Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

“Sweetheart, I have to go. I’l cal you soon, though, and you know I’m thinking about you every minute, right?”

“I know. You tel me every day, jeez!”

They both smooched into the phone and hung up. Chloe hurried across the room to Fiona, who was struggling with the fire. The cameramen fol owed her, and Chloe looked back at them, adjusting to the creepy feeling of being watched, fol owed, and filmed.

Fiona put another log on while Chloe took the antique red-andgold fireplace bel ows and, as if she’d been doing this her whole life, fanned the fire.

Fiona eased the bel ows out of Chloe’s hands. “Much obliged, but it’s not your place to tend the fire. Might we get you dressed now?”

“Of course.”

Chloe put her hands on her hips and spoke to the camera crew. “But only if you leave, okay?”

Not a one of them said a word.

Fiona ushered Chloe back behind the screen. “The crew cannot speak to us, only George can. They’l stay on the other side of the screen and won’t film you until your chemise is on and I’m lacing up your stays, or corset, as you may know it. They’l film from the back at that point. Agreed?”

Like she had a choice? She nodded in agreement.

Chloe undressed quickly so Fiona couldn’t do it for her. She relinquished her bra and green cotton panties.

“This is your chemise, also cal ed a shift, and you wear it under al your gowns.” Fiona swooshed it over Chloe’s head.

It was sleeveless, grazed her kneecaps, and was so thin it almost wasn’t there.

Fiona slid Chloe’s arms into the stays, began to tighten the laces, and continued her narrative. “Regency women wore stays,” she said with a pause.

The cameras came in on cue, and Chloe got goose bumps just thinking about being filmed in, essential y, her 1812 underwear.

“Regency stays, unlike the Victorian corset, weren’t boned, and weren’t meant to cinch the waist, but were intended to push the bosom up and out like a shelf.”

“I’l take whatever help I can get!” Chloe said into one of the cameras, but the cameraman didn’t crack a smile.

“You’l have shorter stays, too, for your more athletic pursuits, but today, posture is everything and you’re wearing this longer one, with the busk.”

Chloe remembered reading about busks at some point, but never real y understood what they were or how they worked.

Fiona wielded the busk, a smooth, flat piece of wood, kind of like a rounded ruler, and slid it into a sewn-in pocket down the front of Chloe’s stays, from the middle of her cleavage to her bel y button.

“But how am I going to—”

“Bend at the waist? You won’t. You’l have to bend at the hip.”

Chloe was thinking more about the logistics of, shal we say, bending to go to the bathroom with a ten-inch ruler down the middle of her chest.

Fiona continued the lacing, and Chloe grew impatient, thinking she’d have to go through this every morning and night. The numerous and tiny eyelet holes were just that: holes without reinforcements. What a pain! She looked longingly at her simple bra with the hooks, folded neatly and in a plastic storage bag on the chaise.

The lacing-up gave her time to dwel on things she didn’t want to think about, like the fact that she’d be in a dating show on international TV and no doubt the Internet, and, worse, that she’d have a stepmom competing for her daughter’s affections. That roiled her.

“I don’t understand,” she said out loud. “Why aren’t there reinforcements for these holes?”

“Reinforcements could only have been made of bone, and richer ladies would have them.”

The money thing, again.

“There!” Fiona tied off the laces. “Let me get the mirror.”

Fiona trotted back with an ornate, if slightly tarnished, floor-length mirror squeaking along on wheels.

“You don’t even feel the busk, do you? And see how it creates such straight posture and how it separates to create this lovely heaving effect?”

Chloe couldn’t believe what she saw. Granted, it took half an hour to lace up and she’d never be able to get the thing on or off by herself, but her boob size had gone from a 34C to a 36DD. And al because of a two-hundred-year-old bra . . . ?

The thirty-nine-year-old droobs became suddenly round, pert, and “boobilicious,” as her employee, Emma, would say.

“A nineteenth-century boob job,” Chloe said.

“Wait til you see how great it makes the gown look. But first, your pantalets.” Fiona held up two cotton half legs with ribbons that tied around the waist in the air. They were crotchless, bottomless, scandalous.

The cameramen zoomed in on her.

“They make a thong look uptight,” Chloe said. “I know Jane Austen wasn’t the prim and proper type some of her relatives made her out to be, but you can’t tel me she wore those.”

“They were considered a little risqué at the time, but she may have.” Fiona held the pantalets in front of Chloe in a “shal we?” kind of way. The

ribbons danced and dangled.