Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (44 page)

“It's a wonder you know so much about childbirth!” Mrs. Crescent exhaled deeply, focusing on Chloe's torn gown barely covered by a hastily buttoned pelisse. “Whatever happened to your gown
this
time? It's a fright. An absolute fright! And your hair is down!”

A warm and glowing feeling came over Chloe, just knowing that Mrs. Crescent was still herself. She brushed Mrs. Crescent's hair out of her face.

Henry scanned Chloe from her slightly askew amber necklace to her muddied hemline.

Chloe looked away and her eyes fell on her fan and reticule at the washstand. “Mrs. Crescent, you'll be happy to know I remembered my fan and reticule.”

Mrs. Crescent clenched the stiff sheets on her sleigh bed.

Chloe's knees went wobbly. She couldn't do this. She wasn't a nurse and this wasn't a hospital.

“Time to push again,” Henry said with the utmost calm.

Mrs. Crescent banged her fists on the bed. “Ugh!”

Chloe let go of the wet washrag.

“One, two—” Henry counted, easing Mrs. Crescent into a more comfortable position.

Chloe's head throbbed and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't take it anymore. “Henry! We need to get her to a hospital. It's not really 1812 here, you know. She needs an epidural—now. Who the hell has a baby without an epidural?”

The cameraman aimed at Chloe. Henry dropped his watch and it dangled from his watch fob.

“Sorry. That was very unladylike.”

Henry looked with affection and sympathy at Mrs. Crescent. “Three. And breathe.”

Mrs. Crescent could breathe, but Chloe couldn't. She broke out in a sweat.

Henry massaged Mrs. Crescent as he glared at Chloe. “Miss Parker, this is what Mrs. Crescent wants. A natural birth. It's too late for the epidural now. Please. Get ahold of yourself. You'll upset our rhythm.”

She gulped. She didn't know Henry could've been so—type A.

Mrs. Crescent leaned over and picked up a brown medicine bottle from the night table. “Should she have a dram?”

Henry shook his head. “If you don't need it, she doesn't. I just concocted it for fun in my lab.”

Chloe straightened and clenched her Empire waist. “What is it? Maybe I could use it.”

“It's laudanum, and no, you can't have any. You don't have any medical reason.” Henry handed the bottle to a servant. “Take it away.” The servant hid it behind Mrs. Crescent's dressing-table mirror and then hurried to change Mrs. Crescent's bed linens.

Mrs. Crescent huffed and puffed. “It's an opiate.”

Chloe tilted her head. “As in opium?”
Great
. She had drugged Sebastian with opium.

“Yes.” Henry continued to massage Mrs. Crescent's back. “It's used for everything from headaches to liven up an evening in a drawing room. It's a sort of cure-all.”

Chloe put another cool washrag on Mrs. Crescent's forehead.

“Look.” Henry reached for a shelf above Mrs. Crescent. He lowered his voice. “We have a mobile phone in case of emergency. An ambulance is at the ready.” The phone glistened in his latex-gloved hand. Without thinking, Chloe took it from him. She squeezed it in her hand, held it close to her chest. If only she could call Abby. Emma. But knowing she or Henry could call the ambulance made her feel better, and she put the phone back on the shelf.

Henry's valet burst into the room. “Ice shards, sir.”

“Set them near Miss Parker. Thank you.”

The valet took one look at Mrs. Crescent and bolted out the door.

“Miss Parker, please give Mrs. Crescent an ice shard—”

Mrs. Crescent opened her dry mouth and Chloe put a piece of ice on her tongue. The ice brought it all back to her. So much swirled around her. Birthing Abigail. The ice-house. Sebastian. The look on Henry's face before he rode off.

Henry looked at his watch. “In just a bit, we'll push again.”

The camerawoman readied for another dramatic scene.

Mrs. Crescent pushed, exhaled deeply, until at last the baby crowned.

“My baby!” Mrs. Crescent sweated and squealed with joy.

Chloe's eyes teared up, remembering her first sight of Abigail's face. She'd do anything for Abigail. Anything. Even this. Even marry the on-again off-again Sebastian in a fake ceremony.

Henry turned to Chloe with a list of instructions as he supported the baby's head and eased it into the world. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “A shoulder is stuck. I need to guide it out. Here. Hold the head.”

Hold the head?!
Chloe cradled the baby's head with her slippery gloved hands.

“Should I call the ambulance?” Chloe cringed as she watched Henry work the tiny shoulder out.

“We'll be fine. We can do it.”

A split second later he slid the shoulder out and the hot little baby slipped into Chloe's hands. Her heart throbbed.

Henry swooped in, wiping the baby's mouth and eyes clean. Then he lifted the baby like a prize for Mrs. Crescent to see. “It's a girl! A girl, Mrs. Crescent!” The baby cried.

Chloe would never, ever again romanticize the Regency. Every single love that culminated in marriage would end like this: with natural childbirth. Because there wasn't any reliable birth control. The mother would be lucky to survive, and probably become pregnant within a year, and every year thereafter. No wonder all of Jane Austen's novels ended with the wedding!

Mrs. Crescent quivered with happiness and exhaustion. Chloe covered her with a blanket. Mrs. Crescent held her arms out for the baby.

“You'll have her in a minute. Just a minute,” Henry said. “Miss Parker, I need you to hold the baby now.”

Chloe took the baby in her arms. She looked away as Henry cut the umbilical cord.

“Well done, Miss Parker.” He took the baby from her, and his face beamed. The room seemed to light up. “Go soothe her. Give her water. I'll clean up the baby. Unless you want to, of course.”

Chloe laughed. “I'll let you do that.”

Mrs. Crescent gave Chloe a little squeeze.

“Thank you, Miss Parker. You were wonderful—”

Chloe shook her head. “No—you were. The baby's perfect. She's beautiful. It's the girl you always wanted.” She pulled off the soiled latex gloves, washed her hands, and poured Mrs. Crescent a glass of water. She couldn't believe they did it. Without a hospital. Without an epidural. But she'd never want to help with a nineteenth-century birth again, that was for sure.

Henry brought the cleaned and swaddled baby toward Mrs. Crescent. But before he handed her to her mother, for just a moment, he put his arm around Chloe, and she leaned against him. She saw their shadows, the two of them, together, and a tiny profile of a baby reflected on the wall. Then he stepped away and handed the baby to Mrs. Crescent.

Henry stood right near Chloe, their arms brushed up against each other.

“Mrs. Crescent, we need to do a little stitching,” he said. “Please give the baby to Miss Parker for a moment.”

Chloe couldn't believe it. Stitching? Without painkillers?

Mrs. Crescent kissed the baby and handed her off to Chloe, who rocked her like an old pro. Because she
was
an old pro! For the first time in a long time, Chloe knew where she belonged, and that was at home with her own daughter, in the land of cell phones and ambulances, hospitals, painkillers, computers, and e-mail.

“You look like quite a natural,” Mrs. Crescent said to Chloe. “You'll be a great mum someday.”

The baby's eyes closed tight, like little crescent moons.

Chloe shot a look at Henry, who had been watching her.

Henry smiled at Mrs. Crescent. “I've gotten word that your husband and children are on their way. They'll be here soon.”

Then Henry snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and threaded a needle. Chloe's stomach lurched. She handed the baby to a servant girl behind her. “Excuse me, I need some air.” She lunged for her fan and reticule and ran out.

When she stopped running, she was outside, and breathed the early-morning air in heavily. She collapsed on the steps in front of the semicircular gravel drive, under a lit torch. She fanned herself frantically. She untied the hospital gown and it fell in a heap at her boots. The clock in the foyer behind her chimed three times.

Someone came and put an arm around Chloe. It was Fiona.

“I didn't mean to hurt you,” she said.

Chloe couldn't look her in the face. She just stared at her Celtic tattoo. “You lied to me. Just so that you could dance with Sebastian?”

“Sebastian's a terrible flirt. He danced with me for one dance and he had promised me at least three.”

“What's your deal, Fiona? Are you after him, too?”

Fiona hung her head. “I wanted to be a contestant. Like you. But I didn't make the cut.”

That explained a lot, and Chloe had suspected it all along. “I don't get it, though. Aren't you engaged?”

“It's been on and off. We'll figure it out when he gets back.”

“Sebastian's a lot like you, Fiona. He doesn't know what he wants.” Chloe waved Fiona off. “Go to bed. It's late.”

She curtsied and sauntered off. This gave a whole new spin to the issue of finding good hired help.

Chloe sat for a long time, until, off in the distance, on the way to the reflecting pond, she saw something move on the lawn. It was probably a deer. She opened her silk reticule, slid Henry's glasses out, and put them on. It looked like some kind of animal out there, all right. Actually, it looked more like two animals—one of which was humping the other. She looked away.

Even the animals were getting more action than her around here. She buried her head in her arms until she heard a loud moan. She lifted the torch out of the ground and carried it to the edge of the gravel drive. Soon after the moaning stopped, a lantern lit up on the lawn. A lantern? Animals with a lantern?

She squinted through Henry's glasses and clearly saw a shirtless Sebastian pulling up his breeches. Grace hopped into her ball gown.

No wonder Sebastian brought up Grace in conversation so much during their time alone. He wasn't protecting Chloe from her. He was trying to find out as much about Grace as possible.

He was an ass! He was a player!

He was most definitely not Mr. Darcy.

Chloe just stood there. And held the torch.

Where was that laudanum?

Y
ou're drunk!”

It had taken a few days to find the laudanum, but she managed to find it despite her busy schedule of wedding-gown fittings and trimming her wedding bonnet. Chloe and Sebastian had been caught together in the ice-house, and just like in the Regency era, they were forced to marry. It was to be a rushed wedding on a Tuesday morning.

So, when Chloe poured more than a few drops of laudanum in her tea this morning, it made it taste like sherry.

Mrs. Crescent leaned over in the chaise-and-four to get a whiff of Chloe's breath.

“I'm not drunk.” Chloe rubbed her forehead under her white bonnet. These carriage rides always undid her updo, but today horse's hooves seemed to be clomping on her brain. Hungover? Yes. Buzzed? That was earlier this morning. She looked out of the carriage window at the hedge maze, wondering how she'd ever get out of this.

Mrs. Crescent tightened the pink bonnet ribbon under her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Did you get into the sewing-cabinet vodka again?”

“No. No. Just took a drop of that laudanum at dawn to calm my nerves. One tiny drop! As any Regency lady would do under the circumstances.”

Mrs. Crescent slapped her hands on the leather-covered bench. “What? Opium! On your wedding day—”

“This is
not
my wedding day.”

Chloe looked down at her white pelisse, white muslin wedding gown, and white calfskin pumps. Her wooden trousseau trunk had been filled with all sorts of frills and Belgian-lace gowns, and strapped to the back of the carriage, in anticipation of the honeymoon. Packing that trousseau was an exercise in humility, preparing for a honeymoon that would never happen after a wedding she didn't want.

She came across Henry's handkerchief in her washstand drawer, the handkerchief he gave her on her first day at Bridesbridge, and she decided to pack that as well as her vial of ink that had only just congealed to perfection.

Mrs. Crescent fumbled around in her reticule. “You
are
getting married today. Here.” She pushed fresh mint leaves into Chloe's gloved hand. “Where did you get laudanum?”

Chloe popped the mint leaves into her mouth, then pointed at her closed lips as she chewed. A lady would never talk with her mouth full. Finally, she swallowed. “I got it from your room. I relieved you of it.”