Grace put her hands on her hips.
“First runner-up . . . Miss Chloe Parker, who forfeits the first dance at the bal due to an arrow gone awry. And, final y, Miss Tripp wins the archery competition, bringing her total to sixty-five Accomplishment Points. Lady Grace and Miss Parker stand tied at forty points. Both Miss Parker and Miss Tripp, however, are due an outing with Mr. Wrightman.”
Chloe handed Henry his spectacles.
“Keep them,” Henry said, and gave them back to her. “Until we get a ladies’ pair made for you.”
“Thank you.” She tucked the glasses into her reticule. “But wil you be able to manage without them?”
He nodded.
She curtsied. Mrs. Crescent patted her on the arm, and together they turned toward Bridesbridge Place.
“Did you happen to notice,” Mrs. Crescent said, “just how sunburned Lady Grace’s bosom was?”
True, Grace had been burned, but that didn’t change the fact that Chloe was going to have to sit out the first dance at the bal . And was Fiona flirting with Sebastian? Beads of sweat trailed down her back. It was too hot for this heavy archery gown. For once, she was happy to change for dinner.
When she opened her bedchamber door, she saw that the cat had knocked over her rosewater bottle and the ink bottles, and shredded some of her blotting paper, and she suddenly remembered that she was supposed to shake her ink vial in the chimney. But just when she was ready to reprimand the cat, he stepped out from behind the drapery with a dead mouse in his mouth, hanging by its pink tail.
Chloe screamed, and as if in obedience to some ancient instinct, she leaped onto a chair and hiked up her archery gown.
Sufficient screaming and shrieking prompted a footman to do away with the remains of the mouse. It was then that Chloe noticed pink petals scattered on her pil owcase. The petals surrounded a letter addressed to
Her cameraman filmed her as she opened the note.
Chapter 16
Even though she ful y intended to appeal to Sebastian’s intel ect and his noble upbringing, she figured whatever she could do to further her cause wouldn’t hurt. So she selected her flimsiest gown with the neckline that didn’t quit and the stays that turned her boobs into the uniboob—a force to be reckoned with. She shaved her legs for the first time in almost two weeks, il egal y albeit, at her washstand, with a razor stolen from one of the footmen, even though she knew Sebastian wouldn’t be seeing her legs. She chose a necklace that had a slightly damaged clasp in the hope that the emerald it contained might slide right into her cleavage at an opportune moment. Mrs. Crescent doused Chloe’s muslin gown with water as any wanton, but stil respectable, lady would do under the circumstances. And, as predicted, as soon as she hit the cooler summer air on this increasingly cloudy day, her nipples went hard.
Sebastian handed her up into his curricle, the sports car of the early 1800s. They were going for a turn around the estate and then a picnic and a bit of nature sketching at the Grecian temple, where Mrs. Crescent awaited them. Chloe couldn’t have planned a more romantic outing herself.
Neither Mrs. Crescent nor the cameras could fit into the curricle, so she and Sebastian were filmed from an ATV shadowing them alongside the road.
Unfortunately, Sebastian had a toothache, and as he drove the horses, he sucked on cloves to help with the pain, because aspirin hadn’t been invented yet. Chloe broached subjects she knew interested him from the bio she’d read: architecture, poetry, painting, astronomy, even bird-watching, but he just rubbed his jaw in reponse. He was clearly in a lot of pain. But the last thing she wanted him to think about was a toothache.
She had to distract him, but how, without breaking the rules?
They passed the grotto in silence. She wanted to know his favorite movie, his favorite restaurant, where he liked to travel, his hopes, his dreams, even his fears, his failings. She wanted to learn everything about him, but al efforts seemed so forced, and he was consumed with pain. What a far cry it was from yesterday’s pole dance at her window, when Sebastian had eyes only for her.
The pressure mounted. The time would go quickly. Certainly Lady Grace was sexier than she, and Julia, no doubt, had youth and exuberance on her side. This cal ed for drastic measures, something Emma, her employee, not Jane Austen’s Emma, might concoct.
She thought about tossing the ladylike approach out the carriage window and throwing herself around him and his double-breasted riding coat, which stretched tautly across his chest. She imagined untying his cravat, tearing off his shirt, and crushing her breasts up against him like a common trol op. Instead she demurely tucked a stray hair under her bonnet. “Mr. Wrightman,” she said, “I wanted to let you know that your cat has caught the mouse.”
“It has?” He shifted on the carriage seat and raised an eyebrow at her. He took his hand off his jaw. The horses shook their manes and their nostrils flared.
“Absolutely.”
“That was certainly quick.”
“Wel , your cat has great instincts.”
He almost dropped the reins as they clipped along past the deer park. “Thank you.”
