Chloe was hoping that the top half of Grace’s boobs would get good and sunburned, because of course, sunblock didn’t exist in 1812.
Her bonnet trimmed and five Accomplishment Points garnered, Chloe pretended to do her embroidery as she spied on Sebastian and Grace through the casement window in the drawing room at Bridesbridge Place. The couple bobbed up and down in the rowboat on the reflecting pond.
Since Chloe had been MIA while out bird-watching with Henry, and Grace had finished embroidering her fireplace screen and had more than enough points for another outing, she was granted the time with Sebastian. Julia, too, had finished her screen and was slated for an outing with him before the archery competition that afternoon.
Julia had fifty Accomplishment Points, but Grace and Chloe only had forty.
“Lady Grace isn’t using her parasol,” Chloe reported to Mrs. Crescent. “And where’s her chaperone, anyway?” She pricked her index finger with the needle. “Ouch!” A drop of blood bubbled up. She flung the needlework to the table and sucked on her fingertip.
Mrs. Crescent was lounging on the settee with Fifi at her side and a leather-bound book in her hands. “You have less than two days to finish that fireplace screen.” She closed the book. “You won’t get any Accomplishment Points for it and you’ll get another, worse task, like mending stockings and stays.”
Chloe stomped over to the pianoforte, where she banged out a few notes. Then she trudged over to the globe, lifted it from its wooden stand, and turned it. She found England, traced the outline of the tiny country with her pricked finger, and set the globe back in the stand.
Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly. “What you need is to win the archery competition this afternoon. Then we’ll all be on our way.”
“Oh, I’ll win all right. I have to!” She needed more time alone with Sebastian.
“That’s the spirit. Now finish up the screen.”
Chloe pressed her nose against the window. “They’re supposed to be bird-watching. Why aren’t they bird-watching?” She picked up her needlework. She set it back down.
Mrs. Crescent stood and rubbed the small of her back. “Lady Grace has no interest in birds. You know that as well as I do.”
Chloe cut a deck of historically accurate oversized cards at the game table, which was draped in a maroon silk tablecloth.
Mrs. Crescent picked up Fifi. “I’m just glad to see you’re back full force. We need to stay focused.”
The cards fell from her hands in a spray on the floor.
Fiona knocked. “Delivery for Miss Parker.”
It looked like some sort of a picnic basket. Fiona set the basket down on the game table and gave Chloe a note, sealed with a blue wax W.
“Thank you,” Chloe said, holding the note in her hand as if it were a winning lottery ticket.
As Fiona curtsied and left, Fifi leaped out of Mrs. Crescent’s arms, jumped up on a chair at the gaming table, and began sniffing the basket. Mrs. Crescent leaned toward the letter.
Chloe broke the seal and read aloud:
“Dear Miss Parker,
Please accept this mousetrap with my regards. I do hope it will catch the mouse in your bedchamber. Looking forward to time together again soon.
Yours,
Mr. Wrightman”
“Mousetrap?” Mrs. Crescent looked sideways at the basket. Fifi started growling.
Chloe thought she saw the basket move, but then again, it could’ve just been her excitement.
“Henry must’ve told him about the mouse.” Chloe held the note up to her nose and breathed in. She showed it to Mrs. Crescent. “Look. He signed it ‘yours.’” She hugged the note close for a moment. No mere e-mail could ever surpass a handwritten note.
Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly and swallowed. “He quite fancies you, doesn’t he.”
Chloe unhooked the basket lid and a young tabby cat peeked out.
“Oh!” Chloe held her arms out to the cat, but Fifi barked and the cat sprang to the writing desk, almost knocking over an ink jar. Fifi hurled himself at the desk in a barking frenzy. The cat arched his back and hissed at Fifi, who snarled and scratched at the desk leg.
Mrs. Crescent scooped up her dog. “Shush, Fifi!”
Chloe whisked the ink jars from the writing desk, but the cat snapped the quill pen in his mouth and held it there like a rose between his teeth. Chloe had to think of Abigail, who loved cats, but never had one as a pet. Chloe missed Abigail so much she had to steady herself against the desk for a moment.
Fifi growled from Mrs. Crescent’s arms as she waddled to the door. “I’m going to rest before the archery meet this afternoon. Now, I suggest you take your mousetrap to your bedchamber, inform Fiona of the new arrival so that she can provide food and a litter box, and use this time to complete your needlework. Enough dawdling!”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “I’m no good at needlework.”
Mrs. Crescent pointed a finger at her. “To win this competition, you need to do more than act like a lady. You need to be one.” With that, she took off.
Chloe picked up the cat and slid the quill from his teeth. She thought about sending Sebastian a thank-you note, but she couldn’t write to a man unless they were engaged. Or could she? Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility did.
She took the cat up to her bedchamber, shutting him in the room with her. She’d never had a cat before. And no man had ever given her anything with more of a pulse than a potted petunia. He must’ve really trusted her; after all, he had no idea that an eight-year-old girl thrived under her care.
She plopped herself down on the red velvet-cushioned stool at her writing desk and ceremoniously lit a tallow candle with a piece of kindling from the fire in her fireplace. The cat paced near the door. She took a piece of thick writing paper from the shelf and it felt almost like cloth. Seizing her bottle of rose water from the dressing table, she sprinkled a couple droplets onto the paper. Mmm—text messages never smelled like roses!
She plucked the goose quill from the penholder, and—was it her sex-starved imagination, or was this pen totally phallic? She touched the hand-cut nib, which was spliced up the center, and ran her hand all the way up the bare shaft to the few feather barbs left at the top. Henry had told her most quills came from the gray goose, and “pen” derived from penna, Latin for “feather.” They were made from the stiff flight feathers on the leading edge of the bird’s wing. Henry, schmenry. The only reason why she thought about him at all was that she spent the most time with him by default, and that had to change.
She flipped the silver top off the crystal ink pot, dipped the quill into the ink, and wiped the shaft of the pen on the rim, as Mrs. Crescent had taught her. The ink permeated the nib and she’d just written the word Dear when the ink ran out and the cat jumped onto the paper. Paw prints and ink were smeared all over. At least she no longer got ink up to her elbows like the first time she tried to write with a quill. She started all over again, with fresh paper, and wrote in a most ladylike tone:
Dear Mr. Wrightman,
Thank you for the mousetrap. It was a most thoughtful gesture and I’m hoping the cat will catch the mouse sooner rather than later.
Yours,
Miss Parker
After rolling the blotter over her words, she folded the letter and dipped a black sealing-wax stick into the candle. Smoke uncoiled into the air. The melting wax perfumed the air with sweetness. The wax dripped slowly onto the paper, forming a liquid circle. Brass seal in hand, she pushed the letter P into the soft wax. It was much more satisfying than clicking the send button!
“Fiona,” Chloe called out down the hallway. Fiona was never far. “Please have this delivered to Mr. Wrightman immediately.”
Fiona took the letter and curtsied.
“Wait. No. I can’t do this. Please give that back to me, Fiona. Sorry to have bothered you.” It was the ladylike thing to do. She’d have to thank him in person, the next time he chose to see her.
Fiona handed the letter back, and without a second thought, Chloe tossed it into her fire. With that, she closed her bedchamber door, stripped off her silk gown, donned a lacy dressing gown, pulled all the pins out of her hair to let it down, and stood at the window.
Her eyes went all glassy as she imagined Sebastian serenading her. He would toss a bouquet of red rosebuds up to her and she would catch it—
An hour and forty-five minutes later, she sat at her open window, flicking her cheek with the quill pen. She couldn’t see Grace and Sebastian anywhere anymore. The hall clock had struck one ages ago. Two o’clock and it was archery time.
She watched a footman and driver mount a carriage below and drive it off toward Dartworth Hall in the afternoon heat. Footmen dressed in long-sleeved coats and wigs carried big wooden tables and wooden chairs out to the lawn for the archery meet while the maids balanced wooden trays loaded with pitchers of lemonade and raspberry puddings ringed with rose petals.
Well, some music would’ve been nice. She didn’t realize how much she’d miss the radio, her CDs, her LP collection, and yes, even iTunes. Sometimes it was just so—quiet here. And the fact that Sebastian had sent her a gift of a cat put her in a celebratory mood. He must have some feelings for her!
She sauntered over to the four-poster bed, vaulted onto the mattress, and swung around one of the bedposts. A song popped into her head. She hadn’t heard anything other than the pianoforte and harp in a while now, but she started singing and swinging her hips to the thumping bass in her head. Soon she was swirling around the bedpost in her corset and stockings, pulling white gloves past her elbows, dipping her head back and letting her hair sway, tickling her legs with her quill pen, cavorting around like a pole dancer, when outside her window, down in the semicircular drive—something moved. She squinted. It was Sebastian! He was in his top hat, gazing up at her with his binoculars.
“Oh God.” She froze for a moment, her stocking leg wrapped around the bedpost.
She heard something trickling—water. The cat was peeing near her evening shoes!
Sebastian stepped forward and back, adjusting the focus on his binoculars. She unwrapped herself from the post, slipped off the bed, and whipped the velvet curtains closed, like a bad puppet show. A pole dance wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind. Something just slightly more ladylike was on the agenda, like flirting from the open window with her hair down, because she looked good with her hair down, much better than the Regency updo Sebastian had associated her with, and she wanted Sebastian to see her that way. Finally, she opened the curtains to say, “It’s huge in America, you know, pole-dance exercise classes.”
He smirked. “I can see why. Please, don’t stop on my account. I find it most—diverting. Carry on.”
Chloe just laughed. “I have to get ready for the archery competition now.”
“You are on my list, Miss Parker. I will be calling on you and you’d best be at home when I arrive!” He bowed and left.
Chloe sank down on the mahogany chaise, putting her head in her hands. Hard to be a lady when the lady was a tramp!
Someone knocked on her door. She snatched her chocolate-colored archery gown from the bed and held it up against herself as if she were sizing it up.
It was Fiona, and Chloe breathed a sigh of relief.
“Time to dress for the archery competition,” her maid said, then gasped at the sight of Chloe’s hair. “Why did you take your hair down, Miss Parker? You know full well it will be half an hour to pin it up again.”
Fiona pinned up Chloe’s hair so quickly and so badly that, right in the middle of the archery competition, when Chloe was already down several points and trying to focus on the red bull’s-eye in the middle of the target, she felt the updo going down.
She kept dwelling on the pole dance. A section of hair fell on the nape of her neck. It startled her into releasing the bowstring sooner than she wanted, and just like that, another arrow bounced off the outer edge of the target and fell to the grass. No doubt the fifteen Accomplishment Points would be going to Grace or Julia at this rate.
“Concentrate!” Mrs. Crescent mouthed to her from a wooden chair on the grassy sideline. And then she mouthed something else, but Chloe never could read lips. Sebastian, Henry, and the chaperones sat under the shade of an old beech tree, watching Grace, Julia, and Chloe face off. Fifi and two greyhounds were asleep under the wooden table where Fiona and some of the other servants were pouring lemonade and stacking Bath buns.
Chloe propped up her lancewood bow, almost as tall as she was, next to her, while she avoided eye contact with Sebastian. She tightened the laces on her brown suede archery gloves. A servant gathered up her misfired arrows and handed them to her like so many broken dreams.
Grace readied her bow.
“Ladies . . .” The butler stepped in front of the camera. “May I interrupt for a moment?”
Grace sighed, relaxed her stance, and scratched her collarbone.
Sunburn, Chloe thought. Soon it would be peeling!
“I’d like to remind you,” he said, looking first at Chloe, then at Grace. “This is the final round of our archery competition today—”
A mosquito buzzed around Chloe’s eyes. She snapped her eyelids closed for a minute, brushed it away, and when she opened them again, she accidentally looked straight at Sebastian, who winked and smiled. At least, it looked like he winked. Anyway, he was smiling—at her. He had this way, even with the gorgeous Grace and alluring Julia around, of making her feel as if she were the one. The only one. She swung her lancewood bow at her side.
“Ahem . . .” The butler cleared his throat. “The winner of today’s competition will not only earn fifteen Accomplishment Points, but will also win an exclusive outing with Mr. Wrightman. Let the games begin.” He raised his arm for the competition to continue.
Chloe’s hands shook.
Grace flashed her white teeth in a fake smile, and Chloe noticed that her teeth somehow seemed whiter than they’d been yesterday. “Another excursion with Mr. Wrightman? I’ll shoot for that.” Grace pulled her bowstring back, and with a snap she nailed it, another bull’s-eye.
Chloe’s hands began to sweat in her suede gloves.
“Miss Parker, may I ask you a question?” Henry bowed in her direction. Mrs. Crescent was standing right by his side.
Chloe didn’t want to get sidetracked by Henry. Not now. “We can talk after the meet, I’m sure, Mr. Wrightman.” She curtsied to soften the blow of her refusal.
“This might help you, Miss Parker. Come over here with us,” Henry said. He guided her toward the lemonade table and handed her a glassful. Her hands shook and when she took a sip, the glass clinked against her teeth. Henry politely ignored this blooper, but the camera got it. She took a big gulp, thinking that what she really needed at the moment was a vodka lemonade.
Henry looked her straight in the eye, as if she had a speck of dirt or something in it. “Miss Parker, do you wear glasses back home?”
She almost sprayed her lemonade all over him. “What?!” She wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin from the table. “Um, I mean, excuse me. Pray tell, what kind of question is that?”
Henry took off his glasses and looked into her eyes while Mrs. Crescent and even Fifi seemed to stare at her. “Have you had your eyesight tested recently?”
Chloe laughed. “Are you saying I’m blind, Mr. Wrightman?”
“It’s your shot, Miss Parker,” Grace called as she slipped her arrows into her tin quiver with a loud ker-plunk.
Chloe put her hands on her hips. “I can see perfectly, thank you very much.” She could see that Sebastian was standing in the background, his arms folded and his brow furrowed as he watched her once again engaged in conversation with Henry.
Mrs. Crescent tapped Chloe’s cap-sleeved shoulder. “Henry has observed, dear—you squint every time you shoot.”
She narrowed her eyes at Henry. What was he trying to do? Break her concentration?
Her thought was interrupted by the butler, who stepped in front of the camera again. “Miss Parker, you must take your turn now. Or do you forfeit?”
The nerve! A lady would never articulate what Chloe was thinking, so she spun away from the lemonade table, plucked a wooden arrow from her tin quiver, grabbed the green velvet grip, raised her bow arm, and kept it locked. Slowly, she drew the twisted linen string back until her thumb hit her jawbone and her index finger almost touched the corner of her pursed lips and—she squinted. There. Now she saw the center circle clearly. She aimed, held her breath, and thought all those archery lessons at summer camp all those years ago had to pay off. She released the arrow but kept her shooting position until she heard the arrow hit the target. Wham! The arrow bounced off the edge of the target and to the grass. She wanted to throw her bow to the ground, but instead she leaned on it and frowned.
Grace mouthed something to Sebastian from across the field. Sebastian mouthed something back, but Chloe had trouble seeing his lips from a distance. Was Henry right? She needed glasses? Was this an approaching-forty thing that had crept up on her so gradually she hardly noticed? She had five arrows left in her quiver. She turned to Henry, who was sitting on the edge of his chair.
“Mr. Wrightman—Henry?” was all she said, and he came right over.
He didn’t say a word. He took off his very clunky nineteenth-century spectacles, with lenses almost as thick as quizzing glasses. A chunk of his hair fell into his light brown eye and he swished it away. He wiped the lenses clean with his cravat and slid the glasses onto her nose as if he were sliding an engagement ring onto her finger. At first she saw nothing but a blur, and she raised her hand to take them off, but then, suddenly, she saw it clearly: the red circle in the middle, the outer rings . . . Wait—now she was seeing the individual leaves on the trees instead of green clumps. She saw peonies in the gardens rather than a blur of pink. Even from this distance, she saw Sebastian’s watch fob dangling from his pants!
She took her stance, held her breath, and shot. Bull’s-eye! She breathed in.
“You’ll need five more of those,” Grace mumbled, leaning nonchalantly on her bow as if it were a streetlamp.
Four bull’s-eyes later, Sebastian, Henry, and Mrs. Crescent clapped and stood. Grace slung her arrow case over her shoulder and folded her arms. Julia folded her arms, too, and drummed her fingers on her taut biceps.
Chloe held the last wooden arrow in her gloved hand. She visualized herself as Cupid, with curly hair and wings as she nocked the arrow in the center of her bowstring and readied herself to take aim, but Grace chose that moment to step none too gently on Chloe’s foot, and Chloe’s fingers released, even though she hadn’t even raised her bow arm. The arrow spun from her bow, as if in slo-mo, and spiraled toward Henry.
Chloe squeezed her eyes shut for a second. Cupid fantasies or not, she certainly hadn’t wanted to shoot an arrow at Henry.
Grace did her best to appear to swoon. “Oh my.” She fell to the grass. “I can’t stand the sight of blood,” she cried, then pretended to faint.
“Blood?!” Chloe ran to Henry’s side. He was already opening up his jacket, looking for the wound.
Chloe’s heart pounded.
“It didn’t hit me,” he said.
Chloe sighed. “Thank God,” she breathed.
Henry looked at her for a moment, then turned away and scrambled to get up. “I think it just hit my watch fob and bounced off.”
Chloe saw that with the fainting, Grace had conveniently managed to land in Sebastian’s arms. He tried to revive her, as if she needed reviving, with her vinaigrette and her fan, and the sight of her in his arms sent chills up Chloe’s corseted spine.
Chloe found the arrow and picked it up, examining the tip. “No blood on the arrow either.”
“It really didn’t hit me,” Henry said, buttoning his coat.
At that moment Grace seemed to miraculously awaken from her fainting spell. “Of course it hit you,” she said from the crook in Sebastian’s arm. “I saw it hit you. You went down because it hit you.”
The butler glared at Chloe.
Out of nowhere, George zoomed in on his ATV in his sunglasses and blue jeans. “Stop the cameras.”
Chloe was taken aback. She’d forgotten that men in the real world didn’t bow when they saw a woman.
George slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and stared at Chloe. “You got lucky,” he said sharply.
Chloe looked down at the arrow in her hand. She did get lucky. If it hadn’t bounced off Henry, she’d be bounced out of here.
“I’m going to be watching this time. Because I don’t want any messing around. Lady Grace, I want you far away from any archers. Take your final shot, Miss Parker,” George said as he moved to the side. “And, Henry, I’d advise you to stop putting yourself in Miss Parker’s path. She tends to attract trouble.”
“Thanks, George,” Chloe muttered. “Don’t forget I happen to be armed at the moment.”
“Take your shot, Miss Parker. Cameras—roll it.”
Sebastian escorted Grace to a wooden chair on the side and then headed back toward the lemonade table.
Henry’s spectacles slid down Chloe’s nose and she pushed them up with her suede gloved finger. She took her stance, drew the string back, and visualized the money, Sebastian in her arms, everything. She raised her bow arm, kept it locked, and drew back the string until her thumb touched her jawbone and her index finger reached the corner of her mouth. She took aim at the red center of the buckskin target, took a breath, held it, breathed out, and released the arrow. Thunk!
“It’s a bull’s-eye!” Mrs. Crescent shouted. Fifi, who’d been fast asleep in her arms, woke up and began to wag his tail.
A servant plucked the arrows from the center of the target and carried them over to Chloe as if they were a bouquet of long-stemmed roses. Triumphantly, she slid them back into her tin quiver, while on the sidelines, Grace’s fan dropped with a faint thud into her lap.
Chloe slid the glasses down the bridge of her nose, and the target blurred again. The leaves and the flowers became fuzzy clumps. Yes, she needed glasses all right. She hurried over to Henry, wanting nothing so much as to throw her arms around him. But instead, she said coolly, “Thank you, Mr. Wrightman, for your observations and for the loan of your gl—er, spectacles.”
He bowed, and as she took in his minty scent, she saw Fiona smile as she poured Sebastian’s lemonade. He smiled back, stirred his lemonade with his finger, and leaned over to whisper to her. Fiona whispered back.
George slipped in between Chloe and Henry. “Miss Parker, I’m sorry to say that you lost the competition by a single arrow.” He signaled the camera crew and hopped in his ATV.
Chloe clicked her heel-less walking boots together. “Thank you again, Henry. I did much better because of your—foresight.”
Henry smiled and flicked the hair out of his eye. “You flatter me. Anyone with any medical experience could have guessed the problem. Eyesight can change rapidly when one approaches—”
“A certain age?” Chloe interrupted.
Henry nodded.
Grace popped out of her chair so fast she knocked it over. “Such an unladylike display of affection,” she announced. “Running over to Mr. Henry Wrightman and thanking him so fervently!”
A blush washed over Chloe’s face. Henry’s glasses slid down her nose. She took them off and folded them up.
“Ladies, gather round,” the butler announced as he stepped in front of the cameras. He opened his notebook.
Julia, Grace, and Chloe encircled him, and their chaperones stepped forward.
“Third-place winner is . . . Lady Grace.”
Grace put her hands on her hips.
“First runner-up . . . Miss Chloe Parker, who forfeits the first dance at the ball due to an arrow gone awry. And, finally, Miss Tripp wins the archery competition, bringing her total to sixty-five Accomplishment Points. Lady Grace and Miss Parker stand tied at forty points. Both Miss Parker and Miss Tripp, however, are due an outing with Mr. Wrightman.”
Chloe handed Henry his spectacles.
“Keep them,” Henry said, and gave them back to her. “Until we get a ladies’ pair made for you.”
“Thank you.” She tucked the glasses into her reticule. “But will you be able to manage without them?”
He nodded.
She curtsied. Mrs. Crescent patted her on the arm, and together they turned toward Bridesbridge Place.
“Did you happen to notice,” Mrs. Crescent said, “just how sunburned Lady Grace’s bosom was?”
True, Grace had been burned, but that didn’t change the fact that Chloe was going to have to sit out the first dance at the ball. And was Fiona flirting with Sebastian? Beads of sweat trailed down her back. It was too hot for this heavy archery gown. For once, she was happy to change for dinner.
When she opened her bedchamber door, she saw that the cat had knocked over her rosewater bottle and the ink bottles, and shredded some of her blotting paper, and she suddenly remembered that she was supposed to shake her ink vial in the chimney. But just when she was ready to reprimand the cat, he stepped out from behind the drapery with a dead mouse in his mouth, hanging by its pink tail.
Chloe screamed, and as if in obedience to some ancient instinct, she leaped onto a chair and hiked up her archery gown.
Sufficient screaming and shrieking prompted a footman to do away with the remains of the mouse. It was then that Chloe noticed pink petals scattered on her pillowcase. The petals surrounded a letter addressed to Miss Parker.
Her cameraman filmed her as she opened the note.
Dear Miss Parker,
I do believe the cat is doing his best to catch the mouse. Looking very much forward to a picnic at the Grecian temple,
Mr. Wrightman