“What do you think?” Chloe smiled.
“I would venture to say no.”
Being a not-so-modern type, Chloe didn’t need to transform too much. She washed off all vestiges of makeup, which in her case was a bit of blush, undereye concealer, and lipstick. Fiona packed Chloe’s simple earrings, necklace, and understated watch into velvet drawstring bags. Time, surely, wouldn’t matter for a lady of leisure in 1812.
Chloe hopped on one foot to yank off her lace-up boots until Fiona hovered, hands on her hips.
“You must get used to me doing such things for you.”
“Really, it’s not a problem.” Chloe did everything for herself, and Abigail. It would take some retraining to have someone else to rely on.
“It’s a rule once we’re on set. If you’ll step behind the dressing screen, I’ll gather your chemise and stockings.”
The room had an aroma of lavender. Behind the screen, and deep in the Derbyshire countryside, hours from London’s Heathrow, and centuries away from her real life, Chloe felt more at home than ever.
She unbuttoned her blouse, because she couldn’t imagine having Fiona do that for her, while her fingers skipped a few in the excitement. Maybe yesterday she’d been a stressed-out single working mom from the Midwest, almost middle-aged, and with a slightly expanding middle of her own, struggling just to get a decent dinner on the table after a long day of trying to drum up business, but today, on this June morning in England, her fantasy life unfolded before her.
The fantasy would have been even better if she’d been a few pounds lighter, but months of cheap pasta dinners had added seven pounds to her tiny frame.
“Curvy women were all the rage in the Regency era, right, Fiona?”
Fiona was smiling a lot more now and warming up to her, Chloe could tell.
One thing Chloe knew for sure: if the meals here were authentic, there wouldn’t be any pasta, thank goodness. She’d had her fill.
She wriggled her black skirt past her hips. Sure, she was doing this for the business, for Abigail, but the white confection of a gown hanging in front of her enchanted her. It wasn’t a froufrou Victorian with hoops, but a classic Regency with an Empire waist and—that neckline, promising escape from her modern woes or perhaps even a romp in the shrubbery.
Wait a minute, where did that come from? A lady would have to be engaged, if not married, to allow for a romp in the shrubbery, and that meant there had to be a gentleman involved. She didn’t let her mind wander down that garden path, the path that led to proposals both decent and indecent, because after all, by 1812 standards, a woman her age would have one foot in the grave. No doubt her role on this show would be that of a widow in mourning. Although they didn’t have her wearing a black gown, there wasn’t a mourning veil in sight, and no sign of a chemisette insert or fichu to cover her cleavage either.
Regardless, any Mr. Darcy on the set would be twenty-eight years old, as he was in Pride and Prejudice, or twenty-three like Mr. Bingley, and both would fill their dance cards with the twenty-year-old Miss Bennets. Men just weren’t on her agenda. She wanted nothing more than to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, answer questions about the novels, win the prize money, and get back home to Abigail.
Her new cell phone with international coverage rang, cutting into her reverie, and she sprang toward the sound of French horns echoing to the beamed ceiling. Abigail had downloaded a Regency ringtone for her. Chloe lunged for the phone, because she had told her daughter to call only in case of an emergency, and she almost knocked the pitcher and bowl off the washstand.
Chloe dug for her phone in the vintage doctor bag she used as a purse. “Cell phones. You know, Fiona, two hundred years ago, we wrote letters with quill pens and sealed them with wax. Life was so much more—romantic.” She picked up without checking the caller ID. “Hello?”
Across the room, there was a knock on the door, it burst open, and three guys with spotlights on booms popped in. Chloe’s blouse was completely unbuttoned and her skirt lay in a crumple at her ankles. She shimmied behind the dressing screen, clenched her blouse closed at her cleavage, and swooped down to yank her skirt back up, covering her decidedly nonthong green cotton panties.
As she looked out from behind the dressing screen, a guy with a video cam bounded in, followed by another cameraman. Lights? Cameras! What was going on here?
“Mommy? Are you there?”
Chloe forgot she was holding the phone to her ear.
“Uh—Abby? Sweetheart? Is everything okay?” Her chest thudded as she squinted into the spotlights.
“Yeah, I just have some really good news.”
Chloe exhaled. “Oh, good. I want to hear all about it, but now’s not a good time, okay? I’ll call you right back.” Grabbing the white gown to shield herself, she clicked off the phone and tossed it on the washstand. She held her hand up toward the video cameras. “Stop the cameras! What the—”
Another guy materialized with a headset over one ear, an iPhone in one hand, and an iPad in the other. All plugged in, just like her ex-husband. “Great line,” the guy said in a juicy English accent. “What you said about letters. Romance. Could you say that again, please? On camera?”
Chloe stepped back, from the sheer panic of the moment, the intense spotlights, or possibly his manner of speaking. It couldn’t have been his cropped auburn hair topped with a pair of sunglasses or his snug-fitting jeans. She was, after all, a raging Anglophile who could crush on any guy with an English accent, and this was the first male one she’d heard since she arrived. All this started with Disney’s Christopher Robin when she was what—six?
The accent threw her, but only for a minute. “Excuse me?! What’s going on?!” She clutched the white gown in front of her. It felt like a fine cheesecloth or voile, and she realized, despite her confusion and rage, that it must be muslin, that delicate Regency fabric she had up until now only read about. She softened her grip, but raised her voice. “Cut the cameras! Can’t you see I’m half naked here?”
“I can see you’re exactly what we’re looking for. Spot-on.” He extended his hand. “George Maxton. Producer. Pleased to meet you, Miss Parker. You can call me George, but once you get on location, everyone’s a ‘mister’ and a ‘miss.’”
Behind the gown, Chloe buttoned her blouse single-handedly, a skill she’d mastered while breast-feeding nine years ago. She glared at George Maxton and the crew.
He gave up on the handshake. “Brilliant. You’re gorgeous.”
Gorgeous? Cute, maybe. Nobody had called her gorgeous since—wait a minute. The nerve! “George, cut the cameras NOW.”
He eyed her from the top of her disheveled hair to the tips of her unpolished toes. “You do realize, Miss Parker, that this is a reality show?”
Something plummeted inside her; she struggled to speak. “You mean ‘immersion documentary.’”
“Documentary?” He laughed. “Now, that’s the stuff I’d love to shoot. No money there.” He pointed to the two cameras as he said, “This, my dear, is a reality dating program, and you’re going to be a brilliant contestant.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth went dry and her heart pounded. Was she hyperventilating? “Dating—what?! There must be some mistake—”
“No mistake. It’s set in the year 1812. Cameras are on twenty-four /seven. Everything’s historically accurate, Miss Parker, and I do mean everything. You will be pleased with that.”
The lights blinded her. Her bosom heaved, and not in a good way. Dating show? She didn’t want to date anybody—she hadn’t had a date in four years! No, it was more than four years, because Winthrop, her ex-husband, was out of town so much they never could manage a date night. How could she be on a dating program? Not to mention the fact that she hated those reality dating things. How could this be happening?
She paced the floor, her gown dragging on the floorboards. She caught her breath and began speaking a mile a minute. “I demand some answers here! What changed between the moment I signed the contract and now?”