But didn’t most Regency proposals take place in the daytime? In a parlor or drawing room, after all the sisters and nosy mothers had been whisked away? At least, that was what happened in the novels and costume dramas. This meeting had to be aboveboard. Sebastian wouldn’t jeopardize her position on the show, would he?
Chloe repeated the poem again in her mind. She still couldn’t decipher it.
As the mantua-maker cuffed the sleeves of the shimmery silk pelisse, Chloe watched Grace, Julia, and Henry play “London Bridge Is Falling Down” with the littlest boys. She could see them mouth the words: “Falling down. Falling down. London Bridge is falling down. My fair lady.”
That was the problem with wearing glasses. You began to see things clearly.
Chapter 18
“Ladies, there are two invitations and three of you,” said the butler in the music room at Bridesbridge on Friday evening. The women had displayed their talents on the musical instrument of their choice. Grace played the harp, as it was the most expensive instrument, and it accentuated her higher-class status. Not to mention the fact that harp players had the added bonus of being able to flash some ankle while they performed. Julia played a complicated Regency piece on the pianoforte. Chloe attempted a Mozart selection on the pianoforte—one that she’d played at a Christmas piano recital when she was twelve.
Grace and Julia garnered fifteen Accomplishment Points while Chloe earned five for effort.
She had to admit to herself that some time-management software might’ve come in handy for such ongoing projects as the piano practicing, the needlework, and remembering to shake her vial of ink three times a day.
Chloe stood between Grace and Julia, who tapped her toe on the Aubusson carpet. Grace feigned a yawn. Chloe felt flushed and fanned herself. Mrs. Crescent, who lounged in a green tufted Grecian couch, looked down at Fifi and petted him.
The butler looked straight into the cameras. “Before we proceed, I would like to remind Mr. Wrightman that Miss Tripp has ninety Accomplishment Points, Lady Grace seventy, and Miss Parker forty-five. Mr. Wrightman has to take into account that Miss Parker failed to finish her needlework task even after a request to extend the deadline was granted.”
Chloe felt the sting of that failure and she really cringed to know that the public announcement of it was being filmed. She didn’t want Abigail to see it, for one thing.
“All three of you have gowns for the ball already made and fitted,” said the butler. He rose up on his toes in his gold-buckled shoes. “But, only two of you will be invited to attend. If you are not chosen, you must immediately pack your trunks and you will be sent home tonight. The two that remain will be attending the ball tomorrow.”
More than ever, Chloe wanted to stay. Surely, Sebastian wouldn’t have sent her that note if he didn’t want her to stay.
“Mr. Wrightman, if you please.”
The butler stood aside, and Sebastian came forward. He looked elegant in his dark coat and breeches and a white cravat that showed off his tanned face.
Sebastian lifted an envelope from the salver. “Lady Grace.”
It was like a guillotine slicing down. Chloe’s chances were suddenly cut in half. It was going to be Julia or her. Even though the note he’d given her had raised her hopes, this had all occurred before her pathetic pianoforte performance, and anything could happen now. Fear of being sent home ripped through her. She realized the worst had happened: she was falling for Sebastian!
Grace curtsied as Sebastian bowed, and the ostrich feather in her turban brushed up against him. Why her?! Chloe fumed internally.
Sebastian gazed at Chloe and Julia, as if even at that moment, he hadn’t yet decided which one of them he would choose. Chloe imagined having to go home to Abigail. Abigail would be thrilled to see her, but also crushed to know that her mother had been sent home. She’d be even more crestfallen to know that her whole life would have to change. They’d have to downsize, move out of the city, and Winthrop, being in a better financial situation, might even be granted the holiday and summer custody he wanted.
“Miss—” Sebastian paused for the cameras. He glanced at the envelope with the red wax W and then at the two women. “Miss Parker.”
She could almost hear the French horns blaring triumph in her head. She felt tantalizingly close to victory, despite her pianoforte fiasco, because she was to meet Sebastian at the ice house. She said her good-byes to Julia, incredulous that Sebastian would let her go and Grace stay.
“Ladies . . .” The butler looked at Chloe and Grace. “Mr. Wrightman will see you at the ball tomorrow night.”
Sebastian bowed, Chloe and Grace curtsied, and Chloe watched Julia as she didn’t bounce, but shuffled into the foyer on Sebastian’s arm.
“Good riddance to her,” Grace said, and brushed her hands off as if she’d just gotten rid of an annoying fly.
The final task was the ball, and Saturday morning, Chloe put herself in the capable hands of Mrs. Crescent, Fiona, and even her chambermaid and a few random servants to help dress her, arrange her hair, fasten her jewelry, and make her up for the evening. She was as diligent as a bride dressing for her wedding, and it took a village.
Mrs. Crescent, alas, would not be going to the ball. She had to stay at Bridesbridge for fear of slipping in the mud and a superstition that a full moon might induce labor. Chloe would be under the dark wing of Grace’s chaperone for the night, but even this didn’t daunt her. Finally, the anticipated moment arrived.
Lit by the moon, the remaining ladies of Bridesbridge Place, Chloe, Grace, and Grace’s chaperone, stepped out of their carriage in front of Dartworth Hall. Dressed in their silk gowns, ostrich feathers, and elbow-length white gloves, they stepped into mud thick as chocolate frosting from the day’s rain.
The rain and mud, combined with the lack of Julia’s sporting presence, not to mention Mrs. Crescent’s, conspired to dampen Chloe’s spirits, but she smiled in anticipation of her first ball in England, surrounded by English people with their English accents. And she quickened at the prospect of dancing with Sebastian even as she wondered at what to expect at the ice house.
After Grace and her chaperone were helped out of the chaise, the footman handed Chloe out and helped her balance on the steel platform pattens strapped to her pale pink ballroom slippers.
Chloe looked back at Bridesbridge Place. She missed Mrs. Crescent, however pregnant and persnickety she might have been. How could she pass this final test—the ball—on her own?
Cameras were everywhere and it made her uneasy. Granted, going with Grace meant she got to ride in the chaise-and-four. Still. Still, she was going to the ball with one of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, and she knew it.
Grace, in her wedding-white gown, looked down on Chloe from the first landing on the stairs. Chloe stretched her bejeweled neck toward the bright open doors of Dartworth Hall. She lifted her silk gown and pelisse and took a deep breath. Back home, everybody was eating cheeseburgers because it was the Fourth of July, but she got to go to a ball in one of the grandest country estates in England.
She teetered her way to the palatial staircase a good four inches off the ground in her pattens. They made a sucking sound every time she took a step in the mud. Everyone laughed as a footman’s shoe stuck in the mud and he had to hop around in his stocking foot. How would she trek to the ice house in all this? And who knew it rained so much in England?
The maids ushered the women into the ladies’ cloakroom, where one of them took off Chloe’s Greek-key-trimmed pelisse and her pattens. The maid even retied her ballroom slippers, fastening the spaghetti-thin pink straps around her ankles a little too tight, but Chloe didn’t complain.