Chloe took a candelabrum into the dark hall, stopping by a painting of roses to wait for Mrs. Crescent and Fifi. The candlelight seemed to illuminate the thorns in the painting more than it did the roses, and Chloe felt a chill come over her.
The cameras weren’t following them, so as soon as Mrs. Crescent and Fifi caught up to her, Chloe spoke quickly. “I was terribly rude and unladylike to Henry. I need to set things straight.” She blew out a candle with her breath. A wisp of smoke curled between them.
“My dear Miss Parker, you won this round. Lord knows how, but you won it. With the new Accomplishment Points you’ve gained, you’ve earned another outing with Mr. Wrightman. You’re leading the way with forty points. There’s no need to talk to Henry.”
“But Henry’s an important ally. He could influence Sebastian against me. It’s a delicate situation.”
A footman sped by while she was speaking, his livery coat askew, cravat untied. He yanked on his drawer strings with one hand, sported a candlestick in the other, and then dropped his cravat in a wicker laundry basket at the top of the servant stairs.
Mrs. Crescent cleared her throat. “You must wait, like a lady, for Sebastian to make the next move. And forget about Henry. Put the notion of visiting out of your head, or you’ll get us both booted out of here.”
Candle wax dripped onto Chloe’s thumb. “Ow!”
The footman returned to plunk his hat into the basket.
“That’s it!” Chloe snapped her fingers. “What about—having a footman deliver a message?”
Mrs. Crescent stooped over to pick up Fifi and sighed on her way up the stairs. The candle flames in the candelabrum bent with her exhale and almost went out. “You know you can’t write a letter to a man unless you’re engaged.”
“There wouldn’t be a letter. I’d just have a footman deliver a verbal message. We have to—push the envelope. You know how Grace is. We have to bend the rules, not break them. You want us to win, right?”
“It’s not proper.”
Chloe knew Mrs. Crescent was right and she leaned against the cold wall. Her right to talk, to communicate, had been stripped away, and she stood helpless, imprisoned in a glorified prom gown. She was a modern woman after all, used to her freedoms of movement and expression. This was exasperating!
At that moment Grace, lips pursed and armed with her own candelabrum, swooshed by the two of them with all the attitude of a model in a Victoria’s Secret commercial. She tugged at her bodice and smoothed her gown. “You’re such a good girl with your chaperone,” she sneered in Chloe’s ear. Her berry-stained lips were smudged. Chloe’s candelabrum went out completely as Grace turned the corner. Two cameramen trailed Grace’s flowing gown.
“At least I won’t get gonorrhea or—pregnant!” Chloe coundn’t keep herself from muttering.
Mrs. Crescent shushed her.
Grace was, by Chloe’s standards, a strumpet, and she had no doubt that the girl had just added another notch to her calling-card case by dallying with yet another footman.
But maybe Grace was right, after all, and Chloe was being too good. Despite Mrs. Crescent’s advice, she knew she had to be proactive, aggressive. Grace had planted a condom in her reticule and gotten away with it, for God’s sake! At the very least, she had to protect—herself.
With their candelabra snuffed out, Chloe and Mrs. Crescent had no choice but to feel their way through the hall, back to the drawing room. The fire in the fireplace and the candelabra in the room were flickering on the ornate gold frames of the paintings. Mrs. Crescent opened the walnut sewing cabinet, pulling out Chloe’s floss and needles.
“Needlework? Haven’t I endured enough punishment for one day?” Chloe asked.
Grace was sleeping with the footmen, and here she was, doing her needlework!
She fingered the irregular, loose stitches in her embroidery. Miss Gately’s fireplace screen stood finished in the corner, a testament to her accomplishments. Uniformly stitched peonies blossomed on a red background, while the robins in Chloe’s embroidery looked more like rats. But then again, she had just started to learn this craft, and she was here and Miss Gately—wasn’t. Grace, though, was still here, too, and so was Julia.
The butler brought the tea things in and Chloe wondered what he had done with that condom anyway.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Crescent said, “I’ll pour.” As soon as he left, Mrs. Crescent shot Chloe a serious look. “We made the cut. You deserve a cup of tea for all your efforts.” She handed Chloe a teacup full of plain, room-temperature water.
“You forgot to run the tea leaves through it.”
“No, I didn’t, dear. Just try it before the cameras find us.” Chloe sipped and practically spit the liquid all over her embroidery. “Vodka?” she cried. “Vodka! Where in the world did you get it?”
“Ah, the benefits of doing one’s needlework.” Mrs. Crescent gestured toward a vodka bottle in the recesses of the locked sewing cabinet. She shut the cabinet door and collapsed on the double settee.
Chloe thought of adding a twist of lemon from her deodorant supply, then slammed the vodka and helped herself to two more, all just before a cameraman arrived on the scene. “Cheers, Mrs. Crescent. Here’s to you. And needlework.” She hadn’t eaten anything all day, and the booze went right to her head.
Mrs. Crescent shook a finger at her. “You must drink your tea like a civilized lady. Slowly. And that’s all the ‘tea’ you’re getting—tonight.”
Chloe tried to nurse her vodka as best she could. “Mrs. Crescent, is there a garden somewhere around here with something in it that casts shadows and light?”
Mrs. Crescent locked the sewing cabinet with a key she kept in her reticule. “I daresay I regret giving you that tea.”
Chloe sipped from the teacup. “Or, perhaps there is a clock somewhere in this house with a garden painted on it?”
Mrs. Crescent shook her head and rubbed her belly. “Oh, dear.”
The vodka warmed Chloe, raising her spirits and her confidence, and loosening her Regency restraint. She knew she needed to take action.
The clock in the hall struck eleven, the women’s curfew. Only the men could be out and about at this hour. As Chloe looked out the window, a star-filled sky seemed to beckon to her. The vodka had dulled her rational side just enough for her to follow her impulses.
“Time for us to turn in,” Mrs. Crescent announced.
Chloe moped toward the doorway, and being rather drunk, she accidentally kicked over the wicker laundry basket. As she put the laundry back in, it hit her.
She could go over to Dartworth, legally—dressed as a man! She hoisted the basket to her hip, balancing it and her candelabra, then leaped up the steps and clicked her door shut in a most ladylike way.
After she stirred the fire to warm up her room, the air of which felt brisk even on this summer night, she lifted a pair of footman’s knee breeches from the laundry basket and held them up against her waist. She wouldn’t really be breaking the rules if she were a “man.” The trick was to bend the rules and not get caught, just as Grace did with drinking her nightly wine, shagging the good-looking footmen, and God only knew what else.
Maybe it was the vodka talking, but after she pulled on the footman’s white stockings, snug-fitting breeches, and brass-buttoned jacket and tucked her hair into the footman’s black hat, she cocked her head in the floor mirror and decided she looked like quite a hot little footman. After days of wearing dresses, the pants felt liberating, sexy even. Chloe smiled in the mirror. If Grace could have closed-door interludes with footmen at the drop of a tricornered hat, then Chloe could go for a walk after eleven o’clock disguised as a man.
She stuffed her bed with pillows, pulled the velvet coverlet over them, and snuffed out the candles. By the light of the fireplace she opened her window to the thick darkness outside. “This is crazy. I came here to win the money and I’m losing my heart to two men.” She said it out loud. There. She’d admitted it. It had to come to this for her to realize.
Outside there were no streetlights, no lights on the front of the house—no wonder a girl wasn’t allowed to roam at this hour. A few torches, though, burned in front of the main door. Opting not to break a leg, she decided not to jump out the second-story window. Instead she waited for all the women’s doors to click shut, and stocking-footed, shoes in hand, she sneaked down the servants’ staircase all the way to the basement kitchen. Cook’s eyeglasses, she noticed, were lying on the pine table. Chloe put them on in hopes of bettering her disguise. For a moment the glasses blurred her vision, but then the fuzziness cleared. She slipped out the kitchen door without anyone noticing. Once she was outside, the cool evening air sobered her, but only for a minute. She pulled on her shoes and groped her way toward the torches.
As she followed the stone wall of Bridesbridge Place, feeling her way toward the light, she saw a candle appear in a window on the second floor, then the window opened, and whoosh—a chambermaid dumped a washbasin of water out the window. Chloe jumped back, but it splashed on her calfskin walking shoes. Dots of mud sprayed onto her white tights. The window slammed shut.
“Damn!” Chloe whispered to herself. “Talk about getting cold feet.” She stepped around what she’d bet was the cold water Grace had just washed her face in. “Forget this.” So much for bending the rules. She decided to shelve this idea.
“Who’s there?” A night watchman raised his torch, pacing atop the steps of the main entry.
Too late to go back now.
Chloe lowered her voice. “Hullo! Just a footman out for a walk.” She yanked on one of the torches, and finally, like the sword in the stone, the thing came out of the ground. It was taller than she was, and heavier than she thought. She almost fell over.
“Here now!” the watchman called out, squinting his eyes to see her better. “Since you’re out, you may as well deliver this to Mr. Sebastian Wrightman.” He handed her a letter and a lantern, and took the torch. Now she had a mission and she considered this to be a sign.
As the watchman came closer, he screwed up his mouth and squinted at her. “Promise me you’ll bring it directly, no stopping for a thimbleful of drink along the way?”
“Promise.” Chloe spun around, wanting to say as little as possible, and headed toward Dartworth before the watchman had a chance to question her further.
Her shoes sank into the mud as she pointed herself toward the flickering torches in front of Dartworth Hall far off in the distance. Her shoes made a slight squishing sound in the mud. Despite her nerves and her shaking hand, she tried to enjoy her newfound freedom without a chaperone. And she was out after dark. She hoisted the lantern high, but it didn’t feel right. She wasn’t like Grace. She couldn’t break rules any more easily than she could break hearts.
The lantern helped her see, but the light it cast was limited at best. She’d never take streetlights for granted again. She almost turned back because the darkness scared her, but she knew that the night watchman had his eye on her and there was no going back. Trees creaked, owls hooted, and something rustled in the woods along the path. The footpath to Dartworth Hall certainly was a lot longer than it looked from her bedchamber window. Just then a nearly full moon burst from behind a cloud and shed a blue light on everything.
When she looked back over her shoulder to see how far she’d gone—wham! She slammed right into a panel of glass and her tricornered hat almost fell off her head. Her shoulder hurt, but at least the glass wasn’t broken. She raised her lantern and discovered she’d bumped into a greenhouse, a massive greenhouse from the looks of it. The glass felt warm and moist on her palm. She wiped away the condensation and shone her torch on strawberries growing on a vine inside. Standing back, she looked up, hoisted her lantern, and made out leaded-glass windows.
After days of forcing down mutton, rubbery little potatoes, and peacock presented with the head still on, she’d been craving fruit. Forbidden fruit!
She heard hurried footsteps and a night watchman from Dartworth Hall came running up with his lantern. “Hullo there,” he called. “What is it, boy? Come from Bridesbridge at this hour? On foot?”
Chloe bowed her head, lowered her voice, and presented the letter. “I—I have a letter for Mr. Wrightman, sir.”
“Do ya now?” The watchman looked at her askance. “You don’t look familiar to me, boy.”
“I’m new at Bridesbridge.”
“You’ll have to bring the letter in yourself. The front-door footmen have gone to bed. He’s in the billiards room. Catty-corner from the main dining room. Follow the large hall and stay right.”
Chloe’s shadow, with her thin legs and ankles, did look rather boylike and the coat hid her hips better than any slimming underwear ever could, although, as a result of the rigors of a Regency diet, she’d already lost the seven pounds she’d been needing to lose for quite some time.
She set her lantern down and bounded up the marble steps—the hundreds and hundreds of steps shining in the blue moonlight. It was too delicious to be true. She’d have Sebastian all to herself—dressed in her cute little footman outfit! And as an added bonus, she could find Henry and apologize to him. She skipped through the open doorway and into the foyer, dimly lit by a few sconces on the walls. The candled chandeliers were out for the night, but a candelabrum stood on the foyer credenza and she picked it up.
She hurried past the dark library, dining room, and drawing rooms and followed the sound of men’s laughter in the distance.
As she approached a brightly lit doorway in front of which a footman sat slumped in a chair, apparently sleeping, Chloe saw a massive mahogany pool table. Sebastian was sprawled in a chair, cognac in hand, smartphone in his lap—smartphone!? Henry was reading a book. George paced back and forth with his hands on his hips.
She lunged toward the door, hoping to hightail it out of there, but the footman chose that moment to wake up and blocked her with his arm. “What do you want?” he demanded.
Chloe handed him the letter, but he didn’t take it. “Delivery from Bridesbridge.”
“Sebastian, finish tweeting!” George commanded from behind the doors.
The footman shoved Chloe back into the dark hall and into his wooden chair, where she couldn’t see anything. He clicked the double doors shut behind him and left her in the dark.
She heard muffled voices. What the hell? She didn’t even have a toilet and they were tweeting?
One of the double doors suddenly swung open, casting light on Chloe’s mud-spattered tights.
“You may come in,” the footman announced, and he spun off. Like in a bad dream, Chloe wanted to move but couldn’t. Finally, she took a deep breath and stepped into the room. The stench of snuff filled the air. Under a high rococo ceiling, a claw-footed pool table dominated the interior. The side tables were littered with wine decanters, snuffboxes, and chocolates. Her eyes scanned the room for the phone and George, but both were gone.
“Well, my boy,” Sebastian slurred as he leaned against his pool cue. “What brings you here at such an ungodly hour?”
The vodka, Chloe realized, was starting to wear off, and goose bumps were beginning to pop up and down her arms. Thank God there weren’t any cameramen around. Maybe the camera crew had turned in for the night.
Sebastian’s eyes looked a little glassy. He had been drinking, and this bolstered her courage. “A delivery.” Chloe handed him the letter.
Henry closed his book and furrowed his brows at her.
Chloe stepped back, wary.
Then Henry’s lips curled into a smile. If he’d seen through her disguise, he didn’t seem upset at her. “What is your name—boy?” he asked.
“Charles—sir.” Chloe bowed her head and pushed Cook’s glasses up the bridge of her nose.
“Charles. Right. Do take off your hat, Charles.”
“No—no, thank you, sir, I cannot stay.”
“Fancy a drink?” Henry asked.