Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (32 page)

Mrs. Crescent clasped her hands together when she saw Chloe. “I had the servants looking all over for you. You had a caller.” She handed Chloe a creamy calling card with the upper-right corner folded down.
Mr. Sebastian Wrightman
was letterpressed into the card in a distinctive, but not overly ornamental font. The folded corner indicated that he had come in person, and the fact that he came “calling” at all pointed to a new level of intimacy in their relationship. Chloe held her palm against the wall. To think she had missed Sebastian all because of Henry!

Mrs. Crescent stood back to inspect Chloe's gown. “My, you look a fright.”

Grace waltzed in, making even a check print look sexy with its scoop neck and her bare arms. She gave Chloe a sidelong glance. “You realize you look like an absolute serial killer. Honestly.” She turned her blond sausage-curled head to the sideboard.

And, just as a joke for the camera, Chloe pretended she had a knife in her hands, Norman Bates style, and she acted as if she were stabbing Grace repeatedly in the back. The camerawoman did her best not to laugh.

Grace stood at the sideboard, hands on her hips. “Ah. Cold mutton and cow's tongue. My favorites.”

Chloe remembered Sebastian's calling card fluttering to the floorboards, but she didn't remember fainting. Really.

C
hloe was hoping that the top half of Grace's boobs would get good and sunburned, because of course, sunblock didn't exist in 1812.

Her bonnet trimmed and five Accomplishment Points garnered, Chloe pretended to do her embroidery as she spied on Sebastian and Grace through the casement window in the drawing room at Bridesbridge Place. The couple bobbed up and down in the rowboat on the reflecting pond.

Since Chloe had been MIA while out bird-watching with Henry, and Grace had finished embroidering her fireplace screen and had more than enough points for another outing, she was granted the time with Sebastian. Julia, too, had finished her screen and was slated for an outing with him before the archery competition that afternoon.

Julia had fifty Accomplishment Points, but Grace and Chloe only had forty.

“Lady Grace isn't using her parasol,” Chloe reported to Mrs. Crescent. “And where's her chaperone, anyway?” She pricked her index finger with the needle. “Ouch!” A drop of blood bubbled up. She flung the needlework to the table and sucked on her fingertip.

Mrs. Crescent was lounging on the settee with Fifi at her side and a leather-bound book in her hands. “You have less than two days to finish that fireplace screen.” She closed the book. “You won't get any Accomplishment Points for it and you'll get another, worse task, like mending stockings and stays.”

Chloe stomped over to the pianoforte, where she banged out a few notes. Then she trudged over to the globe, lifted it from its wooden stand, and turned it. She found England, traced the outline of the tiny country with her pricked finger, and set the globe back in the stand.

Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly. “What you need is to win the archery competition this afternoon. Then we'll all be on our way.”

“Oh, I'll win all right. I have to!” She needed more time alone with Sebastian.

“That's the spirit. Now finish up the screen.”

Chloe pressed her nose against the window. “They're supposed to be bird-watching. Why aren't they bird-watching?” She picked up her needlework. She set it back down.

Mrs. Crescent stood and rubbed the small of her back. “Lady Grace has no interest in birds. You know that as well as I do.”

Chloe cut a deck of historically accurate oversized cards at the game table, which was draped in a maroon silk tablecloth.

Mrs. Crescent picked up Fifi. “I'm just glad to see you're back full force. We need to stay focused.”

The cards fell from her hands in a spray on the floor.

Fiona knocked. “Delivery for Miss Parker.”

It looked like some sort of a picnic basket. Fiona set the basket down on the game table and gave Chloe a note, sealed with a blue wax
W
.

“Thank you,” Chloe said, holding the note in her hand as if it were a winning lottery ticket.

As Fiona curtsied and left, Fifi leaped out of Mrs. Crescent's arms, jumped up on a chair at the gaming table, and began sniffing the basket. Mrs. Crescent leaned toward the letter.

Chloe broke the seal and read aloud:

“Mousetrap?” Mrs. Crescent looked sideways at the basket. Fifi started growling.

Chloe thought she saw the basket move, but then again, it could've just been her excitement.

“Henry must've told him about the mouse.” Chloe held the note up to her nose and breathed in. She showed it to Mrs. Crescent. “Look. He signed it ‘yours.'” She hugged the note close for a moment. No mere e-mail could ever surpass a handwritten note.

Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly and swallowed. “He quite fancies you, doesn't he.”

Chloe unhooked the basket lid and a young tabby cat peeked out.

“Oh!” Chloe held her arms out to the cat, but Fifi barked and the cat sprang to the writing desk, almost knocking over an ink jar. Fifi hurled himself at the desk in a barking frenzy. The cat arched his back and hissed at Fifi, who snarled and scratched at the desk leg.

Mrs. Crescent scooped up her dog. “Shush, Fifi!”

Chloe whisked the ink jars from the writing desk, but the cat snapped the quill pen in his mouth and held it there like a rose between his teeth. Chloe had to think of Abigail, who loved cats, but never had one as a pet. Chloe missed Abigail so much she had to steady herself against the desk for a moment.

Fifi growled from Mrs. Crescent's arms as she waddled to the door. “I'm going to rest before the archery meet this afternoon. Now, I suggest you take your mousetrap to your bedchamber, inform Fiona of the new arrival so that she can provide food and a litter box, and use this time to complete your needlework. Enough dawdling!”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “I'm no good at needlework.”

Mrs. Crescent pointed a finger at her. “To win this competition, you need to do more than
act
like a lady. You need to
be
one.” With that, she took off.

Chloe picked up the cat and slid the quill from his teeth. She thought about sending Sebastian a thank-you note, but she couldn't write to a man unless they were engaged. Or could she? Marianne Dashwood in
Sense and Sensibility
did.

She took the cat up to her bedchamber, shutting him in the room with her. She'd never had a cat before. And no man had ever given her anything with more of a pulse than a potted petunia. He must've really trusted her; after all, he had no idea that an eight-year-old girl thrived under her care.

She plopped herself down on the red velvet-cushioned stool at her writing desk and ceremoniously lit a tallow candle with a piece of kindling from the fire in her fireplace. The cat paced near the door. She took a piece of thick writing paper from the shelf and it felt almost like cloth. Seizing her bottle of rose water from the dressing table, she sprinkled a couple droplets onto the paper. Mmm—text messages never smelled like roses!

She plucked the goose quill from the penholder, and—was it her sex-starved imagination, or was this pen totally phallic? She touched the hand-cut nib, which was spliced up the center, and ran her hand all the way up the bare shaft to the few feather barbs left at the top. Henry had told her most quills came from the gray goose, and “pen” derived from
penna
, Latin for “feather.” They were made from the stiff flight feathers on the leading edge of the bird's wing. Henry, schmenry. The only reason why she thought about him at all was that she spent the most time with him by default, and that had to change.

She flipped the silver top off the crystal ink pot, dipped the quill into the ink, and wiped the shaft of the pen on the rim, as Mrs. Crescent had taught her. The ink permeated the nib and she'd just written the word
Dear
when the ink ran out and the cat jumped onto the paper. Paw prints and ink were smeared all over. At least she no longer got ink up to her elbows like the first time she tried to write with a quill. She started all over again, with fresh paper, and wrote in a most ladylike tone:

After rolling the blotter over her words, she folded the letter and dipped a black sealing-wax stick into the candle. Smoke uncoiled into the air. The melting wax perfumed the air with sweetness. The wax dripped slowly onto the paper, forming a liquid circle. Brass seal in hand, she pushed the letter
P
into the soft wax. It was much more satisfying than clicking the send button!

“Fiona,” Chloe called out down the hallway. Fiona was never far. “Please have this delivered to Mr. Wrightman immediately.”

Fiona took the letter and curtsied.

“Wait. No. I can't do this. Please give that back to me, Fiona. Sorry to have bothered you.” It was the ladylike thing to do. She'd have to thank him in person, the next time
he
chose to see her.

Fiona handed the letter back, and without a second thought, Chloe tossed it into her fire. With that, she closed her bedchamber door, stripped off her silk gown, donned a lacy dressing gown, pulled all the pins out of her hair to let it down, and stood at the window.

Her eyes went all glassy as she imagined Sebastian serenading her. He would toss a bouquet of red rosebuds up to her and she would catch it—

An hour and forty-five minutes later, she sat at her open window, flicking her cheek with the quill pen. She couldn't see Grace and Sebastian anywhere anymore. The hall clock had struck one ages ago. Two o'clock and it was archery time.

She watched a footman and driver mount a carriage below and drive it off toward Dartworth Hall in the afternoon heat. Footmen dressed in long-sleeved coats and wigs carried big wooden tables and wooden chairs out to the lawn for the archery meet while the maids balanced wooden trays loaded with pitchers of lemonade and raspberry puddings ringed with rose petals.

Well, some music would've been nice. She didn't realize how much she'd miss the radio, her CDs, her LP collection, and yes, even iTunes. Sometimes it was just so—quiet here. And the fact that Sebastian had sent her a gift of a cat put her in a celebratory mood. He must have some feelings for her!

She sauntered over to the four-poster bed, vaulted onto the mattress, and swung around one of the bedposts. A song popped into her head. She hadn't heard anything other than the pianoforte and harp in a while now, but she started singing and swinging her hips to the thumping bass in her head. Soon she was swirling around the bedpost in her corset and stockings, pulling white gloves past her elbows, dipping her head back and letting her hair sway, tickling her legs with her quill pen, cavorting around like a pole dancer, when outside her window, down in the semicircular drive—something moved. She squinted. It was Sebastian! He was in his top hat, gazing up at her with his binoculars.

“Oh God.” She froze for a moment, her stocking leg wrapped around the bedpost.

She heard something trickling—water. The cat was peeing near her evening shoes!

Sebastian stepped forward and back, adjusting the focus on his binoculars. She unwrapped herself from the post, slipped off the bed, and whipped the velvet curtains closed, like a bad puppet show. A pole dance wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind. Something just slightly more ladylike was on the agenda, like flirting from the open window with her hair down, because she looked good with her hair down, much better than the Regency updo Sebastian had associated her with, and she wanted Sebastian to see her that way. Finally, she opened the curtains to say, “It's huge in America, you know, pole-dance exercise classes.”

He smirked. “I can see why. Please, don't stop on my account. I find it most—diverting. Carry on.”

Chloe just laughed. “I have to get ready for the archery competition now.”

“You are on my list, Miss Parker. I will be calling on you and you'd best be at home when I arrive!” He bowed and left.

Chloe sank down on the mahogany chaise, putting her head in her hands. Hard to be a lady when the lady was a tramp!