“I have to admit, this is way better than my rabbit pudding,” I joked.
Everyone ignored me. The women were fawning over Beck.
“Really?” Bunny was saying. “I would have expected you billionaires to do nothing but date. You could have all the beautiful women in the world.”
The unspoken part was, of course,And yet you’re with Tess.
Beck and I have a fake relationship, I reminded myself.They can say whatever they want.
But it still hurt.
“You need to be with someone like my Cressida,” Penny said. “She went to all the best schools.”
I stabbed at a piece of rabbit angrily. Instead of quietly spearing the meat, my fork hit a bone, and the whole piece flew up in the air and landed with a thunk on the dining room table, leaving a large red stain on the white tablecloth.
“I’ll just take that back,” I said, panicking slightly as I leaned over to pick up the whole piece of rabbit, several more buttons popping as I did so.
One of the servers came by. “I’ll take that, ma’am.”
“No need,” I said, feeling sweat dripping down between my boobs, which were crammed together under the stiff stay. Then I shoved the whole piece of rabbit in my mouth and chewed, cheeks bulging.
Ethel drained her wineglass.
I was going to ask for more wine, but I had a huge piece of bone in my mouth and nowhere to spit it. The napkins weren’t paper; they were cloth, and I didn’t dare spit the bone there. Could I put it back in my bowl?
I tried to think back on the etiquette lessons I had read drunkenly on the internet after bingeing regency romance books.
You had to take the food out of your mouth with whatever you had used to put it there, if I recalled.
I had used my fingers, but a fork seemed more appropriate. I picked it up and put it in my mouth.
Of course I couldn’t spear the piece of bone. I tried to carefully roll it on the fork, slipping it out of my mouth like I was doing an Easter egg race. I made it halfway to the plate, then the bone bounced off my fork, clanged on the edge of the plate, and onto the hardwood floor.
Everyone stopped to stare at me.
Beck’s face was unreadable.
“You know,” I said desperately, trying to salvage the situation. “In the 1700s, people just used their hands and a knife to eat, so really, you could say I’m just trying to be historically accurate.”
God,that was the worst dinner ever.
All I wanted was a shower and some macaroni and cheese and a chocolate cake. A whole one.
More buttons had come undone in the car ride. My dress was sliding off as I shuffled down the hallway, shedding clothes like a seventeenth-century scullery-maid Cinderella. My bonnet was askew, my frizzy hair finally beating it into submission. My stay was crooked, one of my boobs had half fallen out, and my petticoats were down to my knees.
“I will never complain about small pockets again,” I huffed. “Just the fact that my clothes in this century stay where they’re supposed to is enough for me.”
“And here I thought you were doing a striptease for my benefit,” Beck’s deep voice said.
I turned then cursed and tried to bring up my shawl to cover my tits, but that meant I lost my hold on the petticoats, and they fell in a puddle around me.
I was feeling kind of puddly down there with the way Beck was looking at me, eyes dark with desire.
“I was hoping to convince you to give me the full historical demonstration,” he said, backing me into my bedroom. “How did they have sex back then in all those clothes?”
One by one, the remaining ties to my overcomplicated clothing came off, falling to the floor as he pulled me into a warm kiss.
I was the first to break away, gesturing at his still-dressed state. “I need to see you.”
