Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (34 page)

When she opened her bedchamber door, she saw that the cat had knocked over her rosewater bottle and the ink bottles, and shredded some of her blotting paper, and she suddenly remembered that she was supposed to shake her ink vial in the chimney. But just when she was ready to reprimand the cat, he stepped out from behind the drapery with a dead mouse in his mouth, hanging by its pink tail.

Chloe screamed, and as if in obedience to some ancient instinct, she leaped onto a chair and hiked up her archery gown.

Sufficient screaming and shrieking prompted a footman to do away with the remains of the mouse. It was then that Chloe noticed pink petals scattered on her pillowcase. The petals surrounded a letter addressed to
Miss Parker
.

Her cameraman filmed her as she opened the note.

A
s Emma would've put it, Chloe had one chance to snag, tag, and bag Sebastian. It was Wednesday of week two, and she only had nine more days to get Sebastian to propose. So she decided—not to wear Henry's spectacles on her date.

Even though she fully intended to appeal to Sebastian's intellect and his noble upbringing, she figured whatever she could do to further her cause wouldn't hurt. So she selected her flimsiest gown with the neckline that didn't quit and the stays that turned her boobs into the uniboob—a force to be reckoned with. She shaved her legs for the first time in almost two weeks, illegally albeit, at her washstand, with a razor stolen from one of the footmen, even though she knew Sebastian wouldn't be seeing her legs. She chose a necklace that had a slightly damaged clasp in the hope that the emerald it contained might slide right into her cleavage at an opportune moment. Mrs. Crescent doused Chloe's muslin gown with water as any wanton, but still respectable, lady would do under the circumstances. And, as predicted, as soon as she hit the cooler summer air on this increasingly cloudy day, her nipples went hard.

Sebastian handed her up into his curricle, the sports car of the early 1800s. They were going for a turn around the estate and then a picnic and a bit of nature sketching at the Grecian temple, where Mrs. Crescent awaited them. Chloe couldn't have planned a more romantic outing herself. Neither Mrs. Crescent nor the cameras could fit into the curricle, so she and Sebastian were filmed from an ATV shadowing them alongside the road.

Unfortunately, Sebastian had a toothache, and as he drove the horses, he sucked on cloves to help with the pain, because aspirin hadn't been invented yet. Chloe broached subjects she knew interested him from the bio she'd read: architecture, poetry, painting, astronomy, even bird-watching, but he just rubbed his jaw in reponse. He was clearly in a lot of pain. But the last thing she wanted him to think about was a toothache. She had to distract him, but how, without breaking the rules?

They passed the grotto in silence. She wanted to know his favorite movie, his favorite restaurant, where he liked to travel, his hopes, his dreams, even his fears, his failings. She wanted to learn everything about him, but all efforts seemed so forced, and he was consumed with pain. What a far cry it was from yesterday's pole dance at her window, when Sebastian had eyes only for her.

The pressure mounted. The time would go quickly. Certainly Lady Grace was sexier than she, and Julia, no doubt, had youth and exuberance on her side. This called for drastic measures, something Emma, her employee, not Jane Austen's Emma, might concoct.

She thought about tossing the ladylike approach out the carriage window and throwing herself around him and his double-breasted riding coat, which stretched tautly across his chest. She imagined untying his cravat, tearing off his shirt, and crushing her breasts up against him like a common trollop. Instead she demurely tucked a stray hair under her bonnet. “Mr. Wrightman,” she said, “I wanted to let you know that your cat has caught the mouse.”

“It has?” He shifted on the carriage seat and raised an eyebrow at her. He took his hand off his jaw. The horses shook their manes and their nostrils flared.

“Absolutely.”

“That was certainly quick.”

“Well, your cat has great instincts.”

He almost dropped the reins as they clipped along past the deer park. “Thank you.”

She became acutely aware that she didn't have so much as a thong on. He was so close, so—hot. These sudden urges made her uncomfortable. It went against everything she believed to lust after a man she'd met just a couple of weeks ago, but then another image of her and Sebastian flashed through her mind. They were parked behind the stables in the back of the carriage and the hemline of her gown was up to her ribboned Empire waist. She was raking her fingers through his thick, dark, tumbling hair as his hands cupped her breasts—

“Are you—enjoying your time here at Bridesbridge, Miss Parker? Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

“Yes, I'm having a fabulous time, and it's beyond what I had hoped. But what about you? Are you getting closer to making your final decision?”

“Yes, every day. It hasn't been easy—but it has led me here, to this point, with you. You're so different from the others.”

She'd heard this before, and it was beginning to sound a little stilted. “You keep saying that, Mr. Wrightman. But what, I wonder, does it mean?” He looked pained again, so she lightened up. “Good different, I hope?”

“Yes. Good different.”

“It's hard to tell—sometimes—exactly how you feel,” she ventured.

“I don't really like all the attention I'm getting as the host of this thing. With the chaperones, so many people I don't know well, it's hard to relax and be myself.”

That must be why his behavior seemed at times so contradictory. This reality show was putting strange pressures on all of them. But her mind kept turning to his skintight breeches tucked neatly into his shapely riding boots. “I feel for you,” she said.

She'd like to feel him, period, she thought. She could hardly contain her physical attraction to this man, and from the way he looked at her when they were alone, it seemed as if he felt the same way. They had chemistry all right—on steroids. The force of the attraction, she reasoned, was probably made all the more powerful by the restrictions of Regency etiquette. She couldn't touch him, kiss him, or even hold his hand until he asked for her hand—in marriage. A flash of her untying his breeches came into her head. She would take hold of him with her leather-gloved hand and he would throb with need—

“I hope you'll like the afternoon I've planned for us.”

“I'm sure I will.” He could be so thoughtful at times, so considerate of her feelings and her pleasure.

He slowed the horses to a trot and they stopped at the Grecian temple. Chloe began to feel another urge rising up in her. It was the simple urge to pee. It happened to her every time she was out in the middle of nature, it seemed.

When he offered his hand to help her out of the carriage, she cast an eye toward the weathered green dome of the Grecian temple on the hill. Behind the temple's fluted columns, a picnic blanket had been laid out and sprinkled with red rose petals.

She reveled in the beauty of the scene. She never wanted to forget it. But one of the horses chose that moment to make a loud farting noise and a wave of the most disgusting-smelling air rose up around them. Just at the wrong moment, Sebastian whisked his hand away to cover his nose with his arm. “Arrgh,” he muttered, wincing.

Chloe made a move to lean on his hand that suddenly wasn't there and stumbled out of the carriage. Meanwhile, the horse lifted its tail and dumped on the road. The pile stank and steamed. Both Sebastian and Chloe gagged.

Such were the hazards of driving by horse.

Sebastian escorted her toward the temple. Heavy clouds began to gather in the sky. Chloe needed to go to the bathroom, but didn't want to leave.

A basket overflowing with dainty sandwiches, buns, and grapes anchored a corner of the picnic blanket. Grapes! And not a mutton leg, cow's tongue, or pig's head in sight. A stack of reproduction first-edition William Cowper and Wordsworth poetry books and a box of charcoal sticks and sketchbooks weighed down another corner.

“Well, what do you think of what Mr. Wrightman has arranged for you here?” Mrs. Crescent asked. She clasped her hands in obvious satisfaction.

“It's perfect,” Chloe said, trying not to think about her bladder.

“Lemonade?” Mrs. Crescent asked as she held up a corked bottle.

Chloe leaned in to whisper to her. “I need to dash off to the ladies' room.”

“You do? How unfortunate. Well, one never thinks of such a thing out here on a picnic. You'll have to go in the woods—or walk over to Dartworth Hall. And remember, ladies don't run, even to the ladies' room.”

“If you will excuse me, Mr. Wrightman. I need to use the—facilities.” Under her breath she said to him, “Or lack thereof.”

He bowed. “Of course. I recommend Henry's lab.”

Henry had a lab? As in science lab?

“See it right there?” Sebastian pointed to a little brick building that stood beneath a clump of trees. “It's a lot closer than Dartworth. And he happens to have one of those newfangled water closets all the way in the back of the building. Don't be long. I'll be waiting for you.” He popped a grape in his mouth and plopped down on the picnic blanket. “Ugh, my tooth.” He started rubbing his jaw again.

Chloe knocked on the door of the lab, but nobody answered. When she opened the door, light from floor-to-ceiling windows spilled into the room, shining on a neatly organized wall full of books. A large telescope on a tripod stood in a window. Wooden plank tables had centerpieces of test tubes in wooden racks, a primitive stethoscope, a camera obscura, and pieces of what looked like a gas lamp. A journal stood open on one of the tables, and next to it a volume of Shakespeare's sonnets. Everything, every single thing, piqued her curiosity.

It was like a snapshot of the inner workings of Henry's mind. If only she could get such a glimpse inside Sebastian's. She spotted the initials
WC
on a door in the back and stepped onto what seemed like a back porch. There it was, a sort of wooden toilet, the first toilet she had sat on in almost two weeks. Who knew that the sight of a toilet could make her so happy?

Chloe was straddling the primitive-looking toilet bowl, hoisting her gown, when suddenly she heard boots clomping on the floorboards in the lab. “Mr. Wrightman?” She searched for the toilet paper. There wasn't a basket of rags anywhere either. When someone pushed the door open, she put her hand up to stop the door from opening fully. “I'm in here!”

Whoever it was pulled the door shut again. “Miss Parker?”

It was Henry.

“So sorry. I had no idea you were in there!”

“It's all right, Henry. But—do you have any . . . toilet paper?” she squeaked.

Chloe heard him scrambling, and what sounded like a tin of something fell to the floor. A moment later he handed her a bucket of rags.

Chloe used one of them.
Now
. . . Another nineteenth-century conundrum. What to do with it? None of this was in her rule book. She couldn't exactly flush it down whatever this thing was. She pulled the handle, but it didn't flush.

“Just bring them out here, Miss Parker. I'll take care of everything.”

Chloe's head pounded with embarrassment. She creaked the door open.

He held out a cloth sack to her.

Without looking at him, she stuffed the rag in the bucket and he took it outside to a tin trash container.

She followed him. What a gentleman to deal with all this! “Um, to make matters worse, the water-closet thingamajig wouldn't flush.”

“I know! I've been working on it every spare minute, and still haven't perfected that part of it yet. Here's a washbowl for your hands.” He guided her toward an outdoor washbasin and handed her a large ball of what she recognized as very good soap. He wasn't wearing a riding jacket, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat untied, and his shirt, a pullover white muslin with a long V neck, hung open. His hair was disheveled.

“Thank you for helping out a damsel in distress.” He had a delicious scent about him, an aroma of oil paints and turpentine, something only an arty girl would know and love.

“You're welcome. I hope you'll excuse my appearance,” he said as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I just came from doing some painting in the field.”