And, just as a joke for the camera, Chloe pretended she had a knife in her hands, Norman Bates style, and she acted as if she were stabbing Grace repeatedly in the back. The camerawoman did her best not to laugh.
Grace stood at the sideboard, hands on her hips. “Ah. Cold mutton and cow’s tongue. My favorites.”
Chloe remembered Sebastian’s calling card fluttering to the floorboards, but she didn’t remember fainting. Really.
Chapter 15
Chloe was hoping that the top half of Grace’s boobs would get good and sunburned, because of course, sunblock didn’t exist in 1812.
Her bonnet trimmed and five Accomplishment Points garnered, Chloe pretended to do her embroidery as she spied on Sebastian and Grace through the casement window in the drawing room at Bridesbridge Place. The couple bobbed up and down in the rowboat on the reflecting pond.
Since Chloe had been MIA while out bird-watching with Henry, and Grace had finished embroidering her fireplace screen and had more than enough points for another outing, she was granted the time with Sebastian. Julia, too, had finished her screen and was slated for an outing with him before the archery competition that afternoon.
Julia had fifty Accomplishment Points, but Grace and Chloe only had forty.
“Lady Grace isn’t using her parasol,” Chloe reported to Mrs. Crescent. “And where’s her chaperone, anyway?” She pricked her index finger with the needle. “Ouch!” A drop of blood bubbled up. She flung the needlework to the table and sucked on her fingertip.
Mrs. Crescent was lounging on the settee with Fifi at her side and a leather-bound book in her hands. “You have less than two days to finish that fireplace screen.” She closed the book. “You won’t get any Accomplishment Points for it and you’ll get another, worse task, like mending stockings and stays.”
Chloe stomped over to the pianoforte, where she banged out a few notes. Then she trudged over to the globe, lifted it from its wooden stand, and turned it. She found England, traced the outline of the tiny country with her pricked finger, and set the globe back in the stand.
Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly. “What you need is to win the archery competition this afternoon. Then we’ll all be on our way.”
“Oh, I’ll win all right. I have to!” She needed more time alone with Sebastian.
“That’s the spirit. Now finish up the screen.”
Chloe pressed her nose against the window. “They’re supposed to be bird-watching. Why aren’t they bird-watching?” She picked up her needlework. She set it back down.
Mrs. Crescent stood and rubbed the small of her back. “Lady Grace has no interest in birds. You know that as well as I do.”
Chloe cut a deck of historically accurate oversized cards at the game table, which was draped in a maroon silk tablecloth.
Mrs. Crescent picked up Fifi. “I’m just glad to see you’re back full force. We need to stay focused.”
The cards fell from her hands in a spray on the floor.
Fiona knocked. “Delivery for Miss Parker.”
It looked like some sort of a picnic basket. Fiona set the basket down on the game table and gave Chloe a note, sealed with a blue wax W.
“Thank you,” Chloe said, holding the note in her hand as if it were a winning lottery ticket.
As Fiona curtsied and left, Fifi leaped out of Mrs. Crescent’s arms, jumped up on a chair at the gaming table, and began sniffing the basket. Mrs. Crescent leaned toward the letter.
Chloe broke the seal and read aloud:
“Dear Miss Parker,
Please accept this mousetrap with my regards. I do hope it will catch the mouse in your bedchamber. Looking forward to time together again soon.
Yours,
Mr. Wrightman”
“Mousetrap?” Mrs. Crescent looked sideways at the basket. Fifi started growling.
Chloe thought she saw the basket move, but then again, it could’ve just been her excitement.
“Henry must’ve told him about the mouse.” Chloe held the note up to her nose and breathed in. She showed it to Mrs. Crescent. “Look. He signed it ‘yours.’” She hugged the note close for a moment. No mere e-mail could ever surpass a handwritten note.
Mrs. Crescent rubbed her belly and swallowed. “He quite fancies you, doesn’t he.”
Chloe unhooked the basket lid and a young tabby cat peeked out.
“Oh!” Chloe held her arms out to the cat, but Fifi barked and the cat sprang to the writing desk, almost knocking over an ink jar. Fifi hurled himself at the desk in a barking frenzy. The cat arched his back and hissed at Fifi, who snarled and scratched at the desk leg.
Mrs. Crescent scooped up her dog. “Shush, Fifi!”
Chloe whisked the ink jars from the writing desk, but the cat snapped the quill pen in his mouth and held it there like a rose between his teeth. Chloe had to think of Abigail, who loved cats, but never had one as a pet. Chloe missed Abigail so much she had to steady herself against the desk for a moment.
Fifi growled from Mrs. Crescent’s arms as she waddled to the door. “I’m going to rest before the archery meet this afternoon. Now, I suggest you take your mousetrap to your bedchamber, inform Fiona of the new arrival so that she can provide food and a litter box, and use this time to complete your needlework. Enough dawdling!”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “I’m no good at needlework.”
Mrs. Crescent pointed a finger at her. “To win this competition, you need to do more than act like a lady. You need to be one.” With that, she took off.
Chloe picked up the cat and slid the quill from his teeth. She thought about sending Sebastian a thank-you note, but she couldn’t write to a man unless they were engaged. Or could she? Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility did.
She took the cat up to her bedchamber, shutting him in the room with her. She’d never had a cat before. And no man had ever given her anything with more of a pulse than a potted petunia. He must’ve really trusted her; after all, he had no idea that an eight-year-old girl thrived under her care.
She plopped herself down on the red velvet-cushioned stool at her writing desk and ceremoniously lit a tallow candle with a piece of kindling from the fire in her fireplace. The cat paced near the door. She took a piece of thick writing paper from the shelf and it felt almost like cloth. Seizing her bottle of rose water from the dressing table, she sprinkled a couple droplets onto the paper. Mmm—text messages never smelled like roses!
She plucked the goose quill from the penholder, and—was it her sex-starved imagination, or was this pen totally phallic? She touched the hand-cut nib, which was spliced up the center, and ran her hand all the way up the bare shaft to the few feather barbs left at the top. Henry had told her most quills came from the gray goose, and “pen” derived from penna, Latin for “feather.” They were made from the stiff flight feathers on the leading edge of the bird’s wing. Henry, schmenry. The only reason why she thought about him at all was that she spent the most time with him by default, and that had to change.
She flipped the silver top off the crystal ink pot, dipped the quill into the ink, and wiped the shaft of the pen on the rim, as Mrs. Crescent had taught her. The ink permeated the nib and she’d just written the word Dear when the ink ran out and the cat jumped onto the paper. Paw prints and ink were smeared all over. At least she no longer got ink up to her elbows like the first time she tried to write with a quill. She started all over again, with fresh paper, and wrote in a most ladylike tone:
Dear Mr. Wrightman,