The horse seemed to go nowhere, like in a nightmare in which you’re running and running but not moving at al . She had to get to Mrs. Crescent.
She had to! Her hands sweated in her dance gloves and her calves cramped up as they squeezed the horse’s sides.
The moonlight cast an eerie glow on the muddied road, and the dark trees seemed foreboding. When she final y arrived, she patted the horse on the neck with her quivering hand. Her reticule and fan, intact, swung from her wrist.
“You did it, boy. Good job. Good job.” There was no footman, nobody at Bridesbridge, so she tied the horse to a tree.
Her hair and ribbons had tumbled to her shoulders and she wiped sweat from the back of her neck as she took the steps at Bridesbridge Place two at a time. Even the night watchman was missing in action.
A single candelabrum, with stubs for candles, burned in the dark foyer. How was that for a fire hazard? Did the place even have smoke alarms?
Why didn’t Chloe see these hazards before?
She scampered out of her total y ruined slippers, chucked them under the neoclassical credenza in the foyer, and grabbed the candelabrum. She slid a hand along the mahogany railing, padded up the staircase, and stopped at the landing, where, if it weren’t dark as hel , she could see the lineup of casement windows.
Okay, so if Mrs. Crescent was giving birth, why was it so quiet and dark?
The soles of her feet flattened against the warm Oriental carpet at the top of the stairs. She felt her way to Mrs. Crescent’s door and opened it a crack. A flicker of candlelight leaked out and spil ed onto the threshold.
“Mrs. Crescent?” Chloe knocked on the doorjamb.
“Come in.”
Chloe nudged the door open with her hip. Mrs. Crescent, propped up with plum-colored pil ows in her great sleigh bed, dropped her nineteenth-century newspaper on her nightgowned bel y like a tent. The headline read: HUNDREDS OF BRITISH SOLDIERS FALL IN FRANCE.” She wiggled her bare toes. “Can the bal be over already?”
Panic seared through Chloe. She thought about Fiona, in her gold gown and white plume as she urged Chloe to leave. “You’re not—having the baby?”
Mrs. Crescent was petting Fifi, scrunched on the edge of the bed. “Oh, I’m having the baby al right. Just not right now, dear.”
Fiona had lied to her.
Chloe steadied herself with a hand on the Chippendale bookcase, sending her reticule and fan swinging. But why? Was she after Sebastian?
“Did you know that Lady Grace finished her fireplace screen? You’l have stockings to mend tomorrow. And how did you rip your gown?”
Chloe fingered the rip in her dress, took a step back into the dark hal way, and creaked the door closed.
“Miss Parker?” Mrs. Crescent struggled to sit up in her bed. Her voice sounded muffled, as if Chloe were hearing her from deep underwater. Her reticule and fan slid off her wrist to the floorboards. She swooped up both, grabbed her walking boots from her room, yanked them on, and headed for the front doors, where she swapped the candelabrum for an oil lantern abandoned by the night watchman.
“Miss Parker! Chloe!” Mrs. Crescent cal ed after her.
Chloe final y stopped running when she felt the ground under her rise up in a mound. Then
“Ouch! Damn flimsy boots!” She dangled the lantern at a brick chimney capped with a wooden hatch door protruded out of the ground in front of her. Last week she might’ve thought the chimney was part of a picturesque little summer home with an earthen roof, but now she figured it was probably a smokehouse. Pig carcasses hanging from meat hooks flashed through her brain.
Flat-footing her way down the slippery side of the earth mound, she breathed deep and held back the tears. She should’ve known that Fiona was conspiring against her. That line about her fiance being on military duty was, no doubt, a lie. Her pelisse trailed in the mud behind her while the moonlight sparkled kaleidoscope-like in her teary eyes. Fiona couldn’t win any of the money, though. Only the contestants could. What would Chloe do without that cash infusion? She and Mrs. Crescent needed that money more than anyone. And just because Fiona was after Sebastian didn’t mean the feelings were reciprocated.
Down at the bottom of the mound, wooden double doors stood tucked into the earth, each with great iron hinges pointy as daggers. She pressed up against the doors and buried her face in her arm. The wood felt cool against her shaky hands.
Back home it was seven hours earlier, and it was the Fourth of July. Abigail would be in the bicycle parade and everybody was playing badminton and croquet and packing the lemonade and buttermilk-fried chicken in picnic baskets for the fireworks. Here—there were no fireworks to speak of. Not even a spark.
Something crunched on the forest floor behind her.
“Miss Parker, is that you?”
The lantern almost slipped from her hand. Henry swooped down from his horse as if out of nowhere. “I didn’t mean to startle you. What are you doing here?”
“That’s a very good question. Good question!” She sniffled. “I suppose I might ask you what you’re doing here! Anytime I’m where I shouldn’t be, you show up.”
He smiled. “The footman at Dartworth informed me you’d taken one of my horses to Bridesbridge. When I got to Bridesbridge, Mrs. Crescent told me you thought she was having her baby, and stormed out. I saw the lantern light from the road.”
