by Lynn Messina
If she recognized the tactic for what it was, Agatha did not draw attention to it. Rather, she asked him what time he would advise for their meeting and deferred to his superior knowledge of depravity when he suggested two in the afternoon as ideal. He also proposed writing the letter from Mr. Clemmons, as he knew the exact words to provoke his attendance. Immediately, she expressed concern that Townshend would recognize the hand as unfamiliar, and before he could suggest a solution, insisted she could easily pilfer a sample from Petrie’s rooms, which were vacant during his absence.
“A man so reliant on his assistant’s services would not travel without at least one note or reminder from the fellow,” she observed thoughtfully.
One by one, they worked through the particulars of Mr. Luther Townshend’s downfall, with the viscount assuming responsibility for much, if not all, that had to be done: He would write the letter; he would talk to the magistrate; he would arrange for the Runners; he would coordinate with the Rusty Plinth; he would provide a carriage to convey her to the meeting; he would even secure a new wig for her disguise.
“I cannot speak to its comfort,” he said cautiously, “for it is a wig, and they are known to be itchy regardless of quality, but I can promise it will fit properly and not be speckled with ancient white powder.”
“An improvement, to be sure. Thank you, my lord,” she said stiffly, then rose to her feet and walked to the door. She was showing him out. “I trust we have covered every detail for tomorrow. I will, of course, have the note with Clemmons’s handwriting delivered to your residence as soon as I lay hands on it. Now, you still have much to do, so I will let you get on with it. I am, as always, grateful for your help.”
Her tone was cool—cool and polite and detached as if she were discussing the price of silk with the milliner. He understood her aloofness was a reaction to his earlier rebuff. He knew she had only adopted the same businesslike manner he himself had assumed when her question rattled him, yet he still resented her attempt to put distance between them. Just because he did not want to share the deeply personal truths of his own life did not mean he didn’t want to know every deeply personal truth of hers.
She had agreed to let him see her studio, and damn it, he wasn’t leaving until he did.
“The south window?” he asked, striding over to the doorway.
“The south window?”
“The window that is suited for climbing through,” he explained, amused by how confused she was. It seemed like an obvious question to him. “It is on the south side of the building? I assume so, as the access is better than the north side.”
The impulse was there to equivocate—he could see it in her eyes—but rather than try to put him off, she conceded with a detailed explanation of how to find the correct window and instructions for avoiding Mrs. Brookner’s sharp eye. “I’m not saying you must crawl, per se, but a low creep under the window sash would not be inappropriate. I will meet you there in fifteen minutes, which will leave me plenty of time to get the writing sample.” Then she called for Gregson and instructed him to show the viscount out.
Although his absence would be temporary, Addleson made a proper good-bye and even kissed Agatha on the hand in front of the butler, an obvious misstep made glaring by the horrified look the lady gave him. Smothering a smile, he sauntered down the front path, climbed onto his curricle and drove to the end of the block. Then he pulled his the carriage to the curb, climbed down again and asked his tiger to exercise the horses. Muttering about cracked nobs, Henry jumped down from his seat and took the reins.
Accustomed to muttered insults from his tiger, Addleson did not feel the least bit put out by the abuse and suspected, as he crouched in the grass under Mrs. Brookner’s window, that there was in fact something a little cracked about his nob. Agatha’s unrestrained laughter as he pulled himself through the window confirmed it.
“Welcome, my lord,” she said, closing the casement behind him. “I would offer you a cup of tea, but I’m sure we do not have time to drink it. At this very moment, the tale of the kiss you bestowed on my hand is spreading through this house like fire through tinder and in a few minutes the story will reach my mother’s ears. When it does, she will send down a footman to request my presence and I will be subjected to a full interrogation. If I have not made myself clear, the kiss was an ill-conceived idea and a very poor way to repay me for a kindness.”
Although she spoke sternly, a glimmer of amusement lit her dark eyes and Addleson sensed an excitement about her, as if she were pleased to have him there. He also thought he detected an unfamiliar bloom to her cheeks but conceded that might have been the lighting in the room, which was as dark as she’d warned.
Indeed, her caution was well served, for the room was every bit as dreary as she’d said. The space was small, the walls were sooty, the floor was smudged with paint and dirt, and the natural light provided by the window in the daytime would be negligible.
He was amazed her studio space was merely a bone of contention between her and her mother. He rather thought it should be the site of a long-fought war.
The room was chilly despite the fire crackling in the hearth, and he noticed the maid Ellen wore a dun-colored wool shawl that had seen better days. Seemingly unaffected by the cold, Agatha stood by the window and watched him with the unwavering gaze of a cat. He did not blame her for the silent scrutiny, for he was the interloper in her midst, one who had inexplicably demanded entry. The onus was on him to make observations.
But he did not want to make observations. Like her, all he wanted to do was look and observe, and breathe and marvel. There was so much to see, for canvases were piled everywhere, one next to the other against the walls and the sideboard and the armchair by the fire. A lot of them were studies—the same arrangement of fruit painted over and over again from different angles using different methods. One focused on the way the light from a candle fell on the bright red skin of an apple. Another captured the shadows in the hollow between grapes.
Many of them were portraits of the staff engaged in sundry duties such as sewing a sock or mixing a broth. There were a dozen canvases of her maid, each one showing her as she was in the moment: an ordinary servant girl posing for her mistress.
All of Agatha’s paintings represented the truth. None of them embodied the scope of history or epitomized the great themes of the day. They were not depictions of famous scenes from the classics or the Bible, nor were they glorifications of regular men. Her studies of Lord Bolingbroke were stunning for their honesty, with the perfect touch of impatience and resignation.
On a table, he discovered stacks of sketches by Mr. Holyroodhouse, some barely outlines, some almost finished and others scribbled over. Among the pile, he found several early drafts of Lord Addlewit, his eyes confronting curious onlookers head on. Something about his expression was off—something that she simply couldn’t get right—for the drawings were almost identical except for a minor change here or there: the line of his jaw, the angle of his nose, the light in his eyes. Recalling the final, with its profile view of him, he knew she never got it right.
As he looked and observed, it was easy to marvel, for so much of her work was marvelous, but breathing—well, breathing was harder, for she quite literally took his breath away.
Then he flipped through the canvases in the far corner by the fireplace and suddenly there was she: Agatha in a series of self-portraits, each one less flattering than the last until the full-blown scowl of Lady Agony glowered back at him.
Everything stopped.
For one endless moment, nothing in the world moved. His heart stopped beating, his blood stopped flowing, his lungs stopped expanding.
It was there, all there, in that image of Agatha. Everything he saw when he looked at her: the impishness, the anger, the impatience, the delight, the forbearance, the talent. It was all contained in that single image, and as the world suddenly started up again, as the blood began to pound through his veins, as his heart tripped over it
self as if trying to win a race, he realized how foolish he had been to think he could be infatuated with Agatha and not immediately tumble into love.
Addleson was staggered and yet not staggered, for he had known from the beginning there was something about her. He had simply thought that something was the mystery she presented, but there he was, standing with all the puzzle pieces in the palm of his hand, and he was still fascinated.
He would always be fascinated.
Awake to the truth, he felt a schoolboy’s impatience to declare his feelings and wondered if he could really do it there, in her humble studio with her maid wrapped in the ugliest woolen shawl he’d ever seen. He smiled and laughed at himself as the answer flitted freely through his mind: yes, he could absolutely do it. He did not care if he made a fool of himself. Indeed, he was eager to do so, for he knew Agatha would appreciate the absurdity.
But the matter wasn’t that simple. No matter of the heart ever was.
As a man of honor, he could not propose to a woman whose indebtedness was ongoing. He had inserted himself into her troubles—and thank God he had, for the thought of her resolving the complication presented by Clemmons on her own terrified him, especially when he imagined her breaking into Townshend’s apartments to look for letters that could be hidden anywhere. The point, however, was that he had promised his help and that help could not now come with conditions. Agatha must be free and unencumbered by obligation when he spoke. Her love, if she loved, must not be clouded by gratitude.
It was only a day, a mere sixteen hours if one were to quibble.
And, oh, yes, he must quibble, for he was a man in love for the first time in his life confined in a small room with the woman he longed to touch more than he wanted his next breath.
As the viscount struggled to get the heady mix of emotions under control, the object of his desire watched him with the steady patience of a saint. No, he thought with a shake of his head, looking at her now and seeing the riddle he would never solve. She was more sphinx than saint, encased in inscrutability and swathed in serenity. How jittery he would be if their situations were reversed, if she were pawing through his life’s work—taking study, making judgments, assessing skill.
Only an hour before, Agatha had asked one probing question and he had immediately retreated into formality.
He did not have her bravery.
Carefully, he leaned the wonderful self-portraits against the wall by the fireplace and walked over to where she stood near the window. Only a few inches away, he rested his back against the table, braced his hands along the edge and crossed one foot over the other. He said softly and calmly, “If Mr. Holyroodhouse is a caricature, then Lord Addlewit is a deflection.”
The single biggest confession of his life and it yielded no gasp of surprise. Agatha simply nodded.
“My father was a brutish man with little care for intellectual pursuits and he took my cleverness as a personal affront. He assumed anyone who was smarter than he must be silently mocking him for his inadequacies, so I learned at a very early age it was safer and wiser to make only trivial remarks. Anything else would provoke him,” he explained, amazed at how easy it was to just say the deeply personal truths of his own life. He’d always assumed the words would choke him. “Inevitably, of course, my father’s fear became a self-fulfilling prophesy, for the more I understood his fear of being ridiculed, the more I ridiculed him. He was never quite clever enough to know for sure if I was mocking him, which just made him dislike me more. The relationship was fraught, to say the least, and I was relieved when he died, for it meant I was released from the obligation of trying to love him.”
Agatha’s sphinxlike face remained unreadable. “You were not relieved.”
He smiled wryly. “No. But I was released, and although there was no need for me to take refuge in nonsensical blather any longer, I found it both useful and entertaining to be mistaken for a fool. The expression on your face at the theater on the night we met was without price. You were confused and appalled and disgusted and horrified and annoyed, and I remembered thinking that if I had a face that revealed my expressions so plainly, I, too, would keep my features trained in an impatient scowl.”
He expected her to scowl, even hoped for it so that he could know what she was thinking, but her expression did not change. “At that moment, I was working out the details of one of Mr. Holyroodhouse’s cartoons and for one terrifying instant I thought you’d figured out the truth.”
“I did figure out the truth,” he reminded her smugly.
Now she smiled, her fathomless black eyes sparkling with humor, and he felt desire pulse through him, desire so sharp it seemed like an actual knife had pierced his gut. How very close she was and how very far away.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and although Agatha jumped at the unexpected sound, she also managed a rueful smile. “There it is—the summons from my mother. Ellen,” she said, looking at her maid, “will you please tell Lady Bolingbroke that I will be up as soon as I finish rinsing my brushes?”
Ellen complied at once, rising swiftly from her chair to make her ladyship’s excuses, but as she slipped through the door, she cast an uncertain glance back at them. Addleson, who readily understood the look, was amused by the maid’s concern, for Agatha’s ramshackle studio bore little resemblance to a love nest.
But then he looked at Agatha and saw her eyes glittering with humor—no, not humor, unmitigated glee—as she refined the story she would tell her mother about the kiss (“There was a fly on my hand and while I was swatting it away, my hand bumped your lips”) and discovered the setting did not matter at all, for in four brisk paces he was by her side and pulling her into his arms. He heard her gasp of surprise as his lips touched hers and he felt her entire body tense as he pressed his hands to her back, but her mouth moved beneath his, soft and sure. The kiss was sweet and almost chaste in its innocence, for he neither increased the pressure nor teased her tongue, but the fire it sparked was as swift as it was fierce and threatened to engulf everything in its path.
As he drew her body closer to his, honor—that damn self-righteous prig!—reared its ugly head and ordered him to take several steps back. For all of her worldliness and cynicism, Agatha was an inexperienced young lady who deserved his respect and reverence, not his voracious hunger.
Disgusted with himself, Addleson turned cold and forbidding, his features hardening into a glower as he forced himself to meet her confused gaze. With shoulders as taut as his tone, he said, “I must apologize, Lady Agatha, for my inappropriate, inexcusable and disgraceful behavior. I do not know what came over me, and I promise it will never happen again.”
He hurt her. It was all there on her face—pain, embarrassment, confusion, sadness. He didn’t know which had done the most harm: the kiss or the apology for the kiss or the icy voice with which he issued the apology for the kiss. He knew his agile brain would be able figure it out if he just took a moment to clear his head.
But as long as he remained in Agatha’s studio, as long as he stared into her beautiful face and her sad eyes, a clear head was impossible. It was not only that his own emotions were too muddled to understand, though that contributed greatly to his bewilderment, but that her body, so pliant in his arms, undermined his good sense. Alone with her for only a few seconds and the code of honor by which he had lived his whole life had deserted him.
Determined to preserve what was left of his self-respect, Addleson bowed stiffly, thanked Agatha for sharing her studio and bid her good night. Then he silently slipped through the window.
Outside, Addleson took a deep, steadying breath and rested his shoulders against the wall of the building. He didn’t bother to call himself a fool, for his actions exceeded even the limitations of that appellation, and he didn’t seriously consider returning to Agatha’s studio to apologize more kindly. He did unseriously consider it for a few moments because he was foolish and in love, but he knew that would only make the situation worse.
&nbs
p; Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow, when the matter of Townshend was settled and Agatha was free of obligation and he had fulfilled his service, he would present himself at the front door like a decent suitor, declare his feelings and beg for her hand. Tomorrow, he would do everything right.
He just had to get through the day first.
Chapter Twelve
Lady Agatha Bolingbroke had never felt so much like a naïve young schoolgirl as when she was waiting for Addleson’s carriage to take her to the Rusty Plinth. That morning, consumed by thoughts of the kiss—oh, that kiss, that kiss, soft and sweet, melting her bones, filling her with light, heating her blood—she had opened her eyes at the first hint of light and found going back to sleep impossible. She had tried. With a determination she usually reserved for thwarting her mother, she had closed her eyes and ordered herself to think sleepy thoughts. But instead of dogs lazing before a crackling fire, she saw Addleson’s face in the moment before his pressed his lips against hers, his eyes so serious and intent, and she felt the luxurious play of his mouth against her own. Oh, did she feel it, almost as if he were still in the room with her.
To cure herself of her lovesick swooning, Agatha called to mind the look of unrestrained horror that had swept across the viscount’s face the moment he’d raised his head. As hurt as she was by his reaction, as disconcerted as she was to feel the sting of coldness while her body was still steeped in heat, she wasn’t entirely surprised, for her mother had warned her repeatedly of the irrepressibility of male lasciviousness. All men, Lady Bolingbroke had explained, even the best of them, succumbed at times to their base desires, giving in to a primitive impulse they could not deny and instantly regretted. Naturally, Agatha had treated this grave pronouncement with suspicion, assuming her mother had exaggerated the extent of the problem to underscore her point, but now that she had experienced the mercuriality firsthand, she believed it. The outrageous lengths to which society went to ensure a young lady was never alone with an unmarried man suddenly made sense.
