From Chloe’s vantage point in the back of the promenade, Sebastian looked hot and bulging in his “inexpressibles.” His tight cream-colored breeches were revealed every time his coattails wafted open. With this potent cocktail of sexiness and intelligence that she had only ever seen on screen, she forgot everything else.
She felt compelled to reconnect with him as she had this morning, or next time around he could kick her off the show with his gold-buckled shoe. But she was at the end, the very end, of the line of guests walking through the mahogany-paneled hall toward the dining room at Dartworth. It made her jealous that he led the procession, arm in arm with Grace, and then it made her mad that she felt jealous. She was just getting to know him! Why was she crushing on him already? The rest of the party followed in order of rank with Chloe, the token poor girl (and come on, she had always thought of herself as decidedly upper middle class despite her current strife) bringing up the end.
Holding her chin high and her spine straight, she walked through the doors with Henry, the cameras all over her. Once she lowered her chin, she found herself standing in front of a long table bedecked in a white tablecloth, and she felt wistful now, on top of everything, because it was Wednesday night, her pizza-and-movie night with Abigail. The grand dining table in front of her stood resplendent with five-pronged candelabra and beeswax candles, silver-rimmed china bowls, and crystal wine goblets at each place setting. Pineapples and shiny red apple pyramids punctuated each end of the table. Fruit! She hadn’t eaten fruit in days, as it was considered bad for a lady’s complexion. Dainty desserts stood on silver epergnes, and five footmen in blue coats and gold waistcoats, all equally young and handsome, and all of uniform height, stood behind the Chippendale chairs, waiting to serve. And then she remembered pizza gave her heartburn and Abigail was probably having fun with her grandparents or, God forbid, her dad and stepmom-to-be.
“You were perhaps expecting a larger dining room?” Henry asked.
Chloe must’ve been frowning at the thought of Marcia Smith.
Henry smiled. “I do hope you find Dartworth Hall to your liking. You don’t think it too ostentatious?”
“Ostentatious? No. No, not at all.” She tried to remember the last time a man spoke to her using polysyllabic words like ostentatious. “I find it elegant.”
“Allow me to escort you to your chair,” he said.
Nobody had ever said that to her before. She took his arm. “Thank you.” He was so nice she actually felt guilty for thinking maybe getting in good with Henry would help her score points with Sebastian.
Henry pulled out her chair and pushed her in next to him. Sebastian sat on the other end of the table, at the head, with Julia on his left and Grace on his right. He caught Chloe’s attention and then rolled his eyes when Grace wasn’t looking. Chloe shrugged. Next to Grace and Julia were Gillian and Kate, then Chloe and Henry, and all the chaperones.
“It appears that American heiresses don’t pull much rank at the dinner table,” Chloe said to Henry.
“Do you seek to improve your rank in this world, Miss Parker?”
“Oh no! I’m mainly here for the white soup.”
Henry smiled. “Ah. You may not care about rank, but you do have expensive tastes.”
Chloe had no idea that white soup was expensive.
“I’m sorry to say you’re in for a disappointment. White soup isn’t on the menu tonight.”
Chloe eyed her empty wineglass. “Not to worry. The wine will more than make up for it.”
Henry laughed as the footmen poured the claret. Chloe didn’t think it was that funny—she hadn’t had wine in days. Ladies didn’t drink wine on their own unless they were “unwell,” a stunt Grace had pulled every night since Chloe arrived.
“I propose—” Sebastian said, raising his glass, looking at Chloe.
Chloe raised her wine goblet, which was no bigger than a bud vase. A proposal already?
“I propose a toast to our new guest at Bridesbridge Court, who comes all the way from America. Miss Chloe Parker.” He lowered his voice. “Welcome to Dartworth.”
What class. What manners. What—luscious lips. Enthralled with watching him bring his wineglass to his mouth, she almost forgot to respond.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m thrilled to be here.”
“May you find what you’re looking for,” Henry said.
Grace looked at Sebastian from behind her wineglass. “I’ve found what I’m looking for.”
Thank goodness for the wine, because Chloe needed a drink. And with just a hint of oak and fruity notes, it went down smoothly. Henry looked at Chloe’s empty wineglass, and almost as quickly, he emptied his.
The footman offered soup from a china tureen, and Chloe accepted two ladlefuls before she realized it was fish soup or bouillabaisse. No matter what kind of spin you put on it, she didn’t like fish soup and neither did her stomach. She also didn’t like the fact that she wasn’t allowed to talk to the footmen and servants, that she had to forget they were real people. Even worse, the servants had actually faded into the background for her over the past couple days, and she, too, was beginning to treat them like the furniture, except for Fiona, whom she did her best to coddle. She stared at the cut-up fish flesh floating in the broth, stirring with her soup spoon. It didn’t matter. She hadn’t been hungry since the outing with Sebastian this morning.
Kate, who sat next to Chloe, scratched her bare arms. Under her caplet sleeves Chloe detected another outbreak of hives.
“Miss Harrington,” Chloe asked Kate, “have you tried Gowland’s Lotion? I’ve heard it’s quite good.”
Kate didn’t get the obscure reference to the lotion mentioned in Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
“Sir Walter highly recommends it,” Henry said, completing the reference.
Henry—a Jane Austen fan? Just like his brother, as it had said in Sebastian’s bio? Chloe did a double take. But then she remembered that it had been Henry who made the wet-shirt comment at the pond.
Kate tapped Chloe on the hand, her eyes already puffy. “Do you think there are any shellfish in this soup? I mustn’t eat shellfish, or I’ll blow up like a hot-air balloon.”
“I can assure you there are no shellfish,” Henry said. “Miss Parker. I hear you explored the old castle ruins today. Did you know it was built around the year 1130? Additions were made to it in the thirteenth century. Did you notice the herringbone pattern of stonework on the outer walls?”
“No. I’m afraid I didn’t notice—that.”
“It’s too bad my brother didn’t point it out to you. It’s very rare to find that pattern of brickwork in a twelfth-century wall.”
Sebastian had pointed—other things out to her.
Still, for a fleeting moment Chloe felt as if she had missed out on something. She could always go back to the ruins, couldn’t she? “I did notice, though, that the archer holes were square and not narrow slits. That was unexpected.”
Henry nodded in agreement and started to say something about how the castle was destroyed by cannonballs during the English Civil War, but Chloe turned away from him to make eye contact with Sebastian. She caught Grace’s eye instead.
Everyone was talking with the person sitting next to them, and over the din of conversation, Grace raised her voice above them all. “This bouillabaisse is simply ecstasy. What a joy to have a French cook. I do so love French food and fashion. I would love to go to Paris again, wouldn’t you, Miss Parker?”
This was some kind of trap. Grace must’ve known Chloe had never been to Paris. She’d been to Martha’s Vineyard, Lake Tahoe, the Hamptons, but never Europe. Chloe opened her mouth and then shut it, like a fish. “I’m quite happy to be here,” she said.
Mrs. Crescent nodded in approval from across the table.
Henry saved her butt. “Surely the Americans find France to be no place for a lady at the moment.”
Grace sipped a spoonful of soup.
“Thank you for that,” Chloe said to Henry.
“Thank Napoleon,” he said, watching her play with her soup. “You’re doing a wonderful job of not eating your bouillabaisse. Do you not like it? I can have Mr. Hill take it away and bring you something else. Mr. Hill? Mr. Hill—”
It was the first time she heard anyone refer to a servant with such respect. Everyone else just called the servants by their last names, without a “Mr.” or “Miss” attached. “The soup is fine, really. Thank you.” Chloe strained to keep eye contact with Sebastian even as she kept conversation going with Henry. She had to wonder why Henry was here, although she suspected he was supposed to help his brother scout out the women, and his latest assignment was to get the dish on her. It was obvious. So she thought she’d have some fun with it. It teetered on the edge of impropriety, but it didn’t strike her as against the rules.
“Are you secretly engaged, Mr. Wrightman? Or otherwise spoken for?” Chloe asked.
Henry sputtered into his soup. “No. No, I’m not engaged, and have no prospects at the moment.”
“Really?” Chloe was surprised. He seemed like the settled type. He didn’t sport a wedding ring, or she might think he was married already.
“I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical from all that.”
“By throwing yourself into a gaggle of eligible women in the middle of the countryside for six weeks?”
“Point well taken, Miss Parker. But you no doubt realize I’m here to help my brother find a suitable wife. He is ready to marry and settle down.”
“And you, I take it, are not.”
“I’m younger.”
Not by much, Chloe thought. Maybe a year or two.
“My brother doesn’t want to waste his time with anyone he can’t envision as the love of his life. I’m here to help him in any way I can.”
“A great sacrifice on your part.”
“It is.”
She turned to Sebastian. Once or twice he ogled down the table at her, steam rising from his soup bowl.
Sebastian wasn’t very good in groups, Chloe decided. Shy. Darcylike. Still, she suspected that he wanted to talk to her; he kept looking at her. But she had to admit, he was looking at the other girls, too, and she didn’t like that. He was so gorgeous that his eyes gave her a rush every time she caught them. Made her hyperaware of everything. By the time the footmen cleared the soup bowls, Chloe determined he might well be her Mr. Darcy. When would she get him alone again? How would she possibly get to know him better? She conjured an image of them dancing, turning hand in hand, eyes locked in on each other—
“Partridge or fish, Miss Parker?” Henry asked.
A footman held a silver platter loaded with roasted birds and fish with the heads still on toward Chloe. A row of dead fish eyes gaped up at her and her stomach churned. She looked at the footman. “Are there any potatoes?” There were always boiled potatoes.
“I’ve been living on potatoes,” she said to Henry.
“Suckling pig and cow tongue doesn’t appeal?” Henry asked. More than anything, the nineteenth-century presentation, where everything came with the head or the feet still attached, didn’t work for Chloe. She had already lost some weight. She twitched her nose.
The footman nodded. “Just one moment.”
She imagined the footmen and maids must have their own fun and their own pairing-off. She hoped so, anyway. It looked like she would, despite the abundance of food, leave the table without eating much, as was so often the case after a meal here in Regency England.
“I can manage almost anything, but not game birds,” Henry said. His plate had a few fish on it.
“I can’t eat them either,” Chloe said.
“Does it have to do with your passion for birds, Miss Parker?”
How did he know about that? Chloe changed the subject to one of his interests—the frog hatchery. “And no doubt you avoid frog legs.”
Henry smiled. “You’re right.”
“Tell me. Which one of the women are you currently recommending to your brother?”
Henry took a slug of his wine. “You are quite forward, Miss Parker.”
“I’m just curious.” She could see this line of conversation made him a little nervous, but a little intrigued, too. And she wanted to intrigue him—in order to intrigue Sebastian.
“I haven’t recommended anyone yet. I have merely helped him discern some of the ladies’ characters.”
“And what have you discerned about my character?”
Henry refolded his napkin. “It’s a little too early to judge. Although I have my theories.” He smirked.
Chloe raised her eyebrows. Now she was intrigued. Unfortunately, during all this jabbering with Henry, Grace had managed to snare Sebastian into a conversation about hunting. “Oh yes. Last fall was my best season ever,” she heard Sebastian say to Grace. He had picked two partridges clean and stacked the bones alongside a pile of fish bones on his plate.
Grace nodded with enthusiasm, her feather nodding with her.
Chloe watched Sebastian, who now seemed so animated, making hand gestures as he talked; he even smiled. The footman offered Chloe a platter of boiled potatoes and carrots, and with a pair of silver tongs, she plucked them from the platter, transferring them carefully to her plate.
Sebastian laughed. “I must’ve bagged fourteen grouse! Looking forward to the season. Grouse hunting in August. Partridges in September. Pheasants in October—”
Chloe turned her head to look at him and the potato she was lifting with the tongs broke and fell into her lap. “Oh—”
Henry offered his napkin to her. But before anybody noticed Chloe’s faux pas, Grace squeaked like a mouse, and spouted a very deliberate “Oh, dear!” All heads and cameras turned to Grace as she squirmed, then shot up out of her chair.
One of her breasts had popped out of her low-cut gown!
At first, a wave of shock rolled through Chloe, and she would’ve stood up to help, but for the broken potato on her lap.
Grace paused for a moment, her hand over her pursed lips, looking down at her breast while the cameras jockeyed around her. Sebastian’s eyes bugged out. He dropped his spoon. Henry sighed and looked away. Kate scratched at her arm furiously. Julia folded her arms.
And that’s when it finally hit Chloe that Grace had orchestrated this stunt. Chloe kept reminding herself that a lady could never appear too angry, especially in public, but her hands shook and she wanted to tell Grace off. How dare she ruin Chloe’s debut dinner at Dartworth!
“Oh my!” Grace squealed. As if in slo-mo, her gotta-be-a-fake boob stood there, erect, en plein air, until Sebastian burst out of his chair, ripped off his coat, and slid it over Grace’s shoulders, carefully covering said breast.
Fish think, but not fast enough, Chloe thought. She plucked the broken potato from her lap. She whispered to Henry, “What do you think that reveals about her character?”
Henry didn’t reply, but instead signaled one of the footmen over to help her clean up the potato. It was as if Grace didn’t exist.
Grace hugged Sebastian’s coat around her. She hurried behind a painted screen in a far corner of the room, and her chaperone joined her. Leave it to Grace to stage a strategic wardrobe malfunction that wouldn’t soon be forgotten. All the women had, for days now, joked about their bodices slipping down, but it never did happen. Chloe shook her head. Grace had to have cut her corset to pull this one off. Everything put away now, Sebastian seated Grace at the table again.
Both Sebastian and Henry looked flushed and they talked about the wine from nearly opposite ends of the long table.
Gillian narrowed her eyes at Grace.
Grace held her wineglass up to the candlelight. “It has great body, don’t you agree?”
Chloe raised her glass. “But a rather empty finish if you ask me.”
Gillian smiled.
If only she could get that image of Grace’s breast out of her head—and out of Sebastian’s.
A footman brandished a platter with a pheasant, purple plumage still attached, encircled with roasted rabbits, their furry heads reattached.
“Any hope of what we in America call ‘salad’?” Chloe whispered to Henry.
“You know full well that greenery is bad for your digestion, and tomatoes are poisonous.”
Chloe didn’t have a barb to fling back at him. She was surprised and impressed by his knowledge of Regency England. But maybe instead of picking up Regency trivia from Henry, she could glean information about Sebastian. “You’re absolutely right about the salad. What was I thinking? Perhaps you can enlighten me on another subject: your brother. Does he really like to hunt?”
Henry set down his knife. “Most country gentlemen do hunt and fish, Miss Parker, for sport as well as for food. But my brother’s bark is bigger than his bite.”
“Bon appétit,” Grace announced. She helped herself to a slice of rabbit.
“Are you saying it has something to do with machismo? Is your brother overly concerned with his image?” Chloe asked.
“I didn’t realize American heiresses were familiar with Spanish words like machismo, nor that they were trained in the wiles of journalism.”
Chloe squirmed in her chair. Tapping Henry for information wouldn’t be easy, but it was worth the effort. And it was fun to spar with him. Still, she felt comforted by the fact that Sebastian must’ve been overstating his hunting prowess to impress the women. He did have the reputation of a Regency squire to live up to, after all.
Sebastian stood, and all eyes moved toward him. “Yes, bon appétit, and, I’d like to invite all the ladies, and Henry, too, of course, to join me in a mock foxhunt on Sunday, nine in the morning. Ladies, we won’t be pursuing a real fox, so not to worry.”
Chloe looked toward the windows. Forget the fox. This meant she’d have to ride a horse sidesaddle. And, no doubt, this was another reality-show task with Accomplishment Points attached and nonparticipants asked to leave.
Julia practically bounced up and down in her chair and her chaperone glared at her until she calmed down.
“A hunt,” Grace said.
Surely, Chloe thought, Miss Parker didn’t have enough status to ride. Chloe hadn’t ridden a horse since college. Could she still do it? Plus, here it would have to be sidesaddle.
Mrs. Crescent leaned toward Chloe and said across the table, “We’ll spend the next three days riding, Miss Parker. Count on it!”
Chloe stared at the arrangement of small woodland animals in front of her.
“Miss Parker,” Sebastian asked from the head of the table. “Are you quite all right?”
English men were so attentive. Chloe was about to respond when suddenly Mrs. Crescent pushed herself up out of her chair, her hands propped on the small of her back, sweat gathering under her curled bangs. “It’s time!” she said, putting one hand on her belly. “It’s time!”
Chloe’s stomach tightened as she remembered the night she gave birth to Abigail. Abigail came a week early, and Winthrop was in Washington on business.
Chloe hurried over to Mrs. Crescent, but Henry was already there, guiding her to a fainting couch by the window. He took the watch from his watch fob and started timing the contractions.
Sebastian and Grace gawked. The chaperones and their charges crowded around Mrs. Crescent.
“Breathe. That’s right,” Henry said. He took her hand.
Mrs. Crescent did her breathing, stood, and paced. Chloe paced with her.
“We should call her OB,” Chloe said to Henry. “An ambulance to take her to the hospital.”
“Contractions are still well over three minutes apart.” With his back to the camera, he spoke a mile a minute to Chloe. “We won’t be calling anyone. She wants to have her baby here. Nineteenth-century style.”
“What?! There is no way—”
“Perhaps instead of being so dogmatic, you could do something useful, Miss Parker?”
Chloe gulped and stepped back. Sebastian had disappeared and so had the all the footmen and servants. Grace took backward steps toward the door. Was Grace snagging some alone time with Sebastian—now? Chloe couldn’t let it happen. But she also couldn’t let Henry think she was a dogmatic idiot either. She released her arm from Mrs. Crescent’s. “Julia, Gillian. Stay with her. I’m going to get the kitchen maids to boil some water.” She dashed out the door and almost banged into Sebastian. Again.
Sebastian looked worried. “I—I’m not good in these situations. I’m an artist, not a doctor.”
He was an artist? What kind of an artist? she wondered. Then Mrs. Crescent groaned. “Come help me boil some water,” Chloe said. “I don’t even know where the kitchen is.”
Grace stood next to her chaperone at the dining room doors, her hands on her hips.
“We have to hurry,” Chloe said. “Which way?”
“Follow me,” Sebastian said.
Chloe was right on his coattails. She smiled to herself. She was chasing him—literally now. And all this dashing through the marble halls lined with antiquities would have been fun had it not been for the gravity of a woman giving birth without a hospital, without an epidural! After scrambling down the servant stairway into the kitchen, Sebastian stopped. Servants and footmen were bustling about, frantically boiling water on the old stove and in the kitchen fireplace. So this was where they had all gone.
“What can I do?” Chloe dove into the fray.
A kitchen maid scowled at her. “You shouldn’t be down here!” She spotted Sebastian and curtsied. “Excuse me, miss, but we’ve got it sorted. Best if you get upstairs.” She shooed Chloe out.
Chloe hurried up to the top of the stairs and Sebastian followed.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Sebastian rubbed the cleft in his chin. “I told you I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
Chloe snapped her fingers. “They’ll need linens. Where’s the linen closet?”
Sebastian smiled. “My valet takes care of everything. I hardly know where he keeps my boots.”
He was sweet, really sweet. Like a boy. Chloe racked her brain, trying to figure out what they could do. She leaned up against a marble column and blew a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes.
Sebastian moved closer, waiting for her to take the lead.
A camerawoman bounded toward them from down the hall. Footmen lumbered up the stairs with pots of boiled water and kitchen maids carried up stacks of white linens. All Chloe and Sebastian could do was follow.
When the entourage arrived in the dining room, Mrs. Crescent sat, fanning herself and smiling.
Henry stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Sebastian and Chloe, who came in last. “False alarm,” he said. “Her contractions have stopped.” He pulled Chloe aside and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Well done, Miss Parker. You may be the smartest person in the room, but a lot of help you were, using this opportunity to take off with Sebastian. So glad I can count on you.”
Chloe wavered, feeling dizzy, surprised by his snarky reaction, which complimented and scolded her in one fell swoop. It crossed her mind, but only for a moment, that he might be jealous of his own brother. “You—you can count on me.”
Henry took off his glasses. “I hope so. Mrs. Crescent wants you to help me deliver the baby when it’s time. Do you think I can rely on you, or shall I consider you otherwise engaged?”
Chloe was shocked. Whether it was because of Mrs. Crescent choosing her to help deliver her baby, or how good Henry looked without glasses, she wasn’t sure.
“Can I count on you, Miss Parker?” Henry folded his arms.
“Of course.”
Later that night, in her boudoir, Chloe woke up to a nightmare of Henry asking over and over, “Can I count on you?” She got out of bed and stumbled to her chamber pot, sicker than a girl who’d drunk negus all night at her coming-out ball. She leaned over it, her stomach sloshing. Could have been that spoonful of fish soup, or the fact that she’d have to spend the next two days riding sidesaddle, and if she didn’t ride, she’d be sent home. Would she still be able to ride after more than twenty years? As she hugged her chamber pot, she realized, though, she was sick over disappointing Henry. Ugh! She liked Henry, but—really! The fact that she cared so much about his opinion of her made her sick, literally. She felt overwhelmed and confused.
At home she could’ve turned on music, the TV—hell, even the computer to distract herself. But here? Her own thoughts could torment her relentlessly. Finally she decided to play the footage in her mind of her moments alone with Sebastian, and that made her feel better.
He felt the same way about her as she felt about him! She had to take the reins and come up with a plan that put her in control. She decided to host a tea after the foxhunt. It would take some doing, and she’d have to put aside her painting, but it would be her show and she could call the shots. Before she snuffed out her candle, she settled her eye on the stack of painting paper and tubes of oil paint that Sebastian had given her. He, too, was an artist. But what kind of artist? A vision of Dartworth Hall floated in front of her. Could he be the one? He was stacking up to be a most interesting man. Instead of snuffing out the candle, she blew it out and made a wish.