Undressing Mr. Darcy (31 page)

Julian had shown some kind of emotion in public? Had the convergence of the energy lines here at the baths gotten to him?

So many possibilities rushed, like a torrent, through Vanessa’s mind. Should she talk to him? Or, at this eleventh hour, should she do something more drastic? Once again, the course proved difficult to navigate. It confused her. She shouldn’t have to make the next move here, should she?

“Ladies.” Julian bowed to Vanessa and Sherry. “If you will excuse me.”

Just like that he disappeared into the swelling crowd and she missed her chance. Would she ever find him again in this crowd of seven hundred? And she knew she shouldn’t have had that lager, because now, of all times, she had to pee.

* * *

T
he crystal chandeliers dimmed in anticipation of the ball upstairs in the Pump Room. Vanessa’s stomach went a little queasy. Each dance would be long, sometimes fifteen minutes. The evening would go quickly, neither Julian nor Chase had asked her to dance, and neither man was anywhere to be seen.

Sherry escorted Vanessa and Lexi toward the Pump Room fountain. “I’m treating us all to a drink of healing water! I’m slapping down my pound fifty.”

Just as they raised and clinked their glasses and took a sip of the warm, mineral-rich water, a very nice gentleman in a blue tailcoat came over and very politely asked Sherry to dance, so Sherry set the rest of her water down on the wooden counter.

Vanessa’s heart positively burst for her as Sherry raised her eyebrows and beamed.

David, too, asked Lexi to dance, and they did make an adorable couple. Lexi set her glass down.

Were the glasses half-empty or half-f? mused Vanessa as she stood alone. She drank her entire glass of mineral water, swallowed a few cold meds with it, and promptly sneezed.

Couples lined up across from each other on the dance floor, forming two long lines of dancers.

The dance caller spoke into the microphone. “Single ladies, don’t be afraid to fill in for the men. Join in the dancing, everyone!”

From all angles of the room, women of all ages and sizes and equally varied costumes happily “filled in.”

Vanessa went to the bar and asked the bartender for the strongest mixed drink he could concoct. She stood there staring down into it: Punch Royal, a deep red Regency mix of cognac, rum, and port, according to the bartender.

She went for her phone as the quartet began the very lively opening song. It wasn’t easy to navigate the cracked screen with her gloves on, but there were no texts, no e-mails, nothing since she checked before she left the flat.

The ballroom glittered with shimmering chandelier light, dancers bounced lightly on their feet, music filled the room to the high ceilings, and Vanessa had never felt more alone. And abandoned by Julian.

But really, he hadn’t abandoned her. She’d shared nothing of her heart with him. She hadn’t opened herself up to him in any way. She’d given nothing, yet expected a return.

She read in the program—er, the “programme”—that a Regency libations lecture was going on in one of the other rooms, so she took her drink and made her way past the smiling lines of dancers to a bright room and took a seat in the back, sucking on her drink.

Before she knew it, her drink was gone, and the lecturer was speaking of small beer and orange wine and port, but nothing made any sense. She kept thinking about Julian and their time together, especially at the fairground.

The costumed crowd laughed frequently at what the lecturer said, and some nodded their coiffed heads in agreement, but once he appeared to turn blurry on her, Vanessa realized the harsh reality.

She was too drunk to be in a libations lecture.

* * *

A
nd she needed to find Julian. She had to let him know how she really felt about him. She needed to take a chance. Maybe the booze had addled her brain, but her time had run out here in England.

She felt as if her time had run out at home, too, for that matter. How had she gotten to this point in her life—alone? Had she somehow forgotten to get married and have kids along the way? Had she been working too much or having too much fun or—her phone vibrated with an e-mail. It was from another eBelieve match.

Drinking all that mineral water and soaking in the magical spa waters of Bath had produced their cure, and Julian had been right! She had a virtual half life.

Right then and there in the lecture room, on her phone, she took down her eBelieve profile and deleted the in-box messages. Time to live! Time to love! Time to hoist up her gown, jump over stiles, and get her petticoats dirtied in six inches of mud! She could live in the nineteenth century and the twenty-first, but she wouldn’t spend any more precious time living in the cyber world.

Standing now, she steadied herself with the chair in front of her and with as much finesse as a drunken duchess could muster, she turned to leave as quickly as possible, but somehow the hem of her gown must’ve gotten under the leg of the chair next to her, where a large older man sat dressed in his Regency best. With a great ripping sound, her ball gown tore.

These things happen when you grab your life by the—balls.

She didn’t look back; she didn’t look at the gown; she only aimed for the golden doorknob at the back of the room, turned it, and opened and quietly shut the door behind her, heaving a sigh that made her aware, once again, of just how exposed she felt in this gown.

There, across the hall, leaning against a doorjamb and checking his phone, stood Chase in his kilt.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

Words that a woman would love to hear—from the man
she’d
been looking for. Especially someone she might have been looking for her entire life.

Chase happened to be a great kisser and a fabulous guy. But she was here to figure out what was in store for her and Julian. That was her plan. That was her mission.

“I see you’ve incorporated a slit into your gown,” Chase said. “Very fetching.”

Vanessa looked down, and shit! Her gown had torn all the way up the side seam, from the hem to about where she’d tied off her garter.

“Fucking hell!”

Chase smiled. “I’m not quite so sure you fit in with this genteel crowd.”

“I can’t go in the ballroom like this!”

“No. You can’t. Let me take you back and we’ll get that ruined gown off you.”

He kept staring at her stockinged leg, completely visible now through the slit.

“I need to find some tape, some staples, something! I need to fix this gown right now!”

Chase moved closer and inspected the seam of the gown. “You know, you smell like a distillery, but that only makes you more alluring to me, a pirate at heart.”

She laughed. “Seriously, I need to fix this.” She needed to fix everything.

He opened the black leather Scottish bag attached to his belt and pulled something out and showed her.

“A sewing kit? You sew?”

“You don’t?”

“No! What guy carries a sewing kit around?”

“A reenacting pirate does. Pirates know how to sew, cook, and clean. Oh, and we know how to tie all kinds of knots, too.” He flashed that cocky grin.

Unsolicited, an image of Chase popped into her head, striking a pose in his pirate outfit, a rose between his teeth, a French maid feather duster in his hand, and ropes on his bedposts. She should never drink rum.

“Look, I happen to have white thread, too.”

“I don’t have time for this to be sewn up!”

“I could just tack it together with big, loose stitches. It won’t take long.”

Was he kidding?

“We just have to figure out where to go to get the job done.”

One thing about Chase she’d always found attractive was his executive decision-making abilities. He had made the decision for her that yes, he would fix her gown.

“The men’s room,” he said. “Follow me.”

And for once she followed someone else’s lead.

* * *

I
f it were Julian sewing up her gown, she might have thought it the sexiest sight she’d ever witnessed.

By the time Chase had finished tying off the thread at the hem, she’d sobered up some, and he’d, meanwhile, noticed her tattoo.

“A heart wrapped in barbed wire, interesting.”

Vanessa didn’t have time for this. “It’s an old tattoo.” She leaned her head back on the tile wall in exasperation and put her hand on his thick hair to tussle it, in hopes of changing the subject, offering a quick thanks, and getting the hell out of here and back into the ballroom. “Thank you, Chase. You’re a man of many talents. I owe you!”

At that very moment, the door swung open, and it happened to be Julian, seeing Chase on his knees with Vanessa’s gown hiked up and her hand in his hair. In the men’s room.

As soon as Julian walked in, he walked out.

Vanessa lost her breath for a moment. “Damn!”

“Who was that?” Chase stood.

“Julian!” Vanessa ran after him. “Julian!”

She spotted him in the ballroom, where the music played. He stood with a crowd of impeccably dressed revelers with his back to her.

Vanessa strode right up to the crowd and broke into the small circle, just as any ill-mannered American would.

“Julian,” she said with a smile, “can we talk?”

He returned the smile. “Of course.”

“Julian?” One of the masked ladies passed judgment and sentencing with a single inflection.

“Oh. Vanessa, I would like you to meet someone very important to me.” He made a flourish with his hand.

The woman stepped forward. She held her black mask on a stick and removed it to get a better look at Vanessa.

“Allison, this is my PR agent from Chicago, Vanessa. Vanessa, this is Allison, my fiancée.”

This wasn’t an act and not at all a part of his Mr. Darcy persona, was it? A sudden headache came on, a hangover jabbing into her brain, and her first thoughts, both shallow and swift, fired something like this:
Fiancée? Fiancée?!
Allison the fiancée didn’t send off any cool or sexy vibes—at all. She stood there like a wilted flower with her plain-Jane face and nondescript gown.

In one-fifth of a second Vanessa judged and labeled Allison as a drag and nothing, nothing like her.

Next thought: Secret engagement? It was straight out of Austen’s
Sense and Sensibility
!

Chase, who seemed to come out of nowhere, slid next to Vanessa with one hand on the handle of his sword while the other encircled her waist.

Could it be true? The engagement explained the hot and the cold, the sizzle and the ice, and the lukewarm to tepid.

Wait a minute. She’d slept with an engaged guy?

Allison limply held out her gloved hand, and Vanessa wanted to deliver a firm, confident handshake, and she did, by some miracle, manage to extend her hand even as, in her mind’s eye, she saw nothing but her and Julian’s naked bodies writhing together—until she pulled her hand back and propped it on her hip.

“Do you happen to have a white puppy?” Vanessa asked.

“Yes, yes, I do,” the amazingly boring Allison said. “Did Julian tell you about her?”

Vanessa glared at Julian. “No. Julian didn’t tell me a
thing
about her. I wish he had. He really should have! Right from the very beginning!”

Allison looked confused.

“I wanted to tell you about—the puppy. I tried to tell you—”

He looked sincere, he really did. Still.

Much like the water bubbling below the surface in Bath, she simmered.

“Oh, really? When did you try to tell me?”

The music had stopped, the dance ended, and hundreds of people, breathless, smiling, and sweaty, cleared the floor with their fans fluttering.

Her self-control reached the boiling point and her rage burst out in a torrent. “Was that before you slept with me or after?”

Her voice carried across the now-empty dance floor. Feathered heads turned. People set down their wineglasses to stare.

“Julian?” The amazingly boring Allison could speak with a modicum of passion, it seemed.

“Vanessa, let’s not get all feisty and American over this,” he said. “It was one night.” He looked pained even as he said it, as if he were lying. Vanessa had only known him a short while, but she could read his face, his normally stoic face.

He looked at Allison. “It was a mistake.”

No matter how he looked, and what his face said, his words stung. Blood rushed to Vanessa’s head. Her hands shook. “A mistake?”

Some of the people in the circle laughed.

What? He wanted to incite her anger even more? That was another mistake.

Chase brandished his fake, blunt sword.

“Nobody’s ever called me a mistake!” She yanked off her glove and slapped Julian across the face. It resounded across the dance floor.

He winced and squinted his dark brown eyes, his long lashes brushing against his high cheekbones. It hurt him more than physically, and Vanessa knew it.

A crowd gathered and some of them smiled, as if she, Julian, and Chase were actors and this were part of a rehearsed play or planned PR stunt. They had no clue this was for real. A man in the crowd handed Julian his replica sword in jest. Two TV cameras appeared out of nowhere and people in gowns and breeches began filming with their phones.

“You have insulted a lady’s honor, Julian, and I challenge you to a duel,” said Chase.

Julian laughed. “First of all, a challenge is never given at the time of the insult!”

“Well, I happen to be flying out tomorrow, so I’m skipping the usual hand-delivered note.”

“And a gentleman can’t duel with a clansman-pirate. We’re not of the same class.”

“Oh, you’re in a different class, all right.” Chase sheathed his sword. “How about fisticuffs?” He rolled up his sleeves and held up his fists.

“No, I choose swords. I accept the challenge. Name your second.”

“Vanessa will be my second!”

“I will?”

They stood at the center of the dance floor now, with the entire room watching and entertained, the TV cameras bobbing and swaying for better angles.

“A woman as a second? Then Allison will be mine.”

Allison couldn’t take her eyes off Vanessa, and Vanessa realized this must be equally, if not more, of a shock to her.