Once she was down to shift and stays, Chloe hunted through the smaller wardrobe for something appropriate to wear to a Blankets for Babes charity tea. Brown? Sand? Ash? She settled for a lackluster gray-violet.
There. Chloe couldn’t look in the mirror without wanting to snore. She grabbed her most unflattering pelisse and strode from her bedchamber.
Before heading downstairs, she paused at the open doorway to the empty Planning Parlor. Bean’s face smiled down at her from his frame above the mantel.
“I wish I’d been your daughter by blood,” she whispered, “so I would have been born with rank.”
Bean’s oil-on-canvas smile did not reply.
It didn’t matter. She’d confessed her desire to be his “real” daughter hundreds of times while he was still alive. Sometimes his loss was so big, it threatened to burst from her chest and rend her to pieces. But she was strong. All of the Wynchesters were.
Bean always said the stars had brought them together. He loved her as she was. What could be more real than that?
The family depended on her to do her part. She would never let them down.
She stepped out of the Planning Parlor in time to catch Jacob frowning in the corridor, sniffing the air with confusion on his handsome face.
“Someone ought to check the flues,” he told her when he caught her quizzical expression. “One of the fireplaces smells like burnt hair.”
Er, that would be Chloe’s room, courtesy of her curling tongs.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she assured him, and hurried down the marble steps before he could ask any questions.
Graham sat alone in the dining room, surrounded by empty tea plates and stacks of society papers, some trapped by a vase of daffodils. He looked up as Chloe entered the room.
“What do you think?” He was adding to one of his hand-written journals. “Is Princess Caraboo actual royalty?”
Chloe switched his fork for a flower while he wasn’t looking. “Nobody ever is who they say they are. I don’t know why you read this rubbish.”
But she picked up one of the pages anyway. Lord D—injured in a duel. Heiress K—caught in the arms of a notorious rake.
It was silly to envy these people’s plights. Finding one’s name in the scandal sheets often spelled disaster for a respectable lord or lady. A permanent tumble from social grace. Chloe was grateful she had no further to fall.
“There’s your basket.” Graham motioned to the opposite side of the table.
Chloe peeked beneath the wicker lid. “Where’s Tiglet?”
“I banished him to Balcovia.”
As Balcovia was the small principality in the Low Countries where Bean had been born, this turn of events seemed unlikely.
“You’ve no idea where Tiglet is.” Chloe shook her head fondly. “A rhinoceros could charge from the teakettle whilst you read your papers and you wouldn’t even notice.”
He grinned unrepentantly. “I’m trying to fathom out how I can become Prince Caraboo. Wouldn’t it be a lark if people believed me to be royalty?”
And now she was jealous at the thought of her brother being fawned over and written about when Graham was only jesting. Wasn’t he? Chloe tried to picture him as royalty. She imagined he would make a striking prince…if he set down his society papers long enough to overtake a castle.
It was Chloe who was always in the midst of it all. Like the scuffed brown parquet of a dance floor: omnipresent and invisible, useful and unnoticed. Witness to everyone else’s fun.
A flicker of calico fur flashed between the curtains.
She scooped Tiglet up, tucked him into the basket next to the blankets, and hurried out to the waiting carriage.
As the wheels inched forward with the queue of eager attendees, Chloe arranged her gown and her basket as neatly as possible. She shouldn’t care about her appearance, and she especially ought not to care what sort of impression she made on Faircliffe—if he even came. She definitely shouldn’t care how she compared to Philippa York.
Until recently, Chloe hadn’t given Philippa much thought. She was a typical young lady inasmuch as any beautiful, spoiled daughter of a powerful MP could be considered typical.
If Chloe was the dance floor, Philippa and her ilk were sparkling chandeliers. Chloe had spent the same amount of time trying to get to know her as one might spend conversing with a candle.
