Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

The seat felt cold and hard. The stable boy stuck the whip into her hands. The horse breathed out of his nostrils and snorted. Terror whipped through her. She’d never driven a horse and buggy! She looked back toward the blazing torches flanking the great front doors at Dartworth Hal . The doors swung open. Two video cams and a boom boy appeared. Henry sidestepped down the stairs and swooped down to pick up her shoe as one of the cameramen barreled down the steps.

“Can you, would you, drive me back to Bridesbridge?” she asked the stable boy. “I’m new and not used to these gigs.”

The stable boy shrugged his shoulders and hopped in next to her. With a flick of his wrist the horses lurched forward, and it wasn’t long before the camera crew was wel behind them.

The moon was floating high in the night sky now, in what would’ve been a perfectly romantic night if she weren’t crouched in front of a horse’s butt dressed in men’s clothes. She was torn between men and money, past and present, bending the rules and breaking them.

They approached Bridesbridge in silence.

“Thanks for the ride. I real y appreciate it.”

The stable boy shrugged his shoulders again, but as soon as Chloe climbed out, she saw the camera crew catching up to her on an ATV.

Just as she thought her little venture in deception was about to blow up in her face, the scul ery door creaked open, Cook held a candlestick into the night, and cal ed out, “Come in, footman! Teapot’s on!”

Cook held the door open wide and Chloe stumbled toward the candlelight and the vague thought of hot tea. She slunk into the kitchen, where a teapot was steaming on the range. The smel of potato peels and yeast enveloped her.

“Nothing to see here,” Cook told her, bolting the door so the camera crew couldn’t get in.

Chloe col apsed into a chair at the pine table. In her wet stockinged feet, the stone floor felt cold.

Cook grimaced at her. Her face looked as ruddy as a new tomato, and Chloe knew she was about to get gril ed but good.

“I should blow the whistle on you right now.” Cook yanked the glasses off Chloe’s face. “You stole my spectacles. Do you know how much spectacles cost an underpaid cook like me?” Chloe’s eyes slowly readjusted to being without the glasses. “Do you know how long it takes to have spectacles made? I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure you don’t care. You’re just an uppity Yank without a thought in the world—”

“I am not!” Chloe interrupted, sinking in her chair. “I’m sorry about the glasses. Real y. It’s just—”

“You don’t fool me for a minute.” Cook popped up and, with her bare hands, pul ed the steaming kettle from the range and set it on the table. The rising steam helped clear Chloe’s head. Cook reached up to retrieve a wooden box of used tea leaves from a shelf, which she had to do because only Grace held the key to the caddy with the fresh tea leaves. Servants had to use sloppy seconds. She darted a blue eye at Chloe. “You don’t fool me, dressed up as a footman either.” She mixed the tea leaves, set them in a perforated spoon atop a ceramic teapot, and poured the boiling water over them. “And you don’t fool me when you’re upstairs dressed in your gowns and gloves and baubles.”

Chloe bowed her head. Cook was right, she was a total fake and could never be an heiress, not even an industrial heiress, from America.

Cook plopped a teacup on the table in front of her. “You’re just un upstart Yank with lots of sil y ideas and no right. No right to an English blue-blood fiancé.”

Why was this woman talking to her like this? she wondered as Cook took down another locked wooden box from the shelf. With another key hanging from her apron she opened this box to reveal a large, cone-shaped loaf of light brown sugar. Dartworth Hal had highly refined white sugar, the most expensive of the times, while here, at Bridesbridge Place, it was light brown. She took the sugar nippers and clipped off two lumps, dropped them into the cup, poured the tea in, and stirred. “Do you know how long the kitchen staff and I slaved over those confections you and Lady Grace bandied about the drawing room like so many tennis bal s?”

“It wasn’t exactly like that. And, yes, I do know how much effort goes into the cooking here. I made the strawberry tart and the syl abub, remember?”

Chloe sank lower in her chair. Even the used tea and not-so-refined sugar smel ed fabulous. “I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t think, did you, now? If you were my charge, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Slowly, guiltily, Chloe stretched out to cup her hands around the warm tea but Cook suddenly whisked the cup away.

“What makes you believe I made this tea for you?” She plunked the teacup down on her side of the table. Her icy blue eyes scanned Chloe’s face for a response. “You used to help us servants out, but now you’ve gotten used to being waited on hand and foot. You feel entitled.”

“That’s not true.”