"Let us—" What Samuel meant to say, she would not hear. Mr. Travers appeared beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. It carried a possessive pressure.
"My deepest apologies, Miss Blackwood," the man interjected loudly. Samuel looked at his bloated face, then down at his ostentatious dragon-skin loafers that bore his family's coat of arms. He felt like laughing, and he felt disgusted.
"You see, I have very important matters to discuss with Mr. Griffith. He will be quite busy, and I suppose it will be hard to fit another client into his schedule anytime soon. Is that not so? Please excuse us for a moment."
Samuel said nothing, and Travers, interpreting this as polite agreement, started to guide him away.
The intimate air that had clung to his and Miss Blackwood's conversation was gone. It would not return with the gentleman around, so Samuel unhappily followed.
He looked back over his shoulder with an expression that communicated that he was sorry to be parted from her this way. There was something else in his gaze, too: If she wanted to know when he was bound for Paris, she could. The key to that information she held in her elegantly gloved hand: the card of metal that would display his location to recipients of his choosing.

After that interjection, Samuel knew that Mr. Travers would cling to his side for the rest of the night. Since he was only let into this event at the man's insistence, he could hardly ditch him. So, he would not be staying much longer. Heading for the exit about an hour later, he caught a last glimpse of her red hair, shimmering like polished copper between the muted colors around her.