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.
Grace stood to leave. “It’s a shame that you can’t shoot pistols with me, Miss Parker. Only titled ladies can shoot. It would be such a diversion.” With that, she spun to the other side of the room.
Chloe turned to Mrs. Crescent with a smile. “Now, that does sound diverting. But I’m sure we can arrange a duel at dawn with swords or something.” She lowered her voice. “What have I done to her, anyway?”
“Nothing, dear. You’re new, and fresh.”
Chloe hadn’t considered coming in late to the game an advantage until now.
Fiona returned, looking as if nothing had happened, and with a clanking of china and silver, cleaned up the tea things.
Chloe gathered the silverware for Fiona until Mrs. Crescent tapped her wrist and shook her head.
Grace sauntered back over to Chloe. “You don’t have titles in America, do you?”
“Well, my father always called me ‘princess.’ Which I believe ranks higher than a lady.”
Grace rattled her chatelaine. “We might practice archery together. You needn’t be titled for that.”
Mrs. Crescent curtsied and it took Chloe a while, but she did bow her head. Nevertheless, as Grace turned to walk down the hallway and the cameraman followed, she pretended to shoot her in the back with a bow and arrow.
“Might I have a word?” Mrs. Crescent brought a handkerchief to her sweaty brow. She whispered, “I’m glad to see you’re a fighter. I’ve never seen anyone handle her quite like that. We have a chance at winning, you know. A big chance!”
“What do you mean ‘we’ have a chance at winning?” Fifi nuzzled his head under Chloe’s arm and Chloe edged away.
“We’re in this together! Of course you know your father hired me to find a suitable match, and if we get Mr. Wrightman to propose to you, I get five hundred pounds.”
Chloe’s real father didn’t have an English pound to spare, so this must’ve been part of the script. It rang true, because Chloe knew chaperones were often hired by eager fathers during the Regency, and the chaperone would be paid a predetermined amount when she married off her young charge.
This gave Mrs. Crescent a real stake in Chloe’s winning.
Mrs. Crescent whispered, “I get five hundred pounds from your father and ten thousand from the show itself if we win, and I really need to win. That’s all I’ll say about the game for now.” She looked crushed. “You wouldn’t know how it is when you’re a mother—you don’t have children.”
Chloe looked down at her ballet-flat shoes. Abigail used to take ballet, before she switched to hip-hop.
Another camera came in; this time it was a camerawoman.
Mrs. Crescent changed her tone and spoke up. “So, I have four children, and another on the way.” She patted her pregnant belly. “Our five-year-old son needs surgery, the physician said.”
Fifi licked Chloe’s arm and Chloe rubbed it off. “For what?”
“To remove a lump in his neck. He’s always been sick and we have no more means to pay. The local physician has a long wait list, and we want to get it done as soon as possible, which means we have to go into town, which is going to cost us.”
Did Mrs. Crescent’s son have a medical issue in real life? Or was this just part of the chaperone’s character sketch? Chloe knew that socialized medicine meant often getting wait-listed for a procedure and thought maybe the Crescents wanted to hurry everything up and pay for it to be done in a private clinic. She tried to catch Mrs. Crescent’s eye, but the worried mother looked away wistfully, toward the window.
“I’m counting on that money.” Mrs. Crescent put her hand on Chloe’s knee. She looked Chloe in the eye. “My whole family’s counting on it.”
Her story had to contain some element of truth. “What’s your son’s name?”
“William,” Mrs. Crescent said, without hesitation. She opened a locket hanging around her neck and pointed to a miniature portrait of a boy with blond hair and curls.
“He looks like a little Cupid.”
Mrs. Crescent closed the locket, rubbing it with her fingers. “He is a love. It’s hard to be away from him for weeks on end. You can’t imagine.”
Sweat dribbled down Chloe’s back. “It must be hard.”
Mrs. Crescent stood and waddled toward the door. “Having children changes your priorities forever. Right. Tonight you’ll meet the rest of the women, but for now, Fifi and I can show you Bridesbridge Place.”
Chloe wanted to know more about little William, but she soon got swept up in the tour of Bridesbridge. She gushed over everything, from the drawing room and its pianoforte to the kitchen garden thick with dill, lavender, and basil.
“Might you show me the—water closet, Mrs. Crescent? All that weak tea seems to have gotten to me.”
Without a word, Mrs. Crescent guided Chloe to her boudoir, where, like a statue, she pointed to the bottom shelf of a credenza. On the shelf, atop a linen towel, sat a china pot, shaped like a gravy boat, only slightly bigger. Chloe lifted it by the handle even as her heart sank.
“A chamber pot?”