Thank you for the mousetrap. It was a most thoughtful gesture and I’m hoping the cat will catch the mouse sooner rather than later.
Yours,
Miss Parker
After rolling the blotter over her words, she folded the letter and dipped a black sealing-wax stick into the candle. Smoke uncoiled into the air. The melting wax perfumed the air with sweetness. The wax dripped slowly onto the paper, forming a liquid circle. Brass seal in hand, she pushed the letter P into the soft wax. It was much more satisfying than clicking the send button!
“Fiona,” Chloe called out down the hallway. Fiona was never far. “Please have this delivered to Mr. Wrightman immediately.”
Fiona took the letter and curtsied.
“Wait. No. I can’t do this. Please give that back to me, Fiona. Sorry to have bothered you.” It was the ladylike thing to do. She’d have to thank him in person, the next time he chose to see her.
Fiona handed the letter back, and without a second thought, Chloe tossed it into her fire. With that, she closed her bedchamber door, stripped off her silk gown, donned a lacy dressing gown, pulled all the pins out of her hair to let it down, and stood at the window.
Her eyes went all glassy as she imagined Sebastian serenading her. He would toss a bouquet of red rosebuds up to her and she would catch it—
An hour and forty-five minutes later, she sat at her open window, flicking her cheek with the quill pen. She couldn’t see Grace and Sebastian anywhere anymore. The hall clock had struck one ages ago. Two o’clock and it was archery time.
She watched a footman and driver mount a carriage below and drive it off toward Dartworth Hall in the afternoon heat. Footmen dressed in long-sleeved coats and wigs carried big wooden tables and wooden chairs out to the lawn for the archery meet while the maids balanced wooden trays loaded with pitchers of lemonade and raspberry puddings ringed with rose petals.
Well, some music would’ve been nice. She didn’t realize how much she’d miss the radio, her CDs, her LP collection, and yes, even iTunes. Sometimes it was just so—quiet here. And the fact that Sebastian had sent her a gift of a cat put her in a celebratory mood. He must have some feelings for her!
She sauntered over to the four-poster bed, vaulted onto the mattress, and swung around one of the bedposts. A song popped into her head. She hadn’t heard anything other than the pianoforte and harp in a while now, but she started singing and swinging her hips to the thumping bass in her head. Soon she was swirling around the bedpost in her corset and stockings, pulling white gloves past her elbows, dipping her head back and letting her hair sway, tickling her legs with her quill pen, cavorting around like a pole dancer, when outside her window, down in the semicircular drive—something moved. She squinted. It was Sebastian! He was in his top hat, gazing up at her with his binoculars.
“Oh God.” She froze for a moment, her stocking leg wrapped around the bedpost.
She heard something trickling—water. The cat was peeing near her evening shoes!
Sebastian stepped forward and back, adjusting the focus on his binoculars. She unwrapped herself from the post, slipped off the bed, and whipped the velvet curtains closed, like a bad puppet show. A pole dance wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind. Something just slightly more ladylike was on the agenda, like flirting from the open window with her hair down, because she looked good with her hair down, much better than the Regency updo Sebastian had associated her with, and she wanted Sebastian to see her that way. Finally, she opened the curtains to say, “It’s huge in America, you know, pole-dance exercise classes.”
He smirked. “I can see why. Please, don’t stop on my account. I find it most—diverting. Carry on.”
Chloe just laughed. “I have to get ready for the archery competition now.”
“You are on my list, Miss Parker. I will be calling on you and you’d best be at home when I arrive!” He bowed and left.
Chloe sank down on the mahogany chaise, putting her head in her hands. Hard to be a lady when the lady was a tramp!
Someone knocked on her door. She snatched her chocolate-colored archery gown from the bed and held it up against herself as if she were sizing it up.
It was Fiona, and Chloe breathed a sigh of relief.
“Time to dress for the archery competition,” her maid said, then gasped at the sight of Chloe’s hair. “Why did you take your hair down, Miss Parker? You know full well it will be half an hour to pin it up again.”
Fiona pinned up Chloe’s hair so quickly and so badly that, right in the middle of the archery competition, when Chloe was already down several points and trying to focus on the red bull’s-eye in the middle of the target, she felt the updo going down.
She kept dwelling on the pole dance. A section of hair fell on the nape of her neck. It startled her into releasing the bowstring sooner than she wanted, and just like that, another arrow bounced off the outer edge of the target and fell to the grass. No doubt the fifteen Accomplishment Points would be going to Grace or Julia at this rate.
“Concentrate!” Mrs. Crescent mouthed to her from a wooden chair on the grassy sideline. And then she mouthed something else, but Chloe never could read lips. Sebastian, Henry, and the chaperones sat under the shade of an old beech tree, watching Grace, Julia, and Chloe face off. Fifi and two greyhounds were asleep under the wooden table where Fiona and some of the other servants were pouring lemonade and stacking Bath buns.
Chloe propped up her lancewood bow, almost as tall as she was, next to her, while she avoided eye contact with Sebastian. She tightened the laces on her brown suede archery gloves. A servant gathered up her misfired arrows and handed them to her like so many broken dreams.
Grace readied her bow.
“Ladies . . .” The butler stepped in front of the camera. “May I interrupt for a moment?”
Grace sighed, relaxed her stance, and scratched her collarbone.
Sunburn, Chloe thought. Soon it would be peeling!
“I’d like to remind you,” he said, looking first at Chloe, then at Grace. “This is the final round of our archery competition today—”
A mosquito buzzed around Chloe’s eyes. She snapped her eyelids closed for a minute, brushed it away, and when she opened them again, she accidentally looked straight at Sebastian, who winked and smiled. At least, it looked like he winked. Anyway, he was smiling—at her. He had this way, even with the gorgeous Grace and alluring Julia around, of making her feel as if she were the one. The only one. She swung her lancewood bow at her side.
“Ahem . . .” The butler cleared his throat. “The winner of today’s competition will not only earn fifteen Accomplishment Points, but will also win an exclusive outing with Mr. Wrightman. Let the games begin.” He raised his arm for the competition to continue.
Chloe’s hands shook.
Grace flashed her white teeth in a fake smile, and Chloe noticed that her teeth somehow seemed whiter than they’d been yesterday. “Another excursion with Mr. Wrightman? I’ll shoot for that.” Grace pulled her bowstring back, and with a snap she nailed it, another bull’s-eye.
Chloe’s hands began to sweat in her suede gloves.
“Miss Parker, may I ask you a question?” Henry bowed in her direction. Mrs. Crescent was standing right by his side.
Chloe didn’t want to get sidetracked by Henry. Not now. “We can talk after the meet, I’m sure, Mr. Wrightman.” She curtsied to soften the blow of her refusal.
“This might help you, Miss Parker. Come over here with us,” Henry said. He guided her toward the lemonade table and handed her a glassful. Her hands shook and when she took a sip, the glass clinked against her teeth. Henry politely ignored this blooper, but the camera got it. She took a big gulp, thinking that what she really needed at the moment was a vodka lemonade.