Definitely Not Mr. Darcy

onto the paper, forming a liquid circle. Brass seal in hand, she pushed the letter P into the soft wax. It was much more satisfying than clicking the send button!

“Fiona,” Chloe cal ed out down the hal way. Fiona was never far. “Please have this delivered to Mr. Wrightman immediately.”

Fiona took the letter and curtsied.

“Wait. No. I can’t do this. Please give that back to me, Fiona. Sorry to have bothered you.” It was the ladylike thing to do. She’d have to thank him in person, the next time he chose to see her.

Fiona handed the letter back, and without a second thought, Chloe tossed it into her fire. With that, she closed her bedchamber door, stripped off her silk gown, donned a lacy dressing gown, pul ed al the pins out of her hair to let it down, and stood at the window.

Her eyes went al glassy as she imagined Sebastian serenading her. He would toss a bouquet of red rosebuds up to her and she would catch it

—

An hour and forty-five minutes later, she sat at her open window, flicking her cheek with the quil pen. She couldn’t see Grace and Sebastian anywhere anymore. The hal clock had struck one ages ago. Two o’clock and it was archery time.

She watched a footman and driver mount a carriage below and drive it off toward Dartworth Hal in the afternoon heat. Footmen dressed in long-sleeved coats and wigs carried big wooden tables and wooden chairs out to the lawn for the archery meet while the maids balanced wooden trays loaded with pitchers of lemonade and raspberry puddings ringed with rose petals.

Wel , some music would’ve been nice. She didn’t realize how much she’d miss the radio, her CDs, her LP col ection, and yes, even iTunes.

Sometimes it was just so—quiet here. And the fact that Sebastian had sent her a gift of a cat put her in a celebratory mood. He must have some feelings for her!

She sauntered over to the four-poster bed, vaulted onto the mattress, and swung around one of the bedposts. A song popped into her head. She hadn’t heard anything other than the pianoforte and harp in a while now, but she started singing and swinging her hips to the thumping bass in her head. Soon she was swirling around the bedpost in her corset and stockings, pul ing white gloves past her elbows, dipping her head back and letting her hair sway, tickling her legs with her quil pen, cavorting around like a pole dancer, when outside her window, down in the semicircular drive—something moved. She squinted. It was Sebastian! He was in his top hat, gazing up at her with his binoculars.

“Oh God.” She froze for a moment, her stocking leg wrapped around the bedpost.

She heard something trickling—water. The cat was peeing near her evening shoes!

Sebastian stepped forward and back, adjusting the focus on his binoculars. She unwrapped herself from the post, slipped off the bed, and whipped the velvet curtains closed, like a bad puppet show. A pole dance wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind. Something just slightly more ladylike was on the agenda, like flirting from the open window with her hair down, because she looked good with her hair down, much better than the Regency updo Sebastian had associated her with, and she wanted Sebastian to see her that way. Final y, she opened the curtains to say, “It’s huge in America, you know, pole-dance exercise classes.”

He smirked. “I can see why. Please, don’t stop on my account. I find it most—diverting. Carry on.”

Chloe just laughed. “I have to get ready for the archery competition now.”

“You are on my list, Miss Parker. I wil be cal ing on you and you’d best be at home when I arrive!” He bowed and left.

Chloe sank down on the mahogany chaise, putting her head in her hands. Hard to be a lady when the lady was a tramp!

Someone knocked on her door. She snatched her chocolate-colored archery gown from the bed and held it up against herself as if she were sizing it up.

It was Fiona, and Chloe breathed a sigh of relief.

“Time to dress for the archery competition,” her maid said, then gasped at the sight of Chloe’s hair. “Why did you take your hair down, Miss Parker? You know ful wel it wil be half an hour to pin it up again.”

F iona pinned up Chloe’s hair so quickly and so badly that, right in the middle of the archery competition, when Chloe was already down several points and trying to focus on the red bul ’s-eye in the middle of the target, she felt the updo going down.

She kept dwel ing on the pole dance. A section of hair fel on the nape of her neck. It startled her into releasing the bowstring sooner than she wanted, and just like that, another arrow bounced off the outer edge of the target and fel to the grass. No doubt the fifteen Accomplishment Points would be going to Grace or Julia at this rate.

“Concentrate!” Mrs. Crescent mouthed to her from a wooden chair on the grassy sideline. And then she mouthed something else, but Chloe never could read lips. Sebastian, Henry, and the chaperones sat under the shade of an old beech tree, watching Grace, Julia, and Chloe face off.

Fifi and two greyhounds were asleep under the wooden table where Fiona and some of the other servants were pouring lemonade and stacking Bath buns.

Chloe propped up her lancewood bow, almost as tal as she was, next to her, while she avoided eye contact with Sebastian. She tightened the laces on her brown suede archery gloves. A servant gathered up her misfired arrows and handed them to her like so many broken dreams.

Grace readied her bow.

“Ladies . . .” The butler stepped in front of the camera. “May I interrupt for a moment?”

Grace sighed, relaxed her stance, and scratched her col arbone.

Sunburn, Chloe thought. Soon it would be peeling!