Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (39 page)

“Miss—” Sebastian paused for the cameras. He glanced at the envelope with the red wax
W
and then at the two women. “Miss Parker.”

She could almost hear the French horns blaring triumph in her head. She felt tantalizingly close to victory, despite her pianoforte fiasco, because she was to meet Sebastian at the ice house. She said her good-byes to Julia, incredulous that Sebastian would let her go and Grace stay.

“Ladies . . .” The butler looked at Chloe and Grace. “Mr. Wrightman will see you at the ball tomorrow night.”

Sebastian bowed, Chloe and Grace curtsied, and Chloe watched Julia as she didn't bounce, but shuffled into the foyer on Sebastian's arm.

“Good riddance to her,” Grace said, and brushed her hands off as if she'd just gotten rid of an annoying fly.

 

 

T
he final task was the ball, and Saturday morning, Chloe put herself in the capable hands of Mrs. Crescent, Fiona, and even her chambermaid and a few random servants to help dress her, arrange her hair, fasten her jewelry, and make her up for the evening. She was as diligent as a bride dressing for her wedding, and it took a village.

Mrs. Crescent, alas, would not be going to the ball. She had to stay at Bridesbridge for fear of slipping in the mud and a superstition that a full moon might induce labor. Chloe would be under the dark wing of Grace's chaperone for the night, but even this didn't daunt her. Finally, the anticipated moment arrived.

Lit by the moon, the remaining ladies of Bridesbridge Place, Chloe, Grace, and Grace's chaperone, stepped out of their carriage in front of Dartworth Hall. Dressed in their silk gowns, ostrich feathers, and elbow-length white gloves, they stepped into mud thick as chocolate frosting from the day's rain.

The rain and mud, combined with the lack of Julia's sporting presence, not to mention Mrs. Crescent's, conspired to dampen Chloe's spirits, but she smiled in anticipation of her first ball in England, surrounded by English people with their English accents. And she quickened at the prospect of dancing with Sebastian even as she wondered at what to expect at the ice house.

After Grace and her chaperone were helped out of the chaise, the footman handed Chloe out and helped her balance on the steel platform pattens strapped to her pale pink ballroom slippers.

Chloe looked back at Bridesbridge Place. She missed Mrs. Crescent, however pregnant and persnickety she might have been. How could she pass this final test—the ball—on her own?

Cameras were everywhere and it made her uneasy. Granted, going with Grace meant she got to ride in the chaise-and-four. Still. Still, she was going to the ball with one of Cinderella's evil stepsisters, and she knew it.

Grace, in her wedding-white gown, looked down on Chloe from the first landing on the stairs. Chloe stretched her bejeweled neck toward the bright open doors of Dartworth Hall. She lifted her silk gown and pelisse and took a deep breath. Back home, everybody was eating cheeseburgers because it was the Fourth of July, but she got to go to a ball in one of the grandest country estates in England.

She teetered her way to the palatial staircase a good four inches off the ground in her pattens. They made a sucking sound every time she took a step in the mud. Everyone laughed as a footman's shoe stuck in the mud and he had to hop around in his stocking foot. How would she trek to the ice house in all this? And who knew it rained so much in England?

The maids ushered the women into the ladies' cloakroom, where one of them took off Chloe's Greek-key-trimmed pelisse and her pattens. The maid even retied her ballroom slippers, fastening the spaghetti-thin pink straps around her ankles a little too tight, but Chloe didn't complain.

She looked in the same mirror in which she had beheld herself after the hedge-maze debacle and hardly recognized what she saw. This time, instead of seeing a madwoman, she saw a peach-gowned princess with a tiny Empire waist trimmed in sparkly gold. Her arched eyebrows, blackened with ripe elderberries, beckoned. Candle-soot eyeliner brought her bright eyes to life. And this time she hadn't eaten her rouge. Was it the strawberry stain, or did she actually have cheekbones now? The weeks of not eating haunch-of-venison soup, raised giblet pie, and Florentine rabbits had paid off. She could market this Regency diet when she got home. She wished Abigail could see her now!

She smiled at her stick-straight hair that Fiona had transformed into a splendor of curls. But the pin curls and yellow beaded silk ribbon that swirled around her hair reminded her of—question marks. Were her feelings for Sebastian real? Or was she just projecting her idealized vision of Mr. Darcy onto him? Did she know him well enough to even say yes to a made-for-television marriage proposal?

“Miss Parker!” Lady Martha clapped her hands at Chloe.

Grace's chaperone always clapped at Chloe, as if she were a dog or circus animal.

Lady Martha put her hands on her silver-spangled hips. “Are you
quite
ready?”

“Really.” Grace rolled her eyes.

Chloe was incensed, and with a huff she spun and led the way through the foyer. Video cameras rolled and cameras clicked away as she marched through the gallery, past rows of oh-so-serious Wrightman family portraits, toward an archway at the end of the marbled foyer that was flanked by two footmen and two candelabra. But, when Henry stepped out from behind the arch in a black cutaway coat, gray knee breeches, white stockings, an elegant ruffled white shirt, and gray gloves, she came to a screeching halt. He bowed. Then, from the other side of the arch, Sebastian appeared, looking as dapper if not more so in his black coat and buff-colored breeches. He bowed, too.

The only thing better than one gentleman was two.

Once again imagining a book on her head, Chloe floated along with video cameras at her side, her gown flowing at her ankles. She glided toward both Henry and Sebastian, who stood waiting in the anteroom. She was ready to glide, on both of their arms, into the pale yellow ballroom bedecked with gilt floral molding and sparkling with candles reflected in gilt mirrors when Henry, with his eyes, and a flick of his gloved hand, signaled her to step aside. She slowed her pace. She had forgotten to let Grace precede her. How could she have forgotten that?

Suddenly the ball of her right foot stuck to the ground, her heel lifted out of her slipper, and she stumbled. Grace had deliberately stepped on the back of Chloe's slipper!

She felt her face flush with color. Of course the cameras got that.

“Ballroom blunder number one,” Grace whispered out of the side of her mouth as she slithered past Chloe.

Chloe shot a look at Lady Martha, who just lowered her eyelids in disdain. “You must enter the ballroom in order of rank. You must always remember your place, Miss Parker,” she sneered.

Chloe leaned back on her heel and crushed the back of her slipper.

A cameraman cut from Lady Martha to Chloe as she watched Sebastian and Henry bow to Grace.

Grace's chaperone looked over her capped-sleeve shoulder at Chloe. “That would mean you come in behind us.” She glanced at Chloe's slippers. “Go to the cloakroom and have a maid repair your lace. You cannot enter the ballroom looking like
that
.”

A group of people dressed in ballroom attire sauntered past Chloe. One of the pink ribbons strapped around her ankle had broken. She looked up and saw Sebastian leading Grace and her chaperone into the glowing ballroom. Henry greeted the crowd with a smile and a handshake.

If she went back to the cloakroom now, she'd miss the opening minuet, and that was probably exactly what Grace and her chaperone had planned, even though Chloe, as she knew full well, had to sit out the first dance in punishment for her mishap at the archery competition. She ducked into an alcove, knelt down to fix the lace, and the camera was on it. Or was the camera on her cleavage?
There
. She'd fixed it. She stood up and flashed a fake smile at the camera. But she couldn't enter the ballroom without a chaperone—she knew that.

The footmen stood like soldiers guarding the archway. The cameraman filmed her biting her lower lip. Another crowd of ball goers passed by. Who were these people? Townfolk? Actors?

She stood awkwardly and pretended to check for something in her reticule when a whiff of garlic hit her. It was Cook dressed in a high-cut green silk gown and white gloves, her silvery hair held in place by a peacock-feathered hair band. Her blue eyes twinkled. “What's the belle of the ball doing out here?” She held out her arm.

Chloe took it in her own. “You don't want to know. I'm so happy to see you here. You look—gorgeous.”

“Might I be your chaperone for the evening?”

Chloe beamed. Together they headed toward the anteroom.

“Tonight, at least for a little while, I'm a card-carrying member of the well-to-do Ton. You know. Society with a capital
S
.”

“I know what the term
Ton
means,” Chloe said. “And you more than qualify, as far as I'm concerned.”

Cook patted Chloe's hand with her fan and lowered her voice to a whisper. “George had everyone at Bridesbridge dress as society for the ball. It's fabulous, but sad, in a way, too. The show's almost over.”

“The show?” Chloe was always surprised when Cook stepped out of her Regency character. She wasn't at all like Mrs. Crescent in that regard. Then again, this could be another test.

“The reality show. The little charade.”

Chloe just smiled.

Henry and Sebastian both turned toward them. Henry flicked the hair out of his eye and Sebastian adjusted his cravat.

Both men smiled at her. It had started out as a show. A way to score some money. But what was it now? Chloe's heart was on the line and it felt as fragile as a Regency-era Wedgwood teacup. First Henry bowed, then Sebastian. Sebastian escorted Cook into the anteroom, and seemed to slight Chloe. But why? Had her eye lingered too long on Henry when he bowed?

“So glad you could join us, Miss Parker.” Henry offered his arm. “Before I escort you to the ball, would you like to see the library here at Dartworth—just for a minute? It's right over there. You don't need a chaperone with all these people milling about.”

Chloe hesitated. “I don't want to miss the minuet, even though I have to sit it out.”

“You won't. I promise.”

As excited as she was about the ball, this might be her last chance to see the Dartworth library. She stopped. “This isn't code for showing me your etchings, is it?”

“Maybe.”

“Is this some kind of test? Because I won't do anything to put my relationship with your brother in jeopardy. You must know, Mr. Wrightman, where my affections lie.”

“I do.”

Once Chloe walked into the library, she had to catch her breath. Hundreds and hundreds of candles had been lit and carefully placed around the room. The leather-bound books with gold- and silver-embossed titles on the bindings glistened in the candlelight. And, in tiny vases everywhere, were flowers from the heirloom cutting garden at Dartworth. Larkspur, snapdragons, bachelor's buttons, lilies, and foxgloves perfumed the air and seemed to sprinkle their colors against the dark wood paneling.

“It's—it's amazing. Did Sebastian do this?”

“I did.”

“You did?”

Henry nodded. “I did it for you. And this is for you, too. I'll have a footman run them over tomorrow.”

He placed three leather-bound books in her hands. Jane Austen's
Sense and Sensibility
in three volumes.

She ran her gloved fingers along the letterpressed title.

“Someday our kids will laugh about these things called ‘books.'”

Chloe got stuck on his saying “our kids.”

“Good thing we're both wearing gloves. It's a first edition,” he said.

Chloe handed the books back to him. “I can't accept them. They're worth a fortune. I can't accept
any
of this.”

“The books may be worth a fortune, but I never planned on selling them. I don't think you will either.”

He looked at her with so much passion in his eyes that she—she swooned—and had to lean against the writing desk. “Henry. You have to stop.”

“I must warn you that this goes against all the rules, but some things are better expressed without words.” He gently but firmly nudged her against the bookshelves, the section labeled FANTASY, and he trapped her there with his arms. Their bodies crushed together as he kissed her deftly and deliciously. He stopped for a moment, and desire ricocheted through her.

“You really are quite accomplished, Miss Parker,” he said. “Very talented.”

He rendered her speechless. He cupped her cheek in his hand. “You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know how ardently I admire you.”

The room spun a little around her, but the light-headedness could've been due to a lack of oxygen. She hadn't been kissed like that in a long time. Why was he doing this to her? Was this another test?

He checked his watch fob, which happened to be dangerously near his bulging breeches. “The minuet will be starting soon.”

Chloe's mouth dropped open a little. He didn't want anything more than a kiss? Surely she did. But “Miss Parker” did not. Miss Parker had already gone too far.

“Perhaps, sometime, when there isn't a grand ball going on, you would like to accompany me back to the library?”

Chloe looked around at the candles, the flowers, the books, drinking it all in. All of it was slipping away already, like a good dream you only remember pieces of when you wake.

“You don't have to answer. I've read it all on your face.”