Chloe hurried over to Mrs. Crescent, but Henry was already there, guiding her to a fainting couch by the window. He took the watch from his watch fob and started timing the contractions.
Sebastian and Grace gawked. The chaperones and their charges crowded around Mrs. Crescent.
“Breathe. That’s right,” Henry said. He took her hand.
Mrs. Crescent did her breathing, stood, and paced. Chloe paced with her.
“We should call her OB,” Chloe said to Henry. “An ambulance to take her to the hospital.”
“Contractions are still well over three minutes apart.” With his back to the camera, he spoke a mile a minute to Chloe. “We won’t be calling anyone. She wants to have her baby here. Nineteenth-century style.”
“What?! There is no way—”
“Perhaps instead of being so dogmatic, you could do something useful, Miss Parker?”
Chloe gulped and stepped back. Sebastian had disappeared and so had the all the footmen and servants. Grace took backward steps toward the door. Was Grace snagging some alone time with Sebastian—now? Chloe couldn’t let it happen. But she also couldn’t let Henry think she was a dogmatic idiot either. She released her arm from Mrs. Crescent’s. “Julia, Gillian. Stay with her. I’m going to get the kitchen maids to boil some water.” She dashed out the door and almost banged into Sebastian. Again.
Sebastian looked worried. “I—I’m not good in these situations. I’m an artist, not a doctor.”
He was an artist? What kind of an artist? she wondered. Then Mrs. Crescent groaned. “Come help me boil some water,” Chloe said. “I don’t even know where the kitchen is.”
Grace stood next to her chaperone at the dining room doors, her hands on her hips.
“We have to hurry,” Chloe said. “Which way?”
“Follow me,” Sebastian said.
Chloe was right on his coattails. She smiled to herself. She was chasing him—literally now. And all this dashing through the marble halls lined with antiquities would have been fun had it not been for the gravity of a woman giving birth without a hospital, without an epidural! After scrambling down the servant stairway into the kitchen, Sebastian stopped. Servants and footmen were bustling about, frantically boiling water on the old stove and in the kitchen fireplace. So this was where they had all gone.
“What can I do?” Chloe dove into the fray.
A kitchen maid scowled at her. “You shouldn’t be down here!” She spotted Sebastian and curtsied. “Excuse me, miss, but we’ve got it sorted. Best if you get upstairs.” She shooed Chloe out.
Chloe hurried up to the top of the stairs and Sebastian followed.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Sebastian rubbed the cleft in his chin. “I told you I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
Chloe snapped her fingers. “They’ll need linens. Where’s the linen closet?”
Sebastian smiled. “My valet takes care of everything. I hardly know where he keeps my boots.”
He was sweet, really sweet. Like a boy. Chloe racked her brain, trying to figure out what they could do. She leaned up against a marble column and blew a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes.
Sebastian moved closer, waiting for her to take the lead.
A camerawoman bounded toward them from down the hall. Footmen lumbered up the stairs with pots of boiled water and kitchen maids carried up stacks of white linens. All Chloe and Sebastian could do was follow.
When the entourage arrived in the dining room, Mrs. Crescent sat, fanning herself and smiling.
Henry stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Sebastian and Chloe, who came in last. “False alarm,” he said. “Her contractions have stopped.” He pulled Chloe aside and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Well done, Miss Parker. You may be the smartest person in the room, but a lot of help you were, using this opportunity to take off with Sebastian. So glad I can count on you.”
Chloe wavered, feeling dizzy, surprised by his snarky reaction, which complimented and scolded her in one fell swoop. It crossed her mind, but only for a moment, that he might be jealous of his own brother. “You—you can count on me.”
Henry took off his glasses. “I hope so. Mrs. Crescent wants you to help me deliver the baby when it’s time. Do you think I can rely on you, or shall I consider you otherwise engaged?”
Chloe was shocked. Whether it was because of Mrs. Crescent choosing her to help deliver her baby, or how good Henry looked without glasses, she wasn’t sure.
“Can I count on you, Miss Parker?” Henry folded his arms.
“Of course.”
Later that night, in her boudoir, Chloe woke up to a nightmare of Henry asking over and over, “Can I count on you?” She got out of bed and stumbled to her chamber pot, sicker than a girl who’d drunk negus all night at her coming-out ball. She leaned over it, her stomach sloshing. Could have been that spoonful of fish soup, or the fact that she’d have to spend the next two days riding sidesaddle, and if she didn’t ride, she’d be sent home. Would she still be able to ride after more than twenty years? As she hugged her chamber pot, she realized, though, she was sick over disappointing Henry. Ugh! She liked Henry, but—really! The fact that she cared so much about his opinion of her made her sick, literally. She felt overwhelmed and confused.
At home she could’ve turned on music, the TV—hell, even the computer to distract herself. But here? Her own thoughts could torment her relentlessly. Finally she decided to play the footage in her mind of her moments alone with Sebastian, and that made her feel better.
He felt the same way about her as she felt about him! She had to take the reins and come up with a plan that put her in control. She decided to host a tea after the foxhunt. It would take some doing, and she’d have to put aside her painting, but it would be her show and she could call the shots. Before she snuffed out her candle, she settled her eye on the stack of painting paper and tubes of oil paint that Sebastian had given her. He, too, was an artist. But what kind of artist? A vision of Dartworth Hall floated in front of her. Could he be the one? He was stacking up to be a most interesting man. Instead of snuffing out the candle, she blew it out and made a wish.
Chapter 9
Even though she’d only just arrived, every day Chloe asked James, the Bridesbridge butler, if there were any letters for her. She couldn’t wait to hear from Abigail.
“Not today, miss,” was his reply as he offered letters from his silver salver to the rest of the women.
Mail from overseas took at least a week, sometimes two, so how could she expect something in just four days? She spent the morning arranging the hunt-tea menu with Cook, thrilled that hosting the tea would bring her fifteen Accomplishment Points, and the afternoon working on mounting and dismounting sidesaddle, until she earned five Accomplishment Points for that. Grace and the other women earned ten Accomplishment Points because they were ahead of her, practicing their jumps.
James arrived at her side during teatime with the silver salver.
“Letter for you, Miss Parker.”
The other ladies at the tea table set their teacups down and eyed the overnighted envelope with curiosity.
Chloe ripped open the cardboard envelope and almost bolted to the foyer, but then she remembered to ask first. “Mrs. Crescent, might I take this to the Grecian temple to read? I won’t be long.”
Mrs. Crescent, completely recovered from her false labor and feeling no ill effects, fed Fifi a lump of sugar under the table. “Go ahead, dear, but watch for rain. Soon as you’re back, you must make your ink and start your needlework project.”
Chloe’s cameraman followed her as she trounced past the herb garden in her bonnet and walking gloves, parasol in hand, blue day dress flouncing at her ankles. Once under the green dome of the Grecian temple atop the hill at Bridesbridge, she sat on a stone bench and ceremoniously opened the envelope.