this show.
I may as well pack my things and go home.
Chapter 6
I don’t go home. Don’t get me wrong, with that little bombshell last night, I want to go home. There’s no point in being here if I can’t showcase Timothy. End of story. What’s more, staying here will be daily torture, thanks to the fact we’ve got to wear old fashioned dresses and that I’ll be forced to watch smug Sebastian pick and choose between the contestants.
Memories of my dignity are becoming more and more blurred.
Why not go home right this minute and collect that dignity at the door as I leave, you ask? The sad fact of the matter is that when I came on the show I signed a contract that says very clearly I can only leave when I’m sent home, I break the rules, or if I do decide to simply walk out, I’ll get slapped with a fine I just can’t afford right now—or at any time, for that matter.
When I signed the contract, although pretty darn harsh, none of it seemed too bad to me. I knew from the outset a guy who would go on a show like this to find love was not my type, so I figured he’d send me home pretty fast, and all I had to do was make sure it wasn’t on the first night.
Now? Well, now I’m forced to take things into my own Regency gloved hands. That means “Operation Make Sebastian Send Me Home” is well and truly on. Either that, or break some rules.
Speaking of the man himself, the fact that he singled me out by sitting next to me last night before the “dress like it’s 1813” bomb was dropped, has really raised some of the contestants’ hackles, just as Kennedy said it did. Which is ridiculous. It’s not as though I asked him to come sit with me, and our conversation lasted all of five minutes, during which he poked fun at me for falling out of the limo and tried to get me to snitch on the other contestants.
Nice guy.
Nevertheless, it would seem I’ve been labelled as a front runner by some, and deserve to be treated with disdain, suspicion, or all of the above.
Lucky me.
One of the contestants, a cute girl from Nebraska called Amy, asked me what my secret was, to which I had to reply I had none. Because there is no secret! Another, Abbi, accused me of using witchcraft to lure him in (I kid you not). With that one I simply nodded and moved to another table to eat my toast. I don’t need to be around that level of crazy before my morning coffee.
But they’re the harmless ones.
Several of the contestants have totally blanked me, including, of course, Hayley, the unnaturally orange looking girl with the stick-on cleavage. She and her cronies moved away from me when I sat down next to them to eat my breakfast, and they’ve continued to shoot evil glares in my direction ever since.
It’s so Mean Girls meets a good old fashioned Salem witch hunt right now.
So much fun.
Some of the contestants seem nice enough, like Kennedy and Phoebe. But really, I don’t know these women, and I couldn’t care less what Sebastian thinks of me.
The sooner I’m out of here, the better.
And now I’m in a room with blacked out windows, sitting in front of fancy gilded wallpaper with a huge bunch of white roses on a table. Bright lights are trained on me as I’m peppered with questions by a member of the crew on camera.
“What do you think of Sebastian?” a woman called Cindy with spiky peroxide blond hair asks.
Many words spring to mind, but instead of being honest, I reply, “I think he’s just great,” as I give her my most winning smile.
“What in particular do you like about him, Emma?”
“His accent. I like it a lot. It’s a really, really great accent.”
She looks at me in expectation. Clearly I need to add more.
“You know it’s all English and stuff, which is nice. It reminds me of Downton Abbey, actually, but only the family’s accents, not the servants. Oh, and not the guy who was the chauffeur who ended up marrying the daughter that died. I think he was Irish or Scottish or something?”
“What else did you like about him?” Cindy asks, cutting me off. I’m not sure she’s vibing with my Downton angle.
I wrack my brain. “His suit. Yeah, I liked his suit. It was