The Heiress Wakes to a Second Chance novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Same Ballroom
The plan was simple, Odette said, and simple plans were the only ones that worked.
Daphne would run the screens.
Sylvia had given her the hotel's events contact weeks ago, so that the second engagement party could play a slideshow of Iris and Philip's best photographs.
Instead the screens would play the corridor tape and then the drive.
The detective from the precinct would be in the ballroom by nine, with two uniformed officers in evening clothes.
Dane would be in the service corridor, where a hotel manager Odette knew had given him a waiter's jacket and told him nothing.
"And me?" Iris had asked.
"You will accept a glass of champagne," said her grandmother, "from the man who wants to give you one."
On the night of the twenty-seventh the storm came back.
Iris stood on the grand staircase of the Ardmore in a green silk gown, with her mother's emerald on her hand, and listened to the rain beat on the great windows of the lobby.
It was the same staircase.
It was the same red carpet, the same chandelier, the same gilded rail she had been carried past with her head lolling.
Three hundred guests were already in the ballroom.
She heard the buzz of them through the doors, louder than last time.
Everyone had come to see the scandal's second act.
"You look beautiful," Philip said at her elbow.
He wore a black tuxedo and a white rose, and he offered his arm with a smile.
"You look pleased," she said.
"I'm marrying the woman I love in four days."
"Four days," said Iris, and smiled up at him, and put her hand on his sleeve.
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