Chloe opened her eyes. A light grew brighter and brighter, taking a rectangle shape while a piano played downstairs, something Baroque.
“Mr. Wrightman? She’s awake,” Fiona said.
The rectangle became a floor-to-ceiling window draped in yellow silk and tassels. Fiona’s face came into focus, then a video camera. Chloe tried to sit up, but didn’t have the strength. One of her biceps hurt, so she tried to look at it, but stopped to focus on the two faces staring at her. One was Fiona and the other—the light from the window shaded his face. She collapsed back again.
Chloe felt for Fiona’s hand and touched an embroidered cover. She must be in a bed. A lumpy bed that crunched. “Mr. Wrightman? Mr. Wrightman’s here?”
Fiona patted Chloe’s hand. “Yes, yes, he carried you in. Quite endearing, that was, miss.”
Chloe sighed, and an image of herself, in her white gown, draped over Mr. Wrightman’s strong arms, her head against his broad shoulders, his dark wavy hair grazing her bonnet, popped into her head. He had been forced to do the forbidden and touch her—carry her in. She’d have to wait till it came out on DVD. She squinted at the light and struggled to move.
“Mr. Wrightman’s been tending to you the entire time,” Fiona said.
“Miss Parker,” said a deep voice in an English accent.
Chloe melted just a bit. His voice was enough to make a girl forget she’d been shot at.
“Can you see clearly?”
“Yes, I can,” she lied. The blur of a man looking down at her so intently, with so much concern, came through clearly, even if his features didn’t. “My arm hurts. Did a bullet graze me or something?”
Fiona stifled a giggle.
“You fainted,” said Mr. Wrightman. “I’m going to put some smelling salts under your nose now. It will smell rancid and sting a bit, I’m afraid—”
“Ooooo! What the—” Chloe snorted and sneezed simultaneously, and she sprayed droplets into Mr. Wrightman’s face. “Excuse me,” she said, trying to regain composure.
The first thing she really saw was Mr. Wrightman’s lips curving into a smile, a very sexy smile, as he handed her his handkerchief. He wore a brown cutaway coat with tails, an upturned white collar tied with a ruffled cravat, a waistcoat, and cream-colored breeches tucked into buckskin boots. Still, he didn’t look like the guy in the bathtub or out in the field. Instead of dark wavy hair, he had dirty-blond straight hair, with a couple strands falling into light brown eyes. He was pale with round wire-rimmed glasses. Despite his seductive smile, he looked more like a librarian than the local Mr. Darcy.
“The smelling salts really clear the senses after a fainting spell,” he said. With a large but gentle hand he pressed a cool cloth on her forehead.
The cloth felt great, but what if it smeared her elderberry-painted eyebrows? “Fainting spell? I don’t faint.”
“Of course you don’t.” He stepped back and let Fiona hold the cloth to Chloe’s forehead.
She wasn’t the fainting type. But this was England, after all, and people fainted in England. She handed the handkerchief back to him, but he didn’t take it. Her thumb grazed the blue embroidered HW in the corner. “Well, I’ve never fainted before.”
“I suppose it follows that if one has never fainted before, one never will. When a lady doesn’t faint, as you clearly haven’t, I recommend a brief rest in her boudoir.”
Chloe’s head spun. She thought sarcasm wasn’t allowed. The nerve of him to spar with a person who’d supposedly just fainted. But—boudoir?
“Did you say ‘boudoir’?” Chloe dropped the handkerchief in the folds of the bedspread and looked around from under the cool cloth at the floral molding, yellow walls with painted-grapevine border, Empire writing desk, high marble fireplace topped with a gilded mirror, and the mahogany four-poster bed she’d been propped up in. Boudoir. Bridesbridge Place! She couldn’t wait to explore it, so she sat up, the cloth slid off her forehead, the room spun, and Mr. Wrightman, with a firm hand, settled her shoulders back against the bumpy pillows.
“Fiona,” Mr. Wrightman said. “Please fetch Miss Parker a cordial water.”
“How cordial of you,” Chloe said. She looked forward to something that smacked of alcohol.
“Standard protocol for a woman who has fainted,” he replied.
“You gave my Fifi and me a most dreadful scare, Miss Parker,” said a gorgeous, probably eight-months-along pregnant woman as she bustled through the doorway in a periwinkle gown and lace cap. The gown complemented her pregnant shape. She carried a pug dog under her arm. “I’m Mrs. Caroline Crescent, your chaperone at Bridesbridge. This is my boy, Fifi.”
Chloe hated small, hyper, bug-eyed dogs. And who would name a male dog Fifi? She scooched up on her good elbow. “You’re my chaperone?” Mrs. Crescent was not only pregnant, but probably a year or two older than her. Tops.
“We did arrange a more suitable welcome,” said Mrs. Crescent. “But you fainted.”
Chloe opened her mouth, then shut it.
“Very ladylike. The fainting bit,” whispered Mrs. Crescent. “Well done.” She patted the panting pug’s head as if he had something to do with it. “I see you’ve met Mr. Wrightman.”
Chloe felt a ripple of disappointment until Fiona waved in two footmen carrying Chloe’s trunks. They set them on the floor near a great mahogany wardrobe.
Across the room, Mr. Wrightman opened another drapery and light gushed in. “It may well have been hysteria,” he said. “The pistol incident and all.”
Everything came back to Chloe in a flash. “‘Pistol incident’? That woman practically killed us!” She sat up and her left arm, for some reason, felt strange. “Where is that b—”
Chloe stopped herself, but Mr. Wrightman coughed.
“Blanket?” Mrs. Crescent interjected. She covered Chloe’s stocking feet with a tasseled blanket.
“Yes, blanket. Thank you.”
Chloe took a large gulp of cordial water and Mr. Wrightman raised an eyebrow. She barely managed to get it down. Who knew it would taste like mouthwash? Fiona offered it again but Chloe shook her head. “I’m quite refreshed, Fiona. Thank you.” Fiona whisked the drink away.
Chloe’s arm must’ve fallen asleep. She turned her head slowly, trying not to start the room spinning again, but someone had tied a leather strap around her biceps. She quickly untied it. On her night-stand, next to the silver candlestick holder, was a jar with something slithering around in it. What was it? Maggots? Then it hit her. They were leeches. Leeches for sucking the blood from sick people, because that was what they did back in the 1800s. The leather strap? A tourniquet. The leeches squirmed around in blood and she bolted upright. Did he bleed her or what?!
She wanted to scream. To rant. To possibly crash the Wedgwood washbowl atop Mr. Wrightman’s head. Instead, she cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Wrightman?”
He was packing up his black medicine bag without a care in the world.
“You didn’t by chance, say, bleed me with leeches, did you?” She dangled the tourniquet in front of her.
He stepped back, folded his arms, and took his glasses off, looking, suddenly, not so librarian-like. If she hadn’t been so steamed she might even consider him attractive in a tall, pale, and blond kind of way.
She let her arm with the tourniquet fall. How could he be insulted? The gown might be exquisite, the boudoir charming, but she didn’t come all this way to get shot at and bled to death just to hook up with someone who wasn’t a Regency buck but some sort of bloodsucking vampire with glasses.
She swung her legs out to stand. “Well. It was a pleasure meeting everyone, but I do believe I should go back home. Fiona, call the carriage for me, please.” She stood in her stocking feet, but her knees weakened as she remembered the money, and the glimmer of possible love, although that was fading fast. The man in the tub, the man in the field, was he a stable hand, or perhaps a favored gardener’s son? If so, then Chloe, in all her heiressness, wouldn’t even be allowed to talk to him.
Mr. Wrightman guided her back to the bed, settling her on the mattress, which seemed to be stuffed with hay.
Mrs. Crescent came and sat so close to Chloe that the pug licked her arm. Chloe scooched away.
“Mr. Wrightman did not bleed you, my dear. Look at your arm. Do you see any open wounds?”
She checked both arms. “No.”
Fiona swung open the wardrobe doors and hung a yellow gown, then a green one, and then another white, each one more exquisite than the last.
Chloe bit her lip and stared at the leeches, slurping and slithering in blood, gorged and happy as caffeine addicts after a few triple espressos.
“Whose blood is that, then?” she asked as politely as possible as she slid to the side of the bed farthest from the jar.
“It’s pig’s blood,” said Mr. Wrightman. He picked up the jar of leeches as if it were a glass of red wine. “I’ll take them away.”
“Why did you tie my arm, then?”
“It’s what any apothecary would do when a lady who didn’t faint pushes away the smelling salts. But luckily, it wasn’t necessary to do a bleeding. This time.” He winked at her.
She clenched her fists. The pug was now in the bed with her, nudging her arm with his slimy nose to get her to pet him.
Mr. Wrightman held up the jar to the camera. “Don’t you find it fascinating, Miss Parker, how leeches cure everything from melancholy to deadly fevers?”
“I find it fascinating you diagnosed me with a fainting spell when in fact it may have been something much more serious, considering the gunfire. And what am I, some sort of guinea pig? How could you even pretend to bleed me with leeches? As if I’m part of some kind of experiment here?”
Mrs. Crescent rubbed her pregnant belly and whispered to Chloe. “Mr. Wrightman is a doctor at the finest hospital in London, dear. Truly, you were never in any danger.”
The piano downstairs stopped.
Chloe looked over at him leaning against the doorjamb. “Oh,” she said.
He put the leeches into his medicine bag. “The carriage ran into a rock and the wheel broke at the very moment that Lady Grace happened to fire her pistol—in the opposite direction.”
Chloe wanted to believe him.
He bowed. “If you will excuse me, Miss Parker, you seem to be quite recovered. All that’s required now is a bit of rest. If you need leeching, or any other medical assistance, I’m happy to oblige. Pleasure meeting you, welcome to Bridesbridge.” His coattails swished behind him.
Something sank inside her when he swooshed out the door. She hadn’t even thanked him. Worse, she implied that he was incompetent. Worse yet, she didn’t even let him know how happy she was to be here, despite the gunfire and leeches. But come on, he feigned bleeding her with leeches.
A woman laughed in the hallway. “Really, Mr. Wrightman, you flatter me.” Grace sauntered into Chloe’s room without knocking, chin in the air. “He’s such a good man,” she said. “So observant. So intelligent. So kind of him to even notice, much less compliment, my pianoforte playing while he has a patient in the house.”
Fiona and Mrs. Crescent curtsied while Chloe glared.
“Don’t bother curtsying on my account, Miss Parker,” Grace said. “Are we feeling better?”
Chloe looked at the camera. “Infinitely. Much obliged that her ladyship would inquire.”
“You do look rather piqued. Fiona, do get us some tea and a proper meal. I’m starved. And no doubt Miss Parker and Mrs. Crescent are, too.”
True, Chloe was famished.
Fiona waited until Chloe nodded in approval.
Grace lounged on Chloe’s settee in front of the window. “With all this fuss over you, Miss Parker, it seems the staff entirely forgot our breakfast.”
“The audacity. Perhaps they’ll whip up a bullet pudding in your honor for dessert tonight.”
Grace looked confused and her blond sausage curls bounced as she slid the turban off her head.
Chloe smiled. Grace didn’t get the obscure reference to the festive Regency parlor game in the guise of a dessert that included a real bullet and Chloe made a mental note to have it served up here sometime very soon.
Mrs. Crescent anchored herself in a scroll-armed chair beside Chloe’s bed, hand on her belly, Fifi curled at her feet.
“I’m here to make amends,” said Grace as she looked outside. “I do apologize, even though it was a misunderstanding. It seems a bullet never hit your carriage. Your wheel crashed into a rock.”
Chloe leveraged herself out of bed and stood strong this time, smoothing her gown over her legs.
“Can you manage it, dear?” Mrs. Crescent asked, and Fifi lifted his head.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
She slid on her shoes.
“Miss Parker, you really should have Fiona put your shoes on for you,” Grace said. “What would we do without servants after all? Life here would hardly be tolerable. Thank God for that brilliant Mr. Wrightman. Any minute that I’m not with him seems like an eternity.”
“Really?” Chloe asked. Grace was catwalk stunning; she seemed a little beyond Mr. Wrightman’s league.
“Mr. Wrightman is an amazing man,” Mrs. Crescent said. “Charming. Why, I truly was touched when he confided in me . . .”
Mrs. Crescent launched into an anecdote about how much Mr. Wrightman admired mothers like her and how he wanted to be a father. One of his cousins recently had a baby and named it after him, and the moment he held that baby he knew he was ready. Ready to fall in love, marry the woman of his dreams, and have children.
Fiona stepped in carrying a tray with a Wedgwood teapot, teacups, and some sort of bread piled high and set the tray on a table near Mrs. Crescent.
Chloe couldn’t believe a maidservant was serving her tea in her boudoir, and she leaned in to admire the teapot’s design. Both sides of it had been hand-painted with the ruins of an abbey standing in a field of yellow flowers and green grass.
Grace sprawled in a chair Fiona had pulled up for her. “Well, there is one other thing that makes it exciting. But when you’ve been here for weeks as we have without—”
“Wait a minute. Did you say you’ve been here for—weeks?” Chloe pulled her own Empire chair to the table.
“We’ve been here, what, three weeks now, Mrs. Crescent?”
Mrs. Crescent nodded. Chloe plopped down in her chair, rattling the teacups in their saucers. “Three weeks?!” She lowered her voice. “I mean—really?”
“Really.” Grace took a skeleton key from her lap, unlocked a wooden box on the tea tray, and scooped tea leaves into a strainer over the teapot.
The cameraman turned his camera on Chloe. The mike dug into her back, her stomach roiled, and her ears burned, she was so upset. The rule book said a Regency lady must never go to emotional extremes. She should never be too happy, too sad, or too angry. Suddenly she didn’t even want tea. She gaped at Mrs. Crescent, who was buttering her bread. Fifi scuttled over to the table, wagging his curl of a tail. George had warned her of surprises, but this? How many Accomplishment Points had the other women garnered in all that time? And they obviously had already gotten to know Mr. Wrightman. She felt the urge to hurl a teacup into the camera. “Mrs. Crescent, will you pass the knife, please?”
Mrs. Crescent looked up from her plate.
“The butter knife, please. And the butter.” Chloe buttered her bread with vigor then stabbed the butter knife upright into the butter dish. Her first English tea in England—ruined. Still, she realized that she hadn’t eaten since the breakfast on the airplane. And sheer excitement had kept her from eating then. So she hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours and really was starved. The bread tasted grainy, though, and too floury, which indicated that the food, too, would be historically correct.
Mrs. Crescent spoke first. “Miss Parker. We’ve been here three weeks and several women have come and gone. Last week, my former charge, Miss Gately, had to leave due to a family emergency, and that’s why you were chosen to join us. Miss Gately made the most amazing things out of bits and bobs, didn’t she, Lady Grace?”
“Oh yes,” said Grace. “She was so talented. So accomplished. She took a rather insipid bonnet of mine and made it quite attractive, really. Pity she had to leave.”
The tea was watery and Chloe looked into her cup. Had she come all this way to drink weak tea and play second string in a posse of women vying for Mr. Wrightman’s attention?
“Something wrong with your tea, dear?” Mrs. Crescent asked Chloe.
“No. Yes. It’s so much different from what I had expected. You can imagine.”
“You will come to like it, as I have,” Mrs. Crescent said. “Fiona, please put some sugar in Miss Parker’s tea.”
Fiona took a tongslike tool and cut off three lumps of brown sugar from a mound in a dish on the table. She dropped the lumps into Chloe’s tea and stirred for her.
“Tea is very expensive, what with the Napoleonic Wars,” Mrs. Crescent explained.
Fiona dropped Chloe’s teaspoon on the floor. “Sorry. So sorry, miss,” she said.
“It’s fine. No worries—not to worry.”
Grace yawned and covered her mouth. “It’s so quiet here one quite forgets all about the wars.”
Fiona was holding on to the fireplace mantel as if to brace herself.
“Are you all right, Fiona?” Chloe asked.
Grace locked the tea caddy. “One great thing about war. All those gorgeous men in red coats.”
Fiona hurried out. Chloe stood to go after her, but Mrs. Crescent patted the chair for her to sit down. “Since tea is expensive, it’s kept under lock and key here,” she continued. “Perhaps you don’t do that in America. The highest-ranking lady—that would be Lady Grace here at Bridesbridge—holds the key to the tea caddy.”
Grace hooked the tea-caddy key to a bejeweled thing dangling from the side of her waist.
“Do you quite like my chatelaine?” she asked Chloe. “Only the lady of the house carries one. See? There’s my watch on one chain. My seal on another. And the tea-caddy key. It really is quite clunky with this thing clanking around all the time. But it is a status symbol, I suppose.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to lug one around,” Chloe said.
Mrs. Crescent cleared her throat. “Often, to conserve supply, we brew the tea weak. Very weak indeed. In lesser houses, tea leaves are reused.”
The tea did taste better with sugar, and all this talk of tea would’ve been more interesting if Chloe had not been so angry that this thing started three weeks ago and they’d obviously added her only to amp up the drama.
Grace stood to leave. “It’s a shame that you can’t shoot pistols with me, Miss Parker. Only titled ladies can shoot. It would be such a diversion.” With that, she spun to the other side of the room.
Chloe turned to Mrs. Crescent with a smile. “Now, that does sound diverting. But I’m sure we can arrange a duel at dawn with swords or something.” She lowered her voice. “What have I done to her, anyway?”
“Nothing, dear. You’re new, and fresh.”
Chloe hadn’t considered coming in late to the game an advantage until now.
Fiona returned, looking as if nothing had happened, and with a clanking of china and silver, cleaned up the tea things.
Chloe gathered the silverware for Fiona until Mrs. Crescent tapped her wrist and shook her head.
Grace sauntered back over to Chloe. “You don’t have titles in America, do you?”
“Well, my father always called me ‘princess.’ Which I believe ranks higher than a lady.”
Grace rattled her chatelaine. “We might practice archery together. You needn’t be titled for that.”
Mrs. Crescent curtsied and it took Chloe a while, but she did bow her head. Nevertheless, as Grace turned to walk down the hallway and the cameraman followed, she pretended to shoot her in the back with a bow and arrow.
“Might I have a word?” Mrs. Crescent brought a handkerchief to her sweaty brow. She whispered, “I’m glad to see you’re a fighter. I’ve never seen anyone handle her quite like that. We have a chance at winning, you know. A big chance!”
“What do you mean ‘we’ have a chance at winning?” Fifi nuzzled his head under Chloe’s arm and Chloe edged away.
“We’re in this together! Of course you know your father hired me to find a suitable match, and if we get Mr. Wrightman to propose to you, I get five hundred pounds.”
Chloe’s real father didn’t have an English pound to spare, so this must’ve been part of the script. It rang true, because Chloe knew chaperones were often hired by eager fathers during the Regency, and the chaperone would be paid a predetermined amount when she married off her young charge.
This gave Mrs. Crescent a real stake in Chloe’s winning.
Mrs. Crescent whispered, “I get five hundred pounds from your father and ten thousand from the show itself if we win, and I really need to win. That’s all I’ll say about the game for now.” She looked crushed. “You wouldn’t know how it is when you’re a mother—you don’t have children.”
Chloe looked down at her ballet-flat shoes. Abigail used to take ballet, before she switched to hip-hop.
Another camera came in; this time it was a camerawoman.
Mrs. Crescent changed her tone and spoke up. “So, I have four children, and another on the way.” She patted her pregnant belly. “Our five-year-old son needs surgery, the physician said.”
Fifi licked Chloe’s arm and Chloe rubbed it off. “For what?”
“To remove a lump in his neck. He’s always been sick and we have no more means to pay. The local physician has a long wait list, and we want to get it done as soon as possible, which means we have to go into town, which is going to cost us.”
Did Mrs. Crescent’s son have a medical issue in real life? Or was this just part of the chaperone’s character sketch? Chloe knew that socialized medicine meant often getting wait-listed for a procedure and thought maybe the Crescents wanted to hurry everything up and pay for it to be done in a private clinic. She tried to catch Mrs. Crescent’s eye, but the worried mother looked away wistfully, toward the window.
“I’m counting on that money.” Mrs. Crescent put her hand on Chloe’s knee. She looked Chloe in the eye. “My whole family’s counting on it.”
Her story had to contain some element of truth. “What’s your son’s name?”
“William,” Mrs. Crescent said, without hesitation. She opened a locket hanging around her neck and pointed to a miniature portrait of a boy with blond hair and curls.
“He looks like a little Cupid.”
Mrs. Crescent closed the locket, rubbing it with her fingers. “He is a love. It’s hard to be away from him for weeks on end. You can’t imagine.”
Sweat dribbled down Chloe’s back. “It must be hard.”
Mrs. Crescent stood and waddled toward the door. “Having children changes your priorities forever. Right. Tonight you’ll meet the rest of the women, but for now, Fifi and I can show you Bridesbridge Place.”
Chloe wanted to know more about little William, but she soon got swept up in the tour of Bridesbridge. She gushed over everything, from the drawing room and its pianoforte to the kitchen garden thick with dill, lavender, and basil.
“Might you show me the—water closet, Mrs. Crescent? All that weak tea seems to have gotten to me.”
Without a word, Mrs. Crescent guided Chloe to her boudoir, where, like a statue, she pointed to the bottom shelf of a credenza. On the shelf, atop a linen towel, sat a china pot, shaped like a gravy boat, only slightly bigger. Chloe lifted it by the handle even as her heart sank.
“A chamber pot?”
“Yes.”
“There must be a water closet somewhere.”
“You’ll find a basket of rags under your bed. The chambermaid will take care of everything when you’ve finished.”
The poor chambermaid!
“I’m going to take a little nap.” Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly. “I get so tired these days. Settle in. We’ll spend the next forty-eight hours working on your accomplishments. Dancing. French. Pianoforte. We have much to catch up on, and the task of the day is mending pens.”
Chloe had to chuckle at the reference to the scene in Pride and Prejudice where Caroline Bingley offers to mend Mr. Darcy’s pen. What fun that would be, but how horrifying the thought of a chamber pot was. She set it on the floorboards. First a chamber pot, then Lady Bootcamp. They were trying to break her, to make her crack on camera, to become the crazy, crying girl that was so good for ratings.
“Come, Fifi.” Mrs. Crescent left.
A cameraman filmed Chloe staring into the chamber pot until she shut the door on him. He must’ve been her designated cameraman because he always seemed to be the one who followed her when she went off on her own. He was a lanky guy, in his late twenties maybe. Like the other camera crew, he never said a word.
She set the chamber pot back down under the credenza. The whole thing reminded her of potty-training Abigail. “There’s got to be a bathroom here somewhere,” she said out loud.
She opened the door, and the cameraman followed her as she dashed through Bridesbridge, checking every door. The rooms she had found so charming earlier, with the neoclassical clocks and Oriental vases and silver epergnes whizzed by in a blur. Some doors were locked and she was convinced one of them was a bathroom. Grace floated by just as Chloe yanked on the last ornate silver doorknob of the last locked door.
“Looking for something, Miss Parker?” Grace asked in a flat voice.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a key to a water closet, would you?”
Grace smiled, fingering her chatelaine. “I have heard of some extremely wealthy houses installing newfangled water closets, as you say, but I cannot imagine you are used to such luxuries in America. We don’t have anything of the sort at Bridesbridge.”
Chloe let the doorknob go. She didn’t want to pee in her pantalets. She flew to the staircase and took two marble steps at a time, nearly colliding with the butler, who was carrying letters on a silver salver.
“Letter for you, Miss Parker.”
If she didn’t have to pee, this would’ve been such a memorable moment. The butler handed her an actual letter, sealed in an envelope. Not an e-mail, not a text, not a tweet.
“Thank you,” she said as she whisked the letter away from him. She bounded up the stairs, knocked her door shut with a sway of her hip, tossed the letter on her writing desk, and straddled the chamber pot. Hoisting her gown and bending to the best of her abilities with the busk, she untied and stripped her pantalets and squatted as if she were in the woods. Never in her life had she felt so unladylike. And the rags—ugh. Carefully, she carried the chamber pot back to the credenza and draped a towel over it. Thank goodness she hadn’t been cast as a chambermaid. Washing her hands in the bowl on the washstand, she discovered what must be the soap, a white ball no larger than a candy Easter egg. After the eight-hour flight, a dusty carriage ride, the chamber pot, and sweating in this house without air-conditioning, she needed a shower—er—bath. She rang for Fiona and eyed the letter on her writing desk. It couldn’t be from Abigial. Not only was it too soon for that, but there was no postage. It simply said Miss Parker on it in handwriting with great flourishes. The back of the thick envelope had been sealed with an elegant red wax W, for Wrightman, no doubt. Chloe fingered the W, then with a bronze letter opener and trembling hands, she sliced open the envelope, leaving the W intact.
Dear Miss Parker,
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to Bridesbridge Place and Dartworth Hall, both of which my eldest son currently oversees. I live at the seaside now, as it is better for my health. My son is a wonderful man who I’m convinced will, through this experience, find his true life partner. I’m very excited for him and I very much look forward to meeting you in future.
Wishing you a pleasant stay,
Lady A. Wrightman
This woman certainly seemed much nicer than Chloe’s ex-mother-in-law. Of course, Mr. Wrightman’s mother came from a polite, well-bred, titled family, and clearly, she wanted the world for her son, as any mother would. Mr. Wrightman’s father was extremely rich as Mrs. Crescent had said, but untitled like Mr. Darcy’s father. It made Chloe feel guilty that she needed to win over Mr. Wrightman for the money first and foremost. Phew, it was warm upstairs.
She opened her casement window to let in the cooler air. Looking out the window past the Bridesbridge gardens, she saw a pond shimmering in the midday light. At the moment she’d give anything just to dangle her feet in it for a few minutes.
The chambermaid knocked, opened the door, and beelined toward the chamber pot while the cameraman followed.
“Excuse me,” Chloe asked, “might I have a bath?”
“Bath will be on Sunday, miss.” The chambermaid picked up the chamber pot and basket of used rags.
Chloe pulled back the draperies to get a better look at the pond. “But—today’s Monday.”
“That’s right, miss. Only one bath per week.”
This took Chloe a minute to absorb.
“As you know, the servants have to pump the water, then heat it and carry it in buckets up the stairs. Bath will be Sunday.”
“Ugh,” Chloe blurted out.
“What was that, miss?”
“Might I have more soap and water, then?”
“The soap ball needs to last you two weeks when the Irish soap monger will be coming by again. I’ll have a footman fetch fresh water.” She bowed her head and took the pot away. Where? Chloe wondered. The cameraman followed the chambermaid. Apparently Chloe’s chamber pot was more interesting than Chloe herself.
Chloe fixed her eyes again on the water that was glistening in the distance. She paced in front of the yellow draperies, trying to put a positive spin on this. So there wasn’t any plumbing. There would be time to paint, there would be a ball, and candlelight dinners in Dartworth Hall.
She stopped and buried her head in her hands. Come on, she was almost forty and a mom. Why couldn’t she grow up and give up the fairy tale? No bath till Sunday. Chamber pots. No phone to call Abigail. Bullets. Leeches. Psycho-housemate Grace. Ready-to-pop-a-baby chaperone. And a Mr. Wrightman who foiled her expectations. She imagined him as dark-haired and brooding, or at least standoffish, and was taken aback that he seemed approachable and caring, if a bit left-brained for her taste. Still, how could she win over any man without being able to bathe for six days? If she wanted to win this thing, she had to be proactive, and she had to, at the very least, smell good.
Something wet nuzzled against Chloe’s leg.
Fifi was nudging his way under her gown, sniffing and licking. Chloe pulled on her walking half boots, snatched the soap ball, a linen towel, and had gotten as far as the hallway when she remembered her bonnet. Bonnet, parasol, and gloves retrieved, she scampered down the servants’ staircase, almost missing a step in the darkness.