Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (21 page)

Chloe clasped her shaky gloved hands in front of her. “No. I'm doing my best to stay!”

“Good. Good.” He sighed at the cameramen.

There wasn't much hope for a meaningful conversation.

“The best way to guarantee your stay, Miss Parker, is to dedicate yourself to preparing for the foxhunt. It's a challenging task, but one I'm sure you're equal to. Do you have a sense of adventure?”

“Adventure? I'm all about adventure!” Chloe shot a look at the dogs out of the corner of her eye.

In his Hessian boots, he stepped even closer to her now, blocked the camera for a moment, and slid a note into her hand. She understood to hide it in her reticule.

“I'm glad to hear it,” he said. “I would want a wife who enjoys adventure and games—a certain element of playfulness and fun. I think you have those qualities and so much more.”

Chloe couldn't believe he'd said all this while surrounded by cameras and—dogs. Nor could she believe that he had slipped a piece of folded paper into her hands, unbeknownst to the cameramen.

A clipped bow, a tip of his hat, a bucking up of his horse, and he was gone, just as suddenly as he had appeared, his coattails flying in the wind and the pack of dogs hot on his trail.

When at last she closed her bedchamber door under the pretense of having to use the chamber pot, Chloe ceremoniously unfolded the note he had given her. The handwriting was old-fashioned, ornamental, and organized in stanzas. He had written her a poem! At thirty-nine years old, Chloe read the first love poem ever written for her:

She read it again. It wasn't a love poem. It was some kind of Regency courtship riddle turned reality-show task. She sighed. But she was up for it! It gave her insight into Sebastian's playful, romantic nature, and it cheered her as no other missive could at this point.

Did the other women get one of these? she wondered. But she couldn't ask them. Sebastian had expressly written that this task would be one for her to take on alone, without even her chaperone's knowledge.

What thing in a garden would incorporate light and shadow? The estate had acres and acres of gardens. Could the garden be in a painting? And what about the two o'clock reference? Could the answer be on a painted face of one of the grandfather clocks in Bridesbridge?

The joke was on her. She didn't get it. Not at all. And she couldn't ask Mrs. Crescent a thing about it.

M
rs. Crescent had handed Chloe a recipe for ink, written by Martha Lloyd, Jane Austen's sister-in-law:

Chloe knew that “gauls” must be the “galls” she had collected from the oak trees. As for the rest, a pint of beer, even strong stale beer, sounded good right about now.

With Mrs. Crescent's help, she managed to get through the recipe, and restrained herself from drinking the beer, but had to remember to visit the parlor chimney two or three times a day from then on to shake her vial of ink.

“Not to worry,” Mrs. Crescent had said. “I shan't let you forget.”

With a total of ten Accomplishment Points now, Chloe faced two days of practicing riding sidesaddle on Chestnut, the nicest horse in the stable. In her spare time, she picked up as many of Fiona's chores as she could when the camera wasn't around, noting that her maid seemed sadder than ever. She also made a point of scouring the estate, tramping through gardens looking for shafts of sunlight and shadows, trying to solve the riddle from Sebastian. That was how she knew she was more than smitten. None of the paintings or clocks in Bridesbridge fit the description in the riddle, not even the pocket watch on Grace's chatelaine.

Her oil paints and stack of painting paper went untouched as Mrs. Crescent started Chloe on another task that would take more than a week: needlework. She had to embroider a fireplace screen for fifteen points when in fact the extent of her needlework skills were sewing on buttons that had fallen off. So much for her days of leisure.

When she scrambled down the servant stairs into the basement kitchen to help Cook do the baking for the tea, she found Cook standing at the pine worktable, beating dough with her fists. Flies buzzed around as a couple of kitchen maids, who seemed sixteen years old at most, stoked the fire in the open range, apparently to set something in the cauldron hanging above it to boil. A hare, dead and skinned, hung from the rafters, and all manner of tongs and knives and industrial-sized soup ladles hung from hooks on the walls. Black clothing irons stood upon a shelf, and everything reeked of onion.

Cook and the kitchen maids curtsied upon Chloe's entrance, and the formality flustered her. She rolled up the decorative, gauzy yellow sleeves of her overdress. “Do you have an apron? I'm here to bake for the tea party.”

Cook shot Chloe a look with her icy blue eyes. “You can't possibly bake. You belong upstairs!”

Chloe snagged an apron from one of the wooden hooks near the copper pots and tied it around herself. “If you just tell me where the strawberry-tart recipe is, I'll begin with that. I just made my own ink, I'm sure I can get a couple of the items from the tea menu taken care of over the next two days.”

Cook looked at the kitchen maids, who giggled. “If the lady insists. Here's the recipe.” Cook opened a reproduction cookbook, called
A Propre new booke of Cokery
, and pointed with a finger tipped in flour.

“Well?” Cook asked. “Get to it. The scullery maid has gone to the trouble of picking the strawberries. I'm about to fill the mincemeat pies and the kitchen maids are in the midst of making the trifle you requested. I'm afraid you're on your own for a bit.”

Luckily, Chloe had made enough fruit tarts in her time that a recipe wasn't even necessary, although she had never used saffron, and washing the strawberries in a dry sink, without running water, wasn't very effective, and then forcing them through the sieve took infinitely longer than if she'd been able to use her food processor.

Considering that she rarely baked in her own modern kitchen, her sudden enthusiasm for desserts and spearheading tea parties could only be attributed to her overwhelming desire to impress Sebastian. What other explanation could there be for turning into a Regency domestic diva?

When it came time to put the tart crust in the oven, Chloe was stumped. The open range didn't have knobs, a touch pad, or a temperature gauge. In fact, the kitchen had no refrigerator, no running water, and no disinfectant soap either. Not to mention a microwave or coffeemaker.

Who knew that two centuries would make such a difference in the kitchen?

She stood in front of the open range a good five minutes until Cook stepped over, took the pie tin with the crust, and shoved it in with a wooden oven handle.

“Keep an eye on it now.” Cook shook a finger at Chloe.

After the crust browned, Chloe filled the tart and put it in the range. “What next?”

“You've done well,” Cook said. “Can you help me gild these confections?”

“Absolutely.” Chloe felt as if she had established some sort of relationship with Cook.

Cook brought a plate of handmade chocolates from the scullery and set them on the pine table along with a tin of edible gold dust.

“You simply dab them like this.” Cook demonstrated.

She handed Chloe what at first seemed to be a cotton ball, but it didn't take long for Chloe to drop the thing on the table. The room began to spin around her.

“What—what is this, Cook? It's not a cotton ball, is it?”

The kitchen maids, who were beating eggs in a bowl, giggled again.

The scullery maid plucked feathers from a partridge, but didn't even look up from her work.

Cook left off from grating suet and came over to Chloe. “That, my dear, is a rabbit's tail, and it makes a wonderful brush, doesn't it?”

Chloe steadied herself against the table. She realized she hadn't eaten the pigeon pies and cold lamb for lunch, and she felt queasy. “I'd better check the oven—I mean range.”

Thank goodness her strawberry tart needed to be taken out. She covered the tart with a cloth to keep the flies off. By the time she returned to the table, Cook had gilded all the chocolates for her with said rabbit tail.

“You've done a wonderful job helping us here.” Cook turned to the kitchen maids. “Hasn't she, girls?” Cook asked.

The maids nodded in agreement.

“Now, I'm sure you have things that need tending to upstairs, like shaking your ink that's set in the chimney? And we'd best get started on dinner. There will be plenty more to do tomorrow.” Cook patted Chloe on the back as Chloe hung up her apron. “As for tonight, I sure hope you're hungry. We're making stewed hare and partridges for dinner!”

 

 

O
n Saturday evening, after two full days of alternating between the riding field and the kitchen, Chloe collapsed in a settee in the parlor, wondering if massages had been discovered yet or not.

She'd gained ten more Accomplishment Points for riding, but the others had gained fifteen for more advanced riding and découpaging a box while she was in the kitchen.

“No rest for the weary, Miss Parker.” Mrs. Crescent clapped and Fifi barked.

“I shook my ink vial three times today, Mrs. Crescent.”

“No, no, it's not that.”

“What, then? Darning a footman's stockings? Trimming Lady Grace's pantalets?”

Mrs. Crescent motioned her to get up. “Come here, dear, and you will see.” She led Chloe to the drawing room, a footman opened the doors, and at first, all Chloe saw was the candlelight.

Sebastian rose from a high-backed chair near the fireplace, stepped over to her, and bowed.

Chloe wondered if she still smelled of mincemeat from the kitchen. She curtsied.

“Mr. Wrightman is here to take your silhouette.”

“Only if Miss Parker wishes me to,” he said.

If he only knew her wishes! “Yes, yes of course,” Chloe said.

A candle burned in front of a large piece of paper attached to the wall and Mr. Wrightman escorted Chloe to the chair turned sideways in front of it. Chloe sat down, her back straight, thanks to the busk. He picked up a stick of charcoal.

Mrs. Crescent and Fifi sat on the far end of the drawing room, out of earshot, but not out of sight.

Mr. Wrightman put his hands on her head, then her shoulders, adjusting her until he achieved the desired effect, that effect being her whole body going aflutter.

“This may be a challenge for you, Miss Parker, as you cannot talk while I'm tracing your shadow.”

Chloe smirked. “I can accept that challenge.”

He started to trace. “Consequently, you'll simply have to listen. I must say, Mrs. Crescent is quite the taskmaster.”

Chloe's eyes, not her head, turned toward Mrs. Crescent, who merely turned another page in her book and continued to pet Fifi.

“Ah, there, she can't hear me, so I can say what I came here to say.”

Chloe couldn't imagine what that would be.

“You must know, Miss Parker, that I know significantly more about you than you know about me, and this puts me at a great advantage. I can confidently say we are ideally matched. Not only was I privy to your audition video, but to all the transcripts of your interviews with our producers.”