“Ladies, there are two invitations and three of you,” said the butler in the music room at Bridesbridge on Friday evening. The women had displayed their talents on the musical instrument of their choice. Grace played the harp, as it was the most expensive instrument, and it accentuated her higher-class status. Not to mention the fact that harp players had the added bonus of being able to flash some ankle while they performed. Julia played a complicated Regency piece on the pianoforte. Chloe attempted a Mozart selection on the pianoforte—one that she’d played at a Christmas piano recital when she was twelve.
Grace and Julia garnered fifteen Accomplishment Points while Chloe earned five for effort.
She had to admit to herself that some time-management software might’ve come in handy for such ongoing projects as the piano practicing, the needlework, and remembering to shake her vial of ink three times a day.
Chloe stood between Grace and Julia, who tapped her toe on the Aubusson carpet. Grace feigned a yawn. Chloe felt flushed and fanned herself. Mrs. Crescent, who lounged in a green tufted Grecian couch, looked down at Fifi and petted him.
The butler looked straight into the cameras. “Before we proceed, I would like to remind Mr. Wrightman that Miss Tripp has ninety Accomplishment Points, Lady Grace seventy, and Miss Parker forty-five. Mr. Wrightman has to take into account that Miss Parker failed to finish her needlework task even after a request to extend the deadline was granted.”
Chloe felt the sting of that failure and she really cringed to know that the public announcement of it was being filmed. She didn’t want Abigail to see it, for one thing.
“All three of you have gowns for the ball already made and fitted,” said the butler. He rose up on his toes in his gold-buckled shoes. “But, only two of you will be invited to attend. If you are not chosen, you must immediately pack your trunks and you will be sent home tonight. The two that remain will be attending the ball tomorrow.”
More than ever, Chloe wanted to stay. Surely, Sebastian wouldn’t have sent her that note if he didn’t want her to stay.
“Mr. Wrightman, if you please.”
The butler stood aside, and Sebastian came forward. He looked elegant in his dark coat and breeches and a white cravat that showed off his tanned face.
Sebastian lifted an envelope from the salver. “Lady Grace.”
It was like a guillotine slicing down. Chloe’s chances were suddenly cut in half. It was going to be Julia or her. Even though the note he’d given her had raised her hopes, this had all occurred before her pathetic pianoforte performance, and anything could happen now. Fear of being sent home ripped through her. She realized the worst had happened: she was falling for Sebastian!
Grace curtsied as Sebastian bowed, and the ostrich feather in her turban brushed up against him. Why her?! Chloe fumed internally.
Sebastian gazed at Chloe and Julia, as if even at that moment, he hadn’t yet decided which one of them he would choose. Chloe imagined having to go home to Abigail. Abigail would be thrilled to see her, but also crushed to know that her mother had been sent home. She’d be even more crestfallen to know that her whole life would have to change. They’d have to downsize, move out of the city, and Winthrop, being in a better financial situation, might even be granted the holiday and summer custody he wanted.
“Miss—” Sebastian paused for the cameras. He glanced at the envelope with the red wax W and then at the two women. “Miss Parker.”
She could almost hear the French horns blaring triumph in her head. She felt tantalizingly close to victory, despite her pianoforte fiasco, because she was to meet Sebastian at the ice house. She said her good-byes to Julia, incredulous that Sebastian would let her go and Grace stay.
“Ladies . . .” The butler looked at Chloe and Grace. “Mr. Wrightman will see you at the ball tomorrow night.”
Sebastian bowed, Chloe and Grace curtsied, and Chloe watched Julia as she didn’t bounce, but shuffled into the foyer on Sebastian’s arm.
“Good riddance to her,” Grace said, and brushed her hands off as if she’d just gotten rid of an annoying fly.
The final task was the ball, and Saturday morning, Chloe put herself in the capable hands of Mrs. Crescent, Fiona, and even her chambermaid and a few random servants to help dress her, arrange her hair, fasten her jewelry, and make her up for the evening. She was as diligent as a bride dressing for her wedding, and it took a village.
Mrs. Crescent, alas, would not be going to the ball. She had to stay at Bridesbridge for fear of slipping in the mud and a superstition that a full moon might induce labor. Chloe would be under the dark wing of Grace’s chaperone for the night, but even this didn’t daunt her. Finally, the anticipated moment arrived.
Lit by the moon, the remaining ladies of Bridesbridge Place, Chloe, Grace, and Grace’s chaperone, stepped out of their carriage in front of Dartworth Hall. Dressed in their silk gowns, ostrich feathers, and elbow-length white gloves, they stepped into mud thick as chocolate frosting from the day’s rain.
The rain and mud, combined with the lack of Julia’s sporting presence, not to mention Mrs. Crescent’s, conspired to dampen Chloe’s spirits, but she smiled in anticipation of her first ball in England, surrounded by English people with their English accents. And she quickened at the prospect of dancing with Sebastian even as she wondered at what to expect at the ice house.
After Grace and her chaperone were helped out of the chaise, the footman handed Chloe out and helped her balance on the steel platform pattens strapped to her pale pink ballroom slippers.
Chloe looked back at Bridesbridge Place. She missed Mrs. Crescent, however pregnant and persnickety she might have been. How could she pass this final test—the ball—on her own?
Cameras were everywhere and it made her uneasy. Granted, going with Grace meant she got to ride in the chaise-and-four. Still. Still, she was going to the ball with one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, and she knew it.
Grace, in her wedding-white gown, looked down on Chloe from the first landing on the stairs. Chloe stretched her bejeweled neck toward the bright open doors of Dartworth Hall. She lifted her silk gown and pelisse and took a deep breath. Back home, everybody was eating cheeseburgers because it was the Fourth of July, but she got to go to a ball in one of the grandest country estates in England.
She teetered her way to the palatial staircase a good four inches off the ground in her pattens. They made a sucking sound every time she took a step in the mud. Everyone laughed as a footman’s shoe stuck in the mud and he had to hop around in his stocking foot. How would she trek to the ice house in all this? And who knew it rained so much in England?
The maids ushered the women into the ladies’ cloakroom, where one of them took off Chloe’s Greek-key-trimmed pelisse and her pattens. The maid even retied her ballroom slippers, fastening the spaghetti-thin pink straps around her ankles a little too tight, but Chloe didn’t complain.
She looked in the same mirror in which she had beheld herself after the hedge-maze debacle and hardly recognized what she saw. This time, instead of seeing a madwoman, she saw a peach-gowned princess with a tiny Empire waist trimmed in sparkly gold. Her arched eyebrows, blackened with ripe elderberries, beckoned. Candle-soot eyeliner brought her bright eyes to life. And this time she hadn’t eaten her rouge. Was it the strawberry stain, or did she actually have cheekbones now? The weeks of not eating haunch-of-venison soup, raised giblet pie, and Florentine rabbits had paid off. She could market this Regency diet when she got home. She wished Abigail could see her now!
She smiled at her stick-straight hair that Fiona had transformed into a splendor of curls. But the pin curls and yellow beaded silk ribbon that swirled around her hair reminded her of—question marks. Were her feelings for Sebastian real? Or was she just projecting her idealized vision of Mr. Darcy onto him? Did she know him well enough to even say yes to a made-for-television marriage proposal?
“Miss Parker!” Lady Martha clapped her hands at Chloe.
Grace’s chaperone always clapped at Chloe, as if she were a dog or circus animal.
Lady Martha put her hands on her silver-spangled hips. “Are you quite ready?”
“Really.” Grace rolled her eyes.
Chloe was incensed, and with a huff she spun and led the way through the foyer. Video cameras rolled and cameras clicked away as she marched through the gallery, past rows of oh-so-serious Wrightman family portraits, toward an archway at the end of the marbled foyer that was flanked by two footmen and two candelabra. But, when Henry stepped out from behind the arch in a black cutaway coat, gray knee breeches, white stockings, an elegant ruffled white shirt, and gray gloves, she came to a screeching halt. He bowed. Then, from the other side of the arch, Sebastian appeared, looking as dapper if not more so in his black coat and buff-colored breeches. He bowed, too.
The only thing better than one gentleman was two.
Once again imagining a book on her head, Chloe floated along with video cameras at her side, her gown flowing at her ankles. She glided toward both Henry and Sebastian, who stood waiting in the anteroom. She was ready to glide, on both of their arms, into the pale yellow ballroom bedecked with gilt floral molding and sparkling with candles reflected in gilt mirrors when Henry, with his eyes, and a flick of his gloved hand, signaled her to step aside. She slowed her pace. She had forgotten to let Grace precede her. How could she have forgotten that?
Suddenly the ball of her right foot stuck to the ground, her heel lifted out of her slipper, and she stumbled. Grace had deliberately stepped on the back of Chloe’s slipper!
She felt her face flush with color. Of course the cameras got that.
“Ballroom blunder number one,” Grace whispered out of the side of her mouth as she slithered past Chloe.
Chloe shot a look at Lady Martha, who just lowered her eyelids in disdain. “You must enter the ballroom in order of rank. You must always remember your place, Miss Parker,” she sneered.
Chloe leaned back on her heel and crushed the back of her slipper.
A cameraman cut from Lady Martha to Chloe as she watched Sebastian and Henry bow to Grace.
Grace’s chaperone looked over her capped-sleeve shoulder at Chloe. “That would mean you come in behind us.” She glanced at Chloe’s slippers. “Go to the cloakroom and have a maid repair your lace. You cannot enter the ballroom looking like that.”
A group of people dressed in ballroom attire sauntered past Chloe. One of the pink ribbons strapped around her ankle had broken. She looked up and saw Sebastian leading Grace and her chaperone into the glowing ballroom. Henry greeted the crowd with a smile and a handshake.
If she went back to the cloakroom now, she’d miss the opening minuet, and that was probably exactly what Grace and her chaperone had planned, even though Chloe, as she knew full well, had to sit out the first dance in punishment for her mishap at the archery competition. She ducked into an alcove, knelt down to fix the lace, and the camera was on it. Or was the camera on her cleavage? There. She’d fixed it. She stood up and flashed a fake smile at the camera. But she couldn’t enter the ballroom without a chaperone—she knew that.
The footmen stood like soldiers guarding the archway. The cameraman filmed her biting her lower lip. Another crowd of ball goers passed by. Who were these people? Townfolk? Actors?
She stood awkwardly and pretended to check for something in her reticule when a whiff of garlic hit her. It was Cook dressed in a high-cut green silk gown and white gloves, her silvery hair held in place by a peacock-feathered hair band. Her blue eyes twinkled. “What’s the belle of the ball doing out here?” She held out her arm.
Chloe took it in her own. “You don’t want to know. I’m so happy to see you here. You look—gorgeous.”
“Might I be your chaperone for the evening?”
Chloe beamed. Together they headed toward the anteroom.
“Tonight, at least for a little while, I’m a card-carrying member of the well-to-do Ton. You know. Society with a capital S.”
“I know what the term Ton means,” Chloe said. “And you more than qualify, as far as I’m concerned.”
Cook patted Chloe’s hand with her fan and lowered her voice to a whisper. “George had everyone at Bridesbridge dress as society for the ball. It’s fabulous, but sad, in a way, too. The show’s almost over.”
“The show?” Chloe was always surprised when Cook stepped out of her Regency character. She wasn’t at all like Mrs. Crescent in that regard. Then again, this could be another test.
“The reality show. The little charade.”
Chloe just smiled.
Henry and Sebastian both turned toward them. Henry flicked the hair out of his eye and Sebastian adjusted his cravat.
Both men smiled at her. It had started out as a show. A way to score some money. But what was it now? Chloe’s heart was on the line and it felt as fragile as a Regency-era Wedgwood teacup. First Henry bowed, then Sebastian. Sebastian escorted Cook into the anteroom, and seemed to slight Chloe. But why? Had her eye lingered too long on Henry when he bowed?
“So glad you could join us, Miss Parker.” Henry offered his arm. “Before I escort you to the ball, would you like to see the library here at Dartworth—just for a minute? It’s right over there. You don’t need a chaperone with all these people milling about.”
Chloe hesitated. “I don’t want to miss the minuet, even though I have to sit it out.”
“You won’t. I promise.”
As excited as she was about the ball, this might be her last chance to see the Dartworth library. She stopped. “This isn’t code for showing me your etchings, is it?”
“Maybe.”
“Is this some kind of test? Because I won’t do anything to put my relationship with your brother in jeopardy. You must know, Mr. Wrightman, where my affections lie.”
“I do.”
Once Chloe walked into the library, she had to catch her breath. Hundreds and hundreds of candles had been lit and carefully placed around the room. The leather-bound books with gold- and silver-embossed titles on the bindings glistened in the candlelight. And, in tiny vases everywhere, were flowers from the heirloom cutting garden at Dartworth. Larkspur, snapdragons, bachelor’s buttons, lilies, and foxgloves perfumed the air and seemed to sprinkle their colors against the dark wood paneling.
“It’s—it’s amazing. Did Sebastian do this?”
“I did.”
“You did?”
Henry nodded. “I did it for you. And this is for you, too. I’ll have a footman run them over tomorrow.”
He placed three leather-bound books in her hands. Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in three volumes.
She ran her gloved fingers along the letterpressed title.
“Someday our kids will laugh about these things called ‘books.’”
Chloe got stuck on his saying “our kids.”
“Good thing we’re both wearing gloves. It’s a first edition,” he said.
Chloe handed the books back to him. “I can’t accept them. They’re worth a fortune. I can’t accept any of this.”
“The books may be worth a fortune, but I never planned on selling them. I don’t think you will either.”
He looked at her with so much passion in his eyes that she—she swooned—and had to lean against the writing desk. “Henry. You have to stop.”
“I must warn you that this goes against all the rules, but some things are better expressed without words.” He gently but firmly nudged her against the bookshelves, the section labeled FANTASY, and he trapped her there with his arms. Their bodies crushed together as he kissed her deftly and deliciously. He stopped for a moment, and desire ricocheted through her.
“You really are quite accomplished, Miss Parker,” he said. “Very talented.”
He rendered her speechless. He cupped her cheek in his hand. “You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know how ardently I admire you.”
The room spun a little around her, but the light-headedness could’ve been due to a lack of oxygen. She hadn’t been kissed like that in a long time. Why was he doing this to her? Was this another test?
He checked his watch fob, which happened to be dangerously near his bulging breeches. “The minuet will be starting soon.”
Chloe’s mouth dropped open a little. He didn’t want anything more than a kiss? Surely she did. But “Miss Parker” did not. Miss Parker had already gone too far.
“Perhaps, sometime, when there isn’t a grand ball going on, you would like to accompany me back to the library?”
Chloe looked around at the candles, the flowers, the books, drinking it all in. All of it was slipping away already, like a good dream you only remember pieces of when you wake.
“You don’t have to answer. I’ve read it all on your face.”
She buzzed into the ballroom on Henry’s arm. She felt as if she’d drunk a couple of glasses of wine. People approached Henry with smiles and swarmed around him. The height of the room, the gilded ceiling, the candlelight, orchestra, and gowns intoxicated Chloe even more than she already was. Cook made her way toward them.
Henry pulled out chairs for the two women. He motioned a flourish with his hand for them to sit. “Ladies, if you please?”
“I’m much obliged. Thank you, sir.” Chloe sat, her vision of the evening torn asunder. She was bedazzled and bewildered all at once.
Henry said something about supper at midnight, lemonade, tea, coffee, and even wine, which, God knows she would’ve given her last soap ball for a glass of. She half expected to see Colin Firth or Hugh Grant mingling in the crowd. Chloe caught a sudden whiff of beeswax and a drop of something from above fell into the crook of her arm just above her glove. It hardened into a warm white circle. She rubbed it off with her gloved finger.
Henry pointed to the ceiling. “Wax from the candles.”
She squinted up at a gold chandelier hanging high above her like an oversized halo. The ceiling itself was painted in a skyscape of white clouds, sunshine beams, and golden-haired cherubs.
“The candles melt quickly in all this heat. It takes an army of servants just to keep the place lit. Which reminds me. Mr. Smith?” He signaled a servant. “Please snuff out the candles in the library. Thank you.”
The candles that hung above her had already melted to half their height. She wasn’t ready for all this to melt away. She didn’t want the candles in the library to be snuffed.
Her eyes welled up with tears. At least she wasn’t wearing any mascara, but the candle-soot eyeliner might smudge. She dabbed the corners of her eyes with her glove.
Henry, of course, offered her a handkerchief. He always had a handkerchief. It was so old-fashioned.
An older woman, doused in Chanel perfume and draped in layer upon layer of silk, broke into their little threesome. “Mr. Wrightman—” She spoke to Henry, but looked down at Chloe, then deliberately turned so that her butt was in Chloe’s face.
Cook squeezed Chloe’s hand.
The woman hooked her arm in Henry’s. “I simply must introduce you to my niece who’s in from London. She’s a doctor, just like you. You will absolutely adore her.”
Who were these people? And why were they mixing with the unwashed from the reality show?
Henry bowed. As the woman led him away, he looked back at Chloe over his shoulder. “Save two dances for me.”
“Of course.” Chloe bowed her head, and when she lifted it, Henry and his companion had already disappeared into the crowd. Poof. It felt as if someone had doused the lights. Her eyes scanned the room for him.
“So.” Cook tapped her on the knee with her fan. “Mrs. Crescent tells me you’re really taken with Sebastian—I mean Mr. Wrightman.”
Chloe opened her mouth to speak and looked at Cook, her familiar face, her smile as warm as plum pudding, and she realized she didn’t even know her name.
“Here you’ve cooked every meal I’ve eaten since I got here—and I don’t even know your name.”
Cook crossed her legs under her glistening gown. “It’s Lady Anne Wrightman.”
Chloe opened up her feathered fan. “Your real name.”
Cook smiled. “It’s Lady Anne. I’m Henry and Sebastian’s aunt.”
It crossed Chloe’s mind that this was a show, after all.
“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Embarrassed, she started to sweat. She fanned herself frantically. “I just assumed you were, uh—”
“Not titled? It’s understandable. I’ve spent the past month or so in the basement kitchen.” Lady Anne laughed.
Chloe tried to reconcile this Lady Anne with the woman she knew as Cook.
“Don’t worry, you were always very kind to me—and all the servants, for that matter. And I really put you to the test! But you’d best be careful with how you manage your fan.” She looked at Chloe’s fan. “With that kind of fluttering, you’re sending a message to all the men that you’re engaged.”
Chloe snapped up her fan and held it in her left hand, at the angle that meant “desirous of acquaintance.” Lady Anne nodded in approval.
It hit Chloe like a ton of stale Bath buns that not only was she sitting next to the aunt of the two men in her life, but that the room was swarming with beautiful women in gowns with plunging necklines, and neither Sebastian nor Henry was anywhere to be seen.
The orchestra, discreetly hidden behind topiaries and shrubbery, struck up and everyone stood.
“Lady Anne.” Chloe had to raise her voice loudly so that her companion could hear her over the music. She practically shouted. Unfortunately, though, at the very moment that she yelled, “Who are all these women?!,” the orchestra took the liberty of stopping.
All the faces in the crowd turned toward Chloe, who fumbled with her fan and unwittingly sent all kinds of mixed messages around the room, from “kiss me” to “I hate you” to “you are too willing.” She couldn’t breathe.
“Play on!” Henry said from the top of the ballroom, and the orchestra started up again. And she breathed again. But she still couldn’t see Henry.
The crowd circled the dance floor, and Chloe and Lady Anne nudged their way to the front, where Grace and Sebastian, as the couple of the highest status, opened the ball with a perfectly danced minuet.
Grace lived up to her name on the dance floor, and the minuet seemed to last forever.
Finally, the dance ended and Chloe craned her neck to see over and around everyone, and wished she was wearing a pair of heels instead of flats. Heels have their purpose, after all, just like so many things from the modern world that she missed. She managed to get a glimpse of the archway, but Henry wasn’t there either.
“May I have the pleasure of this dance?” Sebastian bowed as he stared into her cleavage. Well, the pleasure was hers, really. On the ballroom floor, the women lined up on one side and the men on the other. For Chloe, one of the most elegant and joyous parts of the dance was this, the beginning, the anticipation, when the line of women faced the line of men and bowed and curtsied simultaneously.
Chloe looked forward to talking with Sebastian. Regency dancing offered a rare opportunity for a couple to speak privately.
Sebastian’s black jacket was so beautifully tailored that Chloe did all she could do to keep herself from hanging on to his coattails. But she had to keep her hands to her sides now and during most of the dance. As with all Regency dancing, touching was minimal.
The orchestra struck up the first chords of “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot,” the very song that Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet danced to in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. They turned by right hands, touching for the second time, their hands low, each of their eyes locked into the other’s. They turned by left hands and she felt the heat surge between them, but then again it was a summer night, there was no air-conditioning, and there had to be sixty some dancers on the floor. Despite the heat, it was a fantasy of hers come to life. She was dancing to “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot” in a gown, in a ballroom, in England, with the most attractive, most mysterious, and richest man in the room! She talked about the dance, but he didn’t reply. She wondered if he was in one of his brooding moods, which she found both sexy and exasperating.
She smirked. “It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Wrightman. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”
He smiled. They came together and they parted, and doubt crackled through her. She almost forgot to cross and cast down the line. Had he really caught the Austen reference she’d just made? She wasn’t sure.
When they met again, she watched him as if he were a science experiment about to bubble over. He seemed to be concentrating on the figures, counting his steps. He looked so preoccupied that Chloe began to doubt that he’d even heard her Austen reference.
Toward the end of the dance, at the point where they faced, met, and led up, Chloe finally broke the silence. “I want to thank you for the apology you left about our outing, but really, I’m the one that should apologize.”
He looked straight at her, and not at his feet, with his intense black eyes. “I’m so glad you brought that up. I can only say I wasn’t myself—”
“Because of laudanum I put into your lemonade,” she blurted. “It was all my fault!”
He looked incredulous. “You put what into my lemonade?”
“Laudanum. I gave it to you for your toothache.”
Now he looked confused.
“It’s some sort of a painkiller. I didn’t give you much, but it was enough to push you over the edge, I guess.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me.”
She sighed. “It’s complicated.” There was no winning this one. She was wrong for not telling him and wrong for being alone with Henry to get the medicine in the first place. He looked deep into her eyes, and she felt herself falling down that rabbit hole again.
She didn’t want to disappoint him—but she needed to win the money. For some reason, though, she kept forgetting about the money. No doubt about it, her priorities had changed. She was actually putting Sebastian first and the prize money second.
Luckily, the dance was over. He bowed, and when she looked up from her curtsy, she finally saw Henry. He was pacing in front of a floor-to-ceiling window like a caged tiger. The rush of air behind him blew out candles as he walked and an annoyed-looking servant had to relight them in his wake.
“Can I interest you in some negus, Miss Parker?” Sebastian asked. He slid his arm in hers and guided her away from Henry, toward the top of the ballroom, where the orchestra sat behind the topiaries. The lively English reel they were currently playing grew louder as they approached, and they couldn’t hear each other talk, so there was no point in saying anything. Chloe linked her arm in his as they headed toward the refreshment tables in the conservatory, where a crush of people gathered under palm trees in huge ceramic pots.
Just as they were about to cross into the room, where the wine that Chloe was craving awaited them, Grace and her chaperone suddenly appeared, barricading the entry.
“I’ve been looking all over for you.” Lady Martha scolded Chloe like a child. “A girl is not allowed to be alone at a ball. This could be reason enough to have you sent back home.” She put an indignant hand on her hip.
“I’m not alone,” Chloe answered her coolly. “I’m with Lady Anne Wrightman.”
Grace and Lady Martha looked at each other. Lady Martha looked back at Chloe. “Lady Anne would not associate with the likes of—”
“Miss Parker is with me.” Lady Anne—aka “Cook”—appeared as if magically conjured, and linked her arm in Chloe’s.
Clearly suppressing their frustration, Grace and her chaperone curtsied.
Sebastian took Lady Anne’s hand, and he kissed it. “How nice to see you again.”
Lady Anne smiled at him, but turned to Grace’s chaperone. “I need to go back to Bridesbridge soon, and at that time I will return Miss Parker to you.”
“Very well.” Grace and Lady Martha curtsied again to Lady Anne and made their way back to the ballroom. Chloe had to laugh at the sight of their fawning behavior toward someone whom, when she was merely known as “Cook,” they wouldn’t have deigned to look at.
Sebastian brought Chloe and her companion a goblet of negus.
Just as Chloe raised the goblet to her lips, Lady Anne turned toward the ballroom. “I need to sit down. Let’s go.” She took Chloe by the arm and Chloe, who didn’t even get to taste her drink, handed it to Sebastian, who downed her glass as well as his own.
When Lady Anne found a seat, Chloe found that Sebastian had disappeared, and as she smoothed the bottom of her gown to sit, she saw both Sebastian and Henry on the dance floor. Sebastian was dancing “Upon a Summer’s Day” with Grace and Henry was paired with someone equally beautiful and intelligent looking, probably the doctor from London he’d been fixed up with.
Chloe tapped her fan in the palm of her gloved hand. She watched the red-haired London doctor, who had no doubt showered, brushed her teeth, and put on real makeup today. But more than her looks, Chloe watched the way she and Henry talked and nodded and laughed through the dance. Sebastian and Grace just stared at each other.
Chloe stood, sat again, and smiled a zigzag smile at Lady Anne, who patted Chloe on the knee.
The dancers formed a circle for “Sellenger’s Round.” They circled to the left, then to the right. Sebastian and Henry and their respective partners, like distant planets, traveled in an orbit far, far removed from Chloe’s universe.
She didn’t even belong as a guest in this ballroom. How could she have dreamed of being the mistress of an estate like this? She didn’t know how to care for two-hundred-year-old painted ceilings or gold chandeliers that hung fifty feet off the ground. How did you clean two-story floor-to-ceiling silk draperies anyway?
She felt herself shudder and tried to watch Sebastian, but her eyes kept gravitating toward Henry.
“Henry really knows these dances,” said Lady Anne.
Chloe agreed. He moved through the dances with such ease. His doctor friend kept screwing up, but somehow he corrected her and made it look like she knew what she was doing. Fascinating as it was to watch just how he did this, Chloe just couldn’t watch him arm in arm with another woman. She had to turn away.
Finally the dancers formed a circle again, and everyone’s backsides swirled in front of Chloe, including that of the blue-gowned London doctor.
Lady Anne pressed her hand on Chloe’s knee just as the music grew louder. “You haven’t taken your eyes off Henry the entire time we’ve sat here, do you know that?”
“I haven’t? I keep looking at Henry?” Chloe forced a smile. “Well, I can hardly see a thing. I don’t have any glasses on. And neither do you, I might add!”
Lady Anne laughed.
The dance ended and Sebastian asked Chloe to dance once again. She accepted. He seemed to want to be with her.
They danced “Le Boulanger” and this time Chloe had to concentrate to remember all the figures and steps. Another thing she hadn’t practiced as much as she should’ve!
Sebastian seemed to know this one and kept talking as he danced. He told her about the sixteen-inch fish he caught fly-fishing the other day. And the regimen of log lifting and a red-meat diet his trainer was putting him through to prepare for a boxing match. Then he recounted the moment he first saw her, their time in the castle ruins, and how he carried her from the hedge maze, all in incredible detail. “The best memories I have of these past six weeks are of moments I spent with you. Only you.”
As she counted her steps, his eyes began to wander, and as they were waiting their turn to dance up the line, he stared at a certain woman who leaned against a column. Chloe squinted. It was Fiona, dressed up in a golden gown with a white plume in her hair. It looked as if she’d just arrived. How could Sebastian be wooing her and scoping out Fiona at the same time? Then again, she had just kissed his brother in the library, not more than an hour ago. Although technically, he had kissed her.
Chloe spotted Henry, arms folded, blond brows furrowed, and hair fallen into one eye. He glared at her and Sebastian from across the room.
Something raced through her.
Henry was smoldering!
She danced up the line opposite Sebastian with renewed energy. When she reached the top of the line, she looked back toward Henry, but he was gone.
“May I have the pleasure of one more dance?” Sebastian bowed and his biceps bulged under his tight jacket. A man asking to dance with the same woman twice in a row was a strong signal that he was serious. Anyway, if she refused him, according to manners of the day, she’d have to sit out at least two more dances. That was an entire hour.
“You may.” She curtsied.
But before the orchestra started in, she heard a familiar voice above the din. “Attention! Attention!” George, all suited up in Regency attire, stood on a wooden platform and the crowd gathered around him. George looked like he was dressed for Halloween; the breeches, coat, and cravat didn’t mesh with him at all. Still, Chloe was happy to see him. So much had happened this evening that the concerns of the modern world seemed to have disappeared.
“The next dance will be a waltz,” George said. The crowd clapped and he nodded.
A cameraman jockeyed for a better angle at George, who raised his voice. “Which, the participants in our show know full well, was very controversial in 1812.” The beautiful people looked at Sebastian and Chloe.
“The waltz, first introduced during the 1800s, allowed a couple to touch in a slight embrace. And in 1812, it caused quite a scandal.”
The crowd laughed.
“You laugh, but the participants in our show have hardly touched each other during all the weeks of filming.”
If he only knew.
“Unlike the present day, touching actually meant something during the Regency. It was a sign of commitment. Now, without further ado, I present to you what is sure to provide one of the most risqué endeavors of our entire stay . . . the waltz.”
Chloe licked her lips.
George raised his arms and the orchestra struck up.
Just as Sebastian’s gloved hand was about to encircle Chloe’s Empire waist and her gloved hand reached out for his shoulder, Fiona, white plume pumping, slid between the two of them.
“Miss Parker.” Her eyes widened and she wrapped her gloved hand around Chloe’s arm. “Mrs. Crescent has gone into labor and she’s absolutely begging for you to come to her side!”
Chloe’s heart skipped. “Wh-what?” she stuttered.
“Mrs. Crescent wants you—now—it’s time!”
Chloe’s arm, the one she almost wrapped around Sebastian’s shoulder, went limp. Her bare shoulders slumped.
Sebastian squeezed his fist, then relaxed his arm. The dancers twirled around them, a blur of color. Chloe felt the cameraman zoom in on her face—not one of her best cinematic moments, she was sure of that. Her mouth felt funny, like after a shot of Novocain.
“Hurry!” Fiona shouted above the music.
Chloe turned to go, but Sebastian reached out and squeezed her arm, pulling her back.
She shook her arm loose. “I have to go. Fiona—is that where Henry is?”
“Yes—that’s where he is,” Fiona said.
It made sense.
Sebastian retracted his arm and bowed.
“Tell Lady Anne!” Chloe shouted over her shoulder to Sebastian as she dodged as many waltzing couples as she could, like a pinball on the dance floor. She collided right into the London doctor, who sneered and still smelled of Chanel.
At the edge of the dance floor Chloe took a deep breath, and drank in the room and the waltz music as if to sustain her. That was when she saw Fiona and Sebastian waltzing.
But instead of throwing a fit or even feeling jealous, Chloe felt—nothing. Sometimes, though, as she knew full well, in moments of great shock, numbness set in, to protect a fragile heart.
She did feel the camera on her face as it panned from her to Sebastian and Fiona dancing, and back again. She spun on her heel-less slippers and hightailed it through Dartworth Hall. At least this time she wasn’t dressed as a footman! She cut through the library, thinking it would lead to the gallery, but this wasn’t the library. It had a bed in it . . . this had to be the biggest bedroom she’d ever seen. The room, lit on either end by two dwindling fires, seemed wallpapered with books. Two butterfly nets stood propped up against a writing desk. She turned around and a cameraman was right behind her. Without thinking, she asked him, “Where are we?”
The cameraman didn’t answer. But she knew.
A sword and mesh fencing mask lay on the writing desk, along with a W wax stamper. A pile of handkerchiefs stood on the washstand. HW was embroidered in the corner. This was Henry’s room. And was that a jockstrap hanging from the chair? It seemed rather—large. Ladies didn’t lurk in gentlemen’s bedrooms, examining their protective gear, especially not while their chaperones were in the throes of childbirth. Her face flushed.
She hurried out the same door she came in, retraced her steps, and finally found her way back to the portrait gallery.
She lifted her gown, scurried down the marble stairway, grabbed her pelisse from the cloakroom, and scampered out the front doors into the night. At the bottom of the palatial steps she saw the footman.
“I need a carriage and a driver!” She was out of breath. “Mrs. Crescent’s having her baby!” She pulled her pelisse on.
The footman looked out toward the stables where the carriages were parked. “It’ll take half an hour to ready a carriage.”
Chloe paced on the bottom step. “Half an hour! I can’t wait that long—”
“Here.” The footman untied a horse from a horse post. “Take a horse. It’ll be much faster.”
She took a step backward.
The footman took her gloved hand with her fan and reticule hanging from the wrist and he lifted it. “I know it’s saddled westernstyle, and not for a lady, but I’ll help you up. You should be all right.”
“No! No, thank you.” Chloe pulled her hand back. “I’ll sprint over there.” And she sprang off the bottom step right into the pasty mud, where her ballroom slipper promptly got stuck. When she tried to lift her foot out of the glop, the lace almost broke again. She looked up at the footman, who smiled and extended his hand to help her out of the mud.
Okay, okay, so she missed cars, and taxis, and buses, and maybe even Harleys.