Chapter 2
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.”