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.