Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

by Karen Doornebos

  “Touché.” Henry laughed, and Chloe cracked a smile, even as she looked straight ahead at the mantua-maker waiting near the partarre.

  Chloe spun toward the kitchen door, where, on a wooden table outside, the scul ery maid gutted fish. The fish skins shone in the sun and the stench almost made Chloe lose it.

  “Not the servant door, Miss Parker—” Mrs. Crescent said in an annoyed-as-ever voice. “Take her through the main doors.”

  She had to walk past Henry, who politely bowed as she escorted the dressmaker to the main doors. As soon as the footmen closed the doors behind them, Chloe excused herself for a moment, and before the exasperated woman could protest, Chloe was up in her chamber. She stashed the vibrator, the MP3 player, the whitening strips, the condoms, and the cigarettes under the rags in the basket next to her chamber pot. Only the poor chambermaid touched that. She rang for a footman to bring her tiara to Henry.

  In the parlor, as Chloe stood on a cushioned stool, the dressmaker pinned her dress for final alterations. The satin drapes had been drawn, and Chloe could see clear through to the parterre, where five boys spil ed through the wrought-iron gate in the east garden wal . Each one of them wore knickers and a vest and looked straight out of a costume drama. Mrs. Crescent must be pleased at the historical accuracy.

  “Turn, please,” the mantua-maker mumbled with a mouthful of pins.

  Chloe turned, and saw Henry playing with one of Mrs. Crescent’s older boys. Which one was Wil iam? Mrs. Crescent hugged two of her littler ones, and they patted her pregnant bel y. Henry gathered the boys around him and showed them the jar with the butterfly in it. They al looked, even the oldest one, wide-eyed, with tiny hands on the jar. Chloe thought only of Abigail. She would’ve enjoyed al this.

  Henry held up the jar, pul ed off the cheesecloth, and the butterfly flew up and around the boys, who clapped and jumped up and down.

  The boys hung on to Henry, laughing and smiling, and Chloe got butterflies in her stomach. He was so good with kids. And, she couldn’t help but think, he would be good with Abigail, too.

  The dressmaker tugged on Chloe’s gown to get her attention. “Would you like a Greek-key trim or tattered lace?” Chloe tried to focus on the two snippets of trim the seamstress handed her. “Oh. Um. Greek key.”

  “Turn, please.”

  Chloe turned again and this time she saw herself in the ful -length gilded mirror. The peach-colored silk gown glimmered in the summer sun that streamed through the windows. Was it just the light or did she lose about ten pounds? For the first time ever, she wanted to hop on a scale. Even with the glasses, she looked—like a lady.

  Henry had a toddler in his lap and he was reading aloud from one of the children’s books. A wave of warmth washed over her.

  “You have lost inches since I was here last, Miss Parker.”

  Chloe heard the dressmaker, but she sounded far away, as if she were in another room.

  Grace, in her low-cut white gown, sauntered over behind Henry and put her arm around his chair as he continued to read. She seemed to be reading it aloud with him to the boys. Henry looked up at Grace and smiled as they mouthed the words together.

  Chloe’s fingers clenched like claws. Et tu, Henry? Wait a nineteenth-century minute. She was getting jealous over—Henry.

  Then Julia romped onto the parterre and set up the ring toss for the boys, and the boys left Henry and Grace alone with the book.

  “Miss Parker?” A gorgeous footman, maybe even Grace’s most recent conquest, held out a silver salver with a handmade envelope on it addressed to her. Chloe picked up the thick note and the footman bowed and left. It was sealed with a red wax W.

  “Now for your pelisse, Miss Parker.” The dressmaker held out the thin, floor-length tailored jacket for alterations. Chloe broke the seal and opened the note.

  Dear Miss Parker,

  I am hoping to see you at the upcoming ball. If you come to the ball, I would like to meet you at the ice house just past the stables after the last dance. I have something to ask you, so please arrive alone. Hoping you do not disappoint.

  Yours,

  Mr. Wrightman

  Even with the tight-sleeved pelisse covering her arms, she got goose bumps. Of course, meeting Sebastian at the ice house alone would be against the rules, but it sounded like he was going to propose. He had something to ask her!

  But didn’t most Regency proposals take place in the daytime? In a parlor or drawing room, after al the sisters and nosy mothers had been whisked away? At least, that was what happened in the novels and costume dramas. This meeting had to be aboveboard. Sebastian wouldn’t jeopardize her position on the show, would he?

  Chloe repeated the poem again in her mind. She stil couldn’t decipher it.

  As the mantua-maker cuffed the sleeves of the shimmery silk pelisse, Chloe watched Grace, Julia, and Henry play “London Bridge Is Fal ing Down” with the littlest boys. She could see them mouth the words: “Fal ing down. Fal ing down. London Bridge is fal ing down. My fair lady.”

  That was the problem with wearing glasses. You began to see things clearly.

  Chapter 18

  L adies, there are two invitations and three of you,” said the butler in the music room at Bridesbridge on Friday evening. The women had displayed their talents on the musical instrument of their choice. Grace played the harp, as it was the most expensive instrument, and it accentuated her higher-class status. Not to mention the fact that harp players had the added bonus of being able to flash some ankle while they performed. Julia played a complicated Regency piece on the pianoforte. Chloe attempted a Mozart selection on the pianoforte—one that she’d played at a Christmas piano recital when she was twelve.

  Grace and Julia garnered fifteen Accomplishment Points while Chloe earned five for effort.

  She had to admit to herself that some time-management software might’ve come in handy for such ongoing projects as the piano practicing, the needlework, and remembering to shake her vial of ink three times a day.

  Chloe stood between Grace and Julia, who tapped her toe on the Aubusson carpet. Grace feigned a yawn. Chloe felt flushed and fanned herself.

  Mrs. Crescent, who lounged in a green tufted Grecian couch, looked down at Fifi and petted him.

  The butler looked straight into the cameras. “Before we proceed, I would like to remind Mr. Wrightman that Miss Tripp has ninety Accomplishment Points, Lady Grace seventy, and Miss Parker forty-five. Mr. Wrightman has to take into account that Miss Parker failed to finish her needlework task even after a request to extend the deadline was granted.”

  Chloe felt the sting of that failure and she real y cringed to know that the public announcement of it was being filmed. She didn’t want Abigail to see it, for one thing.

  “Al three of you have gowns for the bal already made and fitted,” said the butler. He rose up on his toes in his gold-buckled shoes. “But, only two of you wil be invited to attend. If you are not chosen, you must immediately pack your trunks and you wil be sent home tonight. The two that remain wil be attending the bal tomorrow.”

  More than ever, Chloe wanted to stay. Surely, Sebastian wouldn’t have sent her that note if he didn’t want her to stay.

  “Mr. Wrightman, if you please.”

  The butler stood aside, and Sebastian came forward. He looked elegant in his dark coat and breeches and a white cravat that showed off his tanned face.

  Sebastian lifted an envelope from the salver. “Lady Grace.”

  It was like a guil otine slicing down. Chloe’s chances were suddenly cut in half. It was going to be Julia or her. Even though the note he’d given her had raised her hopes, this had al occurred before her pathetic pianoforte performance, and anything could happen now. Fear of being sent home ripped through her. She realized the worst had happened: she was fal ing for Sebastian!

  Grace curtsied as Sebastian bowed, and the ostrich feather in her turban brushed up against him. Why her?! Chloe fumed internal y.

  Sebastian ga
zed at Chloe and Julia, as if even at that moment, he hadn’t yet decided which one of them he would choose. Chloe imagined having to go home to Abigail. Abigail would be thril ed to see her, but also crushed to know that her mother had been sent home. She’d be even more crestfal en to know that her whole life would have to change. They’d have to downsize, move out of the city, and Winthrop, being in a better financial situation, might even be granted the holiday and summer custody he wanted.

  “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 wil see you at the bal 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 bal , 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 vil age.

  Mrs. Crescent, alas, would not be going to the bal . She had to stay at Bridesbridge for fear of slipping in the mud and a superstition that a ful 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. Final y, 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 Hal . 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 bal 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 bal room 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 bal —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. Stil . Stil , she was going to the bal with one of Cinderel a’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 Hal . 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 bal 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 al 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 bal room 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 actual y 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 yel ow 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 wel 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?”

  “Real y.” Grace rol ed her eyes.

  Chloe was incensed, and with a huff she spun and led the way through the foyer. Video cameras rol ed and cameras clicked away as she marched through the gal ery, 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 yel ow bal room 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 bal 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.

  “Bal room 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 bal room 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 bal room looking like that.”

  A group of people dressed in bal room 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 bal room. 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 ful wel , 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 bal room 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 bal 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 bel e of the bal 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 wel -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 bal .

  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 al 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?