Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (46 page)

She looked around the rim of her bonnet for Henry.

The curate had already started the ceremony. “. . . and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding . . .”

How could you take this lightly? She looked up at the rose window.

“. . . but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.”

She was sober all right. A lot more sober than she was hitting the laudanum at the crack of dawn this morning. Two video cams turned in on her.

“. . . if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it . . .”

Chloe looked up at the curate, and opened her mouth, afraid that nothing would come out, but it did.

She let her rosebud nosegay drop to the stone floor. “I can't marry him.”

“Pardon me?” The curate's book slid down from his chest to his side. A great rustling and shuffling and whispering came from behind her.

“Well, that's a relief!” Grace stood up. “It saves me from having to announce an impediment—or two.”

Chloe's mother stood, too, and leaned on the pew in front of her, apparently for strength. And Henry—where was Henry?

Chloe looked straight into Sebastian's eyes. “I can't marry the wrong Mr. Wrightman. Even if it is just for TV.” Her eyes darted around the church. Henry was gone.

Whispering rose up to the church's vaulted ceiling.

Sebastian grabbed her by the arm. “What are you doing?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You can't do this to me in front of everybody.”

Mrs. Crescent stepped up to the wedding group. “She can't mean it, Mr. Wrightman. She's just nervous. Let me talk with her.”

The curate furrowed his brows.

The cameras stayed on Chloe.

“Let go of me,” she said to Sebastian, and yanked her arm away from him. A ray of sunlight shone through the rose window. “You're no gentleman. And you never will be. You're not the brooding, silent type. In fact, I don't know what you are, and you don't know what—or who—you want. I don't care how much money you have—you can take it and stick it into your breeches for all I care!”

Sebastian stepped backward, his perfect jawline askew.

Cook—Lady Anne—made her way up to the altar. “Miss Parker—let me explain.”

“No, let me explain.” Chloe stood next to the marble altar draped in a maroon sash. Her voice echoed throughout the pulpit. “The real gentleman here is Henry, who stands to win nothing and gain nothing. The rest of us are just modern-day screwups in gowns and cutaway coats. Pretending. Grace is pretending so she can win back her family's land that her great-great-great grandfather lost gambling. I'm pretending I'm not divorced, with an eight-year-old daughter at home waiting for me.”

The small crowd gasped. Henry was still nowhere to be seen.

“I thought this was real. It isn't. Everyone's pretending—except of course, for Lady Anne, who, as far as I can tell, is the real deal. But the rest of us? We can't even act like Regency people. We know too much, we've done too much, and said too much to even pretend to live in the nineteenth century. Here, Grace.” Chloe tossed her nosegay to Grace, who caught it. “You marry him. For TV or real life or land or money or all of the above. I don't care.”

Chloe untied her wedding bonnet. Her dad tried to pull the cameramen away. She dumped her bonnet upside down on the altar, where the cameras filmed a vibrator, a pink MP3 player, whitening strips, a pack of cigarettes, and condoms wrapped in black foil tumble onto the maroon altar cloth.

“Dear God!” Mrs. Crescent gasped. “Don't throw it away now, Chloe. We've won. Don't.”

“We can't live like it's 1812. Not even for a few weeks. Come and get your stash, Grace. I'm going home. Back to my daughter, where I belong.”

The curate stepped up to her and put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

Grace stepped up to the altar. “I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. These aren't mine.”

“Don't be stupid, Grace. This is the twenty-first century. I had my gloves on every time I handled them. A simple dusting for thumbprints will prove they're yours, and if that doesn't work—there are always DNA tests.”

Chloe's mother barreled up to the pulpit. The cameras loomed in on Chloe from the front. She felt hunted. Her dad clenched his teeth. Her mom's manicured nails clawed at her even through her gloves. She had to get out of here.

She hoisted up her gown, dodged them all, and ran all the way down the aisle, out the church door, down the steps, past the tombstones, and right smack into the white wedding carriage, an open barouche covered in pink peonies and pink ribbons. Not just one, but four horses turned their heads. She untied them from the hitching post, clambered up to the driver's perch, and with a shaking hand, flicked the reins. The horses lunged forward. When she looked back she saw everyone had spilled out of the church, past the stone fence, but nobody else had a horse. They had all walked to the wedding in their finery! She brought the horses to a trot. The great carriage rattled along, peonies flew off, ribbons flapped, her updo collapsed.

When she finally reached the iron gates that marked the end of the deer park and the beginning of the real world, she stopped the carriage. The gravel road ended. A paved road intersected it. She hadn't seen blacktop in weeks. It looked so unnatural, yet so promising. The open road. It was the American in her, all right, thrilled to hit the open road.

A red Jaguar whizzed by on the wrong side of the street, because of course, this was England, and it startled the horses. She couldn't exactly ride a barouche into town, now, could she? She stepped out of the carriage, guided the horses to a wrought-iron hitching post on the edge of the deer park, and tied them to it.

She stood on the edge of the blacktop, looked east and west, followed the road with her eyes. Thanks to the glasses, she could actually see the road twist into the distance. Which way to civilization? She went west. She bunched up her gown to jog, and tried to run, but her shoes didn't cooperate. They had even less support than her stays. Who knew she would actually miss her harness of a sports bra and running shoes? She slowed to a walk, letting her gown fall back to her ankles.

She passed English farmland pungent with manure and grasses. A hawk circled overhead and she thought of Henry. Her thoughts always circled back to Henry. Sunshine poured down on her and she felt naked without a bonnet and, for once, she could actually use a parasol and fan. Sweat dampened her silk stockings and her lower back, so she stripped off her pelisse and gloves. Those lemons she rubbed under her underarms this morning were not exactly meant to hold up under a power walk in nineteenth-century wedding attire.

And she would feel better about all this tramping about the English countryside without knowing where she was really going if she had a cell phone. Or a portable GPS. Or at least a damn plastic water bottle. How irresponsible it was for a mother to fling herself into the countryside on the other side of the earth without even knowing where she was going? What if something happened to her and Abigail ended up getting raised by her ex? In Boston? With the fortunate Marcia Smith?

By the time she reached the top of the third hill, she didn't have to shield her eyes from the sun, because a battalion of rain clouds had floated in. The breeze, cooler now, dampened her skin, and she could tell that it was going to rain. How could it rain on her almostwedding day? She pulled her pelisse back on even as she licked her dry lips. The sight of a church spire and slate-roofed red-brick houses in the distance helped spur her on.

Someone in a passing car tossed a white cardboard coffee cup out the window and over a hedgerow. The blacktop turned to cobblestone as she crossed what must've been a stone bridge from the Roman era. Normally, Chloe would've loved this quaint village with its cobblestoned main street and whitewashed, half-timbered cottage storefronts where cars seem oddly out of place. As she read the sign at the end of the bridge, HUNTSFORDSHIRE, she walked right into a woman pushing a jogging stroller in her workout gear and talking on her cell.

“So sorry,” the young mom said. The baby looked up at Chloe with big blue eyes.

She had to get back to Abigail. What was she doing?

“Are you quite all right?” The young mom took the cell from her ear.

Chloe nodded yes, even though she really wasn't.

“Sorry again.” The mom pushed the stroller on.

Chloe, out of habit, curtsied. She curtsied!

The mom's eyes narrowed and she looked Chloe up and down, navigating her precious baby around in a wide circumference as if Chloe were some kind of lunatic.

Her head throbbed with the onslaught of car engines, a train, honking horns, voices, and car radios. Raindrops fell, and umbrellas of all different sizes and colors popped up all around her.

None of the men bowed to her. The women didn't curtsy. Nobody even looked at her, or if they did, they quickly looked away out of politeness. She was the raving lunatic homeless woman on the street.

Pelting rain dripped down her face and neck and probably by now had smudged her eyebrow liner made from candle ashes. Even in the rain, though, the aroma of scones spilled out of a bakery. She stood in front of a tearoom and coffeehouse under a dripping awning, looking at a reflection in the window of her sodden self. The antibride with a child hidden in her attic.

She pressed her hand to the window. She needed a plane ticket home, but first—coffee. It didn't even have to be a double espresso latte, but she didn't have any money. For the first time in a long time, she ached for a credit card, and couldn't believe she cut up all her credit cards in a fit of rage all those years ago.

A young man sat inside the tearoom, holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in white paper. For the first time in forever, a man with flowers didn't make her moon over Winthrop. She smiled. They were better off, the two of them, without each other. She had left him for good reason, and now she finally felt the strength to fight him in the upcoming custody trial. She could do it—and win.

The young man in the tearoom gave Chloe a hostile glance; no doubt she looked crazy. She stepped back and the rain from the awning dripped heavily on her. He was waiting for someone, because he had a life, a real life, with real people in it. All these people had a life. She had nothing. Except for Abigail, who counted on her for everything. And as far as that went, she had blown it. She'd be coming home without the prize money. What she
would
be coming home with, though, was a resolve to leave the past behind—all of it—even the nineteenth century, and that was worth a lot more than a hundred grand.

She darted under a covered bus stop where an old woman sat in her green trench coat with a cloth market basket full of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Lettuce! Green lettuce helped digestion. She craved lettuce. She'd trade the gown off her back for a chopped salad.

She sat on the bench next to the woman, wiped her glasses with her wet gloves, put them back on, and looked up the street, where, high atop a hill in the distance, Dartworth Hall stood. It would've made a great postcard. Hell, it probably was one and probably was sold in the shops along this street.

“I can't believe—” she said out loud, like a homeless woman.

The old woman looked at her, then quickly looked at her watch.

“I threw it all away.”

The woman pushed back her plastic rain scarf. “Threw what away?” She eyed Chloe up and down; she was curious.

“Dartworth Hall. The prize money. Everything.”

The woman gave Chloe a tissue from her trench pocket, which only reminded Chloe of Henry and his handkerchiefs. Chloe wiped her dripping nose.

“Are you part of that film going on up there?”

Chloe nodded. “They wanted me to marry him. But I couldn't. Even though it was just for TV. I couldn't.”

The old woman had kind green eyes. “Marry who?”

“Why, Sebastian, of course. Sebastian Wrightman.”

The old woman looked confused. She stood up. “Who? Ah. Here's my bus. But Dartworth Hall doesn't belong to anyone named Sebastian.” The bus lumbered up. “Henry Wrightman is the master of Dartworth Hall.”

“What?” Chloe clenched her pelisse around her chest; her lips quivered.

The bus doors opened and the woman stepped up the first step in her black flats. “I would say it's a good thing you didn't marry that Sebastian—”

“Door's closing!” the annoyed driver yelled, and the doors snapped closed.

Chloe stepped out from under the Plexiglas bus stop, into the rain, to watch the woman take her seat and wave.

She collapsed back down on the bench under the covered bus stop and buried her head in her hands. Maybe that old woman didn't know what she was talking about. Maybe she had Alzheimer's or dementia or some sort of addled-brain disease that Chloe was convinced she would get someday, too, if she didn't have it already. She better start doing crossword puzzles or something—and soon.
Wait a minute.
Crossword. Acrostic—she opened her wedding reticule and pulled out the well-worn folded-up poem from Sebastian. The acrostic jumped out at her now: