Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

“The crew searched al your bags and suitcases, Miss Parker, and only one item qualifies to go with you; everything else wil go under lock and key for three weeks.”

Was she more shocked by the fact that they searched her bags or that she could only bring one thing? It was hard to tel .

“You can bring this.” Fiona held up a red velvet bag and pul ed out Chloe’s diamond tiara, a family heirloom and her good-luck charm. “It’l be perfect for the bal .”

“So there wil be a bal ?”

“Yes, of course.”

Fiona handed the velvet bag to Chloe.

“My grandmother gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday.” Chloe had worn it in the audition video, as wel as the Jane Austen Society bal s she’d attended, but she’d never danced in it.

“It’s beautiful, and wil fit in your reticule. Now, if you wil simply hand me your purse.”

Chloe handed over her purse, minus her phone and charger.

Fiona held out her palm.

“What?”

“Everything is historical y accurate, Miss Parker. You know you can’t bring your phone. Regardless, there isn’t any electricity.”

Chloe couldn’t even process the thought of no electricity. “No phone? Not even just for texting or e-mailing?”

Fiona put a hand on her hip, or what would’ve been her hip if she had any. “It’l be here, safe under lock and key.”

Chloe sank down on the chaise, but the busk kept her from slumping over. “I can’t do this. I need to talk with Abigail.”

Fiona smiled. “Not to worry. Everyone has a direct line of communication through George for any emergency, day or night. Your family has George’s phone numbers. Send her a text that you’l write. You said yourself you’re keen on writing by hand. She can write you back. It’l be—

sweet.”

Chloe keyed in a last message to Abigail: “Wil snail mail u. Snail back. Can’t take phone. Cal George Maxton in emergency. Love u. B good.”

She hadn’t felt it til now, but she real y was across the ocean, thousands of miles from home.

Fiona zipped the phone in a plastic bag, just like al the rest of her things, as if Chloe were going to jail. The zip sliced through the air and the sudden silence of the room closed in as Fiona whisked the bag away.

Then the phone rang inside the bag, breaking the silence.

Chloe got goose bumps. What if it was Abigail and what if she couldn’t bear not to be in touch with her mom and what if she wanted her to come home—

“Wait! Stop!” Chloe hustled after Fiona, her boobs jostling in her stays and the cameramen jostling after her.

Fiona stood at a metal safe, closing the door, turning the key.

“Stop, Fiona! I need my phone! Give me my phone!!”

Chapter 3

M iss Parker,” George said as he raked his auburn hair with his hand, “A cal from your daughter asking if she can go to a pop concert does not constitute an emergency.”

Chloe had hunted George down and found him in his production trailer, which was set up in a green behind the inn. Thankful y, he’d instructed Fiona to retrieve Chloe’s phone, and he al owed her to return the missed cal from Abigail. Abigail had cal ed merely to ask if she could go to a concert with Winthrop and Marcia, and reluctantly Chloe acquiesced. The competition for Abigail’s affections had begun in earnest with Chloe half a world away and incommunicado.

Coffee permeated the air of George’s trailer, good coffee, the kind Chloe didn’t get on the eight-hour flight.

George stood in front of three high-def TVs mounted to the wal , dividing his attention between Chloe and his iPhone.

“It’s not an emergency to you, George,” Chloe said. She covered his iPhone screen with her hand for a moment. “She’s not your daughter. At her age I was reading The Secret Garden. I didn’t go to my first concert until I was a teenager. It took a lot of thought for me to say yes.”

Chloe, stil shaken, and stirred, propped herself up against the floor-to-ceiling wine refrigerator. “I guess I overreacted to having my cel phone confiscated for three weeks. I’ve never been out of touch with her like this. I’m a single mom—” She looked straight into the camera filming her, sucked in her cheeks, and edited herself to become more restrained and guarded as a single woman of the era should be.

“Are you sure you’re strong enough to forgo modern technology for more than a fortnight?” George asked.

Fortnight. She loved that word.

She was happy to leave everything but her cel phone. Her pantalets, she noticed, were sticking to her thighs. “Of course.”

“Did you real y read al the fine print in the contract you signed? Because this shouldn’t be such a surprise to you.”