“Yes. With nineteenth-century silversmithing tools, no less. It was a bit of a challenge to get it right.”
She couldn’t even see the seam where he’d welded it together. “Thank you. You are—talented.” She tucked the tiara back into the velvet bag and steeled herself. “But this isn’t what I need from you.”
The waitress brought a fragrant pot of tea, a plate of sliced lemons, sugars, and a pitcher of cream. The stack of scones came next and a dish of clotted cream so thick it took everything in Chloe’s power not to scoop it up like ice cream. She was famished. The waitress set Chloe’s white paper cup of coffee with the familiar plastic lid right where her plate should be.
Henry swept the blond hair out of the corner of his eye. “Please bring the lady a plate for the scones. Perhaps a paper one, if you have it. Pity, but she’s not staying.”
Chloe held back a smile. After all that weak tea and coffee that tasted as if it really were hundreds of years old, this coffee tasted amazing. Still, jokes and good coffee aside, she didn’t want to get sidetracked. “The truth. Spill it.”
Steam from his tea rose out of his cup. “It’s true that I’m the heir of Dartworth Hall. I’m a doctor, but I don’t need to work for the money. I do it because I enjoy helping people. I’m forty years old. My friend George came up with this crazy idea for a TV show because women kept coming after me for my money. But you—you forfeited the money. A hundred thousand dollars. For me, it was a game until you came along. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long that the bio you read about Sebastian back in Chicago? That profile was—me.”
“All of it was you? All this time, you were behind every little—”
“Detail. Not only do I love art, I own a few galleries. You already know I’m a Jane Austen fan and a bird-watcher. I’m also an avid traveler and architecture buff.”
“Everything was a lie,” Chloe said, shaking her head.
“It wasn’t a lie—it was all me. There were clues everywhere. All laid out for you.”
“What clues? I didn’t see any clues.”
“No, you didn’t. The poem, for example. That was a clue.”
“If that’s your idea of a clue, then you’re clueless. I’m not Sherlock Holmes here. I’m just a girl. A girl who’s been played by Sebastian. Ultimately, though, I hold you responsible.”
Henry looked down.
Chloe clenched her fists. She wanted to swear at him up and down, but the Regency Miss Parker kept the modern Chloe’s mouth in check. “This was all an experiment of some kind. I was right about you when I first met you. Who do you think you are that you can just put people in a petri dish and watch them squirm under a microscope?”
“It was an experiment, of sorts, and I realize now it was wrong of me.”
“I’ll say! Hearts were broken! Dreams were dashed!”
“You’ve taught me. I was wrong.”
Chloe shook her head. “Another thing I don’t get: Why keep Grace? Why send Julia and Imogene home?”
Henry looked into her eyes. “George had me keep her on. For production value.”
“Is that why you kept me on?!”
“No—no, not at all.”
She didn’t believe him.
“I just wanted to find a loyal and true love, a kind of modern-day Anne Elliot, if you will. But it was a crazy idea.”
The waitress brought a Wedgwood china plate rimmed in gold.
Chloe slathered clotted cream on her scone and not even the cream at the Drake could compare. She dabbed her mouth with her napkin and calmed herself. “So. If Dartworth is yours and Sebastian’s profile is yours, then who is Sebastian?”
“A distant cousin. Who wants to break into the film industry.”
Chloe looked up from plastering another scone with two inches of clotted cream, and looked at Henry.
“He’s—an actor?”
“Well, he wants to be, but—”
“That explains his lines. He always knew exactly what to say. He’s a damn actor. No wonder he never told me what kind of an artist he was. He’s a scam artist!”
“Those lines were true—they were coming from me—Miss Parker—”
Chloe took the scone dripping with clotted cream and pushed it into his face, turning it a few times just for effect.
The tearoom went silent while Henry wiped cream from his face with his napkin.
“I deserve that, I know. But do you know that I love you? It’s not a game anymore. There’s more. I want to tell you everything. Your ‘Cook,’ Lady Anne, is my mother—”
Clotted cream covered his eyebrows and Chloe got a flash of him, decades from now, as an old man with white eyebrows.
“So she lied to me as well? Guess what? I lied, too. A lot. I’m divorced. I have a little girl at home. How’s that for a deal breaker?”
She put a hand on her hip.
He wiped the clotted cream from his eyebrows. “I know about your daughter. And your divorce. They’re not deal breakers.”
She took a long, slow sip of her coffee. “I need to go. I’ll be taking your horse.”
Henry bowed. “Of course. Because that’s what you do best. You run away.”
If her coffee didn’t taste so damn good, she’d pour the rest of it on him. Her hand quivered with the thought.
“I’m not running away. For once I’m running to something. My real life. In the real world. Where people are—real!” She stamped her calfskin pump to no effect.
Coffee in one hand, tiara in the other, she burst into the . . . sunshine? How dare the sun shine now?
Henry stood in the doorway, his greatcoat draped over his shoulders. “Despite everything—I think what we have is real. It’s a real beginning—”
In half a second she untied the horse, tied the velvet bag to the saddle horn, and mounted western style, her gown hiked up to her thighs, coffee cup still in hand. The wet saddle chafed against her legs.
“You’re no more real to me than a character in a Jane Austen novel—no—a character from a bad film adaptation. You played me. I played you. We never had anything real.”
She tossed her empty coffee cup into a trash can on the sidewalk and tossed her head. “And we never will.” If only all this could’ve been caught on camera.
Henry moved closer to her. “I’m not a character from a book. I’m a real person. Who makes real mistakes. And so are you. But look what came out of it—we’ve found each other—”
“I don’t think I found anybody—except, as the old cliché goes—myself.”
She pulled on the reins to turn the horse around. After starting up the street, she took one last peek at Henry, who was running after her in his riding boots. She brought the horse to a canter. She didn’t need Sebastian or Henry or Winthrop or any man. She was going home—home to the twenty-first century, where she would ramp up her letterpress business with Web capability. Ideas on how to bring the business into the modern world tumbled around in her.
She soon realized she was cantering up the wrong side of the road. Once on the left side of the street, she brought the horse into a brisk gallop. Cars and trucks swerved around her, some drivers honked, others stared, and still others swore, but she had her plan. She couldn’t wait to put it all into action.
Without looking back, she galloped out of the only English village she’d ever been in, without even a souvenir T-shirt for Abigail that said ENGLAND on it, without having had a pint in the local pub, and without a clue as to what she would do once she got back to Bridesbridge.
Chapter 22
The headlights from the black English taxicab bounced up the gravel drive in front of Bridesbridge. Its rubber tires made a determined crunching noise in the dark. Chloe had called herself a cab on her dad’s BlackBerry.
George had tried to stop her. “You outed us. You found Mr. Wrightman. Henry wants to grant you the prize money. You earned it.”
She looked down on George from her high horse. The cameras were rolling. “I don’t want Henry’s money, George. Give it to Mrs. Crescent for William.”