Undressing Mr. Darcy (13 page)

When she looked back, though, something like happiness spilled over her. It was a gorgeous September eve, the sun was setting, turning the buildings aglow in warmth, and behind her was a long, long procession of people in finery and feathers that really got everyone on the street to stop, pay attention, and smile. The Janeites were laughing and chatting, and it was a beautiful sight, really, and a beautiful moment, but she had missed most of the walk obsessing over the flash mob. At least she could watch the video of the promenade she had Kai shooting. They rounded the corner to the hotel.

“Miss Roberts, something must be amiss. Is there something wrong? Something I might help with, perhaps?”

Help. She hadn’t thought about asking anyone for help with this. Well, what could anyone really do, anyway? Especially Julian, who barely knew how to use his cell phone.

“Well, you’re right. There is something . . . But, if you’ll excuse me for a moment? I’ll meet you in the ballroom. I need to visit the ladies’.”

“Just let me know if I can be of assistance,” he said. “Not—not in the ladies’, of course, well—”

“Of course I don’t need your help in that department! Look, I’ll keep you posted,” she said as she walked backward.

He gave a slight bow. “Yes, do. Keep me—posted.”

She turned, hiked up her gown, and vaulted toward the escalators. Once in the bathroom, she yanked out her phone to start calling all the local TV news stations first.

But her phone was out of juice.

It took a lot to make her swear out loud, in public, but there, in the marble-floored bathroom with glittering mirrors and ladies lined up in their gowns, was Vanessa, fanning herself with her fan, pacing the floor, staring at her phone, shaking it, and yelling.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

The ladies in line went silent while she stopped to look at herself in the mirror, a strange amalgam of lady and modern smut-mouth.

There was a girl in line, probably no more than twelve years old, in a gown and bonnet, and Vanessa felt the sting of her f-bombrant.

“I’m sorry. My phone is out of battery,” she explained. “A lady should never use that word, you know. It’s very uncool.”

The women in line looked at her in horror, but the twelve-year-old smiled. These women, some of them armed with PhDs, knew a lot, but they didn’t know that a Brontë flash mob would be descending upon the Janeites at any moment, and the media needed to be here! If she didn’t get at least one news channel here, she’d have failed Julian, her aunt, and Janeites everywhere, and most of all, she’d have failed herself in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime chance of something going viral.

Quickly, under the glare of the fluorescent bathroom lights, she considered her options, checking them off in her head, eliminating each and every one. No, she couldn’t ask anyone else for their phones because she didn’t have the media reps’ phone numbers memorized. All her contacts were in her phone—and her laptop—but she’d left that at home because of the damn reticule that was the size of a kid’s toy purse.

Kai? No, she’d thought of copying all her contacts into Kai’s phone, but then she’d thought better of it because he was only an intern and he would leave her, and she didn’t want him to leave with the coveted list of contacts she’d spent years cultivating. After all, the real contacts at the stations and papers weren’t always the obvious ones. In many cases, the people who’d jump the quickest were personal assistants, interns, and rookie reporters.

Several toilets flushed in succession as Vanessa realized something quite shitty: only Lexi would have the numbers she needed.

Without so much as adjusting her drooping ostrich feather, Vanessa, to the sound of Dyson hand dryers, propelled herself into the hall and toward the ballroom, where, after a quick scan of the room, she discovered Lexi was nowhere to be found.

Her eyes landed on a nearby couple dressed in exquisite Regency garb and hovered over a smartphone laughing, presumably looking at pictures. It took everything in Vanessa’s power not to just yank the phone from their hands, but something about them hit her hard. She could feel it. They were in love—nauseatingly in love—and Vanessa, even in her rush, felt the power of it.

“Henry!” The woman laughed. “Really?” She looked to be about Vanessa’s age and so happy with this Henry.

Vanessa slid up to them and smiled, bursting their little love bubble. “Excuse me. Can I borrow your phone to make a quick local call? It’s an emergency and my phone’s out of batteries.”

Henry dug into his pocket and handed her his phone right away. “An emergency? Of course.” He had an English accent. Why did that surprise her?

“Thank you, umm . . . ?”

“Henry. Henry Wrightman. And this is Chloe Parker.”

“Hi.” Chloe waved with a smile. She was from Chicago; Vanessa could nail the accent anywhere.

Well. International couples are everywhere, really.

“I do hope everything’s quite all right. Let us know if we can be of any assistance,” Henry said.

She keyed in Lexi’s cell number—a number she hadn’t forgotten even after all these years.

“Hello?” Lexi answered.

“Lexi. It’s Vanessa. Where are you? I need to talk to you right away. It’s an emergency.”

Henry had his arm around Chloe now, and Vanessa turned away.

Lexi sighed. “Of course I’m preoccupied, Vanessa. What kind of emergency?”

“Just tell me where you are.” Vanessa’s eyes continued to scan the room.

“I’m by the potted palms, palming your Mr. Darcy. He’s a bit stiff, in every sense of the word. I quite like that about him—”

She was with Julian? What happened to Chase? Vanessa ended the call, tossed the phone back into Henry’s free hand, said a brisk thank-you, and beelined for the potted palms across the ballroom until someone hooked into her arm, jolting her backward.

“Vanessa!” It was Paul, Aunt Ella’s friend. “You look absolutely ravishing.”

“Paul, something’s come up and—”

He nodded and took her hand in his. “I need to ask you something very important. It’s about your aunt.”

“Is everything okay? Where is she?”

“Everything’s fine. Better than fine. She’s in the restroom right now with Helena, powdering her nose, which is better than powdering her wig—of course that would be a Georgian ball and not Regency.”

“Paul. I’m really sorry, but I have to dash. Can we talk later?” Vanessa sidestepped away.

“Yes. Yes, later, but not too much later. After the first dance. Come and find me. It’s important—”

Vanessa left the poor man rambling while she darted toward Lexi, who stood near the potted palms, a palm leaf suggestively covering her pelvic area as if she were Eve herself, and sure enough, she was feeding Julian a strawberry.

Julian’s eyes did widen a bit when he saw Vanessa approaching, but his mouth was full of strawberry, and he couldn’t say a word.

Lexi turned and rolled her eyes. “Whatever
do
you want? I was just showing our guest how hospitable some of us Chicago women can be.”

“I need to use your phone.”

“Nobody uses my phone. Ever. Ask somebody else.”

“I need your phone, Lexi. I need to call the TV stations. Please. For old times’ sake. Mine’s out of batteries.”

Lexi smiled and put her hand on the small of Julian’s back. “I see. You want to call
my
contacts. I’ve been holding out the olive branch to you for two days now, you don’t even so much as talk to me, but now you want my contacts?”

Julian leaned in to Lexi. “Miss Stone, perhaps you would acquiesce on my account? It seems Miss Roberts is in dire need of your phone. Perhaps there is something I might do for you in return?”

Lexi batted her fake eyelashes at him. “Well, I can think of any number of things you can do for me, or with me, or to me, and the thought of it makes me quiver, but I’d rather have Vanessa be beholden to me. If I give you my phone, Vanessa dear, you must agree to do my bidding.”

Vanessa held out her hand for the phone. “Name it. I’ll do it.”

“Excuse us, darling,” Lexi said to Julian as she took Vanessa aside. “If you hand him over to me as a client, you can use my phone the entire week.”

“‘Him’ who? Julian?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“He means that much to you, does he? Now I really want in. Surely it can’t be for the money.”

“There’s no money in it,” Vanessa said.

“I began to gather that. You must really like him.”

“I’m doing it for my aunt. Please, I just need your phone for a few minutes.”

Lexi looked away, feigning boredom.

The quartet began to warm up and the cacophony of instruments underscored the rush of conflicting thoughts in Vanessa’s brain. If she didn’t make the calls now, she’d lose her chance. She had to strike a deal now.

Lexi spoke first. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll share him as a client. Like we used to back in the day. It’ll show you I’ve changed—especially since I think he’s kind of hot.” She sucked in her cheeks, emphasizing her already chiseled features and her pallid skin.

“But there’s no money to split. It’s pro bono.”

“That’s a deal, but with two conditions. One, that I open the dance with him tonight. And two, that I go with you two to Louisville. Even though I hate Louisville. The
South.
The
countryside
.”

Damn. Julian must’ve told her about Louisville. She should’ve warned him about Lexi, but it was already too late. Vanessa couldn’t disappoint Aunt Ella by letting Lexi open the dance with him. And, much as she dreaded the thought of driving to and from Louisville with her, she didn’t have the luxury of time to bargain.

“I will open the dance with him,” Vanessa said. “But fine, you can come with us to Louisville.” She sighed. Even as she said it, she regretted it. “He rides in the front with me, though.”

“You’ve gotten better at negotiating,” Lexi said.

“I learned from the master, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did, Padawan.” Lexi held out her gloved hand to shake, and Vanessa shook, thinking she should’ve gotten all this in writing, then quickly made a flurry of calls while Lexi fed a somewhat reluctant Julian an oversized purple grape. Was Julian smart enough to see Lexi for who she really was? Regardless, Vanessa wouldn’t be the one to intervene—she’d made that mistake before. Let him find out for himself. After all, he was a big boy, and men never wanted to hear the truth, did they?

She had bigger things to worry about, and she sincerely hoped this was a slow news day out there. She hadn’t had time to check her local news apps, but the TV cams would only show if nothing else was going on. Her last call was to Kai, reminding him to film the entire evening, but he just sighed, saying of course he knew that, duh.

The dance caller brought the room to attention and the quartet struck up the chord that was the cue for Julian and Vanessa. With a bow from him and a curtsy from her, they began the minuet they’d practiced so diligently on Oak Street Beach the previous night, and as Vanessa counted her steps and figures, she could see Aunt Ella beaming at them from her perch at the head table.

That alone made all this—the wearing of a Regency gown, the recurring thoughts of a man who would be gone in a few days, and now Lexi in tow—worth it.

Although even Vanessa had to admit that the quartet added a new, brighter dimension to their dancing, and she couldn’t help but smile. The music seemed to play her, and were she a more sentimental girl, she might have read something into the fact that she and Julian were thrown together at this point in time and meant to meet, and dance, and . . . and what? Nothing had happened, and he’d be back in England before his tea got cold.

Were she not so preoccupied with the fact that she needed to be posting witty remarks about the ball on social media via Lexi’s phone and that, at any moment, a flash mob would appear and she could only hope the TV cameras could get here in time . . . she might have taken more notice of Julian. She realized he was looking at her rather intently and that he danced very well. Even though she tried to look like she knew what the hell she was doing, they had made a few glaring missteps.

When she could, she allowed her eyes to dart to all corners of the room, wondering when the Brontë flash mob would strike and what they would look like. Would they be a throng of wide-eyed women, without makeup, in black Victorian dresses, their hair in buns, brandishing
Jane Eyre
,
Wuthering Heights
, and
The Professor
? Or would they be more like Sherry, wearing T-shirts that said things like
I’d go to my grave for Heathcliff
? Would they have baseball hats on saying
Blinded by love for Mr. Rochester
? Vanessa didn’t remember much about
Wuthering Heights
, but it did, in her opinion, revolve around some seriously screwed-up people isolated in the English moors, and as she recalled, the sociopathic Heathcliff made Darcy look like a real catch.

She began to dance with a little more Elizabeth Bennet in her step once she spotted a news camera crew enter the room.

As she spun around, she noticed Chase standing near the punch bowl, his arms crossed as Lexi spoke to him.

One of the last things Lexi had said to Vanessa in a rage all those years ago was that Vanessa would end up a crazy cat lady, and maybe that was true.

She began to worry, though—not about her destiny with cats, but that the Brontë Society flash mob might not appear at all or they might not somehow make it past security with their potentially passionate ways, and the media would never listen to her summons again.

There: another TV crew appeared. When she looked toward Aunt Ella for approval, she saw that her aunt’s chair stood empty, and that rocked Vanessa to the core. Where did she go? Did she miss Vanessa’s performance? She would never leave the ball, surely!

Finally Vanessa saw her aunt and Paul standing on the side of the ballroom floor, arm in arm, smiling, very near to that sappy Chloe and Henry couple.

The dance ended, Julian bowed, she curtsied, and the room resounded with clapping.

“You were amazing,” Sherry said as she stepped right up to Vanessa.