Prada and Prejudice

Chapter 9

I flip over the first folded note. The Duke of Harksbury is all it says on the outside. It's written in a feminine scrawl, little curlicues and elegant loops all over the place.

I know I shouldn't be reading this. It's probably a bunch of love letters. I should just shove it back between the couch and the table and forget about it.

But I got stuck here somehow, and I need to discover everything I can about where I'm staying. There's no telling what kind of clues I could come across if I pay attention. Clues that could lead me back to the twenty-first century.

And okay, I'm a teensy bit curious as to whether he has a girlfriend.

I take a deep breath and slide my finger under the fold and open the letter. The same cute penmanship greets me.

Your Grace,

I am certain my previous correspondence has been lost, for I have written you with each passing month, and yet still I receive no reply. Is it so easy to forget all of your whispered promises?

Your daughter was born two months ago.

I jerk backward and the letter flutters from my hand. Alex has a daughter? He's freaking nineteen and he has a daughter?

The world swims as I scramble to put together the pieces. He's not married, is he? Even if he were, this lady is definitely not living here. I mean, I would have seen her by now.

Not to mention a two-month-old little baby.

I shake my head. Maybe I shouldn't jump to conclusions....

It pains me to ask for money, hut I have no choice. The daughter of a duke should not go hungry, and I fear that is in her future. Please, I will not shame your family or utter a word of this to a soul. There will be no scandal, for no one will know, hut I beg of you to help me. I amunable to find work —

I snap the letter shut, suddenly feeling nauseated.

He has a daughter and he abandoned her. And she and her mother are poor? He's living in this giant mansion with servants at his beck and call, and his own daughter has nothing?

This is disgusting. Did he sleep with a maid or something and then send her away?

Oh God, he's so much worse than I could have possibly imagined. He's not just an arrogant jerk... He's an absolute wretched human being!

I gather up the letters and tie the ribbon back around them, wishing I'd never found them at all. I'll read the rest of the letters later and figure out what to do.

I jump up and swiftly leave the room. I'll deposit the letters somewhere in my bedroom and then finish exploring.

An hour later, I've figured out the layout of Harksbury, but I haven't found a single item to prove my theory of make-believe.

I mean, these people don't even have indoor plumbing. There are chamber pots in most of the bedrooms. For real. And I think I found the laundry room, except they sure don't use washing machines. Forget about the kitchen. It was sweltering in there from actual fires for cooking with, and the servants looked at me with such shocked expressions I backpedaled and fled before they could yell at me for being there.

God, 1815 really stinks. In my century, a girl gets child support if a guy like Alex does something like this. Or a big college fund, in my case, though I would have preferred an actual dad. One who didn't up and move to the East Coast and start a whole new family three years ago, and then invite me out, like that wouldn't be the most awkward summer of my life.

I shake my head and hope it sends the memories flying to the back of my mind, where they belong. At least my dad calls twice a week and pays child support on time.

Alex is such a schmuck, to live like this and have a kid on the side. What a rotten person. And seriously, he's nineteen. That's just wrong.

I reach the bottom of the steps and head down the east wing.

Harksbury seems to be made up in sort of a rectangular fashion, around the courtyard I'd seen earlier. The two main wings come together at the big foyer and grand staircase, and then go off in opposite directions, a good couple hundred feet or more, each hall lined with door after door after door. It'll take me days to open them all, hut I don't think I'm going to try because nothing I've found so far has been useful.

Downstairs are a bunch of sitting rooms and dining halls and a few smaller bedrooms.

Upstairs are the library and more bedrooms, but those are bigger, some with whole sitting rooms attached to them.

Only parts of the house have hardwood. The rest is carpeted. Everything is bigger than normal, stately and grand. The doors would accommodate a seven-foot guy and the ceilings are so high I could stand on a chair and leap into the air and not be able to touch them.

But it's all sort of cold in its grandiosity. Three people do not need a house this size. Especially since the servants seem to keep to the lower level, except when cleaning.

Which they do a lot of. They're everywhere, dusting and sweeping and beating rugs.

Every time I find another room, another fancy painting, and another oversized piece of furniture, I think about the letters stuffed under my mattress. How could he live like this while his own daughter is living God knows where?

I despise him. I abhor him. I hate him.

I'm mumbling to myself as I exit the house and wander through the gardens. They could still have that private jet back here, right?

I slow as I approach the barns. There's some kind of rhythmic beat coming from inside. It's almost musical.

When I round the corner, I see a man with an overturned bucket tapping away on it with two sticks, like a drummer. Two boys who look barely thirteen are doing the absolute funniest Riverdance I have ever seen, jumping around like happy little leprechauns, their elbows jutting out and their toes barely touching the ground.

I can't stop the laugh that bubbles out of me. I clamp a hand over my mouth but it's too late; they've heard it. One of the boys stops so quickly he falls over and promptly turns beet red.

And now I feel really guilty, because I know precisely how the burn in his cheeks feels.

The last thing I should be doing is laughing at other people.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. I've just, uh, never seen dancing like that before."

The younger boy, a redhead, picks himself up off the ground with a wide-eyed look.

"You are American," he says, as if I'm a mythical creature.

I nod. "Yes. And, uh, we have different dances where I come from."

"Can you show us one?" The second boy, a dark-haired kid, steps forward, looking intrigued.

I stifle a laugh. "Oh, uh, no. I'm a horrible dancer."

"Please?" the redheaded boy asks. "I have never seen an American dance."

I just laughed at them thirty seconds ago. Wouldn't that make me mean if I just blow them off now?

"I doubt you'd want to see these dances," I say, stalling. I feel kind of bad. But I really can't dance. I'll make a fool of myself.

"Oh, but I do. Most certainly."

"Oh." Well, then.

I could try, right? Just some tiny little thing?

But what do I share? MC Hammer? The Running Man? The Electric Slide? A little Macarena?

"Uh," I say, stepping forward. "How about, um, the Robot?"

"The Robot?" the two boys ask in unison.

Did the word robot even exist in 1815?

"Yeah. You, uh, hold your arms out like this," I say, demonstrating the proper way to stand like a scarecrow. I can't believe I'm doing this. "And then relax your elbows and let your hands swing. Like this."

I'm really not doing it well, but by the way their eyes widen, you'd think I just did a full-on pop-and-lock routine with Justin Timberlake. They mimic my maneuver, making it look effortless.

The drummer guy stands up and gets in on the action, swinging his arms freely. The guy's better than me after a two-second demo. Figures.

"Okay, then, uh, you sort of walk and you try to make everything look stiff and, uh, unnatural. Like this." I show him my best robotic walk, my arms mechanical in their movements.

The two boys and the drummer immediately copy me, and by the time they've taken four or five steps, they seriously look like robots.

In no time they're improvising, and their laughter trickles up toward the rafters of the barn.

Yeah. That's my cue to leave before inspiration strikes and I try to show them how to break-dance but only succeed in breaking my neck.

I slip out of the barn unnoticed, grinning to myself as I walk the gravel path back toward the house, my skirts brushing the dirt.

At least somewhere, I'm not Callie the Klutz. Even if it's just some smelly old barn.

There's hope for me after all.