Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

She’d also never been abroad, and never to England, even though English blue blood ran thick on her mother’s side and she surrounded herself with al things Austen and al things English, from BBC costume dramas to Cadbury chocolates. She had even named her daughter Abigail so she could cal her “Abby” after the famed English abbeys.

Abigail, though, didn’t like to be cal ed “Abby.” She took hip-hop dance classes, programmed her own apps, shot her own YouTube videos, and even filmed and uploaded Chloe’s audition video for this Regency documentary.

“With al the social networking, Twittering, e-mailing, and texting I’m supposed to be doing, I’m twenty-first-century weary and twenty-first-century chal enged,” Chloe told Fiona. “I can’t wait to escape to the 1800s and slow things down for a while.”

“Right.” Fiona held out her waiflike arms toward Chloe’s suitcases. “It’s time to go upstairs and get dressed for your carriage ride to Bridesbridge Place, where you’l be staying. Might I take your baggage?” Her outstretched arm revealed a Celtic ring tattoo around her wrist.

It occurred to Chloe that Fiona might be a little miffed that she had been cast as a servant forced to wait on the likes of her. “No thanks, I have them.”

“As you wish. Fol ow me, please.” Fiona spun around and led Chloe to a narrow wooden staircase with steps smoothed from hundreds of years of wear, and Chloe couldn’t help but imagine the people who must’ve walked the same path over time. It was fitting that her journey would start at an inn, as inns were the crossroads of early 1800s society, where rich and poor intermingled, horses were switched out, ladies could lunch in public, and trysts in various rooms changed destinies.

Chloe tried not to bang the plaster wal s with her heavy bags.

She had baggage, that was for sure. An ex-husband, a stack of overdue bil s, and a house facing foreclosure, al because her antique letterpress business was tanking. Nobody paid for their wedding invitations or anything to be letterpressed and handcrafted on one hundred percent cotton-rag paper anymore.

Letterpress was a dying art, another casualty of the digital age. The bank sent her threatening letters run off on cheap paper and laser-printed in Helvetica, the font she despised the most, because it was sans serif, overused, and, to her, it heralded the reign of the impersonal.

With Chloe’s failing business, Abigail’s entire world was in jeopardy. That brought Chloe here, first and foremost, to compete in this documentary, to put her knowledge of Austen novels to the test and win the $100,000 prize. How else could she ral y that kind of cash so quickly and generate PR for her business at the same time? Perhaps, though, even more than the cash, the documentary offered her one last chance at—

everything.

Fiona looked down on Chloe from the top of the stairs. “How ever did you find out about our film project al the way from America?”

“Oh! The president of the Jane Austen Society of North America sent me the casting-cal information. I’m a lifelong member and win so many of the Austen trivia contests, she thought of me right away. Once I won the audition, wel , how could a lady refuse?”

Chloe might have been born two centuries too late, and in the wrong country no less, but now that she was in her ancestral England, everything was going to work out.

“Do you think you have what it takes to win the prize money?”

“Absolutely. Al things Austen are a passion of mine, and that’s why I decided to do this.” If there was one thing she knew, it was Austen novels.

“What exactly do you intend to do with the money if you win?”

Chloe stopped on the stairs for a moment. “What do you mean ‘if’?”

Fiona tapped her finger on her cheek and smirked.

“I ful y intend to give as much of it as I can to charity.” There. She made it to the second floor, where several closed wooden doors radiated from the landing. “But only after I set aside enough money to secure my daughter’s future.”

Fiona stepped back. “Daughter? Are you married, Miss Parker?”

“Divorced. Four years ago.”

Fiona raised an eyebrow and made a flourish toward a door that, once unlocked and opened, revealed, in a corner of the room, a white floor-length Regency gown hanging from a large three-paneled mahogany dressing screen. “Your gown.”

“Wow.” Chloe gasped, trying to imagine herself in the straight skirting, the smal puff sleeves, and the revealing neckline. She thought they’d put her in something a little more—matronly.

“I didn’t expect you’d have a daughter. How does she feel about her mum being so far off?”

Chloe hadn’t worn such a low neckline in a while. “Um, she actual y made her own plea on my audition video, that’s how much she supports my being here.”

They’d had so much fun filming, along with Chloe’s only employee, Emma. They shot Chloe in a hand-sewn Regency gown, sitting in a horse carriage on Michigan Avenue, sipping coffee from a white paper cup and bemoaning the plight of a modern Janeite.