The curate stepped up to her and put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
Grace stepped up to the altar. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. These aren’t mine.”
“Don’t be stupid, Grace. This is the twenty-first century. I had my gloves on every time I handled them. A simple dusting for thumbprints wil prove they’re yours, and if that doesn’t work—there are always DNA tests.”
Chloe’s mother barreled up to the pulpit. The cameras loomed in on Chloe from the front. She felt hunted. Her dad clenched his teeth. Her mom’s manicured nails clawed at her even through her gloves. She had to get out of here.
She hoisted up her gown, dodged them al , and ran al the way down the aisle, out the church door, down the steps, past the tombstones, and right smack into the white wedding carriage, an open barouche covered in pink peonies and pink ribbons. Not just one, but four horses turned their heads. She untied them from the hitching post, clambered up to the driver’s perch, and with a shaking hand, flicked the reins. The horses lunged forward. When she looked back she saw everyone had spil ed out of the church, past the stone fence, but nobody else had a horse. They had al walked to the wedding in their finery! She brought the horses to a trot. The great carriage rattled along, peonies flew off, ribbons flapped, her updo col apsed.
When she final y reached the iron gates that marked the end of the deer park and the beginning of the real world, she stopped the carriage. The gravel road ended. A paved road intersected it. She hadn’t seen blacktop in weeks. It looked so unnatural, yet so promising. The open road. It was the American in her, al right, thril ed to hit the open road.
A red Jaguar whizzed by on the wrong side of the street, because of course, this was England, and it startled the horses. She couldn’t exactly ride a barouche into town, now, could she? She stepped out of the carriage, guided the horses to a wrought-iron hitching post on the edge of the deer park, and tied them to it.
She stood on the edge of the blacktop, looked east and west, fol owed the road with her eyes. Thanks to the glasses, she could actual y see the road twist into the distance. Which way to civilization? She went west. She bunched up her gown to jog, and tried to run, but her shoes didn’t cooperate. They had even less support than her stays. Who knew she would actual y miss her harness of a sports bra and running shoes? She slowed to a walk, letting her gown fal back to her ankles.
She passed English farmland pungent with manure and grasses. A hawk circled overhead and she thought of Henry. Her thoughts always circled back to Henry. Sunshine poured down on her and she felt naked without a bonnet and, for once, she could actual y use a parasol and fan. Sweat dampened her silk stockings and her lower back, so she stripped off her pelisse and gloves. Those lemons she rubbed under her underarms this morning were not exactly meant to hold up under a power walk in nineteenth-century wedding attire.
And she would feel better about al this tramping about the English countryside without knowing where she was real y going if she had a cel phone. Or a portable GPS. Or at least a damn plastic water bottle. How irresponsible it was for a mother to fling herself into the countryside on the other side of the earth without even knowing where she was going? What if something happened to her and Abigail ended up getting raised by her ex? In Boston? With the fortunate Marcia Smith?
By the time she reached the top of the third hil , she didn’t have to shield her eyes from the sun, because a battalion of rain clouds had floated in.
The breeze, cooler now, dampened her skin, and she could tel that it was going to rain. How could it rain on her almostwedding day? She pul ed her pelisse back on even as she licked her dry lips. The sight of a church spire and slate-roofed red-brick houses in the distance helped spur her on.
Someone in a passing car tossed a white cardboard coffee cup out the window and over a hedgerow. The blacktop turned to cobblestone as she crossed what must’ve been a stone bridge from the Roman era. Normal y, Chloe would’ve loved this quaint vil age with its cobblestoned main street and whitewashed, half-timbered cottage storefronts where cars seem oddly out of place. As she read the sign at the end of the bridge, HUNTSFORDSHIRE, she walked right into a woman pushing a jogging strol er in her workout gear and talking on her cel .
“So sorry,” the young mom said. The baby looked up at Chloe with big blue eyes.
She had to get back to Abigail. What was she doing?
“Are you quite al right?” The young mom took the cel from her ear.
Chloe nodded yes, even though she real y wasn’t.
“Sorry again.” The mom pushed the strol er on.
Chloe, out of habit, curtsied. She curtsied!
The mom’s eyes narrowed and she looked Chloe up and down, navigating her precious baby around in a wide circumference as if Chloe were some kind of lunatic.
Her head throbbed with the onslaught of car engines, a train, honking horns, voices, and car radios. Raindrops fel , and umbrel as of al different sizes and colors popped up al around her.
None of the men bowed to her. The women didn’t curtsy. Nobody even looked at her, or if they did, they quickly looked away out of politeness.
She was the raving lunatic homeless woman on the street.
Pelting rain dripped down her face and neck and probably by now had smudged her eyebrow liner made from candle ashes. Even in the rain, though, the aroma of scones spil ed out of a bakery. She stood in front of a tearoom and coffeehouse under a dripping awning, looking at a reflection in the window of her sodden self. The antibride with a child hidden in her attic.
She pressed her hand to the window. She needed a plane ticket home, but first—coffee. It didn’t even have to be a double espresso latte, but she didn’t have any money. For the first time in a long time, she ached for a credit card, and couldn’t believe she cut up al her credit cards in a fit of rage al those years ago.
A young man sat inside the tearoom, holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in white paper. For the first time in forever, a man with flowers didn’t make her moon over Winthrop. She smiled. They were better off, the two of them, without each other. She had left him for good reason, and now she final y felt the strength to fight him in the upcoming custody trial. She could do it—and win.
The young man in the tearoom gave Chloe a hostile glance; no doubt she looked crazy. She stepped back and the rain from the awning dripped heavily on her. He was waiting for someone, because he had a life, a real life, with
