world. Vaulted ceilings and carved stone moldings added to the chil . Candles flickered in the drafts. With his perfect profile, Sebastian stood at the altar, waiting.
For a fake wedding, it sure felt real. She leaned on her dad. Henry wore a bottle-green cutaway coat and practical y paced in his pew.
She wanted to wrap her arms around him, or at least catch his eye. But he was the only one not looking at her, the bride, as she made her way to the altar. Even Grace glared and drummed her gloved fingers on the scrol ed pew railing in front of her. Immediately after the wedding, Grace would be sent home. She had lost the competition. But of course, filming her watch the wedding made fabulous drama, so she had to stay.
For a minute it did seem like a movie and not like the real thing. Chloe felt like she was looking down on herself getting married—again. The first time around, sixteen years ago, it seemed exactly the same. Movielike. Unreal. An out-of-body experience in a white dress. Back then, of course, the white dress was appropriate. As a thirty- nine-year-old divorcee with an eight-year-old stateside, not to mention her ice-house moment, it seemed downright scandalous.
Sebastian, the cad, in a tight black cutaway coat, white breeches, and black shoes, looked the part he was playing. Chloe could tel he didn’t like the glasses. He kept squinting and clearing his throat as the curate spoke.
She looked around the rim of her bonnet for Henry.
The curate had already started the ceremony. “. . . and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding . . .”
How could you take this lightly? She looked up at the rose window.
“. . . but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.”
She was sober al right. A lot more sober than she was hitting the laudanum at the crack of dawn this morning. Two video cams turned in on her.
“. . . if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawful y joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it . . .”
Chloe looked up at the curate, and opened her mouth, afraid that nothing would come out, but it did.
She let her rosebud nosegay drop to the stone floor. “I can’t marry him.”
“Pardon me?” The curate’s book slid down from his chest to his side. A great rustling and shuffling and whispering came from behind her.
“Wel , that’s a relief!” Grace stood up. “It saves me from having to announce an impediment—or two.”
Chloe’s mother stood, too, and leaned on the pew in front of her, apparently for strength. And Henry—where was Henry?
Chloe looked straight into Sebastian’s eyes. “I can’t marry the wrong Mr. Wrightman. Even if it is just for TV.” Her eyes darted around the church.
Henry was gone.
Whispering rose up to the church’s vaulted ceiling.
Sebastian grabbed her by the arm. “What are you doing?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You can’t do this to me in front of everybody.”
Mrs. Crescent stepped up to the wedding group. “She can’t mean it, Mr. Wrightman. She’s just nervous. Let me talk with her.”
The curate furrowed his brows.
The cameras stayed on Chloe.
“Let go of me,” she said to Sebastian, and yanked her arm away from him. A ray of sunlight shone through the rose window. “You’re no gentleman. And you never wil be. You’re not the brooding, silent type. In fact, I don’t know what you are, and you don’t know what—or who—you want. I don’t care how much money you have—you can take it and stick it into your breeches for al I care!”
Sebastian stepped backward, his perfect jawline askew.
Cook—Lady Anne—made her way up to the altar. “Miss Parker—let me explain.”
“No, let me explain.” Chloe stood next to the marble altar draped in a maroon sash. Her voice echoed throughout the pulpit. “The real gentleman here is Henry, who stands to win nothing and gain nothing. The rest of us are just modern-day screwups in gowns and cutaway coats. Pretending.
Grace is pretending so she can win back her family’s land that her great-great-great grandfather lost gambling. I’m pretending I’m not divorced, with an eight-year-old daughter at home waiting for me.”
The smal crowd gasped. Henry was stil nowhere to be seen.
“I thought this was real. It isn’t. Everyone’s pretending—except of course, for Lady Anne, who, as far as I can tel , is the real deal. But the rest of us? We can’t even act like Regency people. We know too much, we’ve done too much, and said too much to even pretend to live in the nineteenth century. Here, Grace.” Chloe tossed her nosegay to Grace, who caught it. “You marry him. For TV or real life or land or money or al of the above. I don’t care.”
Chloe untied her wedding bonnet. Her dad tried to pul the cameramen away. She dumped her bonnet upside down on the altar, where the cameras filmed a vibrator, a pink MP3 player, whitening strips, a pack of cigarettes, and condoms wrapped in black foil tumble onto the maroon altar cloth.
“Dear God!” Mrs. Crescent gasped. “Don’t throw it away now, Chloe. We’ve won. Don’t.”
“We can’t live like it’s 1812. Not even for a few weeks. Come and get your stash, Grace. I’m going home. Back to my daughter, where I belong.”
