Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

Steam from his tea rose out of his cup. “It’s true that I’m the heir of Dartworth Hal . 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 dol ars. For me, it was a game until you came along. I’ve wanted to tel you for so long that the bio you read about Sebastian back in Chicago? That profile was—me.”

“Al of it was you? Al this time, you were behind every little—”

“Detail. Not only do I love art, I own a few gal eries. 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 al me. There were clues everywhere. Al 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 al 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’l 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 al .”

She didn’t believe him.

“I just wanted to find a loyal and true love, a kind of modern-day Anne El iot, if you wil . 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?”

“Wel , 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 tel 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 wel ? 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’l 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 stil 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 wil .” If only al 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.”