She tugged at the lion’s-head pul to open the top drawer and it made a scraping noise. Her heart throbbed and she checked the door—stil closed. Grace’s dressing table, capped in Italian marble and nearly twice the size of Chloe’s, had not only a bottle of rose water on it, but lavender water and orange water, too, plus a vase of fresh cabbage roses.
As her hands felt their way around in the drawer, she found al the expected things: hair ribbons, hair combs, and a—curling iron? She pul ed it out. It wasn’t a curling iron. She pressed the “on” button. It started vibrating. It was a vibrator!
“Yuck!” She dropped it to the ground. It fel with a loud clunk, but kept vibrating right near the dressing-table leg carved into the shape of a lion’s paw. Chloe froze. Only her eyes jumped to the beaded silver doorknob. Nothing—yet.
Looking down at the flesh-colored plastic thing pulsing on the hardwood floor, she got the wil ies. How gross to know that she had turned on Grace’s vibrator!
Thank God she had her walking gloves on. She swooped down to pick the thing up and shut it off. How did Grace smuggle that in here? Chloe didn’t want to know.
With her gloved hand gripped around the vibrator, she looked in the ornate gilded mirror, about the size of a plasma TV, tilted on top of Grace’s dressing table. Henry’s spectacles, which she wore now whenever Sebastian wasn’t around, made her look like a spinster on steroids. And maybe she was. She didn’t own a vibrator. She didn’t even know how to hold it, exactly. It looked total y out of place in her hands—period clothing or not.
Her hazel eyes looked browner than ever, and under the thick glass of Henry’s spectacles, they appeared wider apart. Somehow, in the mirror in her room, as smal and oval as her face, the glasses seemed okay. The poke bonnet with a straw crown and ruffled white trim completed the old-maid look. She frowned. Grace had already gotten a good laugh out of the glasses, and now Chloe could see why. She pul ed the bonnet from her head, held it upside down, peeled back the ruffled cotton liner, and tucked the vibrator in. The poke bonnet had an extended crown, almost like a stovepipe, and quite a bit could fit into it. She opened the other two side drawers and found half a pack of cigarettes, teeth-whitening strips . . .
eureka! The condoms! She tossed it al into the bonnet and eyed the doorknob.
Of course, the dressing table was way too obvious. Was there more? She peeked behind the tilted mirror, and something silver caught her eye.
Reaching behind the mirror with her arm, she pul ed out a foil packet of pil s. Xanax? Weren’t those antianxiety pil s? What could a beautiful, titled lady possibly have had anxiety attacks about?
She looked under Grace’s palatial canopy bed. Nothing. Chloe turned to the washstand, snooping around the linens. Grace had five walnut-sized soaps on her washstand. Five! Chloe pilfered one and stuck that in her bonnet, too. In the mahogany wardrobe that happened to be three times as big as Chloe’s, she found enough gowns to make a princess swoon and it was no wonder Grace never wore the same thing twice. She closed the wardrobe door and turned the ornate bronze key in the lock.
She opened each little drawer in the hutch above the writing desk and found a pink MP3 player! She popped that into her bonnet, too, then careful y squished the bonnet on her head, tied the ribbons under her chin, and glanced in the mirror. Amazingly, it didn’t look any clunkier on her than it had before she stuffed al those things in it. She scanned the room one last time before she turned to the door to go, but she heard Grace talking in the hal way.
Her knees went weak.
Grace’s bed was high off the ground, even though that had gone out of fashion by the Regency, but it was, in the end, her only option. Her bonnet just made it under the heavy wooden bed frame, and it was too risky to reach for Henry’s glasses, which had fal en off under the bed, near the edge of the Oriental carpet. The floor was dusty and her nose itched. She had about a foot-high field of vision from under the bed frame. Grace’s boots and riding habit train came by first, fol owed by her chaperone’s boots and riding train.
Chloe’s bodice was smushed against the wooden floor. When would she be able to get out of here? Grace’s chatelaine hit the dressing-table top with a clunk, like a key ring.
“I got a letter from my new lawyer,” Grace said to her chaperone.
“And?”
“He, too, claims the land’s been with them so long that nothing can legal y be done about it.”
Grace’s maidservant came in; Chloe saw her feet. She couldn’t hold her straining neck up any longer so she set her chin on the dirty floor to rest.
Grace walked toward the bed and her boot tips almost kicked Chloe in the nose. With a creak, Grace sat down on the bed, and the bedboard groaned above Chloe’s bonnet. The heels of Grace’s boots were practical y in Chloe’s face.
The maidservant knelt down to unlace Grace’s boots. Chloe held her breath, as if that would help. Final y, the maidservant slipped the boots off Grace’s feet, stood again, and Chloe exhaled.
Grace’s chaperone walked to the other side of the room. “Wel , then, you only have one choice, as I see it.” She always spoke as if she had an English muffin in her mouth. Stuffy.
The maidservant must’ve been helping Grace out of her riding habit. A slight ruffling noise and the skirt and train disappeared. Chloe looked away, even though she could only see up to Grace’s skinny calves. Chloe just wanted out of here.
The chaperone interrupted by clearing her throat, a not-so-subtle signal that the hired help might be listening. “We must get everyone else out of the picture. Out of your picture. No matter what it takes.”
Chloe knew what they were talking about, so she was pretty sure the maidservant knew, too. Her chin hurt, and she turned her face the other way, to keep her neck from cramping up.
The maidservant’s feet came into view. “Would you like to wear this gown, my lady?”
“No. No. The iridescent square-necked one.” Both the maidservant’s and Grace’s feet walked away. Chloe heard splashes coming from the washstand where Grace must’ve been washing her face.
