Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (2 page)

“With all the social networking, Twittering, e-mailing, and texting I'm supposed to be doing, I'm twenty-first-century weary and twenty-first-century challenged,” Chloe told Fiona. “I can't wait to escape to the 1800s and slow things down for a while.”

“Right.” Fiona held out her waiflike arms toward Chloe's suitcases. “It's time to go upstairs and get dressed for your carriage ride to Bridesbridge Place, where you'll be staying. Might I take your baggage?” Her outstretched arm revealed a Celtic ring tattoo around her wrist.

It occurred to Chloe that Fiona might be a little miffed that she had been cast as a servant forced to wait on the likes of her. “No thanks, I have them.”

“As you wish. Follow me, please.” Fiona spun around and led Chloe to a narrow wooden staircase with steps smoothed from hundreds of years of wear, and Chloe couldn't help but imagine the people who must've walked the same path over time. It was fitting that her journey would start at an inn, as inns were the crossroads of early 1800s society, where rich and poor intermingled, horses were switched out, ladies could lunch in public, and trysts in various rooms changed destinies.

Chloe tried not to bang the plaster walls with her heavy bags.

She had baggage, that was for sure. An ex-husband, a stack of overdue bills, and a house facing foreclosure, all because her antique letterpress business was tanking. Nobody paid for their wedding invitations or anything to be letterpressed and handcrafted on one hundred percent cotton-rag paper anymore.

Letterpress was a dying art, another casualty of the digital age. The bank sent her threatening letters run off on cheap paper and laser-printed in Helvetica, the font she despised the most, because it was sans serif, overused, and, to her, it heralded the reign of the impersonal.

With Chloe's failing business, Abigail's entire world was in jeopardy. That brought Chloe here, first and foremost, to compete in this documentary, to put her knowledge of Austen novels to the test and win the $100,000 prize. How else could she rally that kind of cash so quickly and generate PR for her business at the same time? Perhaps, though, even more than the cash, the documentary offered her one last chance at—everything.

Fiona looked down on Chloe from the top of the stairs. “How ever did you find out about our film project all the way from America?”

“Oh! The president of the Jane Austen Society of North America sent me the casting-call information. I'm a lifelong member and win so many of the Austen trivia contests, she thought of me right away. Once I won the audition, well, how could a lady refuse?”

Chloe might have been born two centuries too late, and in the wrong country no less, but now that she was in her ancestral England, everything was going to work out.

“Do you think you have what it takes to win the prize money?”

“Absolutely. All things Austen are a passion of mine, and that's why I decided to do this.” If there was one thing she knew, it was Austen novels.

“What exactly do you intend to do with the money if you win?”

Chloe stopped on the stairs for a moment. “What do you mean ‘if'?”

Fiona tapped her finger on her cheek and smirked.

“I fully intend to give as much of it as I can to charity.” There. She made it to the second floor, where several closed wooden doors radiated from the landing. “But only after I set aside enough money to secure my daughter's future.”

Fiona stepped back. “Daughter? Are you
married
, Miss Parker?”

“Divorced. Four years ago.”

Fiona raised an eyebrow and made a flourish toward a door that, once unlocked and opened, revealed, in a corner of the room, a white floor-length Regency gown hanging from a large three-paneled mahogany dressing screen. “Your gown.”

“Wow.” Chloe gasped, trying to imagine herself in the straight skirting, the small puff sleeves, and the revealing neckline. She thought they'd put her in something a little more—matronly.

“I didn't expect you'd have a daughter. How does she feel about her mum being so far off?”

Chloe hadn't worn such a low neckline in a while. “Um, she actually made her own plea on my audition video, that's how much she supports my being here.”

They'd had so much fun filming, along with Chloe's only employee, Emma. They shot Chloe in a hand-sewn Regency gown, sitting in a horse carriage on Michigan Avenue, sipping coffee from a white paper cup and bemoaning the plight of a modern Janeite.

But somehow, Emma's interview questions led Chloe to a rant about men who text other women while on a date or tweet breakups, who think baseball hats are fashion, and who can give a blow-by-blow account of any sporting event but are incapable of writing a love letter even if their last glimpse of the Super Bowl depended on it.

“I remember Abby said to me, ‘You have to go, Mom. Who else owns a complete collection of the ‘I Heart Mr. Darcy, Mr. Knightly, Mr. Tilney' blah, blah, blah coffee mugs?' She's staying with my parents, and even though they're on a fixed income, I'm sure they'll spoil her as best they can.”

Fiona folded her arms. “What really brought you here, Miss Parker?” She blocked the door.

“I'm a huge Jane Austen fan, huge. But I'm here for the prize money, really. And the great PR this will bring my failing business. I'm facing bankruptcy. My ex-husband only contributes minimally, and Abigail's an advanced student, on the gifted track. I resolved a long time ago to give her the best education I could. You have no idea what it took to get her into her school, and if we have to move—”

Fiona didn't seem fazed.

“Look, I don't fit into the modern American world, but Abigail, she has an extremely bright future ahead of her. Sometimes I feel like ‘Ma' from
Little House on the Prairie
with a daughter like her who's into all things futuristic and trendy. But I'd do anything for her. Anything.”

“Does she know you're here just for the money?”

“I'm not here just for the money!”

“Then what else are you here for?”

“To ogle the young men in their buckskin breeches.” Chloe winked.

Fiona smiled again.

“I'm here for the experience, of course! Although Abigail's under the grand delusion that I'm going to find my own Mr. So-and-So.” Chloe laughed.

Fiona didn't. “And what do you think?”

The thought had crossed Chloe's mind, but, in true Regency fashion, she had repressed the idea, even after reading a sample bio they had sent her of a cast member, a certain Mr. Wrightman, a man who seemed great—Oxford-educated, an art, architecture, and travel buff—all interesting, except for that ridiculous stage name.

“You didn't come here to meet a man?” Fiona asked, confirming the vibe Chloe had picked up on.

“I think that just because a woman travels overseas, people shouldn't assume she's looking for romance,” Chloe said. “I came here to dress in gowns for this documentary, to live and breathe the Regency, and use my knowledge of Jane Austen novels to win.”

“Of course.” Fiona turned to lead Chloe into the room.

Chloe had to sign all kinds of agreements and go through a battery of interviews and medical and psychological tests for this documentary and now her own maidservant was probing about a man, too? Why was everything always about men? She was perfectly happy without one.

Chloe stumbled, but caught her fall by grabbing onto the wooden coat tree on her way through the door.

“Mind your step.” Fiona nodded toward the floor and took Chloe's bags. “Many of these old doorways have wooden thresholds.”

“I never was very good at thresholds—being carried over them or otherwise.”

That made Fiona laugh, and Chloe felt like she was making progress with her melancholy maid and had successfully dodged the man question.

She found herself in a fairy-tale cottage of a room with a canopy bed, a scroll-armed chaise lounge, and a fire dwindling in a fireplace with a wooden-beam mantel. The dressing screen with the white gown hanging from it dominated the room, and Chloe had to wonder: Could a mom like her pull off a gown like that?

O
ther than your earrings, do you have any jewelry to remove?

Any belly rings or the like?” Fiona asked as she closed the door behind Chloe.

“What do you think?” Chloe smiled.

“I would venture to say no.”

Being a not-so-modern type, Chloe didn't need to transform too much. She washed off all vestiges of makeup, which in her case was a bit of blush, undereye concealer, and lipstick. Fiona packed Chloe's simple earrings, necklace, and understated watch into velvet drawstring bags. Time, surely, wouldn't matter for a lady of leisure in 1812.

Chloe hopped on one foot to yank off her lace-up boots until Fiona hovered, hands on her hips.

“You must get used to me doing such things for you.”

“Really, it's not a problem.” Chloe did everything for herself, and Abigail. It would take some retraining to have someone else to rely on.

“It's a rule once we're on set. If you'll step behind the dressing screen, I'll gather your chemise and stockings.”

The room had an aroma of lavender. Behind the screen, and deep in the Derbyshire countryside, hours from London's Heathrow, and centuries away from her real life, Chloe felt more at home than ever.

She unbuttoned her blouse, because she couldn't imagine having Fiona do that for her, while her fingers skipped a few in the excitement. Maybe yesterday she'd been a stressed-out single working mom from the Midwest, almost middle-aged, and with a slightly expanding middle of her own, struggling just to get a decent dinner on the table after a long day of trying to drum up business, but today, on this June morning in England, her fantasy life unfolded before her.

The fantasy would have been even better if she'd been a few pounds lighter, but months of cheap pasta dinners had added seven pounds to her tiny frame.

“Curvy women were all the rage in the Regency era, right, Fiona?”

Fiona was smiling a lot more now and warming up to her, Chloe could tell.

One thing Chloe knew for sure: if the meals here were authentic, there wouldn't be any pasta, thank goodness. She'd had her fill.

She wriggled her black skirt past her hips. Sure, she was doing this for the business, for Abigail, but the white confection of a gown hanging in front of her enchanted her. It wasn't a froufrou Victorian with hoops, but a classic Regency with an Empire waist and—that neckline, promising escape from her modern woes or perhaps even a romp in the shrubbery.

Wait a minute, where did that come from? A lady would have to be engaged, if not married, to allow for a romp in the shrubbery, and that meant there had to be a gentleman involved. She didn't let her mind wander down that garden path, the path that led to proposals both decent and indecent, because after all, by 1812 standards, a woman her age would have one foot in the grave. No doubt her role on this show would be that of a widow in mourning. Although they didn't have her wearing a black gown, there wasn't a mourning veil in sight, and no sign of a chemisette insert or fichu to cover her cleavage either.

Regardless, any Mr. Darcy on the set would be twenty-eight years old, as he was in
Pride and Prejudice
, or twenty-three like Mr. Bingley, and both would fill their dance cards with the twenty-year-old Miss Bennets. Men just weren't on her agenda. She wanted nothing more than to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, answer questions about the novels, win the prize money, and get back home to Abigail.

Her new cell phone with international coverage rang, cutting into her reverie, and she sprang toward the sound of French horns echoing to the beamed ceiling. Abigail had downloaded a Regency ringtone for her. Chloe lunged for the phone, because she had told her daughter to call only in case of an emergency, and she almost knocked the pitcher and bowl off the washstand.

Chloe dug for her phone in the vintage doctor bag she used as a purse. “Cell phones. You know, Fiona, two hundred years ago, we wrote letters with quill pens and sealed them with wax. Life was so much more—romantic.” She picked up without checking the caller ID. “Hello?”

Across the room, there was a knock on the door, it burst open, and three guys with spotlights on booms popped in. Chloe's blouse was completely unbuttoned and her skirt lay in a crumple at her ankles. She shimmied behind the dressing screen, clenched her blouse closed at her cleavage, and swooped down to yank her skirt back up, covering her decidedly nonthong green cotton panties.

As she looked out from behind the dressing screen, a guy with a video cam bounded in, followed by another cameraman. Lights? Cameras! What was going on here?