filmed. She didn’t want Abigail to see it, for one thing.
“Al three of you have gowns for the bal already made and fitted,” said the butler. He rose up on his toes in his gold-buckled shoes. “But, only two of you wil be invited to attend. If you are not chosen, you must immediately pack your trunks and you wil be sent home tonight. The two that remain wil be attending the bal tomorrow.”
More than ever, Chloe wanted to stay. Surely, Sebastian wouldn’t have sent her that note if he didn’t want her to stay.
“Mr. Wrightman, if you please.”
The butler stood aside, and Sebastian came forward. He looked elegant in his dark coat and breeches and a white cravat that showed off his tanned face.
Sebastian lifted an envelope from the salver. “Lady Grace.”
It was like a guil otine slicing down. Chloe’s chances were suddenly cut in half. It was going to be Julia or her. Even though the note he’d given her had raised her hopes, this had al occurred before her pathetic pianoforte performance, and anything could happen now. Fear of being sent home ripped through her. She realized the worst had happened: she was fal ing for Sebastian!
Grace curtsied as Sebastian bowed, and the ostrich feather in her turban brushed up against him.
Sebastian gazed at Chloe and Julia, as if even at that moment, he hadn’t yet decided which one of them he would choose. Chloe imagined having to go home to Abigail. Abigail would be thril ed to see her, but also crushed to know that her mother had been sent home. She’d be even more crestfal en to know that her whole life would have to change. They’d have to downsize, move out of the city, and Winthrop, being in a better financial situation, might even be granted the holiday and summer custody he wanted.
“Miss—” Sebastian paused for the cameras. He glanced at the envelope with the red wax
She could almost hear the French horns blaring triumph in her head. She felt tantalizingly close to victory, despite her pianoforte fiasco, because she was to meet Sebastian at the ice house. She said her good-byes to Julia, incredulous that Sebastian would let her go and Grace stay.
“Ladies . . .” The butler looked at Chloe and Grace. “Mr. Wrightman wil see you at the bal tomorrow night.”
Sebastian bowed, Chloe and Grace curtsied, and Chloe watched Julia as she didn’t bounce, but shuffled into the foyer on Sebastian’s arm.
“Good riddance to her,” Grace said, and brushed her hands off as if she’d just gotten rid of an annoying fly.
Mrs. Crescent, alas, would not be going to the bal . She had to stay at Bridesbridge for fear of slipping in the mud and a superstition that a ful moon might induce labor. Chloe would be under the dark wing of Grace’s chaperone for the night, but even this didn’t daunt her. Final y, the anticipated moment arrived.
Lit by the moon, the remaining ladies of Bridesbridge Place, Chloe, Grace, and Grace’s chaperone, stepped out of their carriage in front of Dartworth Hal . Dressed in their silk gowns, ostrich feathers, and elbow-length white gloves, they stepped into mud thick as chocolate frosting from the day’s rain.
The rain and mud, combined with the lack of Julia’s sporting presence, not to mention Mrs. Crescent’s, conspired to dampen Chloe’s spirits, but she smiled in anticipation of her first bal in England, surrounded by English people with their English accents. And she quickened at the prospect of dancing with Sebastian even as she wondered at what to expect at the ice house.
After Grace and her chaperone were helped out of the chaise, the footman handed Chloe out and helped her balance on the steel platform pattens strapped to her pale pink bal room slippers.
Chloe looked back at Bridesbridge Place. She missed Mrs. Crescent, however pregnant and persnickety she might have been. How could she pass this final test—the bal —on her own?
Cameras were everywhere and it made her uneasy. Granted, going with Grace meant she got to ride in the chaise-and-four. Stil . Stil , she was going to the bal with one of Cinderel a’s evil stepsisters, and she knew it.
Grace, in her wedding-white gown, looked down on Chloe from the first landing on the stairs. Chloe stretched her bejeweled neck toward the bright open doors of Dartworth Hal . She lifted her silk gown and pelisse and took a deep breath. Back home, everybody was eating cheeseburgers because it was the Fourth of July, but she got to go to a bal in one of the grandest country estates in England.
She teetered her way to the palatial staircase a good four inches off the ground in her pattens. They made a sucking sound every time she took a step in the mud. Everyone laughed as a footman’s shoe stuck in the mud and he had to hop around in his stocking foot. How would she trek to the ice house in al this? And who knew it rained so much in England?
The maids ushered the women into the ladies’ cloakroom, where one of them took off Chloe’s Greek-key- trimmed pelisse and her pattens. The maid even retied her bal room slippers, fastening the spaghetti-thin pink straps around her ankles a little too tight, but Chloe didn’t complain.
She looked in the same mirror in which she had beheld herself after the hedge-maze debacle and hardly recognized what she saw. This time, instead of seeing a madwoman, she saw a peach-gowned princess with a tiny Empire waist trimmed in sparkly gold. Her arched eyebrows, blackened with ripe elderberries, beckoned. Candle-soot eyeliner brought her bright eyes to life. And this time she hadn’t eaten her rouge. Was it the strawberry stain, or did she actual y have cheekbones now? The weeks of not eating haunch-of-venison soup, raised giblet pie, and Florentine rabbits had paid off. She could market this Regency diet when she got home. She wished Abigail could see her now!
She smiled at her stick-straight hair that Fiona had transformed into a splendor of curls. But the pin curls and yel ow beaded silk ribbon that swirled around her hair reminded her of—question marks. Were her feelings for Sebastian real? Or was she just projecting her idealized vision of Mr. Darcy onto him? Did she know him wel enough to even say yes to a made-for-television marriage proposal?
