Julia practical y bounced up and down in her chair and her chaperone glared at her until she calmed down.
“A hunt,” Grace said.
Surely, Chloe thought, Miss Parker didn’t have enough status to ride. Chloe hadn’t ridden a horse since col ege. Could she stil do it? Plus, here it would have to be sidesaddle.
Mrs. Crescent leaned toward Chloe and said across the table, “We’l spend the next three days riding, Miss Parker. Count on it!”
Chloe stared at the arrangement of smal woodland animals in front of her.
“Miss Parker,” Sebastian asked from the head of the table. “Are you quite al right?”
English men were so attentive. Chloe was about to respond when suddenly Mrs. Crescent pushed herself up out of her chair, her hands propped on the smal of her back, sweat gathering under her curled bangs. “It’s time!” she said, putting one hand on her bel y. “It’s time!”
Chloe’s stomach tightened as she remembered the night she gave birth to Abigail. Abigail came a week early, and Winthrop was in Washington on business.
Chloe hurried over to Mrs. Crescent, but Henry was already there, guiding her to a fainting couch by the window. He took the watch from his watch fob and started timing the contractions.
Sebastian and Grace gawked. The chaperones and their charges crowded around Mrs. Crescent.
“Breathe. That’s right,” Henry said. He took her hand.
Mrs. Crescent did her breathing, stood, and paced. Chloe paced with her.
“We should cal her OB,” Chloe said to Henry. “An ambulance to take her to the hospital.”
“Contractions are stil wel over three minutes apart.” With his back to the camera, he spoke a mile a minute to Chloe. “We won’t be cal ing anyone. She wants to have her baby here. Nineteenth-century style.”
“What?! There is no way—”
“Perhaps instead of being so dogmatic, you could do something useful, Miss Parker?”
Chloe gulped and stepped back. Sebastian had disappeared and so had the al the footmen and servants. Grace took backward steps toward the door. Was Grace snagging some alone time with Sebastian—now? Chloe couldn’t let it happen. But she also couldn’t let Henry think she was a dogmatic idiot either. She released her arm from Mrs. Crescent’s. “Julia, Gil ian. Stay with her. I’m going to get the kitchen maids to boil some water.” She dashed out the door and almost banged into Sebastian. Again.
Sebastian looked worried. “I—I’m not good in these situations. I’m an artist, not a doctor.”
He was an artist? What kind of an artist? she wondered. Then Mrs. Crescent groaned. “Come help me boil some water,” Chloe said. “I don’t even know where the kitchen is.”
Grace stood next to her chaperone at the dining room doors, her hands on her hips.
“We have to hurry,” Chloe said. “Which way?”
“Fol ow me,” Sebastian said.
Chloe was right on his coattails. She smiled to herself. She was chasing him—literal y now. And al this dashing through the marble hal s lined with antiquities would have been fun had it not been for the gravity of a woman giving birth without a hospital, without an epidural! After scrambling down the servant stairway into the kitchen, Sebastian stopped. Servants and footmen were bustling about, frantical y boiling water on the old stove and in the kitchen fireplace. So this was where they had al gone.
“What can I do?” Chloe dove into the fray.
A kitchen maid scowled at her. “You shouldn’t be down here!” She spotted Sebastian and curtsied. “Excuse me, miss, but we’ve got it sorted.
Best if you get upstairs.” She shooed Chloe out.
Chloe hurried up to the top of the stairs and Sebastian fol owed.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Sebastian rubbed the cleft in his chin. “I told you I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
Chloe snapped her fingers. “They’l need linens. Where’s the linen closet?”
Sebastian smiled. “My valet takes care of everything. I hardly know where he keeps my boots.”
He was sweet, real y sweet. Like a boy. Chloe racked her brain, trying to figure out what they could do. She leaned up against a marble column and blew a strand of hair that had fal en into her eyes.
Sebastian moved closer, waiting for her to take the lead.
A camerawoman bounded toward them from down the hal . Footmen lumbered up the stairs with pots of boiled water and kitchen maids carried up stacks of white linens. Al Chloe and Sebastian could do was fol ow.
When the entourage arrived in the dining room, Mrs. Crescent sat, fanning herself and smiling.
Henry stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Sebastian and Chloe, who came in last. “False alarm,” he said. “Her contractions have stopped.” He pul ed Chloe aside and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Wel done, Miss Parker. You may be the smartest person in the room, but a lot of help you were, using this opportunity to take off with Sebastian. So glad I can count on you.”
Chloe wavered, feeling dizzy, surprised by his snarky reaction, which complimented and scolded her in one fel swoop. It crossed her mind, but only for a moment, that he might be jealous of his own brother. “You—you can count on me.”
