Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

In his Hessian boots, he stepped even closer to her now, blocked the camera for a moment, and slid a note into her hand. She understood to hide it in her reticule.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I would want a wife who enjoys adventure and games—a certain element of playfulness and fun. I think you have those qualities and so much more.”

Chloe couldn’t believe he’d said al this while surrounded by cameras and—dogs. Nor could she believe that he had slipped a piece of folded paper into her hands, unbeknownst to the cameramen.

A clipped bow, a tip of his hat, a bucking up of his horse, and he was gone, just as suddenly as he had appeared, his coattails flying in the wind and the pack of dogs hot on his trail.

When at last she closed her bedchamber door under the pretense of having to use the chamber pot, Chloe ceremoniously unfolded the note he had given her. The handwriting was old-fashioned, ornamental, and organized in stanzas. He had written her a poem! At thirty-nine years old, Chloe read the first love poem ever written for her:

As the sun shines high in the sky

Love blooms in my heart, I cannot lie.

To let our love grow

Is what is want, I know.

Still I cannot be convinced

Nay, I need more evidence

Of your intentions, are they true?

To convince me here is what you need to do:

As the clock strikes two you must find

Something in a garden where light and shadow are intertwined

Inspect the face in the garden bright

Then follow the line of light

Straight to a house without walls

Enter the door and go where the water falls

Extrapolate from this poem the puzzle within

Make a note of the six-word answer, write it, and you will win

Send your missive through the secret door and the answers you seek will

be in store!

She read it again. It wasn’t a love poem. It was some kind of Regency courtship riddle turned reality-show task. She sighed. But she was up for it!

It gave her insight into Sebastian’s playful, romantic nature, and it cheered her as no other missive could at this point.

Did the other women get one of these? she wondered. But she couldn’t ask them. Sebastian had expressly written that this task would be one for her to take on alone, without even her chaperone’s knowledge.

What thing in a garden would incorporate light and shadow? The estate had acres and acres of gardens. Could the garden be in a painting? And what about the two o’clock reference? Could the answer be on a painted face of one of the grandfather clocks in Bridesbridge?

The joke was on her. She didn’t get it. Not at al . And she couldn’t ask Mrs. Crescent a thing about it.

M rs. Crescent had handed Chloe a recipe for ink, written by Martha Lloyd, Jane Austen’s sister-in-law: Take 4 ozs of blue gauls, 2 ozs of green copperas, 1 ? ozs of gum arabic. Break the gauls. The gum and copperas must be beaten in a mortar and put into a pint of strong stale beer; with a pint of small beer. Put in a little refin’d sugar. It must stand in the chimney corner fourteen days and be shaken two or three times a day.

Chloe knew that “gauls” must be the “gal s” she had col ected from the oak trees. As for the rest, a pint of beer, even strong stale beer, sounded good right about now.

With Mrs. Crescent’s help, she managed to get through the recipe, and restrained herself from drinking the beer, but had to remember to visit the parlor chimney two or three times a day from then on to shake her vial of ink.

“Not to worry,” Mrs. Crescent had said. “I shan’t let you forget.”

With a total of ten Accomplishment Points now, Chloe faced two days of practicing riding sidesaddle on Chestnut, the nicest horse in the stable.

In her spare time, she picked up as many of Fiona’s chores as she could when the camera wasn’t around, noting that her maid seemed sadder than ever. She also made a point of scouring the estate, tramping through gardens looking for shafts of sunlight and shadows, trying to solve the riddle from Sebastian. That was how she knew she was more than smitten. None of the paintings or clocks in Bridesbridge fit the description in the riddle, not even the pocket watch on Grace’s chatelaine.

Her oil paints and stack of painting paper went untouched as Mrs. Crescent started Chloe on another task that would take more than a week: needlework. She had to embroider a fireplace screen for fifteen points when in fact the extent of her needlework skil s were sewing on buttons that had fal en off. So much for her days of leisure.

When she scrambled down the servant stairs into the basement kitchen to help Cook do the baking for the tea, she found Cook standing at the pine worktable, beating dough with her fists. Flies buzzed around as a couple of kitchen maids, who seemed sixteen years old at most, stoked the fire in the open range, apparently to set