The Bolingbroke Chit: A Regency Romance (10 page)

He treated his daughter with the same benign indifference, appearing interested in her painting while remaining almost entirely ignorant of her passion. When she presented him with a full-size portrait of himself to hang in his study, he could not say which surprised him more: the imperious sneer she had given to his upper lip or the revelation that he had agreed to let her hang the canvas in his study.

Bolingbroke nodded agreeably to her observation. “Yes, yes, Addleson did in fact have the unparalleled pleasure of Petrie’s company for an extended time. I almost interrupted once to introduce Petrie to Cromer—a bit of showing off, I will admit!—but I did not have the heart to spoil Addleson’s enjoyment.”

Agatha smiled at this assertion, for the viscount had looked far from joyful while her eyes had been focused on him. But her father’s enthusiasms tended to cloud his perception, altering his reality just slightly.

“I am surprised by Addleson’s interest,” Agatha said. “He strikes me as the sort of gentleman who’s more devoted to being a tulip than raising them.”

Her father laughed appreciatively at her witticism, for he himself had recently been represented as a tulip in a drawing by that wicked Mr. Holyroodhouse only a few weeks before. As an obedient daughter, Agatha had felt some qualms about portraying her sire as a flower and appeased her conscience by placing him in the back row, half hidden behind one of Miss Lavinia Harlow’s pointy elbows. The alternative—not doing the caricature—had never occurred to her, for she was too much of an artist to forgo the perfect idea out of a vague sense of filial disloyalty. The Marquess of Huntly had indeed been plucked by the Harlow chit and his own arrogance.

In drawing the illustration, she had treated her father no more harshly than she had treated herself, for Lady Agatha Bolingbroke’s lack of social graces was far too widely discussed to pass unnoticed by a social commentator of Mr. Holyroodhouse’s caliber. Not to lampoon the notorious misanthrope would have raised awkward questions about the cartoonist’s identity, so Agatha gamely took aim at herself. Employing the nickname she had heard muttered in her general direction several times, she put it front and center in her first drawing, a depiction of a dark-eyed woman standing alone in the middle of an empty dance floor: “Lady Agony awaits her next victim.”

And with that, a reputation had been made.

“Well stated, my dear,” Bolingbroke said, “very well stated. Just between us, I will confess that I suspect he’s a bit dicked in the nob. He is mostly a reasonable man of passing intelligence, but he’s given to long, rambling fits about inconsequential things. He once babbled at me for five minutes on the proper height of a Hessian heel! Without question, I recognized the gravity of appropriate footwear and take great pride in the shine of my shoes—not that I would employ Champagne like Brummel in the pursuit of it, for such a thing strikes me as wasteful—but there is a point at which a preoccupation for fashion passes into madness. I wasn’t even wearing Hessians at the time. I was sporting top boots! I fully expected the commissioner of Bedlam to come and carry him off. I think it’s above all things absurd for a man with such an uncertain temperament to be allowed to take up his seat in parliament. Obviously, it’s his birthright and the Crown cannot administer aptitude tests before allowing the privilege, but surely something should be done to prevent cracked pots from deciding the country’s future.”

Considering her father’s own penchant for passionate discussion of the things that mattered to him, Agatha smiled at his indignation and pictured him trapped in a conversation about boot heels. Despite his claim to care about the luster of his footwear, she knew he thought very little about his appearance. His only concern was that he be presented in the first stare of fashion; the tools required to attain that goal—be it Champagne, claret or gutter water—did not occupy him in the least.

For this reason, she could well imagine his impatient stance as the viscount rambled on: the disgruntled brow, the curled lip, the fingers of his left hand tugging on his watch fob. The scene was so diverting, it took her a moment to properly digest the whole of his statement.

“I’m sorry, Father, but did you say that Lord Addleson intends to take up his seat in the House of Lords?”

Bolingbroke nodded in earnest. “I did, m’dear, yes. Your surprise is understandable, for if anyone seems ill-suited to the rigors of political life, with its three-hour speeches on the leveeing of taxes and its decidedly unaccommodating benches—terrible on the back, I assure you—it is he. But it’s not mere rumor. Linlithgow heard it from the gentleman himself. He leans Whigish, you know—Addleson, not Linlithgow.”

At once, the idea of Addleson sporting a Whigish wig occurred to Agatha, but the image that accompanied the thought was of the dreary wigs her grandfather and his contemporaries wore. Towering in height and brimming with pomposity, the powdered confections lent themselves easily to satire, as Hogarth’s brilliant engraving, “The Five Orders of Periwigs,” beautifully demonstrated. There was nothing about the formerly popular adornment, however, that aligned it with the Whig party. Headpieces in general, she realized, were politically neutral in their bearing, unlike, for example, the scarlet ribbons worn by French nobility during the Terror to denounce the voracious use of the guillotine.

Although she could not come up with a type of wig that had an essential Whigishness about it, she remained convinced the idea had merit and wondered if she was being too literal in her thinking. The wig didn’t have to be accurate in its history.

Or maybe the problem was that she wasn’t being literal enough. Perhaps the dim-witted viscount believed that being a Whig meant wearing a wig.

Oh, yes, she thought as the image started to take form in her mind. She could show Addleson in his dressing room donning a wig and the caption would read: “Lord Addleson becomes a Whig.”

No, she thought, excitement coursing through her, Lord Addle
wit
becomes a Whig.

As impatient as she was to get started, Agatha was too well bred to dart out of the room like an eager schoolgirl and instead listened politely as her father speculated about Linlithgow’s political affiliation. Although Bolingbroke had known the fellow for more than twenty years, he didn’t have a clue as to which direction he leaned, a thought that had only just occurred to him. Listening to him parse his friend’s horticultural preferences for deeper meaning (“A penchant for reusing topsoil does not necessarily indicate a Tory frugality”), Agatha thought she might pull her hair out at the roots.

Far better to rudely end a conversation than to go bald. Surely, her mother would concur. Lady Agony was horrifying enough with a full head of disheveled ringlets.

“I’m sorry, Papa, but I must excuse myself. I have work to do,” she explained, jumping to her feet.

It was hard to say which startled his lordship more—her abrupt movement or the concept of work. Despite the imposing image of himself sneering down at him from his own study wall, the brushstroke of which even he had to concede was masterful, he continued to consider her painting as a genteel hobby to be cast aside when she married. All her attempts to explain otherwise had fallen on deaf ears.

“What are you doing closeted in here with me, anyway?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject rather than trying yet again to make him to understand. “You should be at Brooks’s savoring your triumph, for your party was a stunning success. Did not a member of the Society for the Advancement of Horticultural Knowledge humble himself so thoroughly as to beg admittance? Surely, someone had laid odds against such a development in the betting books. And we can’t let Waldegrave monopolize our guest. He hasn’t suffered through—I mean, enjoyed the pleasure of—his care and feeding for three days.”

Although Bolingbroke was not a possessive host, he could not deny the truth of his daughter’s statement. Mr. Petrie
was
his guest and while it had been a pleasure to feed and house him, the experience wasn’t without its challenges. The American was very particular in his requirements, to the consternation of Bolingbroke’s staff, and yet chaotic in his habits. A tremendous amount of fuss and confusion had been caused upon his arrival at the docks by the fact that he didn’t know what his own trunk looked like, a calamity made worse by the much-regretted absence of Mr. Clemmons, upon whom Petrie clearly relied very heavily.

Bolingbroke took a final sip of brandy and stood up. “You are right, my dear, to remind me of my duties as host. I should not have been so quick to abandon Mr. Petrie to the vagaries of London. I’m sure Waldegrave is taking sufficient care of him, but no doubt he wants to review with me the pleasures of the evening. If nothing else, he must be aware of our rivalry with the Society for the Advancement of Horticultural Knowledge and will want to revel in its ignominy. I shall head to Brooks’s immediately. You will forgive me, I hope, for cutting our tête-à-tête short?”

Agatha smothered a smile as she gave her father a second kiss on the cheek, for she was positive he had forgotten the first one. Unlike his wife, Lord Bolingbroke was dismayingly easy to lead astray. “Of course, dear. Don’t tease yourself a single moment more.”

While her father called for his valet, Agatha swiftly exited the room and ran down the stairs to her studio. In all likelihood, Lady Bolingbroke had retired for the evening, for she had said as much after their guests left, but she had been known to ambush her daughter before and Agatha wasn’t taking anything for granted. A conversation with her mother now would be fatal, as that determined woman could not be swayed from her purpose by a simple change in subject. No, she would go on at such length, Agatha would lose all opportunity to draw.

Once safely in her studio, Agatha immediately began to sketch. She started with the central figure, elongating Addleson’s chin and increasing the size of his ears. She sought perfection and was frequently ill tempered when a likeness fell short of the original, but she was also accustomed to working quickly. Her opportunities to draw were curtailed by the social calendar and her mother’s whim. On more than one occasion, she’d been forced to cease painting midbrushstroke to change for a dinner party.

Was it any wonder, then, that she worked so hard not to be invited to dinner parties?

Tonight, at least, she would not be interrupted, and as the hours passed, she drew dozens of sketches of Addleson, each one with a slight variation from the last. She did not usually spend so much time capturing a single subject, but there was something about the viscount that was proving elusive. First, she thought it was the set of his mouth, slightly amused yet somewhat scornful, but then she realized it was the look in his eyes. There was a deceptive stillness about them that she took for emptiness, but his eyes were not empty. She knew this because every time she drew them with a vacant stare, the image looked wrong. The only time Addleson looked like himself was when she gave his eyes a keen knowingness.

That wasn’t right either.

Frustrated, she decided to change her approach altogether and settled on a different idea, one that was much better than the original. Rather than donning a powdered wig in his dressing room, Addleson was lifting a bench in the Lesser Hall at the Palace of Westminster. The caption read: “Viscount Addlewit takes up his seat in the House of Lords.”

It was, Agatha decided well after midnight when she was finally satisfied, the ideal solution, for not only was the new idea more clever than the original, but it also took the focus away from his lordship’s face.

Pleased, she signed the caricature in Mr. Martin Holyroodhouse’s florid hand and wrapped it in sturdy brown paper. The responsibility of delivering the package would fall to her lady’s maid, Ellen, whose father worked for a perfumer on Jermyn Street. He, in turn, would slip it discreetly under the back door of Mrs. Biddle’s shop in St. James’s. If there was a note for Agatha, he would find it hidden under the mat on the back step.

Luckily for Agatha, Mr. Smith was a game fellow who enjoyed a mystery so much, he’d happily agreed to help without asking a single question. If he suspected the whole story, he had never indicated as much to his daughter by word or deed.

The delivery procedure was somewhat Byzantine in its complexity because Agatha needed to ensure her anonymity. If Lady Bolingbroke discovered the truth—that her socially uningratiating daughter regularly mocked and ridiculed the members of their set—she would throw away everything Agatha cared about: her paints, her inks, her canvases, her sketch pads, her pencils. She would summarily discard every single thing that made her daughter’s life worth living and then banish her to her room to survive on bread and water for years.

Agatha knew this to be true. Her mother flitted around like a butterfly, darting from one shiny object to another on a wisp of laughter, but she felt things deeply and would not be able to easily dismiss the gross social humiliation of having a caricaturist daughter. As it was, she could barely bear the burden of having an artistic one. To be sure, Lady Bolingbroke never wanted to raise a child with a consuming passion. Like all devoted mothers, she wanted her offspring to be proficient at everything, not to excel at anything.

With a tired sigh, Agatha opened the door to her room and was immediately greeted by Ellen, who was reading in a comfortable armchair near the fire.

“Good evening, miss,” she said, raising her blond head in greeting as she marked her page in the book.

Agatha smiled wanly in return and dropped onto the bed, suddenly exhausted. “Thank you for waiting up. I did not intend for it to be such a late night. I fear I lost track of time.”