The cameras weren’t following them, so as soon as Mrs. Crescent and Fifi caught up to her, Chloe spoke quickly. “I was terribly rude and unladylike to Henry. I need to set things straight.” She blew out a candle with her breath. A wisp of smoke curled between them.
“My dear Miss Parker, you won this round. Lord knows how, but you won it. With the new Accomplishment Points you’ve gained, you’ve earned another outing with Mr. Wrightman. You’re leading the way with forty points. There’s no need to talk to Henry.”
“But Henry’s an important ally. He could influence Sebastian against me. It’s a delicate situation.”
A footman sped by while she was speaking, his livery coat askew, cravat untied. He yanked on his drawer strings with one hand, sported a candlestick in the other, and then dropped his cravat in a wicker laundry basket at the top of the servant stairs.
Mrs. Crescent cleared her throat. “You must wait, like a lady, for Sebastian to make the next move. And forget about Henry. Put the notion of visiting out of your head, or you’ll get us both booted out of here.”
Candle wax dripped onto Chloe’s thumb. “Ow!”
The footman returned to plunk his hat into the basket.
“That’s it!” Chloe snapped her fingers. “What about—having a footman deliver a message?”
Mrs. Crescent stooped over to pick up Fifi and sighed on her way up the stairs. The candle flames in the candelabrum bent with her exhale and almost went out. “You know you can’t write a letter to a man unless you’re engaged.”
“There wouldn’t be a letter. I’d just have a footman deliver a verbal message. We have to—push the envelope. You know how Grace is. We have to bend the rules, not break them. You want us to win, right?”
“It’s not proper.”
Chloe knew Mrs. Crescent was right and she leaned against the cold wall. Her right to talk, to communicate, had been stripped away, and she stood helpless, imprisoned in a glorified prom gown. She was a modern woman after all, used to her freedoms of movement and expression. This was exasperating!
At that moment Grace, lips pursed and armed with her own candelabrum, swooshed by the two of them with all the attitude of a model in a Victoria’s Secret commercial. She tugged at her bodice and smoothed her gown. “You’re such a good girl with your chaperone,” she sneered in Chloe’s ear. Her berry-stained lips were smudged. Chloe’s candelabrum went out completely as Grace turned the corner. Two cameramen trailed Grace’s flowing gown.
“At least I won’t get gonorrhea or—pregnant!” Chloe coundn’t keep herself from muttering.
Mrs. Crescent shushed her.
Grace was, by Chloe’s standards, a strumpet, and she had no doubt that the girl had just added another notch to her calling-card case by dallying with yet another footman.
But maybe Grace was right, after all, and Chloe was being too good. Despite Mrs. Crescent’s advice, she knew she had to be proactive, aggressive. Grace had planted a condom in her reticule and gotten away with it, for God’s sake! At the very least, she had to protect—herself.
With their candelabra snuffed out, Chloe and Mrs. Crescent had no choice but to feel their way through the hall, back to the drawing room. The fire in the fireplace and the candelabra in the room were flickering on the ornate gold frames of the paintings. Mrs. Crescent opened the walnut sewing cabinet, pulling out Chloe’s floss and needles.
“Needlework? Haven’t I endured enough punishment for one day?” Chloe asked.
Grace was sleeping with the footmen, and here she was, doing her needlework!
She fingered the irregular, loose stitches in her embroidery. Miss Gately’s fireplace screen stood finished in the corner, a testament to her accomplishments. Uniformly stitched peonies blossomed on a red background, while the robins in Chloe’s embroidery looked more like rats. But then again, she had just started to learn this craft, and she was here and Miss Gately—wasn’t. Grace, though, was still here, too, and so was Julia.
The butler brought the tea things in and Chloe wondered what he had done with that condom anyway.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Crescent said, “I’ll pour.” As soon as he left, Mrs. Crescent shot Chloe a serious look. “We made the cut. You deserve a cup of tea for all your efforts.” She handed Chloe a teacup full of plain, room-temperature water.
“You forgot to run the tea leaves through it.”
“No, I didn’t, dear. Just try it before the cameras find us.” Chloe sipped and practically spit the liquid all over her embroidery. “Vodka?” she cried. “Vodka! Where in the world did you get it?”
“Ah, the benefits of doing one’s needlework.” Mrs. Crescent gestured toward a vodka bottle in the recesses of the locked sewing cabinet. She shut the cabinet door and collapsed on the double settee.
Chloe thought of adding a twist of lemon from her deodorant supply, then slammed the vodka and helped herself to two more, all just before a cameraman arrived on the scene. “Cheers, Mrs. Crescent. Here’s to you. And needlework.” She hadn’t eaten anything all day, and the booze went right to her head.
Mrs. Crescent shook a finger at her. “You must drink your tea like a civilized lady. Slowly. And that’s all the ‘tea’ you’re getting—tonight.”
Chloe tried to nurse her vodka as best she could. “Mrs. Crescent, is there a garden somewhere around here with something in it that casts shadows and light?”
Mrs. Crescent locked the sewing cabinet with a key she kept in her reticule. “I daresay I regret giving you that tea.”
Chloe sipped from the teacup. “Or, perhaps there is a clock somewhere in this house with a garden painted on it?”
Mrs. Crescent shook her head and rubbed her belly. “Oh, dear.”
The vodka warmed Chloe, raising her spirits and her confidence, and loosening her Regency restraint. She knew she needed to take action.
The clock in the hall struck eleven, the women’s curfew. Only the men could be out and about at this hour. As Chloe looked out the window, a star-filled sky seemed to beckon to her. The vodka had dulled her rational side just enough for her to follow her impulses.
“Time for us to turn in,” Mrs. Crescent announced.
Chloe moped toward the doorway, and being rather drunk, she accidentally kicked over the wicker laundry basket. As she put the laundry back in, it hit her.
She could go over to Dartworth, legally—dressed as a man! She hoisted the basket to her hip, balancing it and her candelabra, then leaped up the steps and clicked her door shut in a most ladylike way.
After she stirred the fire to warm up her room, the air of which felt brisk even on this summer night, she lifted a pair of footman’s knee breeches from the laundry basket and held them up against her waist. She wouldn’t really be breaking the rules if she were a “man.” The trick was to bend the rules and not get caught, just as Grace did with drinking her nightly wine, shagging the good-looking footmen, and God only knew what else.
Maybe it was the vodka talking, but after she pulled on the footman’s white stockings, snug-fitting breeches, and brass-buttoned jacket and tucked her hair into the footman’s black hat, she cocked her head in the floor mirror and decided she looked like quite a hot little footman. After days of wearing dresses, the pants felt liberating, sexy even. Chloe smiled in the mirror. If Grace could have closed-door interludes with footmen at the drop of a tricornered hat, then Chloe could go for a walk after eleven o’clock disguised as a man.
She stuffed her bed with pillows, pulled the velvet coverlet over them, and snuffed out the candles. By the light of the fireplace she opened her window to the thick darkness outside. “This is crazy. I came here to win the money and I’m losing my heart to two men.” She said it out loud. There. She’d admitted it. It had to come to this for her to realize.