Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (28 page)

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 spilled 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 pulling 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!”

B
eing a corn-fed girl from the Midwest, Chloe had seen corn mazes, but never a maze sculpted from eight-foot-tall 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.

Chloe had imagined running along the narrow, pebbled paths between the high hedges, dropping red rose petals behind her, Sebastian at her heels. They would meet in the pagoda in the center to kiss, his lips finally touching hers, her fingers finally grazing his squared-off sideburns, nothing but green all around and blue sky above—

The butler interrupted her reverie. “This morning the three of you will be competing for fifteen Accomplishment Points. Mr. Wrightman will be sitting in the pagoda in the middle of the maze. You will all be sent off into the maze at the same time, and the woman to reach Mr. Wrightman first wins the points and time alone with him until the other ladies catch up.”

Chloe almost groaned out loud. This, of all the competitions so far, seemed the most demeaning. She crossed her arms and kicked the dust with her walking boots.

Just then, out of nowhere, George came zipping up in an ATV. George!? Was he here to send her packing?

Janey was sitting next to him, sipping coffee from a white cardboard cup.

Chloe had given up drinking coffee here in England. Regency coffee tasted horrid, and the weak tea proved only marginally better.

George swung his blue-jeaned legs out of the cart and pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. A Bluetooth was stuck on his ear. Chloe couldn't stand those things; Winthrop used to wear his all the time.

“Girls.” He made guns with his fingers and aimed at Chloe and Grace. “A word?” He whipped off his Bluetooth and raked his hair. The air around him hinted of shampoo and toothpaste. His hair must've been loaded with product. How else could it have smelled of shampoo and looked so much like bed head?

“Over here.” When he grabbed them by the elbows, their parasols tipped to the sides. Regency men didn't call women “girls” and they didn't yank women around by the elbows. After weeks of Sebastian's and Henry's gentlemanly behavior, even Grace seemed shocked at such treatment. In addition to bowing, Sebastian and Henry always stood when a lady entered the room, and a lady could get used to such things.

George led them, faster than their calfskin boots could carry them, toward the topiary arch at the entrance of the hedge maze. Overhead, clouds were rolling in.

“No cameras,” George barked at two of the crew, and they backed off.

Moments later, Sebastian and Henry arrived and tied their horses to a tree.

Grace's chaperone looked intent with concern and Mrs. Crescent sent Fifi on to be with Chloe.

“Listen, ladies,” George began ominously, “I can be the king of grouchy Brit reality-show judges, you know.”

Grace folded her arms just under the hem of her spencer jacket, which so nicely accentuated her boobs and tiny waist. “I don't see what I have to do with all this.”

Chloe stooped down to pick up Fifi's leash.

George flashed a frown and pointed his iPhone at Chloe. “Officially, Miss Parker, you're on probation. You haven't gotten caught on camera, and your antics are great for ratings, and those are just two reasons why I'm not getting rid of you here and now.” He paced around the soft grass, checking his phone.

Chloe picked up Fifi, who began pushing at her arm as if he wanted her to rub his neck, or what would be his neck if he had one.

“Suffice it to say that both of you are here, for the moment—with warning. Mr. Wrightman wants you both here because somehow he can picture you both as wife material, although I can't say I agree with his judgment. Then again he doesn't know everything I know, although I am tempted to tell him. Condoms appearing in reticules, shagging every footman in sight, going out after curfew—these are serious infractions.” He keyed something into his phone.

Chloe tipped her well-coiffed head, which, at the moment, was covered in the unfortunate poke bonnet. “Did you know that the condom was planted on me?”

“We have no proof the condom was planted on you, Miss Parker, and unless you can produce proof, the jury's still out on that one.” George's phone rang and they were saved by the bell.

It'd been a while since Chloe heard a phone ring and it actually sounded pleasant. For the first time in a long while, she didn't cringe at the sound. She watched George as he talked on the phone to someone far away, to people other than this small crowd, and she marveled at it, as if she really were from 1812. She felt a sudden urge to snatch the phone from him and call Abigail, just to hear her voice.

Chloe watched George slide the phone into his back pocket. She just wanted to hold it, really. Okay—she wanted to check her e-mail! Surf the Web! Buy toilet paper online! My God, what was happening to her? She clutched Fifi.

“Now, Miss Parker, we're on National Trust property at Bridesbridge Place—the key word being
trust
, okay? Respect it. The clothing, the grounds. Mr. Wrightman would be none too pleased if any damage befell his ancestral home or belongings.”

“I would never damage anything on the grounds!” Chloe swore off sewing-cabinet vodka right then and there.

“You must have the common decency not to destroy our English heritage, Miss Parker,” Grace said. When she tossed her head a few of her blond sausage curls fell out of her turban. “You of all people should be concerned for the grounds, what with your last name.”

Chloe put her hand on her hip. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I'll tell you what it means,” Grace returned. “The surname ‘Parker' originates in the Old French, meaning ‘keeper of the park.' Your ancestors, Miss Parker, were groundskeepers and gamekeepers. It's a most dreadfully common last name.”

Fifi nuzzled under Chloe's arm. “And your last name means ‘money' in French, perhaps because your ancestors, not unlike yourself, I might add, were overly preoccupied with it.”

George took his sunglasses off. “Ladies. I blame you both. Equally. For everything.”

Grace pouted. For some reason, her lips seemed plumper than they had been yesterday.

George's phone rang again. He smiled and talked as if nothing were the matter. He was the British version of Winthrop. She wondered if he, too, would make the crucial mistake of e-mailing his wife “Happy 35th Birthday” from across the country, without sending flowers, a present, or even bothering to call.

George wrapped up his conversation and set his sunglasses atop his head as the sky began to darken. “You've both been duly warned.”

Fifi growled and Chloe forced herself to pet him, just to calm him down.

George raked his hair. “God knows nothing can happen in a silly hedge maze, but we have an archery competition slated for tomorrow if the weather holds. Aim for the targets. If so much as an apple gets hit by a stray arrow, the game's over and you'll be replaced with two beautiful, smart, and eager prospects.”

“You wouldn't!” Grace practically popped out of her spencer. “After all the time I've invested in this? Leaving all my clients high and dry? Really! When you know very well that all this is Miss Parker—Chloe's doing!”

Fifi quivered in Chloe's arms, and at first Chloe thought it was from the rain, the first drops of which had started coming down, but then he snarled at something that looked like a weasel. It was burrowing under the hedge. All of a sudden Fifi lunged from Chloe's grip, flinging his hot little body into the gargantuan maze with his leash trailing behind him.

Chloe held out her arms, as if she somehow expected him to come bounding back. “Fifi!” she cried, clapping as the dog squeezed under the hedge. “Come back here!”

“Fifi! My Fifi!” yelled Mrs. Crescent, cradling her belly and waddling over. “He'll get hopelessly lost in there!”

Chloe tossed aside her parasol, hiked up her gown, and sprang into the maze.

“Cameras! Get on this!” George whistled with his fingers, and the cameras rolled behind her. “That girl's golden,” she heard him say. “Wherever she goes, drama follows.”

Grace laughed and George's ATV spun off.

Fifi growled somewhere within the maze, but Chloe couldn't see him. She ran toward the spot from where the growling seemed to be coming. Her walking boots were so thin she could feel the gravel under the soles of her feet.

“Fifi! Fifi! Come here!” Her bonnet fell to her shoulders. Her white shawl snagged on a yew branch.

“Miss Parker! Miss Parker!” Mrs. Crescent called from outside the hedge maze. “Save my baby Fifi! Hurry! Before he gets hurt! Oh, Mr. Wrightman—thank goodness you're here!”

Sebastian? Great. He was supposed to be chasing
her
through the maze, and here
she
was chasing a droopy-eyed pug. She heard more growling and shuffling.

“Fifi! Fifi!” Chloe found herself bumping into dead end after dead end as larger and larger raindrops began to fall faster and faster.

“Yip! Yip!” Fifi yelped, and Chloe spun, sprinted, took a sharp turn in the hedge, and barreled right into—Mr. Wrightman—the younger, the penniless.

“I've been meaning to run into you,” he quipped, offering her a hand to steady her. “But not quite like this.”

That sounded like something she would say, or did say, to Sebastian.

The rain was falling even harder now.

“Listen, I'll get the dog. You head back,” Henry said.

“Yip! Yip!” Fifi yelped again, and Henry marched off.

But Chloe couldn't leave Fifi. She clambered behind with a broken shoelace and her flimsy boots soaked through. Deep into the maze, she finally caught up to Henry and watched him throw his jacket on a tangle of pug and weasel and somehow magically extract the dog from the pile. He tucked Fifi under his arm like a football while ribbons of blood and mud trickled down the dog's back. Fifi was yipping and crying.

Chloe felt as if the seams of her corset were showing through her white dress. Her gown clung to her legs, revealing her garters at midthigh.

Henry's eyes roamed from her face to her neck, her breasts, her legs—then he turned to head back. “Follow me for the way out,” he said in the pouring rain as he led the way. “If you lose sight of me, keep your left hand on the hedge. I've got to hurry and get the dog cleaned and bandaged before infection sets in. He's covered in mud.”

Henry didn't know her lace was broken. As she followed him, her cameraman followed her, rain running down her face, over her lip, and into her mouth, tasting sweet and salty at the same time. The sky flashed lightning.

In a matter of moments she lost sight of Henry and could no longer hear his boots crunching in the gravel. She placed her wet glove on the hedge to her left. Fog was rolling in among the hedgerows, and all at once the vivid green hedges seemed grayer, taller, woodier. What kind of mother would let herself get lost in a hedge maze in the middle of nowhere in England, during a thunderstorm?