Karen Doornebos - Definitely Not Mr Darcy

“You look like quite a natural,” Mrs. Crescent said to Chloe. “You’ll be a great mum someday.”

The baby’s eyes closed tight, like little crescent moons.

Chloe shot a look at Henry, who had been watching her.

Henry smiled at Mrs. Crescent. “I’ve gotten word that your husband and children are on their way. They’ll be here soon.”

Then Henry snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and threaded a needle. Chloe’s stomach lurched. She handed the baby to a servant girl behind her. “Excuse me, I need some air.” She lunged for her fan and reticule and ran out.

When she stopped running, she was outside, and breathed the early-morning air in heavily. She collapsed on the steps in front of the semicircular gravel drive, under a lit torch. She fanned herself frantically. She untied the hospital gown and it fell in a heap at her boots. The clock in the foyer behind her chimed three times.

Someone came and put an arm around Chloe. It was Fiona.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said.

Chloe couldn’t look her in the face. She just stared at her Celtic tattoo. “You lied to me. Just so that you could dance with Sebastian?”

“Sebastian’s a terrible flirt. He danced with me for one dance and he had promised me at least three.”

“What’s your deal, Fiona? Are you after him, too?”

Fiona hung her head. “I wanted to be a contestant. Like you. But I didn’t make the cut.”

That explained a lot, and Chloe had suspected it all along. “I don’t get it, though. Aren’t you engaged?”

“It’s been on and off. We’ll figure it out when he gets back.”

“Sebastian’s a lot like you, Fiona. He doesn’t know what he wants.” Chloe waved Fiona off. “Go to bed. It’s late.”

She curtsied and sauntered off. This gave a whole new spin to the issue of finding good hired help.

Chloe sat for a long time, until, off in the distance, on the way to the reflecting pond, she saw something move on the lawn. It was probably a deer. She opened her silk reticule, slid Henry’s glasses out, and put them on. It looked like some kind of animal out there, all right. Actually, it looked more like two animals—one of which was humping the other. She looked away.

Even the animals were getting more action than her around here. She buried her head in her arms until she heard a loud moan. She lifted the torch out of the ground and carried it to the edge of the gravel drive. Soon after the moaning stopped, a lantern lit up on the lawn. A lantern? Animals with a lantern?

She squinted through Henry’s glasses and clearly saw a shirtless Sebastian pulling up his breeches. Grace hopped into her ball gown.

No wonder Sebastian brought up Grace in conversation so much during their time alone. He wasn’t protecting Chloe from her. He was trying to find out as much about Grace as possible.

He was an ass! He was a player!

He was most definitely not Mr. Darcy.

Chloe just stood there. And held the torch.

Where was that laudanum?

“You’re drunk!”

It had taken a few days to find the laudanum, but she managed to find it despite her busy schedule of wedding-gown fittings and trimming her wedding bonnet. Chloe and Sebastian had been caught together in the ice-house, and just like in the Regency era, they were forced to marry. It was to be a rushed wedding on a Tuesday morning.

So, when Chloe poured more than a few drops of laudanum in her tea this morning, it made it taste like sherry.

Mrs. Crescent leaned over in the chaise-and-four to get a whiff of Chloe’s breath.

“I’m not drunk.” Chloe rubbed her forehead under her white bonnet. These carriage rides always undid her updo, but today horse’s hooves seemed to be clomping on her brain. Hungover? Yes. Buzzed? That was earlier this morning. She looked out of the carriage window at the hedge maze, wondering how she’d ever get out of this.

Mrs. Crescent tightened the pink bonnet ribbon under her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Did you get into the sewing-cabinet vodka again?”

“No. No. Just took a drop of that laudanum at dawn to calm my nerves. One tiny drop! As any Regency lady would do under the circumstances.”

Mrs. Crescent slapped her hands on the leather-covered bench. “What? Opium! On your wedding day—”

“This is not my wedding day.”

Chloe looked down at her white pelisse, white muslin wedding gown, and white calfskin pumps. Her wooden trousseau trunk had been filled with all sorts of frills and Belgian-lace gowns, and strapped to the back of the carriage, in anticipation of the honeymoon. Packing that trousseau was an exercise in humility, preparing for a honeymoon that would never happen after a wedding she didn’t want.

She came across Henry’s handkerchief in her washstand drawer, the handkerchief he gave her on her first day at Bridesbridge, and she decided to pack that as well as her vial of ink that had only just congealed to perfection.

Mrs. Crescent fumbled around in her reticule. “You are getting married today. Here.” She pushed fresh mint leaves into Chloe’s gloved hand. “Where did you get laudanum?”

Chloe popped the mint leaves into her mouth, then pointed at her closed lips as she chewed. A lady would never talk with her mouth full. Finally, she swallowed. “I got it from your room. I relieved you of it.”

“You stole it.”

Chloe sat up straight, pinning her shoulders against the upholstered black leather seat back.

“The night you gave birth to Jemma. I added it to my stockpile.” She folded her arms over her bodice.

“Dear Lord! What are you stockpiling?”

The carriage passed the hollyhocks where she and Henry had caught butterflies. The pink flowers swayed in the breeze.

“I’ve been stockpiling things that Grace smuggled onto the show to prove that she planted that condom on me, and that although I bent a few rules, she broke so many of them.”

Mrs. Crescent grabbed Chloe by the arm, the same arm that Sebastian had grabbed only a few nights ago. “Listen, dear, we’ve been over this a thousand times. You were caught. You have to marry him.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s what would’ve been done in 1812.”

As soon as those drop-front pants came down, the deal was sealed for Chloe because she got caught by the footman, who told. Grace didn’t get caught by anyone—except Chloe.

The carriage, with its wooden wheels, jostled on the crusty road and seemed to punctuate Mrs. Crescent’s words. “Be glad he wants to marry you. Not all Regency girls are so lucky. Anyway, it’s just for the telly. You’re not really marrying him. By hook or by crook, this is what we wanted. We’ve won!” She clapped her gloved hands joyfully.

But she stopped when, in a clearing alongside the road, she saw cameras filming a throng of servants gathered around a—gallows? A noose swayed, and a girl appeared to be hanging from it. A girl about Abigail’s age. Chloe’s gloved hands shook. “What—what’s going on?” Waves of horror crashed through her.

“It’s a hanging. They’re hanging that orphan girl.” Then she whispered, “A mock hanging. It’s a dummy, not a girl.”

The dummy twisted on the noose in the sunshine and turned toward Chloe, who cringed. “Ugh. That’s horrifying. Why?”

“She stole a loaf of bread.”

Chloe didn’t mean why did they hang her, but why stage a mock hanging at all. “But—wait. That little girl was hanged for stealing bread?”

Mrs. Crescent nodded.

“That seems a little medieval to me.”

“It’s very Regency. Typical Regency.”

“She’s just a schoolgirl.”

“Girls don’t go to school, you know that.”

Chloe did know. Girls weren’t educated. They couldn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge. And ladies couldn’t choose to work. They had to marry. Chloe looked down at her white reticule. A mock hanging on her mock wedding day. How appropriate. The shadow of the girl as she twisted toward Chloe stayed with her long after they’d passed it. And even though the execution wasn’t real, it rattled Chloe to the core.

Regency life was grim for women, very grim, and this, too, had been one of Austen’s messages, just not the one Chloe had wanted to acknowledge.

The carriage came to a jarring halt in front of an old limestone church that looked to have come straight out of a fairy tale. Bay-leaf garlands draped the stone gateway to the churchyard. A round rose window adorned the front of the church. A fuzzy figure stood in the doorway, holding open the door for guests. If she would’ve just worn the glasses Henry made for her, she could’ve seen it all clearly.

“Anyhoo, it’s a beautiful morning for a wedding,” Mrs. Crescent said for the video cam as she looked out of the carriage window at the blue sky frosted with white clouds.

Chloe slumped back in her seat. “Morning. Who gets married in the morning, anyway?”

Mrs. Crescent frowned. “We do, dear, here in the Regent’s England. Have I taught you nothing?”

A footman opened the carriage door to hand her out.

“I won’t marry him.” She turned to Mrs. Crescent, who, short of breath, stepped out of the carriage with the footman’s help. She had left the baby with the nursemaid and her husband and children, all at Bridesbridge Place, so she could be Chloe’s matron of honor. Chloe had one and only one bridesmaid: the breast-feeding Mrs. Crescent. The bride herself? A divorced single mom with a child nobody knew about and a tryst everybody knew all about. It was warped.

Together, bride and matron of honor walked under the bay-leaf garland and into the churchyard. Tombstones, old crumbling tombstones, littered the green grass around the little church. Chloe couldn’t do this, no matter how fake the ceremony.