The man he'd chosen was a former Scotland Yard detective with eyes that missed nothing. That was the point. Dominic Ashford would see through Vivienne's disguise in days, maybe hours, and the whole farce would be over. She'd come home. She'd be sensible. She'd marry well.
But Dominic Ashford was also dangerous. Not in any criminal sense -- his record was spotless, his reputation impeccable. But the man was reckless, irreverent, and possessed of a magnetism that had left a trail of heartbroken women across two continents. Sending Vivienne to work alongside him was, in retrospect, the equivalent of tossing a rabbit into a wolf's den and hoping the wolf had already eaten.
"He's perfectly safe," Edwin said, and almost believed it.
Outside the door, Margaret the nurse bit down on her knuckle to stifle a laugh. She'd heard every word. She crept away on soft feet, shaking her head.
Vivienne Mercer had no idea what she'd just agreed to.
New York swallowed her whole.
The cab from JFK crawled through Queens, hit the Midtown Tunnel, and spat Vivienne out on East 42nd Street into a wall of noise, exhaust, and humid September air. She stood on the sidewalk with two oversized suitcases and a leather garment bag, watching the city churn around her. Sirens. Horns. A man yelling into his phone about a shipment of artisanal cheese. A woman in four-inch stilettos sprinting for a crosswalk.
London was loud. New York was violent about it.
She found her father's apartment on the twelfth floor of a prewar building on West 54th. The doorman let her in without fuss -- Edwin had called ahead -- though his eyes lingered on her face a beat too long. She was still dressed as herself: black jeans, white t-shirt, hair loose. No disguise yet. She'd made the flight as Vivienne.
That had been a mistake. She realized it the moment the doorman said, "Your father told me to expect a young man. His son."
"I'm his -- assistant," Vivienne improvised. "Vincent will be arriving shortly. I was just dropping off the luggage."
The doorman nodded, unconvinced but uninterested enough to let it go.
The apartment was exactly what she'd expected: clean, impersonal, barely lived in. Edwin spent forty-nine weeks a year at the Blackwood Estate in Connecticut and the remaining three weeks at various expensive locations around the world, all on Alexander Blackwood's dime. This Midtown apartment was a postal address, nothing more.
Two bedrooms. One bathroom with a clawfoot tub and no shower curtain. A kitchen with an espresso machine still in its box and a refrigerator containing a single bottle of sparkling water, expired. The living room had a leather sofa, a television that predated streaming services, and a window overlooking a brick air shaft.