“Other than your earrings, do you have any jewelry to remove? Any belly rings or the like?” Fiona asked as she closed the door behind Chloe.
“What do you think?” Chloe smiled.
“I would venture to say no.”
Being a not-so-modern type, Chloe didn’t need to transform too much. She washed off all vestiges of makeup, which in her case was a bit of blush, undereye concealer, and lipstick. Fiona packed Chloe’s simple earrings, necklace, and understated watch into velvet drawstring bags. Time, surely, wouldn’t matter for a lady of leisure in 1812.
Chloe hopped on one foot to yank off her lace-up boots until Fiona hovered, hands on her hips.
“You must get used to me doing such things for you.”
“Really, it’s not a problem.” Chloe did everything for herself, and Abigail. It would take some retraining to have someone else to rely on.
“It’s a rule once we’re on set. If you’ll step behind the dressing screen, I’ll gather your chemise and stockings.”
The room had an aroma of lavender. Behind the screen, and deep in the Derbyshire countryside, hours from London’s Heathrow, and centuries away from her real life, Chloe felt more at home than ever.
She unbuttoned her blouse, because she couldn’t imagine having Fiona do that for her, while her fingers skipped a few in the excitement. Maybe yesterday she’d been a stressed-out single working mom from the Midwest, almost middle-aged, and with a slightly expanding middle of her own, struggling just to get a decent dinner on the table after a long day of trying to drum up business, but today, on this June morning in England, her fantasy life unfolded before her.
The fantasy would have been even better if she’d been a few pounds lighter, but months of cheap pasta dinners had added seven pounds to her tiny frame.
“Curvy women were all the rage in the Regency era, right, Fiona?”
Fiona was smiling a lot more now and warming up to her, Chloe could tell.
One thing Chloe knew for sure: if the meals here were authentic, there wouldn’t be any pasta, thank goodness. She’d had her fill.
She wriggled her black skirt past her hips. Sure, she was doing this for the business, for Abigail, but the white confection of a gown hanging in front of her enchanted her. It wasn’t a froufrou Victorian with hoops, but a classic Regency with an Empire waist and—that neckline, promising escape from her modern woes or perhaps even a romp in the shrubbery.
Wait a minute, where did that come from? A lady would have to be engaged, if not married, to allow for a romp in the shrubbery, and that meant there had to be a gentleman involved. She didn’t let her mind wander down that garden path, the path that led to proposals both decent and indecent, because after all, by 1812 standards, a woman her age would have one foot in the grave. No doubt her role on this show would be that of a widow in mourning. Although they didn’t have her wearing a black gown, there wasn’t a mourning veil in sight, and no sign of a chemisette insert or fichu to cover her cleavage either.
Regardless, any Mr. Darcy on the set would be twenty-eight years old, as he was in Pride and Prejudice, or twenty-three like Mr. Bingley, and both would fill their dance cards with the twenty-year-old Miss Bennets. Men just weren’t on her agenda. She wanted nothing more than to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, answer questions about the novels, win the prize money, and get back home to Abigail.
Her new cell phone with international coverage rang, cutting into her reverie, and she sprang toward the sound of French horns echoing to the beamed ceiling. Abigail had downloaded a Regency ringtone for her. Chloe lunged for the phone, because she had told her daughter to call only in case of an emergency, and she almost knocked the pitcher and bowl off the washstand.
Chloe dug for her phone in the vintage doctor bag she used as a purse. “Cell phones. You know, Fiona, two hundred years ago, we wrote letters with quill pens and sealed them with wax. Life was so much more—romantic.” She picked up without checking the caller ID. “Hello?”
Across the room, there was a knock on the door, it burst open, and three guys with spotlights on booms popped in. Chloe’s blouse was completely unbuttoned and her skirt lay in a crumple at her ankles. She shimmied behind the dressing screen, clenched her blouse closed at her cleavage, and swooped down to yank her skirt back up, covering her decidedly nonthong green cotton panties.
As she looked out from behind the dressing screen, a guy with a video cam bounded in, followed by another cameraman. Lights? Cameras! What was going on here?
“Mommy? Are you there?”
Chloe forgot she was holding the phone to her ear.
“Uh—Abby? Sweetheart? Is everything okay?” Her chest thudded as she squinted into the spotlights.
“Yeah, I just have some really good news.”
Chloe exhaled. “Oh, good. I want to hear all about it, but now’s not a good time, okay? I’ll call you right back.” Grabbing the white gown to shield herself, she clicked off the phone and tossed it on the washstand. She held her hand up toward the video cameras. “Stop the cameras! What the—”
Another guy materialized with a headset over one ear, an iPhone in one hand, and an iPad in the other. All plugged in, just like her ex-husband. “Great line,” the guy said in a juicy English accent. “What you said about letters. Romance. Could you say that again, please? On camera?”
Chloe stepped back, from the sheer panic of the moment, the intense spotlights, or possibly his manner of speaking. It couldn’t have been his cropped auburn hair topped with a pair of sunglasses or his snug-fitting jeans. She was, after all, a raging Anglophile who could crush on any guy with an English accent, and this was the first male one she’d heard since she arrived. All this started with Disney’s Christopher Robin when she was what—six?
The accent threw her, but only for a minute. “Excuse me?! What’s going on?!” She clutched the white gown in front of her. It felt like a fine cheesecloth or voile, and she realized, despite her confusion and rage, that it must be muslin, that delicate Regency fabric she had up until now only read about. She softened her grip, but raised her voice. “Cut the cameras! Can’t you see I’m half naked here?”
“I can see you’re exactly what we’re looking for. Spot-on.” He extended his hand. “George Maxton. Producer. Pleased to meet you, Miss Parker. You can call me George, but once you get on location, everyone’s a ‘mister’ and a ‘miss.’”
Behind the gown, Chloe buttoned her blouse single-handedly, a skill she’d mastered while breast-feeding nine years ago. She glared at George Maxton and the crew.
He gave up on the handshake. “Brilliant. You’re gorgeous.”
Gorgeous? Cute, maybe. Nobody had called her gorgeous since—wait a minute. The nerve! “George, cut the cameras NOW.”
He eyed her from the top of her disheveled hair to the tips of her unpolished toes. “You do realize, Miss Parker, that this is a reality show?”
Something plummeted inside her; she struggled to speak. “You mean ‘immersion documentary.’”
“Documentary?” He laughed. “Now, that’s the stuff I’d love to shoot. No money there.” He pointed to the two cameras as he said, “This, my dear, is a reality dating program, and you’re going to be a brilliant contestant.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth went dry and her heart pounded. Was she hyperventilating? “Dating—what?! There must be some mistake—”
“No mistake. It’s set in the year 1812. Cameras are on twenty-four /seven. Everything’s historically accurate, Miss Parker, and I do mean everything. You will be pleased with that.”
The lights blinded her. Her bosom heaved, and not in a good way. Dating show? She didn’t want to date anybody—she hadn’t had a date in four years! No, it was more than four years, because Winthrop, her ex-husband, was out of town so much they never could manage a date night. How could she be on a dating program? Not to mention the fact that she hated those reality dating things. How could this be happening?
She paced the floor, her gown dragging on the floorboards. She caught her breath and began speaking a mile a minute. “I demand some answers here! What changed between the moment I signed the contract and now?”
“Not much, really; we tweaked the concept a bit to make it more marketable, but relationships and courtship were always part of the equation. You did read the paperwork and contract we sent, correct, Miss Parker?”
“I auditioned for a public-television documentary—I’d never sign up for a dating show—I expected Jane Austen trivia contests—I certainly won’t participate in any antics with hot tubs and bikini-clad massages and . . . and . . . dates!”
“For a person who’s so above reality TV, you seem to know a lot about it,” George quipped.
And he was right. “Unfortunately you can’t have a pulse on this planet without knowing about reality television, especially if you don’t have cable like me. Why can’t you just film something tasteful?”
“Do you really think people want to watch you sit around in your gown sipping tea and taking Jane Austen quizzes for three weeks?”
Chloe felt the sting of her naïveté, and once again she lived up to her name, Chloe, which meant “young green sprout” in old Greek, and she felt grass green, despite her age.
A log fell in the dwindling fire across the room, sending sparks flying and a wisp of smoke curling into the air.
Then it hit her. “I must be cast as a doting aunt or chaperone, right? A thirty-nine-year-old in 1812 would be strictly on the shelf, not making her ballroom debut. And couples didn’t date in the nineteenth century anyway.”
“You’re absolutely correct, Miss Parker, on two counts. Regency couples didn’t ‘date.’ Men courted women, and that sounds so much more refined, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to educate the public on the intricacies of Regency courtship? There weren’t any hot tubs in 1812, so you needn’t worry about that. To accommodate you we’ve bent the age rules, making you a bona fide contestant, Miss Parker. You’re much too young by today’s standards, and feisty enough by any standards—to be on the shelf!”
Chloe stomped her bare foot. “This can’t be legal.” She tried to be rational. “You misrepresented the show. Is there really any prize money? I need to call my lawyer.”
“You’re free to call your lawyer, but nothing was misrepresented. You will be partaking of historically appropriate tasks, in an 1812 setting. There is a one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize, and I will explain all that.”
He kept checking his iPhone, and looking up when he could. “But even you, on your audition video, referred to the woes of the single American woman. During our extensive interviews with you, you said you’re open to finding love and happily-ever-after. Is it true, Miss Parker, or did you misrepresent yourself?”
He had her there. The spotlights shone bright and hot, and she hesitated to say it on camera.
“It’s true. What you said.”
George smiled and looked her straight in the eye. “Say it, Miss Parker.”
“I’m still hoping to find true love.”
George clasped his hands.
“But not now—someday. And it’ll never happen on a reality dating show.”
“Don’t think of it as ‘dating’; think of it as ‘courting.’”
“If I took this on, the only thing I’d be courting is disaster.” Chloe steadied herself with a palm on the whitewashed wall. She squeezed her eyes shut. “What is the name of this atrocity?”
“The working title is How to Date Mr. Darcy.”
Chloe’s stomach churned. “You have got to be kidding me. If Jane Austen only knew! ‘Dating’ is right there in the title, it’s an anachronism. Where’s the courtship? Where’s the class?”
“Even if the title is a little on the commercial side, the production is top-notch. Trust me.”
Trust him?!
A text message beeped on her phone, and, still holding the gown in front of her, she scissor-stepped over to it. Abigail’s text said “<3 u” and Chloe would never have even known that meant “heart you” had Abigail not taught her. “Hugs 4ever,” Chloe texted back. She needed to call her.
Chloe sighed, phone in one hand, gown in the other, wondering what to do. If she quit this thing, would she regret it? She’d be out the money for the plane ticket, which she’d paid for with the last of her savings. She’d have to face a short sale on the brownstone, her bankrupt business, and worse, she’d have to explain to Abigail why she quit. One of the perks of doing this thing was to set an example for her daughter that a woman, even a single mom, could go to another country, hell, another era—and kick butt. But what kind of PR for her business would come out of something called How to Date Mr. Darcy?
Speaking of how, how could she leave England now, when she’d been dreaming of coming here her entire life? And why did the image of her on a dark-haired Mr. Darcy’s arm just pop into her head?
She stared at her phone, as if it would have the answers.
“Bit of a mobile addict, Miss Parker?” George asked.
That snapped her back to—dare she think it—reality. George obviously hadn’t read the bio she sent. “Oh yes, I can’t get enough of modern time-sucks like Facebook, Twitter, or reality TV. Bring it on. Who would want to step back in time a couple hundred years and actually live a quality life?”
“That’s the attitude, Miss Parker! So glad you’re on board.”
“I never said—”
His phone blared a British police-siren ringtone. “So sorry, best take this one. Whatever did we do without these things?”
“We read books and talked face-to-face. We didn’t watch reality, we lived it.”
George winked at Chloe. “Hallo,” he answered his phone. He whispered to her, “You’re perfect. Just relax. Forget the cameras. You’ll make a fabulous governess.”
Chloe almost dropped the gown. “Get out! I can’t be a governess! I—I forgot all my college French.” Being cast as a governess would be her worst nightmare. Homeschooling spoiled children in an attic somewhere? Wearing gray up to her chin? Dealing with a moody master? This sounded more Jane Eyre than Jane Austen.
“I’m kidding. Kidding. Of course you’re not a governess. Not in that gown. Though it will tear if you step on it, I’m afraid. It’s sprigged muslin.”
Chloe lifted the gown and narrowed her eyes at him.
“You’ve just proven to me that you really do want to be a contestant and not just a—governess.”
She had passed a test, and didn’t even know she was being quizzed.
This time she had the questions, so many questions, and it was her turn to get some answers, but George didn’t give her a chance. He left, the cameras stayed.
He slammed the door so hard behind him that something shook above her. It was swags of drying lavender. Ah, lavender. England. Regency England, where leather-bound books were treasures, where women who had a talent for drawing were called “accomplished,” and where men were gentlemen—not sleazy producers.
Fiona brought over a stack of garments, placed them on the chaise, and hung the gown back up.
“Fiona, please tell George I insist on finishing our discussion.”
“You’re to see him after you’re dressed, Miss Parker, and you can sort it all out then, can’t you?”
Chloe eyed the gown. If she left, she’d be leaving this picture-perfect inn, and she hadn’t even seen Bridesbridge Place yet. She slunk down on the chaise and ran her fingers over the red velvet. “I don’t want to go. You can really feel the history here.”
“Forgive me, miss, but it’s just an inn.”
“Fiona, did you know this was a dating show? What should I do?”
Fiona shrugged her shoulders. “I’m only the hired help.”
“Oh, Fiona, you’re much more than that, come on. What are you in the real world? A law student? Working in the financial sector?”
Fiona shook her head.
Chloe realized that Fiona wasn’t going to reveal anything about her twenty-first-century self. “I guess there’s no harm in trying the gown on—I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re quite lucky,” Fiona said. “I know a score of charwomen and scullery maids ready to trade their lot with yours this instant.”
Chloe rubbed her temples. There it was again, that flash of her and a tall, dark, and white-cravat-throated someone, this time in a ballroom under a candlelit chandelier.
The door swung open again. It was George.
“George!” Chloe called out. “We need to talk.”
“We will talk. We will, Miss Parker. And not to worry. We’ll edit out any naughty bits, for the American market at least. And soon as you’re ready I’ll explain all the rules. Cheers!” He slammed the door again behind him.
Chloe shot up. “Naughty bits? What naughty bits?!”
“I dunno, Miss Parker. Dunno.”
Muslin turned out to be a very thin fabric, nearly sheer, and Chloe knew better than to hope for petticoats, because those had gone out of fashion by 1812.
Just as Fiona held up an equally threadbare chemise to go under the gown, Chloe’s phone rang.
“See, Fiona, how modern technology interrupts our lives?”
It was Abigail. “Hi, Mom! Grandma told me not to tell you yet, but Dad took me out to lunch today.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. After the plethora of times he’d been on the road, missing Abigail’s school plays and hip-hop dance recitals, Chloe was out of town for the first time since the divorce, and he’d swooped in on day one.
“Dad’s engaged,” Abigail continued. “He’s going to be married in September and the good news is I get to be a flower girl! I get to wear a pretty dress and throw the petals and ride in a limo and . . .”
Chloe leaned against the cold whitewashed wall to support herself. She didn’t even know that Winthrop was dating. He hadn’t even talked to her as to how to approach this with Abigail. “Are you sure about this, Abigail?” The gown loomed in front of her. White. Floor-length. Gown. The last time she’d worn one of these was . . . her wedding.
“I’ll be right back, Mom. I need to look up satellites on the computer, I’m doing a mock-up for my science camp. Here’s Grandma.”
A cameraman stepped closer and Chloe lowered her voice to a whisper. “Mom, I don’t have time now—”
Her mother plowed ahead anyway. “I just thought you should know that Winthrop wants to reopen the custody arrangement now that he’s engaged. His promotion to senior VP means he won’t be traveling all the time.”
Chloe clutched the ruffle on her blouse and both cameramen closed in on her. Winthrop wouldn’t dare put them all through another custody trial, would he? She wanted to shout, but just bit her lip for the cameras.
Fiona’s shoulders slumped, she set the chemise down on the chaise, and stepped over to the fire.
Chloe’s mom sighed. “You really need to win that money over there, Chloe. Now that he’s promoted.”
Chloe turned her back to the cameras. “Everybody’s a senior vice president these days, Mom, that title doesn’t mean anything anymore.” The engagement and less travel would give him leverage, though.
Fiona stabbed the poker in the fire.
“I can’t talk long, Mom, but take good care of Abigail, and thanks—for everything.”
“Bye, dear. Here’s Abigail.”
“Mom, you’re really going to like Dad’s fiancée.”
Chloe doubted that. “Mmm-hmm. What’s her name?”
“Marcia.”
“Marcia what, angel?”
“Marcia Smith.”
No chance of Googling or finding a Smith on any social network site. She’d never felt the urge to cyberstalk someone until now.
“She’s a very successful businesswoman Daddy says.”
Chloe’s eyelid twitched.
“She was in a magazine. She showed me.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “What magazine?”
“It was a funny name for a magazine, like fortune cookie. Oh, yeah. Fortune magazine.”
Of course Marcia Smith was in Fortune.
“She has long blond hair and does Pilates every day and she’s very excited about being my other mom, she says.”
Chloe made a fist. She almost growled. She thought the smoke she was smelling was coming out of her ears, but then she remembered that Fiona had stirred the fire. Chloe had never even thought of sharing Abigail with a stepmother. “She sounds nice,” she said through clenched teeth. “Tell Daddy I said ‘congrats.’ I can’t wait to see your flower-girl dress.”
Wasn’t Marcia fortunate enough with her long blond hair and money and her Pilates body? She could have Winthrop, but did she have to take away her daughter, too?
“Still, I don’t want to call her ‘Mom,’” Abigail said.
Relieved, Chloe looked into the cameras again. As Abigail recounted the dessert Winthrop and Marcia had bought her, Chloe made her decision about this show. Her mom was right, she had to win the money now.
More determined than ever, she decided to toss her bonnet in the ring.
“Sweetheart, I have to go. I’ll call you soon, though, and you know I’m thinking about you every minute, right?”
“I know. You tell me every day, jeez!”
They both smooched into the phone and hung up. Chloe hurried across the room to Fiona, who was struggling with the fire. The cameramen followed her, and Chloe looked back at them, adjusting to the creepy feeling of being watched, followed, and filmed.
Fiona put another log on while Chloe took the antique red-andgold fireplace bellows and, as if she’d been doing this her whole life, fanned the fire.
Fiona eased the bellows out of Chloe’s hands. “Much obliged, but it’s not your place to tend the fire. Might we get you dressed now?”
“Of course.”
Chloe put her hands on her hips and spoke to the camera crew. “But only if you leave, okay?”
Not a one of them said a word.
Fiona ushered Chloe back behind the screen. “The crew cannot speak to us, only George can. They’ll stay on the other side of the screen and won’t film you until your chemise is on and I’m lacing up your stays, or corset, as you may know it. They’ll film from the back at that point. Agreed?”
Like she had a choice? She nodded in agreement.
Chloe undressed quickly so Fiona couldn’t do it for her. She relinquished her bra and green cotton panties.
“This is your chemise, also called a shift, and you wear it under all your gowns.” Fiona swooshed it over Chloe’s head.
It was sleeveless, grazed her kneecaps, and was so thin it almost wasn’t there.
Fiona slid Chloe’s arms into the stays, began to tighten the laces, and continued her narrative. “Regency women wore stays,” she said with a pause.
The cameras came in on cue, and Chloe got goose bumps just thinking about being filmed in, essentially, her 1812 underwear.
“Regency stays, unlike the Victorian corset, weren’t boned, and weren’t meant to cinch the waist, but were intended to push the bosom up and out like a shelf.”
“I’ll take whatever help I can get!” Chloe said into one of the cameras, but the cameraman didn’t crack a smile.
“You’ll have shorter stays, too, for your more athletic pursuits, but today, posture is everything and you’re wearing this longer one, with the busk.”
Chloe remembered reading about busks at some point, but never really understood what they were or how they worked.
Fiona wielded the busk, a smooth, flat piece of wood, kind of like a rounded ruler, and slid it into a sewn-in pocket down the front of Chloe’s stays, from the middle of her cleavage to her belly button.
“But how am I going to—”
“Bend at the waist? You won’t. You’ll have to bend at the hip.”
Chloe was thinking more about the logistics of, shall we say, bending to go to the bathroom with a ten-inch ruler down the middle of her chest.
Fiona continued the lacing, and Chloe grew impatient, thinking she’d have to go through this every morning and night. The numerous and tiny eyelet holes were just that: holes without reinforcements. What a pain! She looked longingly at her simple bra with the hooks, folded neatly and in a plastic storage bag on the chaise.
The lacing-up gave her time to dwell on things she didn’t want to think about, like the fact that she’d be in a dating show on international TV and no doubt the Internet, and, worse, that she’d have a stepmom competing for her daughter’s affections. That roiled her.
“I don’t understand,” she said out loud. “Why aren’t there reinforcements for these holes?”
“Reinforcements could only have been made of bone, and richer ladies would have them.”
The money thing, again.
“There!” Fiona tied off the laces. “Let me get the mirror.”
Fiona trotted back with an ornate, if slightly tarnished, floor-length mirror squeaking along on wheels.
“You don’t even feel the busk, do you? And see how it creates such straight posture and how it separates to create this lovely heaving effect?”
Chloe couldn’t believe what she saw. Granted, it took half an hour to lace up and she’d never be able to get the thing on or off by herself, but her boob size had gone from a 34C to a 36DD. And all because of a two-hundred-year-old bra . . . ?
The thirty-nine-year-old droobs became suddenly round, pert, and “boobilicious,” as her employee, Emma, would say.
“A nineteenth-century boob job,” Chloe said.
“Wait till you see how great it makes the gown look. But first, your pantalets.” Fiona held up two cotton half legs with ribbons that tied around the waist in the air. They were crotchless, bottomless, scandalous.
The cameramen zoomed in on her.
“They make a thong look uptight,” Chloe said. “I know Jane Austen wasn’t the prim and proper type some of her relatives made her out to be, but you can’t tell me she wore those.”
“They were considered a little risqué at the time, but she may have.” Fiona held the pantalets in front of Chloe in a “shall we?” kind of way. The ribbons danced and dangled.
Chloe figured women wore some kind of drawers under their gowns, not these things. Certainly, when she wore her Regency gown to a Jane Austen event, she wore her usual hose underneath. Austen never mentioned undergarments in her novels, and even though Chloe knew a lot about the Regency, her knowledge was by no means encyclopedic. “No drawers?”
“Drawers were newfangled, and not completely accepted until later in the Regency. Miss Austen may have done what many women did, especially in this summer heat, and you may choose to do as well.”
Color rose to Chloe’s cheeks. She’d never look at another period film the same way again. “I’ll go with the pantalets.”
With the utmost discretion, Fiona helped Chloe into the pantalets and then her white silk stockings.
“Stockings were white,” Fiona said. “A woman of your station wouldn’t wear pink, that would be vulgar.”
Chloe began to piece together that she wasn’t to be one of the “Ton,” but she wouldn’t be a “woman of the night” either, so maybe she’d shake out as a sort of middle-class Elizabeth Bennet?
With silk ribbon garters, Fiona tied off the stockings well above the knee, and Chloe felt suddenly sexy. Maybe, just maybe, this show could be fabulous—
Fiona plunked two lemon halves in Chloe’s hands.
“You need to rub these under your arms.”
Chloe cocked her head.
“Your deodorant. The staff was hard-pressed to find Regency recipes for deodorant, and most likely they rarely used it, so lemons will have to do, when they’re available.”
Wincing, Chloe did as she was told. Her mind drifted to thoughts of a lemon martini as she flapped her arms to dry off.
“Now for your gown. This is the best day gown you have, and even though it’s a bit impractical to wear for travel in a carriage, it’s important to wear your best, as you’re going to a grander home than the one you came from.”
Fiona lifted the gown over Chloe’s head, buttoned up the back, and Chloe morphed into a nineteenth-century version of herself, all in white. She spun before the mirror. Abigail would’ve loved this. The high Empire waist elongated her torso, the busk kept her back straight, the neckline showed off her racked-up rack, and she felt more convinced than ever that she belonged here, in 1812, although the gown was so sheer you could see her blue ribbon garters right through it.
After Fiona slid on the shoes that had no designated left or right and resembled ballet flats, Chloe floated to the vanity, where Fiona curled and pinned her boring brown hair into a seductive Regency updo that somehow camouflaged the few gray hairs she had. Brown tendrils of hair skimmed her face.
Fiona clasped an amethyst necklace around Chloe’s neck as Chloe pursed her lips in the mirror. She knew only prostitutes would wear lipstick, but getting anyone to woo her without it would be a challenge.
Fiona rubbed crushed strawberries on Chloe’s cheeks, but that didn’t seem to do much other than make her cheeks feel tight and sticky, kind of like her underarms with the lemon. The only suitors this might attract would be flies.
“When we have special occasions, I’ll do your eyes up with candle soot,” Fiona said.
“That is something to look forward to,” said Chloe.
“But for now we have elderberry stain for your brows.”
The elderberry just seemed to bring out the dark circles under her eyes. “I don’t know if I can face a world without undereye concealer and lipstick.”
She might’ve been better off in an eighteenth-century dating show, with her face painted white like Marie Antoinette, covering up the undereye circles and filling in the beginnings of crow’s-feet. Of course, that white face paint proved to be full of lead and poisonous, even fatal, to women of the time. Still. No makeup was a bit too revealing.
Chloe padded over to her vintage bag, cameramen behind her, in search of her concealer, and came across the foil-wrapped strip of condoms Emma had slipped her at the airport.
With all those hot Englishmen in tights you might need III these,” Emma had said.
“They won’t be wearing tights, Emma. That would be seventeenth century.”
“Bummer.”
“Anyway, I’m not going there for the men, and sex before marriage was a real taboo in Regency England. Have you not heard of Lydia Bennet?”
Emma dangled the condoms in front of her. “They’re strawberry-margarita flavored,” she singsonged.
She handed Chloe the condoms.
Chloe pushed them away. “What do you think? I’ll be having a quickie in the back of a chaise-and-four?”
“I hope so, for your sake!”
Chloe tossed her head back. Resistance was futile. Emma tucked the condoms into Chloe’s bag.
“It’s your first trip without Abigail, and I think you should be going to Key West, not repressed England. Take them just in case, okay?”
“All right. And just for the record, I have no desire to ever go to Key West.”
She knew she couldn’t possibly bring such contraband with her, and as if she read her mind, Fiona made it clear.
“The crew searched all your bags and suitcases, Miss Parker, and only one item qualifies to go with you; everything else will go under lock and key for three weeks.”
Was she more shocked by the fact that they searched her bags or that she could only bring one thing? It was hard to tell.
“You can bring this.” Fiona held up a red velvet bag and pulled out Chloe’s diamond tiara, a family heirloom and her good-luck charm. “It’ll be perfect for the ball.”
“So there will be a ball?”
“Yes, of course.”
Fiona handed the velvet bag to Chloe.
“My grandmother gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday.” Chloe had worn it in the audition video, as well as the Jane Austen Society balls she’d attended, but she’d never danced in it.
“It’s beautiful, and will fit in your reticule. Now, if you will simply hand me your purse.”
Chloe handed over her purse, minus her phone and charger.
Fiona held out her palm.
“What?”
“Everything is historically accurate, Miss Parker. You know you can’t bring your phone. Regardless, there isn’t any electricity.”
Chloe couldn’t even process the thought of no electricity. “No phone? Not even just for texting or e-mailing?”
Fiona put a hand on her hip, or what would’ve been her hip if she had any. “It’ll be here, safe under lock and key.”
Chloe sank down on the chaise, but the busk kept her from slumping over. “I can’t do this. I need to talk with Abigail.”
Fiona smiled. “Not to worry. Everyone has a direct line of communication through George for any emergency, day or night. Your family has George’s phone numbers. Send her a text that you’ll write. You said yourself you’re keen on writing by hand. She can write you back. It’ll be—sweet.”
Chloe keyed in a last message to Abigail: “Will snail mail u. Snail back. Can’t take phone. Call George Maxton in emergency. Love u. B good.”
She hadn’t felt it till now, but she really was across the ocean, thousands of miles from home.
Fiona zipped the phone in a plastic bag, just like all the rest of her things, as if Chloe were going to jail. The zip sliced through the air and the sudden silence of the room closed in as Fiona whisked the bag away.
Then the phone rang inside the bag, breaking the silence.
Chloe got goose bumps. What if it was Abigail and what if she couldn’t bear not to be in touch with her mom and what if she wanted her to come home—
“Wait! Stop!” Chloe hustled after Fiona, her boobs jostling in her stays and the cameramen jostling after her.
Fiona stood at a metal safe, closing the door, turning the key.
“Stop, Fiona! I need my phone! Give me my phone!!”