The waitress brought a Wedgwood china plate rimmed in gold.
Chloe slathered clotted cream on her scone and not even the cream at the Drake could compare. She dabbed her mouth with her napkin and calmed herself. “So. If Dartworth is yours and Sebastian’s profile is yours, then who is Sebastian?”
“A distant cousin. Who wants to break into the film industry.”
Chloe looked up from plastering another scone with two inches of clotted cream, and looked at Henry.
“He’s—an actor?”
“Wel , he wants to be, but—”
“That explains his lines. He always knew exactly what to say. He’s a damn actor. No wonder he never told me what kind of an artist he was. He’s a scam artist!”
“Those lines were true—they were coming from me—Miss Parker—”
Chloe took the scone dripping with clotted cream and pushed it into his face, turning it a few times just for effect.
The tearoom went silent while Henry wiped cream from his face with his napkin.
“I deserve that, I know. But do you know that I love you? It’s not a game anymore. There’s more. I want to tel you everything. Your ‘Cook,’ Lady Anne, is my mother—”
Clotted cream covered his eyebrows and Chloe got a flash of him, decades from now, as an old man with white eyebrows.
“So
She put a hand on her hip.
He wiped the clotted cream from his eyebrows. “I know about your daughter. And your divorce. They’re not deal breakers.”
She took a long, slow sip of her coffee. “I need to go. I’l be taking your horse.”
Henry bowed. “Of course. Because that’s what you do best. You run away.”
If her coffee didn’t taste so damn good, she’d pour the rest of it on him. Her hand quivered with the thought.
“I’m not running away. For once I’m running to something. My real life. In the real world. Where people are— real!” She stamped her calfskin pump to no effect.
Coffee in one hand, tiara in the other, she burst into the . . . sunshine? How dare the sun shine now?
Henry stood in the doorway, his greatcoat draped over his shoulders. “Despite everything—I think what we have is real. It’s a real beginning—”
In half a second she untied the horse, tied the velvet bag to the saddle horn, and mounted western style, her gown hiked up to her thighs, coffee cup stil in hand. The wet saddle chafed against her legs.
“You’re no more real to me than a character in a Jane Austen novel—no—a character from a bad film adaptation. You played me. I played you.
We never had anything real.”
She tossed her empty coffee cup into a trash can on the sidewalk and tossed her head. “And we never wil .” If only al this could’ve been caught on camera.
Henry moved closer to her. “I’m not a character from a book. I’m a real person. Who makes real mistakes. And so are you. But look what came out of it—we’ve found each other—”
“I don’t think I found anybody—except, as the old cliche goes—myself.”
She pul ed on the reins to turn the horse around. After starting up the street, she took one last peek at Henry, who was running after her in his riding boots. She brought the horse to a canter. She didn’t need Sebastian or Henry or Winthrop or any man. She was going home—home to the twenty-first century, where she would ramp up her letterpress business with Web capability. Ideas on how to bring the business into the modern world tumbled around in her.
She soon realized she was cantering up the wrong side of the road. Once on the left side of the street, she brought the horse into a brisk gal op.
Cars and trucks swerved around her, some drivers honked, others stared, and stil others swore, but she had her plan. She couldn’t wait to put it al into action.
Without looking back, she gal oped out of the only English vil age she’d ever been in, without even a souvenir T-shirt for Abigail that said ENGLAND on it, without having had a pint in the local pub, and without a clue as to what she would do once she got back to Bridesbridge.
Chapter 22
George had tried to stop her. “You outed us. You found Mr. Wrightman. Henry wants to grant you the prize money. You earned it.”
She looked down on George from her high horse. The cameras were rol ing. “I don’t want Henry’s money, George. Give it to Mrs. Crescent for Wil iam.”
