Some things are simple and hard to ignore
They say the truth is like that

Ben might have still been a little paranoid about his interactions with Ellory Pendergast. Given everything that the two of them had been through over the past eight months, it was hard not to be. He wondered if her older sister had found some stash of his letters that she was keeping and gotten suspicious about her plans to visit the Street Fair. He wondered whether her plans had changed, and she'd been too self-conscious or too heavily observed by her chaperones to write to him and say as much. He even wondered, even though she had promised him she wouldn't, whether she had let slip to the wrong person about their would-be liaison, and gotten herself (or worse, him) into trouble with someone.

He'd come and wandered through the fair yesterday feeling both hopeful and apprehensive. There had been plenty to distract himself with, of course, but by the time he'd headed back to the club he was more than a little disappointed not to have happened upon the redhead. Ben came back the next day, but had largely exhausted the amusing part of the festival. That left him nothing to do, really, except drink and play carnival games, and hope that at some point she showed up. And that he didn't have Aldous waiting for him in his room when he went back home, with another ticket to Canada or Timbuktu or something.

It was early afternoon by the time that he finally spotted her, mercifully without any crazy sister in sight. Not that Ben had ever met her crazy sister, nor did he really think he would recognize her, but there wasn't anyone loitering around Ellory exuding an air of crazy, which gave him rather more confidence than it should have. "Princess!" he greeted boldly, with a wide grin. He was more than a little bit tipsy. "I wasn't sure you were really coming!"