Dante moved toward him. “Is there a problem?”
Keniel shook his head and held out a piece of paper. “No, sir. Miss Sanford asked that I deliver this to you.”
“Thank you.” Dante opened the paper.
The Ambassador is here with the same man.
He took a quiet survey of the room. “Thanks, Keniel. You can return to your break.”
Dante made his way over to Driscoll. “I need to speak with Miss Sanford for a minute. Keniel’s on his break.”
Driscoll waved his hand. “Fine. Things are quiet right now.”
Dante took the stairs two at a time. Lydia was waiting for him at the top.
“Where are they?”
She took his hand and walked him to the glassed-in area. She pointed. “There. At the vingt-et-un table.”
“Damn. I never saw him.”
“I believe it is much easier to see everything from here.”
They both watched the two men converse as they played their hands.
“I need to get down there and hear what they’re saying,” Lydia said.
Dante shook his head. “No. You cannot go down to the floor. The liquor has been flowing for a while and I don’t feel comfortable letting you walk around.”
She tapped her fingernail on her lip. “What if I wasn’t walking around?”
He leaned one shoulder against the wall. He could see her devious mind working and couldn’t wait to hear what came out of her mouth next. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I know how to play vingt-et-un quite well.”
Dante grinned and crossed his arms over his chest. “What exactly is it you are proposing, Miss Sanford? You might as well say it out loud before I say no.”
“Please listen, Dante. I know how to play the game and I could learn rather quickly how to deal the cards. If they choose to converse in another language, I’ll understand what they’re saying. It’s the same as if we were working a ball, or a musicale. They would never assume someone dealing their cards was listening to them. Think of all the information I might glean.”
When he hesitated, she continued. “You’ve had a female dealer on that table before. It would not seem unusual for me to step in.”
Dante pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. The woman made a lot of sense. It would be the perfect set-up to hear what they were saying without having to sneak behind bushes in the dark.
He looked over at Lydia in the black dress that would have all the men at the table drooling over their cards. “Amelia always wore a mask.”
She apparently sensed his surrender. “Perfect! My only concern had been the many men down there that I know from various events. If word got back to my father, but with a mask. . .”
His stomach muscles clenched. Now he knew how his brother had felt when he allowed Amelia to work on the gaming room floor. Except Driscoll had already developed a tendre for his wife by then.
So why do you think you feel the same way?
“I would like to find out first how long the Ambassador has been there. It is quite possible we might go through all this trouble and he’s about to leave.”
“Would Keniel know? Since you hadn’t known the Ambassador until recently, you had no reason to note if he favored that table, or even if he spends much time here at all.”
“I don’t know about Keniel, but I’m sure James, who deals at that table most nights would know.”
“Can you get a note to him?”