Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

Cook slammed a cloth bag of flour onto the table and a puff of it rose like a storm cloud. “Do you know that I prepare the dough at this hour for your breakfast toast?”

“I didn’t realize—”

“You don’t realize plenty of things. More than eight thousand proper English applicants. And he turned them away for the likes of you.”

Chloe needed to get out of the frying pan here. “I real y am sorry about the trouble I’ve caused. I blew it by dressing up like this. I just wanted to clear everything up with—Henry.” She looked at the tea caddy and sugar box as if for the last time.

Cook plunked a big ceramic mixing bowl on the table and sent a puff of yeast into the air. “What do you care about Henry?”

“I don’t understand why everyone keeps treating him like a second-class citizen. He’s a great guy. There, I said it. I was rude to him earlier and I just wanted to apologize, so I dressed up in footman’s clothes, because women aren’t al owed out after eleven, and I couldn’t write a note—or cal , e-mail, text, tweet, or send a Facebook message! If wanting to apologize is a crime, then I’m guilty, so turn me in.” She held her wrists out to Cook, as if Cook would handcuff her.

Cook poured some flour and water into the bowl and mixed with a big wooden spoon. “I should turn you in, but I won’t. I, too, have a soft spot for Henry.”

Chloe stumbled toward the door and looked away from her disheveled reflection in a row of copper pots and pans. She’d said too much.

“You’d best go to bed,” Cook told her, taking a tin of salt down from the shelf above the washbasin and prying the lid open with her thumbnail.

“Just do me a favor.”

“You name it.”

“Remember the cook.”

Like she could forget.

“And remember one more thing. I’m on your side.”

She was?

For a long time, Chloe lay in her canopied bed and tossed in her nightgown, unable to sleep. She thought she heard a mouse scuttle from the floor mirror to the writing desk, but there couldn’t possibly be mice running around her bedchamber, could there?

She wished she didn’t care about Sebastian or Henry, but it was too late for that. She moved over to her half of the bed—making room for—

someone.

T he next morning, she woke, unable to do anything except sit on the edge of her bed, even though it was Monday and there might be mail from Abigail. Fiona worked around her while a cameraman filmed. She must’ve been quite drunk to dress up like a footman and go to Dartworth! The very thought of it made her paralyzed with fear.

“This is how it should be, mum,” Fiona said as she brushed Chloe’s hair with a large, heavy, gleaming silver brush in front of the French bombé dressing table. “It’s much better when you just let me take care of everything like this. ’Tis my duty.”

Chloe wanted to be brushing Abigail’s hair, braiding it, getting her ready for the day.

Fiona twisted Chloe’s hair back so tightly that Chloe winced. But she always did a great updo, and when Chloe looked in the mirror, she had to admire the sexy way her hair spil ed out from the knot atop her head.

“James told me to bring this up to you, miss.”

It wasn’t mail, but something wrapped in a blue silk scarf that turned out to be her shoe from last night. She sighed. It was a nice gesture on Henry’s part, and as far as that went, her mission had been accomplished.

Fiona was pul ing back the draperies and sunlight was flooding into the room when suddenly Mrs. Crescent and Fifi came bounding in.

Mrs. Crescent was almost breathless. “You missed breakfast, Miss Parker. The butler announced that your outing with Mr. Wrightman has been bumped by a group competition at the hedge maze. Can you fathom why?”

“I can’t.” Chloe was shaky, and needed to eat something.

Two plump strawberries from the Dartworth hothouse waited in a mortar and pestle bowl to be crushed and made into rouge for Chloe. Red, ripe strawberries. Overcome with desire, Chloe snatched them up and ate them both at the same time. What did it matter if her cheeks had no color today? After last night, she’d surely be sent home, anyway.

Mrs. Crescent shook a finger at her. “I daresay it’s no wonder Lady Grace always looks so much more polished than you. You’ve gone and eaten your cosmetics again!”

Chapter 13

B eing a corn-fed girl from the Midwest, Chloe had seen corn mazes, but never a maze sculpted from eight-foot-tal yew trees. Ever since she arrived, she’d been enticed by the prospect of the hedge maze, and now, it seemed, was her chance to see it, although it did sting that the visit to the maze had trumped her scheduled outing with Sebastian.

The women and their chaperones were gathering around the entry to the maze while Sebastian and Henry came riding toward them on their horses.