Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

Someone in a passing car tossed a white cardboard coffee cup out the window and over a hedgerow. The blacktop turned to cobblestone as she crossed what must’ve been a stone bridge from the Roman era. Normal y, Chloe would’ve loved this quaint vil age with its cobblestoned main street and whitewashed, half-timbered cottage storefronts where cars seem oddly out of place. As she read the sign at the end of the bridge, HUNTSFORDSHIRE, she walked right into a woman pushing a jogging strol er in her workout gear and talking on her cel .

“So sorry,” the young mom said. The baby looked up at Chloe with big blue eyes.

She had to get back to Abigail. What was she doing?

“Are you quite al right?” The young mom took the cel from her ear.

Chloe nodded yes, even though she real y wasn’t.

“Sorry again.” The mom pushed the strol er on.

Chloe, out of habit, curtsied. She curtsied!

The mom’s eyes narrowed and she looked Chloe up and down, navigating her precious baby around in a wide circumference as if Chloe were some kind of lunatic.

Her head throbbed with the onslaught of car engines, a train, honking horns, voices, and car radios. Raindrops fel , and umbrel as of al different sizes and colors popped up al around her.

None of the men bowed to her. The women didn’t curtsy. Nobody even looked at her, or if they did, they quickly looked away out of politeness.

She was the raving lunatic homeless woman on the street.

Pelting rain dripped down her face and neck and probably by now had smudged her eyebrow liner made from candle ashes. Even in the rain, though, the aroma of scones spil ed out of a bakery. She stood in front of a tearoom and coffeehouse under a dripping awning, looking at a reflection in the window of her sodden self. The antibride with a child hidden in her attic.

She pressed her hand to the window. She needed a plane ticket home, but first—coffee. It didn’t even have to be a double espresso latte, but she didn’t have any money. For the first time in a long time, she ached for a credit card, and couldn’t believe she cut up al her credit cards in a fit of rage al those years ago.

A young man sat inside the tearoom, holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in white paper. For the first time in forever, a man with flowers didn’t make her moon over Winthrop. She smiled. They were better off, the two of them, without each other. She had left him for good reason, and now she final y felt the strength to fight him in the upcoming custody trial. She could do it—and win.

The young man in the tearoom gave Chloe a hostile glance; no doubt she looked crazy. She stepped back and the rain from the awning dripped heavily on her. He was waiting for someone, because he had a life, a real life, with real people in it. Al these people had a life. She had nothing.

Except for Abigail, who counted on her for everything. And as far as that went, she had blown it. She’d be coming home without the prize money.

What she would be coming home with, though, was a resolve to leave the past behind—al of it—even the nineteenth century, and that was worth a lot more than a hundred grand.

She darted under a covered bus stop where an old woman sat in her green trench coat with a cloth market basket ful of lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Lettuce! Green lettuce helped digestion. She craved lettuce. She’d trade the gown off her back for a chopped salad.

She sat on the bench next to the woman, wiped her glasses with her wet gloves, put them back on, and looked up the street, where, high atop a hil in the distance, Dartworth Hal stood. It would’ve made a great postcard. Hel , it probably was one and probably was sold in the shops along this street.

“I can’t believe—” she said out loud, like a homeless woman.

The old woman looked at her, then quickly looked at her watch.

“I threw it al away.”

The woman pushed back her plastic rain scarf. “Threw what away?” She eyed Chloe up and down; she was curious.

“Dartworth Hal . The prize money. Everything.”

The woman gave Chloe a tissue from her trench pocket, which only reminded Chloe of Henry and his handkerchiefs. Chloe wiped her dripping nose.

“Are you part of that film going on up there?”

Chloe nodded. “They wanted me to marry him. But I couldn’t. Even though it was just for TV. I couldn’t.”

The old woman had kind green eyes. “Marry who?”

“Why, Sebastian, of course. Sebastian Wrightman.”

The old woman looked confused. She stood up. “Who? Ah. Here’s my bus. But Dartworth Hal doesn’t belong to anyone named Sebastian.” The bus lumbered up. “Henry Wrightman is the master of Dartworth Hal .”

“What?” Chloe clenched her pelisse around her chest; her lips quivered.

The bus doors opened and the woman stepped up the first step in her black flats. “I would say it’s a good thing you didn’t marry that Sebastian—”

“Door’s closing!” the annoyed driver yel ed, and the doors snapped closed.