Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (19 page)

“I'm just curious.” She could see this line of conversation made him a little nervous, but a little intrigued, too. And she wanted to intrigue him—in order to intrigue Sebastian.

“I haven't recommended anyone yet. I have merely helped him discern some of the ladies' characters.”

“And what have you discerned about my character?”

Henry refolded his napkin. “It's a little too early to judge. Although I have my theories.” He smirked.

Chloe raised her eyebrows. Now
she
was intrigued. Unfortunately, during all this jabbering with Henry, Grace had managed to snare Sebastian into a conversation about hunting. “Oh yes. Last fall was my best season ever,” she heard Sebastian say to Grace. He had picked two partridges clean and stacked the bones alongside a pile of fish bones on his plate.

Grace nodded with enthusiasm, her feather nodding with her.

Chloe watched Sebastian, who now seemed so animated, making hand gestures as he talked; he even smiled. The footman offered Chloe a platter of boiled potatoes and carrots, and with a pair of silver tongs, she plucked them from the platter, transferring them carefully to her plate.

Sebastian laughed. “I must've bagged fourteen grouse! Looking forward to the season. Grouse hunting in August. Partridges in September. Pheasants in October—”

Chloe turned her head to look at him and the potato she was lifting with the tongs broke and fell into her lap. “Oh—”

Henry offered his napkin to her. But before anybody noticed Chloe's faux pas, Grace squeaked like a mouse, and spouted a very deliberate “Oh, dear!” All heads and cameras turned to Grace as she squirmed, then shot up out of her chair.

One of her breasts had popped out of her low-cut gown!

At first, a wave of shock rolled through Chloe, and she would've stood up to help, but for the broken potato on her lap.

Grace paused for a moment, her hand over her pursed lips, looking down at her breast while the cameras jockeyed around her. Sebastian's eyes bugged out. He dropped his spoon. Henry sighed and looked away. Kate scratched at her arm furiously. Julia folded her arms.

And that's when it finally hit Chloe that Grace had orchestrated this stunt. Chloe kept reminding herself that a lady could never appear too angry, especially in public, but her hands shook and she wanted to tell Grace off. How dare she ruin Chloe's debut dinner at Dartworth!

“Oh my!” Grace squealed. As if in slo-mo, her gotta-be-a-fake boob stood there, erect, en plein air, until Sebastian burst out of his chair, ripped off his coat, and slid it over Grace's shoulders, carefully covering said breast.

Fish think, but not fast enough,
Chloe thought. She plucked the broken potato from her lap. She whispered to Henry, “What do you think that reveals about
her
character?”

Henry didn't reply, but instead signaled one of the footmen over to help her clean up the potato. It was as if Grace didn't exist.

Grace hugged Sebastian's coat around her. She hurried behind a painted screen in a far corner of the room, and her chaperone joined her. Leave it to Grace to stage a strategic wardrobe malfunction that wouldn't soon be forgotten. All the women had, for days now, joked about their bodices slipping down, but it never did happen. Chloe shook her head. Grace had to have cut her corset to pull this one off. Everything put away now, Sebastian seated Grace at the table again.

Both Sebastian and Henry looked flushed and they talked about the wine from nearly opposite ends of the long table.

Gillian narrowed her eyes at Grace.

Grace held her wineglass up to the candlelight. “It has great body, don't you agree?”

Chloe raised her glass. “But a rather empty finish if you ask me.”

Gillian smiled.

If only she could get that image of Grace's breast out of her head—and out of Sebastian's.

A footman brandished a platter with a pheasant, purple plumage still attached, encircled with roasted rabbits, their furry heads reattached.

“Any hope of what we in America call ‘salad'?” Chloe whispered to Henry.

“You know full well that greenery is bad for your digestion, and tomatoes are poisonous.”

Chloe didn't have a barb to fling back at him. She was surprised and impressed by his knowledge of Regency England. But maybe instead of picking up Regency trivia from Henry, she could glean information about Sebastian. “You're absolutely right about the salad. What was I thinking? Perhaps you can enlighten me on another subject: your brother. Does he
really
like to hunt?”

Henry set down his knife. “Most country gentlemen do hunt and fish, Miss Parker, for sport as well as for food. But my brother's bark is bigger than his bite.”

“Bon appétit,”
Grace announced. She helped herself to a slice of rabbit.

“Are you saying it has something to do with machismo? Is your brother overly concerned with his image?” Chloe asked.

“I didn't realize American heiresses were familiar with Spanish words like
machismo
, nor that they were trained in the wiles of journalism.”

Chloe squirmed in her chair. Tapping Henry for information wouldn't be easy, but it was worth the effort. And it was fun to spar with him. Still, she felt comforted by the fact that Sebastian must've been overstating his hunting prowess to impress the women. He did have the reputation of a Regency squire to live up to, after all.

Sebastian stood, and all eyes moved toward him. “Yes,
bon appétit
, and, I'd like to invite all the ladies, and Henry, too, of course, to join me in a mock foxhunt on Sunday, nine in the morning. Ladies, we won't be pursuing a real fox, so not to worry.”

Chloe looked toward the windows. Forget the fox. This meant she'd have to ride a horse sidesaddle. And, no doubt, this was another reality-show task with Accomplishment Points attached and nonparticipants asked to leave.

Julia practically bounced up and down in her chair and her chaperone glared at her until she calmed down.

“A hunt,” Grace said.

Surely, Chloe thought, Miss Parker didn't have enough status to ride. Chloe hadn't ridden a horse since college. Could she still do it? Plus, here it would have to be sidesaddle.

Mrs. Crescent leaned toward Chloe and said across the table, “We'll spend the next three days riding, Miss Parker. Count on it!”

Chloe stared at the arrangement of small woodland animals in front of her.

“Miss Parker,” Sebastian asked from the head of the table. “Are you quite all right?”

English men were so attentive. Chloe was about to respond when suddenly Mrs. Crescent pushed herself up out of her chair, her hands propped on the small of her back, sweat gathering under her curled bangs. “It's time!” she said, putting one hand on her belly. “It's time!”

Chloe's stomach tightened as she remembered the night she gave birth to Abigail. Abigail came a week early, and Winthrop was in Washington on business.

Chloe hurried over to Mrs. Crescent, but Henry was already there, guiding her to a fainting couch by the window. He took the watch from his watch fob and started timing the contractions.

Sebastian and Grace gawked. The chaperones and their charges crowded around Mrs. Crescent.

“Breathe. That's right,” Henry said. He took her hand.

Mrs. Crescent did her breathing, stood, and paced. Chloe paced with her.

“We should call her OB,” Chloe said to Henry. “An ambulance to take her to the hospital.”

“Contractions are still well over three minutes apart.” With his back to the camera, he spoke a mile a minute to Chloe. “We won't be calling anyone. She wants to have her baby here. Nineteenth-century style.”

“What?! There is no way—”

“Perhaps instead of being so dogmatic, you could do something useful, Miss Parker?”

Chloe gulped and stepped back. Sebastian had disappeared and so had the all the footmen and servants. Grace took backward steps toward the door. Was Grace snagging some alone time with Sebastian—now? Chloe couldn't let it happen. But she also couldn't let Henry think she was a dogmatic idiot either. She released her arm from Mrs. Crescent's. “Julia, Gillian. Stay with her. I'm going to get the kitchen maids to boil some water.” She dashed out the door and almost banged into Sebastian. Again.

Sebastian looked worried. “I—I'm not good in these situations. I'm an artist, not a doctor.”

He was an artist? What kind of an artist? she wondered. Then Mrs. Crescent groaned. “Come help me boil some water,” Chloe said. “I don't even know where the kitchen is.”

Grace stood next to her chaperone at the dining room doors, her hands on her hips.

“We have to hurry,” Chloe said. “Which way?”

“Follow me,” Sebastian said.

Chloe was right on his coattails. She smiled to herself. She was chasing him—literally now. And all this dashing through the marble halls lined with antiquities would have been fun had it not been for the gravity of a woman giving birth without a hospital, without an epidural! After scrambling down the servant stairway into the kitchen, Sebastian stopped. Servants and footmen were bustling about, frantically boiling water on the old stove and in the kitchen fireplace. So this was where they had all gone.

“What can I do?” Chloe dove into the fray.

A kitchen maid scowled at her. “You shouldn't be down here!” She spotted Sebastian and curtsied. “Excuse me, miss, but we've got it sorted. Best if you get upstairs.” She shooed Chloe out.

Chloe hurried up to the top of the stairs and Sebastian followed.

“Now what?” she asked.

“I don't know.” Sebastian rubbed the cleft in his chin. “I told you I'm not very good at this sort of thing.”

Chloe snapped her fingers. “They'll need linens. Where's the linen closet?”

Sebastian smiled. “My valet takes care of everything. I hardly know where he keeps my boots.”

He was sweet, really sweet. Like a boy. Chloe racked her brain, trying to figure out what they could do. She leaned up against a marble column and blew a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes.

Sebastian moved closer, waiting for her to take the lead.

A camerawoman bounded toward them from down the hall. Footmen lumbered up the stairs with pots of boiled water and kitchen maids carried up stacks of white linens. All Chloe and Sebastian could do was follow.

When the entourage arrived in the dining room, Mrs. Crescent sat, fanning herself and smiling.

Henry stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Sebastian and Chloe, who came in last. “False alarm,” he said. “Her contractions have stopped.” He pulled Chloe aside and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Well done, Miss Parker. You may be the smartest person in the room, but a lot of help you were, using this opportunity to take off with Sebastian. So glad I can count on you.”

Chloe wavered, feeling dizzy, surprised by his snarky reaction, which complimented and scolded her in one fell swoop. It crossed her mind, but only for a moment, that he might be jealous of his own brother. “You—you can count on me.”

Henry took off his glasses. “I hope so. Mrs. Crescent wants you to help me deliver the baby when it's time. Do you think I can rely on you, or shall I consider you otherwise engaged?”

Chloe was shocked. Whether it was because of Mrs. Crescent choosing her to help deliver her baby, or how good Henry looked without glasses, she wasn't sure.

“Can I count on you, Miss Parker?” Henry folded his arms.

“Of course.”

 

 

L
ater that night, in her boudoir, Chloe woke up to a nightmare of Henry asking over and over, “Can I count on you?” She got out of bed and stumbled to her chamber pot, sicker than a girl who'd drunk negus all night at her coming-out ball. She leaned over it, her stomach sloshing. Could have been that spoonful of fish soup, or the fact that she'd have to spend the next two days riding sidesaddle, and if she didn't ride, she'd be sent home. Would she still be able to ride after more than twenty years? As she hugged her chamber pot, she realized, though, she was sick over disappointing Henry. Ugh! She liked Henry, but—really! The fact that she cared so much about his opinion of her made her sick, literally. She felt overwhelmed and confused.

At home she could've turned on music, the TV—hell, even the computer to distract herself. But here? Her own thoughts could torment her relentlessly. Finally she decided to play the footage in her mind of her moments alone with Sebastian, and that made her feel better.

He felt the same way about her as she felt about him! She had to take the reins and come up with a plan that put her in control. She decided to host a tea after the foxhunt. It would take some doing, and she'd have to put aside her painting, but it would be her show and she could call the shots. Before she snuffed out her candle, she settled her eye on the stack of painting paper and tubes of oil paint that Sebastian had given her. He, too, was an artist. But what kind of artist? A vision of Dartworth Hall floated in front of her. Could he be the one? He was stacking up to be a most interesting man. Instead of snuffing out the candle, she blew it out and made a wish.