Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (41 page)

Lady Anne pressed her hand on Chloe's knee just as the music grew louder. “You haven't taken your eyes off Henry the entire time we've sat here, do you know that?”

“I haven't? I keep looking at Henry?” Chloe forced a smile. “Well, I can hardly see a thing. I don't have any glasses on. And neither do you, I might add!”

Lady Anne laughed.

The dance ended and Sebastian asked Chloe to dance once again. She accepted. He seemed to want to be with her.

They danced “Le Boulanger” and this time Chloe had to concentrate to remember all the figures and steps. Another thing she hadn't practiced as much as she should've!

Sebastian seemed to know this one and kept talking as he danced. He told her about the sixteen-inch fish he caught fly-fishing the other day. And the regimen of log lifting and a red-meat diet his trainer was putting him through to prepare for a boxing match. Then he recounted the moment he first saw her, their time in the castle ruins, and how he carried her from the hedge maze, all in incredible detail. “The best memories I have of these past six weeks are of moments I spent with you. Only you.”

As she counted her steps, his eyes began to wander, and as they were waiting their turn to dance up the line, he stared at a certain woman who leaned against a column. Chloe squinted. It was Fiona, dressed up in a golden gown with a white plume in her hair. It looked as if she'd just arrived. How could Sebastian be wooing her and scoping out Fiona at the same time? Then again, she had just kissed his brother in the library, not more than an hour ago. Although technically, he had kissed her.

Chloe spotted Henry, arms folded, blond brows furrowed, and hair fallen into one eye. He glared at her and Sebastian from across the room.

Something raced through her.

Henry was smoldering!

She danced up the line opposite Sebastian with renewed energy. When she reached the top of the line, she looked back toward Henry, but he was gone.

“May I have the pleasure of one more dance?” Sebastian bowed and his biceps bulged under his tight jacket. A man asking to dance with the same woman twice in a row was a strong signal that he was serious. Anyway, if she refused him, according to manners of the day, she'd have to sit out at least two more dances. That was an entire hour.

“You may.” She curtsied.

But before the orchestra started in, she heard a familiar voice above the din. “Attention! Attention!” George, all suited up in Regency attire, stood on a wooden platform and the crowd gathered around him. George looked like he was dressed for Halloween; the breeches, coat, and cravat didn't mesh with him at all. Still, Chloe was happy to see him. So much had happened this evening that the concerns of the modern world seemed to have disappeared.

“The next dance will be a waltz,” George said. The crowd clapped and he nodded.

A cameraman jockeyed for a better angle at George, who raised his voice. “Which, the participants in our show know full well, was very controversial in 1812.” The beautiful people looked at Sebastian and Chloe.

“The waltz, first introduced during the 1800s, allowed a couple to touch in a slight embrace. And in 1812, it caused quite a scandal.”

The crowd laughed.

“You laugh, but the participants in our show have hardly touched each other during all the weeks of filming.”

If he only knew.

“Unlike the present day, touching actually meant something during the Regency. It was a sign of commitment. Now, without further ado, I present to you what is sure to provide one of the most risqué endeavors of our entire stay . . . the waltz.”

Chloe licked her lips.

George raised his arms and the orchestra struck up.

Just as Sebastian's gloved hand was about to encircle Chloe's Empire waist and her gloved hand reached out for his shoulder, Fiona, white plume pumping, slid between the two of them.

“Miss Parker.” Her eyes widened and she wrapped her gloved hand around Chloe's arm. “Mrs. Crescent has gone into labor and she's absolutely begging for you to come to her side!”

Chloe's heart skipped. “Wh-what?” she stuttered.

“Mrs. Crescent wants you—now—it's time!”

Chloe's arm, the one she almost wrapped around Sebastian's shoulder, went limp. Her bare shoulders slumped.

Sebastian squeezed his fist, then relaxed his arm. The dancers twirled around them, a blur of color. Chloe felt the cameraman zoom in on her face—not one of her best cinematic moments, she was sure of that. Her mouth felt funny, like after a shot of Novocain.

“Hurry!” Fiona shouted above the music.

Chloe turned to go, but Sebastian reached out and squeezed her arm, pulling her back.

She shook her arm loose. “I have to go. Fiona—is that where Henry is?”

“Yes—that's where he is,” Fiona said.

It made sense.

Sebastian retracted his arm and bowed.

“Tell Lady Anne!” Chloe shouted over her shoulder to Sebastian as she dodged as many waltzing couples as she could, like a pinball on the dance floor. She collided right into the London doctor, who sneered and still smelled of Chanel.

At the edge of the dance floor Chloe took a deep breath, and drank in the room and the waltz music as if to sustain her. That was when she saw Fiona and Sebastian waltzing.

But instead of throwing a fit or even feeling jealous, Chloe felt—nothing. Sometimes, though, as she knew full well, in moments of great shock, numbness set in, to protect a fragile heart.

She did feel the camera on her face as it panned from her to Sebastian and Fiona dancing, and back again. She spun on her heel-less slippers and hightailed it through Dartworth Hall. At least this time she wasn't dressed as a footman! She cut through the library, thinking it would lead to the gallery, but this wasn't the library. It had a bed in it . . . this had to be the biggest bedroom she'd ever seen. The room, lit on either end by two dwindling fires, seemed wallpapered with books. Two butterfly nets stood propped up against a writing desk. She turned around and a cameraman was right behind her. Without thinking, she asked him, “Where are we?”

The cameraman didn't answer. But she knew.

A sword and mesh fencing mask lay on the writing desk, along with a
W
wax stamper. A pile of handkerchiefs stood on the washstand.
HW
was embroidered in the corner. This was Henry's room. And was that a jockstrap hanging from the chair? It seemed rather—large. Ladies didn't lurk in gentlemen's bedrooms, examining their protective gear, especially not while their chaperones were in the throes of childbirth. Her face flushed.

She hurried out the same door she came in, retraced her steps, and finally found her way back to the portrait gallery.

She lifted her gown, scurried down the marble stairway, grabbed her pelisse from the cloakroom, and scampered out the front doors into the night. At the bottom of the palatial steps she saw the footman.

“I need a carriage and a driver!” She was out of breath. “Mrs. Crescent's having her baby!” She pulled her pelisse on.

The footman looked out toward the stables where the carriages were parked. “It'll take half an hour to ready a carriage.”

Chloe paced on the bottom step. “Half an hour! I can't wait that long—”

“Here.” The footman untied a horse from a horse post. “Take a horse. It'll be much faster.”

She took a step backward.

The footman took her gloved hand with her fan and reticule hanging from the wrist and he lifted it. “I know it's saddled westernstyle, and not for a lady, but I'll help you up. You should be all right.”

“No! No, thank you.” Chloe pulled her hand back. “I'll sprint over there.” And she sprang off the bottom step right into the pasty mud, where her ballroom slipper promptly got stuck. When she tried to lift her foot out of the glop, the lace almost broke again. She looked up at the footman, who smiled and extended his hand to help her out of the mud.

Okay, okay, so she missed cars, and taxis, and buses, and maybe even Harleys.

T
he footman flirted with her. The guy couldn't be a day over eighteen and might even be jailbait. But Chloe didn't want to waste a minute, no matter how flattering the situation.

Finally he slid her muddied pink ballroom slipper into the stirrup.

Shaking, Chloe hoisted her gown up to her knees and flashed her silk stockings at the footman as she swung her leg over the horse.

The cameraman came closer to her, and she knew she was breaking every rule in the book by riding western style in her ball gown, but—Mrs. Crescent was having her baby! Her gown had ripped, but she clenched the reins and squinted, barely able to make out the torchlights in front of Bridesbridge. She brought the horse to a gallop as she hunched down low, near the horse's warm neck.

The horse seemed to go nowhere, like in a nightmare in which you're running and running but not moving at all. She had to get to Mrs. Crescent. She had to! Her hands sweated in her dance gloves and her calves cramped up as they squeezed the horse's sides.

The moonlight cast an eerie glow on the muddied road, and the dark trees seemed foreboding. When she finally arrived, she patted the horse on the neck with her quivering hand. Her reticule and fan, intact, swung from her wrist.

“You did it, boy. Good job. Good job.” There was no footman, nobody at Bridesbridge, so she tied the horse to a tree.

Her hair and ribbons had tumbled to her shoulders and she wiped sweat from the back of her neck as she took the steps at Bridesbridge Place two at a time. Even the night watchman was missing in action.

A single candelabrum, with stubs for candles, burned in the dark foyer. How was that for a fire hazard? Did the place even have smoke alarms? Why didn't Chloe see these hazards before?

She scampered out of her totally ruined slippers, chucked them under the neoclassical credenza in the foyer, and grabbed the candelabrum. She slid a hand along the mahogany railing, padded up the staircase, and stopped at the landing, where, if it weren't dark as hell, she could see the lineup of casement windows.

Okay, so if Mrs. Crescent was giving birth, why was it so quiet and dark?

The soles of her feet flattened against the warm Oriental carpet at the top of the stairs. She felt her way to Mrs. Crescent's door and opened it a crack. A flicker of candlelight leaked out and spilled onto the threshold.

“Mrs. Crescent?” Chloe knocked on the doorjamb.

“Come in.”

Chloe nudged the door open with her hip. Mrs. Crescent, propped up with plum-colored pillows in her great sleigh bed, dropped her nineteenth-century newspaper on her nightgowned belly like a tent. The headline read: HUNDREDS OF BRITISH SOLDIERS FALL IN FRANCE.” She wiggled her bare toes. “Can the ball be over already?”

Panic seared through Chloe. She thought about Fiona, in her gold gown and white plume as she urged Chloe to leave. “You're not—having the baby?”

Mrs. Crescent was petting Fifi, scrunched on the edge of the bed. “Oh, I'm having the baby all right. Just not right now, dear.”

Fiona had lied to her.

Chloe steadied herself with a hand on the Chippendale bookcase, sending her reticule and fan swinging. But why? Was she after Sebastian?

“Did you know that Lady Grace finished her fireplace screen? You'll have stockings to mend tomorrow. And how did you rip your gown?”

Chloe fingered the rip in her dress, took a step back into the dark hallway, and creaked the door closed.

“Miss Parker?” Mrs. Crescent struggled to sit up in her bed. Her voice sounded muffled, as if Chloe were hearing her from deep underwater. Her reticule and fan slid off her wrist to the floorboards. She swooped up both, grabbed her walking boots from her room, yanked them on, and headed for the front doors, where she swapped the candelabrum for an oil lantern abandoned by the night watchman.

“Miss Parker! Chloe!” Mrs. Crescent called after her.

Chloe finally stopped running when she felt the ground under her rise up in a mound. Then
wham
—she stubbed her toe on what felt like a huge rock.

“Ouch! Damn flimsy boots!” She dangled the lantern at a brick chimney capped with a wooden hatch door protruded out of the ground in front of her. Last week she might've thought the chimney was part of a picturesque little summer home with an earthen roof, but now she figured it was probably a smokehouse. Pig carcasses hanging from meat hooks flashed through her brain.

Flat-footing her way down the slippery side of the earth mound, she breathed deep and held back the tears. She should've known that Fiona was conspiring against her. That line about her fiancé being on military duty was, no doubt, a lie. Her pelisse trailed in the mud behind her while the moonlight sparkled kaleidoscope-like in her teary eyes. Fiona couldn't win any of the money, though. Only the contestants could. What would Chloe do without that cash infusion? She and Mrs. Crescent needed that money more than anyone. And just because Fiona was after Sebastian didn't mean the feelings were reciprocated.