Ben waited where instructed while Miss Montague disappeared into the ladies’ room, though he did bounce on the balls of his feet a few times to try and see if certain dark-haired women passing nearby were Melody (they never were). The retiring room was a good lead, though he’d been looking for her long enough that it wasn’t reasonable to assume she’d just popped in for a moment to use the lavatory. If she’d been in the retiring room this whole time then something must have been wrong — could she have been struck with an illness, or grown faint? — he had been more worried about her leaving without him, but now the idea of Melody struggling and alone somewhere on the premise was a more visceral anxiety.

Miss Montague returned without his wife in tow, and Ben’s shoulders fell with disappointment. Back to square zero, as it were, but now with a growing anxiety that something might have happened to Melody, rather than just that she had left without telling him. “Nora’s with her nurse,” he said, chewing his lower lip — it had not occurred to him to worry about Nora, and now he wondered if it had been stupid to keep circling the ballroom looking for Melody. “She would have told me. She would have — at the very least sent an owl back after she left,” he said, though he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

“Maybe I should go,” he said, wavering indecisively.

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