Definitely Not Mr. Darcy (8 page)

“We did arrange a more suitable welcome,” said Mrs. Crescent. “But you fainted.”

Chloe opened her mouth, then shut it.

“Very ladylike. The fainting bit,” whispered Mrs. Crescent. “Well done.” She patted the panting pug's head as if he had something to do with it. “I see you've met Mr. Wrightman.”

Chloe felt a ripple of disappointment until Fiona waved in two footmen carrying Chloe's trunks. They set them on the floor near a great mahogany wardrobe.

Across the room, Mr. Wrightman opened another drapery and light gushed in. “It may well have been hysteria,” he said. “The pistol incident and all.”

Everything came back to Chloe in a flash. “‘Pistol incident'? That woman practically killed us!” She sat up and her left arm, for some reason, felt strange. “Where is that b—”

Chloe stopped herself, but Mr. Wrightman coughed.

“Blanket?” Mrs. Crescent interjected. She covered Chloe's stocking feet with a tasseled blanket.

“Yes, blanket. Thank you.”

Chloe took a large gulp of cordial water and Mr. Wrightman raised an eyebrow. She barely managed to get it down. Who knew it would taste like mouthwash? Fiona offered it again but Chloe shook her head. “I'm quite refreshed, Fiona. Thank you.” Fiona whisked the drink away.

Chloe's arm must've fallen asleep. She turned her head slowly, trying not to start the room spinning again, but someone had tied a leather strap around her biceps. She quickly untied it. On her night-stand, next to the silver candlestick holder, was a jar with something slithering around in it. What was it? Maggots? Then it hit her. They were leeches. Leeches for sucking the blood from sick people, because that was what they did back in the 1800s. The leather strap? A tourniquet. The leeches squirmed around in blood and she bolted upright. Did he bleed her or what?!

She wanted to scream. To rant. To possibly crash the Wedgwood washbowl atop Mr. Wrightman's head. Instead, she cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Wrightman?”

He was packing up his black medicine bag without a care in the world.

“You didn't by chance, say, bleed me with leeches, did you?” She dangled the tourniquet in front of her.

He stepped back, folded his arms, and took his glasses off, looking, suddenly, not so librarian-like. If she hadn't been so steamed she might even consider him attractive in a tall, pale, and blond kind of way.

She let her arm with the tourniquet fall. How could
he
be insulted? The gown might be exquisite, the boudoir charming, but she didn't come all this way to get shot at and bled to death just to hook up with someone who wasn't a Regency buck but some sort of bloodsucking vampire with glasses.

She swung her legs out to stand. “Well. It was a pleasure meeting everyone, but I do believe I should go back home. Fiona, call the carriage for me, please.” She stood in her stocking feet, but her knees weakened as she remembered the money, and the glimmer of possible love, although that was fading fast. The man in the tub, the man in the field, was he a stable hand, or perhaps a favored gardener's son? If so, then Chloe, in all her heiressness, wouldn't even be allowed to talk to him.

Mr. Wrightman guided her back to the bed, settling her on the mattress, which seemed to be stuffed with hay.

Mrs. Crescent came and sat so close to Chloe that the pug licked her arm. Chloe scooched away.

“Mr. Wrightman did not bleed you, my dear. Look at your arm. Do you see any open wounds?”

She checked both arms. “No.”

Fiona swung open the wardrobe doors and hung a yellow gown, then a green one, and then another white, each one more exquisite than the last.

Chloe bit her lip and stared at the leeches, slurping and slithering in blood, gorged and happy as caffeine addicts after a few triple espressos.

“Whose blood is that, then?” she asked as politely as possible as she slid to the side of the bed farthest from the jar.

“It's pig's blood,” said Mr. Wrightman. He picked up the jar of leeches as if it were a glass of red wine. “I'll take them away.”

“Why did you tie my arm, then?”

“It's what any apothecary would do when a lady who didn't faint pushes away the smelling salts. But luckily, it wasn't necessary to do a bleeding. This time.” He winked at her.

She clenched her fists. The pug was now in the bed with her, nudging her arm with his slimy nose to get her to pet him.

Mr. Wrightman held up the jar to the camera. “Don't you find it fascinating, Miss Parker, how leeches cure everything from melancholy to deadly fevers?”

“I find it fascinating you diagnosed me with a fainting spell when in fact it may have been something much more serious, considering the gunfire. And what am I, some sort of guinea pig? How could you even pretend to bleed me with leeches? As if I'm part of some kind of experiment here?”

Mrs. Crescent rubbed her pregnant belly and whispered to Chloe. “Mr. Wrightman is a doctor at the finest hospital in London, dear. Truly, you were never in any danger.”

The piano downstairs stopped.

Chloe looked over at him leaning against the doorjamb. “Oh,” she said.

He put the leeches into his medicine bag. “The carriage ran into a rock and the wheel broke at the very moment that Lady Grace happened to fire her pistol—in the opposite direction.”

Chloe wanted to believe him.

He bowed. “If you will excuse me, Miss Parker, you seem to be quite recovered. All that's required now is a bit of rest. If you need leeching, or any other medical assistance, I'm happy to oblige. Pleasure meeting you, welcome to Bridesbridge.” His coattails swished behind him.

Something sank inside her when he swooshed out the door. She hadn't even thanked him. Worse, she implied that he was incompetent. Worse yet, she didn't even let him know how happy she was to be here, despite the gunfire and leeches. But come on, he feigned bleeding her with leeches.

A woman laughed in the hallway. “Really, Mr. Wrightman, you flatter me.” Grace sauntered into Chloe's room without knocking, chin in the air. “He's such a good man,” she said. “So observant. So intelligent. So kind of him to even notice, much less compliment, my pianoforte playing while he has a patient in the house.”

Fiona and Mrs. Crescent curtsied while Chloe glared.

“Don't bother curtsying on my account, Miss Parker,” Grace said. “Are we feeling better?”

Chloe looked at the camera. “Infinitely. Much obliged that her ladyship would inquire.”

“You do look rather piqued. Fiona, do get us some tea and a proper meal. I'm starved. And no doubt Miss Parker and Mrs. Crescent are, too.”

True, Chloe was famished.

Fiona waited until Chloe nodded in approval.

Grace lounged on Chloe's settee in front of the window. “With all this fuss over you, Miss Parker, it seems the staff entirely forgot our breakfast.”

“The audacity. Perhaps they'll whip up a bullet pudding in your honor for dessert tonight.”

Grace looked confused and her blond sausage curls bounced as she slid the turban off her head.

Chloe smiled. Grace didn't get the obscure reference to the festive Regency parlor game in the guise of a dessert that included a real bullet and Chloe made a mental note to have it served up here sometime very soon.

Mrs. Crescent anchored herself in a scroll-armed chair beside Chloe's bed, hand on her belly, Fifi curled at her feet.

“I'm here to make amends,” said Grace as she looked outside. “I do apologize, even though it was a misunderstanding. It seems a bullet never hit your carriage. Your wheel crashed into a rock.”

Chloe leveraged herself out of bed and stood strong this time, smoothing her gown over her legs.

“Can you manage it, dear?” Mrs. Crescent asked, and Fifi lifted his head.

“Yes, I'm fine.”

She slid on her shoes.

“Miss Parker, you really should have Fiona put your shoes on for you,” Grace said. “What would we do without servants after all? Life here would hardly be tolerable. Thank God for that brilliant Mr. Wrightman. Any minute that I'm not with him seems like an eternity.”

“Really?” Chloe asked. Grace was catwalk stunning; she seemed a little beyond Mr. Wrightman's league.

“Mr. Wrightman is an amazing man,” Mrs. Crescent said. “Charming. Why, I truly was touched when he confided in me . . .”

Mrs. Crescent launched into an anecdote about how much Mr. Wrightman admired mothers like her and how he wanted to be a father. One of his cousins recently had a baby and named it after him, and the moment he held that baby he knew he was ready. Ready to fall in love, marry the woman of his dreams, and have children.

Fiona stepped in carrying a tray with a Wedgwood teapot, teacups, and some sort of bread piled high and set the tray on a table near Mrs. Crescent.

Chloe couldn't believe a maidservant was serving her tea in her boudoir, and she leaned in to admire the teapot's design. Both sides of it had been hand-painted with the ruins of an abbey standing in a field of yellow flowers and green grass.

Grace sprawled in a chair Fiona had pulled up for her. “Well, there is one other thing that makes it exciting. But when you've been here for weeks as we have without—”

“Wait a minute. Did you say you've been here for—weeks?” Chloe pulled her own Empire chair to the table.

“We've been here, what, three weeks now, Mrs. Crescent?”

Mrs. Crescent nodded. Chloe plopped down in her chair, rattling the teacups in their saucers. “Three weeks?!” She lowered her voice. “I mean—really?”

“Really.” Grace took a skeleton key from her lap, unlocked a wooden box on the tea tray, and scooped tea leaves into a strainer over the teapot.

The cameraman turned his camera on Chloe. The mike dug into her back, her stomach roiled, and her ears burned, she was so upset. The rule book said a Regency lady must never go to emotional extremes. She should never be too happy, too sad, or too angry. Suddenly she didn't even want tea. She gaped at Mrs. Crescent, who was buttering her bread. Fifi scuttled over to the table, wagging his curl of a tail. George had warned her of surprises, but this? How many Accomplishment Points had the other women garnered in all that time? And they obviously had already gotten to know Mr. Wrightman. She felt the urge to hurl a teacup into the camera. “Mrs. Crescent, will you pass the knife, please?”

Mrs. Crescent looked up from her plate.

“The butter knife, please. And the butter.” Chloe buttered her bread with vigor then stabbed the butter knife upright into the butter dish. Her first English tea in England—ruined. Still, she realized that she hadn't eaten since the breakfast on the airplane. And sheer excitement had kept her from eating then. So she hadn't eaten in more than twenty-four hours and really was starved. The bread tasted grainy, though, and too floury, which indicated that the food, too, would be historically correct.

Mrs. Crescent spoke first. “Miss Parker. We've been here three weeks and several women have come and gone. Last week, my former charge, Miss Gately, had to leave due to a family emergency, and that's why you were chosen to join us. Miss Gately made the most amazing things out of bits and bobs, didn't she, Lady Grace?”

“Oh yes,” said Grace. “She was so talented. So accomplished. She took a rather insipid bonnet of mine and made it quite attractive, really. Pity she had to leave.”

The tea was watery and Chloe looked into her cup. Had she come all this way to drink weak tea and play second string in a posse of women vying for Mr. Wrightman's attention?

“Something wrong with your tea, dear?” Mrs. Crescent asked Chloe.

“No. Yes. It's so much different from what I had expected. You can imagine.”

“You will come to like it, as I have,” Mrs. Crescent said. “Fiona, please put some sugar in Miss Parker's tea.”

Fiona took a tongslike tool and cut off three lumps of brown sugar from a mound in a dish on the table. She dropped the lumps into Chloe's tea and stirred for her.

“Tea is very expensive, what with the Napoleonic Wars,” Mrs. Crescent explained.

Fiona dropped Chloe's teaspoon on the floor. “Sorry. So sorry, miss,” she said.

“It's fine. No worries—not to worry.”

Grace yawned and covered her mouth. “It's so quiet here one quite forgets all about the wars.”

Fiona was holding on to the fireplace mantel as if to brace herself.

“Are you all right, Fiona?” Chloe asked.

Grace locked the tea caddy. “One great thing about war. All those gorgeous men in red coats.”

Fiona hurried out. Chloe stood to go after her, but Mrs. Crescent patted the chair for her to sit down. “Since tea is expensive, it's kept under lock and key here,” she continued. “Perhaps you don't do that in America. The highest-ranking lady—that would be Lady Grace here at Bridesbridge—holds the key to the tea caddy.”

Grace hooked the tea-caddy key to a bejeweled thing dangling from the side of her waist.

“Do you quite like my chatelaine?” she asked Chloe. “Only the lady of the house carries one. See? There's my watch on one chain. My seal on another. And the tea-caddy key. It really is quite clunky with this thing clanking around all the time. But it is a status symbol, I suppose.”

“I'm glad I don't have to lug one around,” Chloe said.

Mrs. Crescent cleared her throat. “Often, to conserve supply, we brew the tea weak. Very weak indeed. In lesser houses, tea leaves are reused.”

The tea did taste better with sugar, and all this talk of tea would've been more interesting if Chloe had not been so angry that this thing started three weeks ago and they'd obviously added her only to amp up the drama.