her relief, he didn’t stop her, his hand dropping and sliding into his pocket. He even looked a little embarrassed, clearing his throat as he bent to retrieve his coffee cup.
“Don’t you know if she is or not?” Vivian asked, surprised at herself.
“I would if I’d been a better father,” he said, the self-deprecating edge back in his smile. “Take care, young lady. I hope Mrs. Buchanan doesn’t keep you waiting much longer.”
“Thanks,” Vivian said, a little uncertainly, as he departed.
She sank against the velvety sofa as soon as the door closed behind him, relieved to be alone for the moment. She tipped her head back before she thought better of the casual pose and sat up abruptly. No sense risking someone coming in to find her lounging like she owned the place.
The pretty glass clock on the mantel began to chime eleven, and Vivian fought down another yawn. She’d been running her feet off at the Nightingale last night, delivering contraband drinks and catching dances on her breaks until two in the morning, and she hadn’t made it home until three. Once her deliveries were done for the day, she could stumble home and catch a little shut-eye. But until then…
Maybe she should have that second cup of coffee. Or open the window again so the cold air could keep her awake. Just one more minute, she told herself, and she’d stand up.
Vivian’s next yawn stretched her jaw wide enough that she could hear it pop. The motion tipped her head back, and once it was resting against the sofa, picking it up suddenly felt like too much work. She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake them up, but they were too heavy, and the cushions were too soft. She yawned again, not bothering to open her eyes this time. The coffee would kick in at any moment, and then she’d feel more awake. She’d hear someone opening the door in time to get up.
The clock on the mantel began to chime, and Vivian was on her feet before she remembered where she was or why she was there. She glanced around the room a little frantically, trying to shake off her drowsiness.
It was noon. Vivian let out a loud sigh of relief. Mrs. Buchanan hadn’t come home to find her asleep on the sofa, and apparently the whole household was such a mess that no one else had remembered she was there either. It was a lucky break—and she didn’t often get those.
But she couldn’t hang around waiting much longer, or Miss Ethel at the dress shop would start wondering where she was. Vivian gathered up her delivery kit—a black satchel shaped like a doctor’s bag but filled with everything a seamstress might need on the go. Then she hesitated over the boxes that held Mrs. Buchanan’s gowns.
On the one hand, if she left them there, they might get damaged or mislaid, and then she’d be blamed. On the other, if she was just going to return for fittings the next day, she could save her arms the extra hours of carting them around the city.
Stumbling over an embroidered footstool, still groggy from her unexpected nap and sudden wake-up, Vivian finished gathering her things and looked around the room.
There was no desk and nothing to write with that she could see. But she had passed what looked like an office when Lena led her upstairs, more than an hour ago. Likely that was where Mr. Buchanan had gone. If his meeting was done—there was no way she would risk interrupting that—maybe she could just poke her head in and grab a piece of paper and write a note to say she’d be back at the same time tomorrow.
Leaving her things for the moment, Vivian peeked out the sitting room door.
The hallway was empty and silent. It made her shiver—she was used to houses like this being full of servants and families. But if it was noon, likely folks were polishing off a meal downstairs and enjoying a break before they got back to work.
The thick carpet muffled her footsteps as she hurried down the hall. The door she thought was an office had been left ajar, so the odds of her interrupting some important or confidential business deal were slim. Still, she knocked.
“Mr. Buchanan?” Vivian called. “Are you in there? It’s me—the delivery girl.”
When there was no answer, she hesitated only a moment before pushing the door open.
The smell hit her first—a deep, animal smell, the taste of metal and filth. Vivian knew it, had smelled it once before, and the fear that followed only a moment later felt like iron in the back of her throat.
She would have fled if she hadn’t seen him right away, slumped on the floor against his desk, his body curled on itself as it had collapsed to the ground, helpless and childlike. The coffee cup lay next to him, the fragile handle snapped off and the coffee already soaked into the deep red carpet.
“Mr. Buchanan?” Vivian croaked.
He didn’t move, and for a moment she didn’t either. But she couldn’t leave him there.
“Mr. Buchanan!” She knelt beside him to grab his shoulders. He wasn’t a small man, but she was wiry and determined, and he didn’t resist as she turned him over, planning to check for a pulse, to call for help, to do what she could.
Her hands slipped against him as he rolled onto his back. Vivian lurched away, stumbling to her feet. She felt frozen, unable to move, unable to do anything except stare at the wide-eyed look of disbelief still on his face, at the blood that had soaked through his clothes and into the carpet, at the handle of the knife that had been plunged into his neck, right where it met the edge of his open collar.