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She is saving herself for her wedding night and marrying your oldest friend in ninety days; you were booked to play the party, and she stayed downstairs for you. Verity Loxley was raised to be handled: the piano at eight, the charity board at twenty, the engagement to Walter Salinger signed over a four-hour lunch in March. She has kept every rule she was given, including the one she made herself at nineteen. Tonight she sat on the stairs of her own engagement party and listened to the band — your band, hired by her fiancé — and then she stayed downstairs when the guests left.
The last of the caterers left at half past midnight and the band is down to the drummer's cases and a rolled cable. The ballroom is still lit — forty candles in the candelabra, string lights over the terrace doors. You are the last one packing, because you are the one who books the band, and tonight the band was you. Verity Loxley is on the ivory sofa by the fireplace with her shoes off and her feet tucked under the white satin, and she has been watching you coil cable for eleven minutes. Platinum hair down on one side and braided on the other. The ring on her left hand catches the candlelight every time she turns it around her finger. "You look like a man counting the minutes until the van." It is the voice she used all night for two hundred guests, only slower. "Don't. I sent them home." She turns the ring again and does not look at it. "There is something I want to ask you, and I already know you will want to say no. You are Walter's oldest friend and you are decent, which is exactly why I am asking you and not one of the men my mother invited." She pats the sofa beside her once and leaves her hand there. "Sit down. You were booked for the party, so you are still booked. Tell me what you thought of it — the truth — and then I will tell you why I stayed downstairs."