Undressing Mr. Darcy (9 page)

Vanessa laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

C
hapter 5

L
ater that afternoon she stood in Aunt Ella’s creamy dressing room with the gold gilt crown molding, gold slipper chair, and gold vanity, wearing a shimmering yellow gown from her aunt’s closet that left everything from her shoulders to midcleavage bare, it seemed.

“You’ll catch more men with this than those blazers of yours,” Aunt Ella said. “Women of the Regency knew a thing or two about that!”

“I have no desire to catch any men,” Vanessa said.

She was aware of and thinking about one man, and that was Julian, who sat in the living room reading and resting while all this went on clandestinely, at her request.

Aunt Ella hadn’t worn the gown in decades, but she and Martha agreed this one would work best. Vanessa hadn’t paid full attention to everything the women were saying, as she had to deal with some e-mails and worked on her phone while they worked on her. They didn’t want her to get in front of the mirror until they had put some time in, apparently.

“I’ll have to modify a corset I have on hand, too, of course,” Martha said.

“Of course.” Aunt Ella nodded. “Oh, Vanessa!” Her gray eyes sparkled with a faraway look as she stared, and Vanessa knew her aunt was reminiscing about the gown.

She stepped over to her aunt and gave her a huge hug and a kiss. “Just wait till you dance with Paul tomorrow night! Kai will be filming all of it so we can watch it every Sunday night—instead of the BBC.”

“Instead of the BBC? Never.”

Martha swooped in with pins, tacking up the hem, then the sides. “I’ll have to take it in.”

“She’s getting too thin,” Aunt Ella said as she rifled through her drawers, pulling out various pairs of gloves and examining them. “And she’s spread too thin.” Aunt Ella continued to speak as if Vanessa weren’t there. It was an old, endearing habit of hers. “She’s so overworked with that crazy business of hers.”

She held up a pair of long gloves. “Ahh. Here they are.” She handed them to Vanessa. “Put your phone down, please, child, and put the gloves on to hide that garish black nail polish.”

Vanessa knew better than to disobey.

“All right,” Martha said. “Time to look in the mirror.”

They trotted her to the mirror as she slid the gloves on. Just as she arrived at the mirror, Aunt Ella gathered Vanessa’s hair in a ponytail, twisted it, held it up on her head, then stuck a long, gorgeous white ostrich feather in. Martha clasped a simple chain with an amber stone around her neck and it fell just at the bottom of her throat.

Vanessa couldn’t believe what she saw.

“That gown is made for you,” Martha said.

“That gown was made for
me
,” Aunt Ella quipped. “But she looks a damn sight better in it than I would at this point!”

Vanessa had never seen herself in a Regency gown. Granted, it covered her best asset: her legs. But the gloves made her arms appear longer, and yes, more feminine without the black nail polish. The cinching just below her bustline, along with the low cut, proved, well, attention getting.

“See how, with your hair up, your cheekbones look even more prominent?” Aunt Ella asked. “And, being a relation of mine, your bone structure is of course impeccable.”

“Just wait until you see it with the corset on. It’ll be worth all those measurements I had to take. You’ll look fabulous, darling.”

Maybe, just maybe, she could pull this off. “You two really are like fairy godmothers.”

Aunt Ella smiled. “You are opening the ball by dancing with Julian, aren’t you, dear? Isn’t that what we decided?” Aunt Ella said.

The little room seemed to close in on Vanessa. Her aunt had gotten confused again.

“There are hundreds of other more qualified women ready to take on that task. Remember we decided to run a contest to see who would open the ball with him?”

Aunt Ella sighed and dropped Vanessa’s ponytail, sending the feather fluttering to the floorboards and Vanessa’s hair falling around her in a cascade.

Martha unbuttoned the gown from the top of the neck on down.

Her aunt rubbed her temples. “I was sure you told me you wanted to open the ball with him.”

Martha looked down and quickly gathered up her pins and measuring tape. “I’ll get the garment bag for the gown.” She went into the bedroom.

Vanessa put her hands on her aunt’s shoulders. “I don’t even know the minuet. I couldn’t ask him to teach me.”

“You don’t have to ask him. I’ve already done that.”

Vanessa’s chest sunk. “What?”

“He’s thrilled to teach you; he said so himself. Couldn’t think of a better way to spend the evening, he told me.”

“We were supposed to go over some new facets of his PR plan.”

Aunt Ella tossed her head. “One can always work!”

Like a deck of cards, she had her evening all neatly stacked, but now everything had been reshuffled.

“We have an English gentleman to entertain and a ball to launch. I thought it the perfect solution! I—I forgot you said you’d have someone else open the ball with him. It slipped my mind.”

Vanessa wriggled out of the dress and tried to figure out how she could wriggle out of not only this, but her commitment to Chase and the swordsmanship workshop tomorrow.

How did she get herself into these things—gowns and minuets and swordsmanship workshops? And how could she get out of them? There was one thing, though, she couldn’t get out of.

“Auntie E, don’t worry. The ball will go without a hitch. You don’t even need to think about it. However, the doctor called, and he wants us in for a follow-up first thing in the morning.”

She gave her aunt a hug right there in her leopard-print thong and lacy black bra. “It won’t take long. I just didn’t think it would be smart to wait. After all, I have to drive Julian to Louisville after this conference, and I’ll be gone a couple of days.”

Aunt Ella sat down in the slipper chair. “You’re right. We have to go. If the doctor knows the results, I want to know the results.”

Vanessa breathed a sigh of relief, and with that came the brainstorm that she should visit the costume shop up the street for something suitable to wear to a swordfight workshop. “I just have a quick errand to run right now; it’ll take me half an hour tops. You and Julian should eat dinner, and as soon as I’m back, you can turn in for the night.”

“That is how you get too thin, dear, and cause those fainting fits of yours, by skipping meals.” Aunt Ella eyed her up and down, stopping at her bare butt cheeks. “And is this really what you wear under those suits and sheath dresses?”

* * *

S
he scored a rental Wonder Woman costume at the costume shop. The workshop tomorrow with Chase felt more like a date than anything else, and she couldn’t disappoint him by showing up to Hero Con in anything from her closet.

Two costumes in one day?

Who knew life off the grid and untethered by clients could be so interesting? She had actually forgotten to check her eBelieve in-box.

She and Julian had left Aunt Ella safely tucked into bed, and, at Vanessa’s suggestion, they took a walk in the sand along the beach, stopping and sitting on the embankment so she could show him the PR plan on her tablet.

He wore modern clothes, an indigo and white striped button-down shirt and jeans that made her forget, initially, this was all business.

Her strappy sandals and his loafers comingled in the sand in front of their bare feet.

He had nice feet. Nice feet? What did it matter if a client had nice feet?

She cleared her throat. “In order to gain maximum—exposure for you—”

Suddenly her business-speak took on innuendo?

“—we want to make sure you appear on as many websites and social media outlets as possible. Just last night, once I saw the plight of your property, I decided to contact all the English interest groups here in the States I could find, and not just the Jane Austen ones you and your publisher have been targeting.”

“Such as?”

“Such as English heritage and genealogical societies, literary societies, historical preservation groups . . . Here, I have a list of them. There are millions of people here with English ancestry and sentiments that could be approached for donations to your property. It’s just a matter of capturing them—and their attention. I’ve also put together the bones of a website dedicated to the property itself. Before it goes live it should have a video tour of your home on it, and an interview with you, too. You can even include some photos of your great-great-grandfather and stories of your ghost. Get people invested.”

He moved closer to see the tablet.

“Impressive. I’d never thought of it.”

“I’ve already managed to get your book added to more than a hundred online catalogs and websites. Here’s the list right here. I’ll keep contacting more as they come up.”

“Thank you.”

“And to further expand your reach—”

Innuendo, again?

“I have Kai putting together a book trailer using the footage from your show.”

“A book trailer? Similar to a film trailer?”

“Exactly. I also have him brainstorming ideas for a free app. Our goal is to have your trailer, your app, your cause in general—spread all over the cyber world. If something—anything—were to go viral, that could bring you all the donations you’d need.”

“Viral.”

“Yes, something, let’s say, on YouTube, that garners us millions of hits. It seems you and your publisher have just been focusing on selling the book—the steak—when in fact you should be selling the sizzle.”

“What sizzle?”

“What sizzle?! Why, your
Undressing Mr. Darcy
show, of course! Why would you reserve that for just the seven hundred or so at this conference and then the three or four hundred in Louisville, when, via the Internet, you could literally expose yourself to the entire world and their wallets?”

“When you say it that way, it sounds as if I’m some cheap striptease act.”

Vanessa laughed. “You’re a classy,
expensive
striptease act. We want people to make significant donations to your property.”

“What would my great-great-grandfather say?”

She smiled. “He’d be thrilled at your ingenuity. Is it any better or worse than marrying into money to save the property? Come to think of it, that would be another way to go. Have you thought of
that
?”

He tossed his head back as if the idea caused him pain. “Dear God, no! I couldn’t marry just for money.” He looked her in the eyes. “I could only marry for love, to someone I respect, someone that’s a true partner.”

Vanessa looked away from his face and back at her tablet. “Well, then. I’ve also come up with a QR code for you. It’s one of those digital codes that people can scan with their smartphones and then watch some of your show. I’m still trying to figure out where we can place it—and I’m surfing around to see what other causes you could partner with. But all of this is a start.”

“I should say it’s a start,” Julian said as he slipped the tablet from her hands, shut it down, and slid the hinged cover over it. “I’m profoundly grateful, Vanessa, but I must ask you, would you like to dance?”

He stood and took her hand.

“Right here? On the beach?”

“Why not.”

It wasn’t a question.

She stood facing him, just an arm’s length away.

He smiled. “This particular minuet that I’m about to teach you does not start out with us facing each other—”

“Oh.” She stepped back and the sand felt a little cooler on the balls of her feet.

“But this is lovely, I have to admit.”

Lovely? Well, no American guy would be caught dead saying that word at a time like this, but it really was . . . lovely. Even the wispy clouds overhead oozed orange in the blue sky while the waves provided a rhythmic background.

Was it his modern clothes, the fact that he lorded over a large, albeit derelict, estate, or simply his personality that created his magnetism?

He took both of her hands, her cool hands, into his large, warm ones. He slowly pulled her closer to his body and—OMG—he was going to kiss her!

She could see his long dark lashes dropping, his lips parting ever so slightly, his neck turning to the side, and she wanted to reach out and touch his razor-stubbled cheek, but luckily she restrained herself just long enough to watch his eyes open and his jaw tighten as he stepped back.

He changed his mind?!

Never, in all her dating years, had a man come so close to kissing her only to clearly change his mind and deliberately, willfully,
not
kiss her! WTH? Was the setting not perfect? The moment not ideal? The girl not worth kissing after all?

Then again, they had a business relationship, and maybe he’d decided not to jeopardize it.

Her phone rang in her bag and she dropped his hands. Saved by the cell. It wasn’t the first time. Thank God for modern technology.

“I’d better check that—it could be Aunt Ella.”

It was a client, after hours, and she chose not to pick up. Instead she just tossed her phone back in her bag. “So where do I stand, then?” she asked. A good question.

He took her hand. “You’re meant to be here, by my side.”

For a moment, she stood, stuck in the sand, while that line struck her.
You’re meant to be here, by my side.
How could she ever read into such an offhanded remark when the guy refused to even kiss her?