Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (9 page)

Grace stood to leave. “It's a shame that you can't shoot pistols with me, Miss Parker. Only titled ladies can shoot. It would be such a diversion.” With that, she spun to the other side of the room.

Chloe turned to Mrs. Crescent with a smile. “Now, that
does
sound diverting. But I'm sure we can arrange a duel at dawn with swords or something.” She lowered her voice. “What have I done to her, anyway?”

“Nothing, dear. You're new, and fresh.”

Chloe hadn't considered coming in late to the game an advantage until now.

Fiona returned, looking as if nothing had happened, and with a clanking of china and silver, cleaned up the tea things.

Chloe gathered the silverware for Fiona until Mrs. Crescent tapped her wrist and shook her head.

Grace sauntered back over to Chloe. “You don't have titles in America, do you?”

“Well, my father always called me ‘princess.' Which I believe ranks higher than a lady.”

Grace rattled her chatelaine. “We might practice archery together. You needn't be titled for that.”

Mrs. Crescent curtsied and it took Chloe a while, but she did bow her head. Nevertheless, as Grace turned to walk down the hallway and the cameraman followed, she pretended to shoot her in the back with a bow and arrow.

“Might I have a word?” Mrs. Crescent brought a handkerchief to her sweaty brow. She whispered, “I'm glad to see you're a fighter. I've never seen anyone handle her quite like that. We have a chance at winning, you know. A big chance!”

“What do you mean ‘we' have a chance at winning?” Fifi nuzzled his head under Chloe's arm and Chloe edged away.

“We're in this together! Of course you know your father hired me to find a suitable match, and if we get Mr. Wrightman to propose to you, I get five hundred pounds.”

Chloe's real father didn't have an English pound to spare, so this must've been part of the script. It rang true, because Chloe knew chaperones were often hired by eager fathers during the Regency, and the chaperone would be paid a predetermined amount when she married off her young charge.

This gave Mrs. Crescent a real stake in Chloe's winning.

Mrs. Crescent whispered, “I get five hundred pounds from your father and ten thousand from the show itself if we win, and I really need to win. That's all I'll say about the game for now.” She looked crushed. “You wouldn't know how it is when you're a mother—you don't have children.”

Chloe looked down at her ballet-flat shoes. Abigail used to take ballet, before she switched to hip-hop.

Another camera came in; this time it was a camerawoman.

Mrs. Crescent changed her tone and spoke up. “So, I have four children, and another on the way.” She patted her pregnant belly. “Our five-year-old son needs surgery, the physician said.”

Fifi licked Chloe's arm and Chloe rubbed it off. “For what?”

“To remove a lump in his neck. He's always been sick and we have no more means to pay. The local physician has a long wait list, and we want to get it done as soon as possible, which means we have to go into town, which is going to cost us.”

Did Mrs. Crescent's son have a medical issue in real life? Or was this just part of the chaperone's character sketch? Chloe knew that socialized medicine meant often getting wait-listed for a procedure and thought maybe the Crescents wanted to hurry everything up and pay for it to be done in a private clinic. She tried to catch Mrs. Crescent's eye, but the worried mother looked away wistfully, toward the window.

“I'm counting on that money.” Mrs. Crescent put her hand on Chloe's knee. She looked Chloe in the eye. “My whole family's counting on it.”

Her story had to contain some element of truth. “What's your son's name?”

“William,” Mrs. Crescent said, without hesitation. She opened a locket hanging around her neck and pointed to a miniature portrait of a boy with blond hair and curls.

“He looks like a little Cupid.”

Mrs. Crescent closed the locket, rubbing it with her fingers. “He is a love. It's hard to be away from him for weeks on end. You can't imagine.”

Sweat dribbled down Chloe's back. “It must be hard.”

Mrs. Crescent stood and waddled toward the door. “Having children changes your priorities forever. Right. Tonight you'll meet the rest of the women, but for now, Fifi and I can show you Bridesbridge Place.”

Chloe wanted to know more about little William, but she soon got swept up in the tour of Bridesbridge. She gushed over everything, from the drawing room and its pianoforte to the kitchen garden thick with dill, lavender, and basil.

“Might you show me the—water closet, Mrs. Crescent? All that weak tea seems to have gotten to me.”

Without a word, Mrs. Crescent guided Chloe to her boudoir, where, like a statue, she pointed to the bottom shelf of a credenza. On the shelf, atop a linen towel, sat a china pot, shaped like a gravy boat, only slightly bigger. Chloe lifted it by the handle even as her heart sank.

“A chamber pot?”

“Yes.”

“There must be a water closet somewhere.”

“You'll find a basket of rags under your bed. The chambermaid will take care of everything when you've finished.”

The poor chambermaid!

“I'm going to take a little nap.” Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly. “I get so tired these days. Settle in. We'll spend the next forty-eight hours working on your accomplishments. Dancing. French. Pianoforte. We have much to catch up on, and the task of the day is mending pens.”

Chloe had to chuckle at the reference to the scene in
Pride and Prejudice
where Caroline Bingley offers to mend Mr. Darcy's pen. What fun that would be, but how horrifying the thought of a chamber pot was. She set it on the floorboards. First a chamber pot, then Lady Bootcamp. They were trying to break her, to make her crack on camera, to become the crazy, crying girl that was so good for ratings.

“Come, Fifi.” Mrs. Crescent left.

A cameraman filmed Chloe staring into the chamber pot until she shut the door on him. He must've been her designated cameraman because he always seemed to be the one who followed her when she went off on her own. He was a lanky guy, in his late twenties maybe. Like the other camera crew, he never said a word.

She set the chamber pot back down under the credenza. The whole thing reminded her of potty-training Abigail. “There's got to be a bathroom here somewhere,” she said out loud.

She opened the door, and the cameraman followed her as she dashed through Bridesbridge, checking every door. The rooms she had found so charming earlier, with the neoclassical clocks and Oriental vases and silver epergnes whizzed by in a blur. Some doors were locked and she was convinced one of them was a bathroom. Grace floated by just as Chloe yanked on the last ornate silver doorknob of the last locked door.

“Looking for something, Miss Parker?” Grace asked in a flat voice.

“You wouldn't happen to have a key to a water closet, would you?”

Grace smiled, fingering her chatelaine. “I have heard of some extremely wealthy houses installing newfangled water closets, as you say, but I cannot imagine you are used to such luxuries in America. We don't have anything of the sort at Bridesbridge.”

Chloe let the doorknob go. She didn't want to pee in her pantalets. She flew to the staircase and took two marble steps at a time, nearly colliding with the butler, who was carrying letters on a silver salver.

“Letter for you, Miss Parker.”

If she didn't have to pee, this would've been such a memorable moment. The butler handed her an actual letter, sealed in an envelope. Not an e-mail, not a text, not a tweet.

“Thank you,” she said as she whisked the letter away from him. She bounded up the stairs, knocked her door shut with a sway of her hip, tossed the letter on her writing desk, and straddled the chamber pot. Hoisting her gown and bending to the best of her abilities with the busk, she untied and stripped her pantalets and squatted as if she were in the woods. Never in her life had she felt so unladylike. And the rags—ugh. Carefully, she carried the chamber pot back to the credenza and draped a towel over it. Thank goodness she hadn't been cast as a chambermaid. Washing her hands in the bowl on the washstand, she discovered what must be the soap, a white ball no larger than a candy Easter egg. After the eight-hour flight, a dusty carriage ride, the chamber pot, and sweating in this house without air-conditioning, she needed a shower—er—bath. She rang for Fiona and eyed the letter on her writing desk. It couldn't be from Abigial. Not only was it too soon for that, but there was no postage. It simply said
Miss Parker
on it in handwriting with great flourishes. The back of the thick envelope had been sealed with an elegant red wax
W
, for Wrightman, no doubt. Chloe fingered the
W
, then with a bronze letter opener and trembling hands, she sliced open the envelope, leaving the
W
intact.

This woman certainly seemed much nicer than Chloe's ex-mother-in-law. Of course, Mr. Wrightman's mother came from a polite, well-bred, titled family, and clearly, she wanted the world for her son, as any mother would. Mr. Wrightman's father was extremely rich as Mrs. Crescent had said, but untitled like Mr. Darcy's father. It made Chloe feel guilty that she needed to win over Mr. Wrightman for the money first and foremost. Phew, it was warm upstairs.

She opened her casement window to let in the cooler air. Looking out the window past the Bridesbridge gardens, she saw a pond shimmering in the midday light. At the moment she'd give anything just to dangle her feet in it for a few minutes.

The chambermaid knocked, opened the door, and beelined toward the chamber pot while the cameraman followed.

“Excuse me,” Chloe asked, “might I have a bath?”

“Bath will be on Sunday, miss.” The chambermaid picked up the chamber pot and basket of used rags.

Chloe pulled back the draperies to get a better look at the pond. “But—today's Monday.”

“That's right, miss. Only one bath per week.”

This took Chloe a minute to absorb.

“As you know, the servants have to pump the water, then heat it and carry it in buckets up the stairs. Bath will be Sunday.”

“Ugh,” Chloe blurted out.

“What was that, miss?”

“Might I have more soap and water, then?”

“The soap ball needs to last you two weeks when the Irish soap monger will be coming by again. I'll have a footman fetch fresh water.” She bowed her head and took the pot away. Where? Chloe wondered. The cameraman followed the chambermaid. Apparently Chloe's chamber pot was more interesting than Chloe herself.

Chloe fixed her eyes again on the water that was glistening in the distance. She paced in front of the yellow draperies, trying to put a positive spin on this. So there wasn't any plumbing. There would be time to paint, there would be a ball, and candlelight dinners in Dartworth Hall.

She stopped and buried her head in her hands. Come on, she was almost forty and a mom. Why couldn't she grow up and give up the fairy tale? No bath till Sunday. Chamber pots. No phone to call Abigail. Bullets. Leeches. Psycho-housemate Grace. Ready-to-pop-a-baby chaperone. And a Mr. Wrightman who foiled her expectations. She imagined him as dark-haired and brooding, or at least standoffish, and was taken aback that he seemed approachable and caring, if a bit left-brained for her taste. Still, how could she win over any man without being able to bathe for six days? If she wanted to win this thing, she had to be proactive, and she had to, at the very least, smell good.

Something wet nuzzled against Chloe's leg.

Fifi was nudging his way under her gown, sniffing and licking. Chloe pulled on her walking half boots, snatched the soap ball, a linen towel, and had gotten as far as the hallway when she remembered her bonnet. Bonnet, parasol, and gloves retrieved, she scampered down the servants' staircase, almost missing a step in the darkness.

H
er white stockings hung from a nearby branch and swayed in the breeze while she waded in the pond. She had rolled up her pantalets, lifted her gown to her knees, and washed her legs and arms with the soap ball when what she really wanted to do was just pull off her gown and dive in. Not only would that have been inappropriate, but she wouldn't want anyone to see her stark naked unless they'd had a few drinks and she was illuminated by candles. Candlelight was one of the perks of nineteenth-century living for an aging spinster like her.