The Bolingbroke Chit: A Regency Romance (14 page)

Agatha didn’t know which was more appalling: that her mother equated her with candlesticks or that she haggled over her price.

It made no difference to her, of course, why the Harlow sisters had taken her under their wing and she certainly had not expected the arrangement to last. She herself was hardly free of blame, for she had used friendliness as a ruse to gather information. Her visit with Vinnie had been fairly conclusive, but she needed to reevaluate the situation in light of this new evidence. Her deductions were based on the assumption that the Harlow girl was incapable of premeditation. Now that she knew she had ruthlessly traded votes for favors—and that she had raised the ranking of her husband-to-be—she couldn’t be as confident.

The only way to know for sure would be to draw a caricature and wait for her reaction. An innocent woman would laugh; a guilty one would blanch.

Agatha knew her thinking could be called simplistic, for society demanded that all its members be able to play a part. But the accusation of murder was so startling, so horrible and shocking, she imagined few women would be able to hide their true response. An experienced society matron would no doubt have the restraint to keep her smile firmly in place but not an unsophisticated young lady such as Miss Harlow.

Eager to begin, Agatha put down her cup of tea and announced she had some work to do. Lady Bolingbroke, cringing as always at the categorization of her daughter’s hobby as work, refused to let her daughter leave before lecturing her on the proper method for paying social calls. “You take the carriage, my dear. How you arrive is as important as when you arrive. And showing up without a lady’s maid is course and vulgar. I trust you will comply with these rules in the future.”

Given the unlikelihood of future social calls, Agatha easily acquiesced to her mother’s requests and left the dear lady to peruse her fashion magazine. In her studio, she sketched a dressing room scene—decorative screen, mirror, table, clothes tossed over the back of a chair—and placed a round figure in the center who more or less met an approximate description of Sir Waldo Windbourne. Positioning him sideways, she dressed him in pantaloons, Hessians and a pristine white linen. She wrapped a whalebone corset over his shirt and inserted a young lady to tighten it. The caption read: “There, that should do it.”

As a general idea, she thought it had merit, for the concept worked on two levels. On the face of it, it was merely a funny representation of male vanity. The lady helping him into the corset did not have to be Miss Lavinia Harlow. Yes, she had her smooth blond hair, but Agatha had intentionally kept her outfit plain so the woman could easily be taken for a servant. Only those who had their suspicions—Agatha, her anonymous source and the villainess herself—would notice anything amiss.

Indeed, she had little doubt that the thing most people would notice was the lack of ingenuity on the part of Mr. Holyroodhouse. As a target, Sir Waldo should be well beneath the renowned satirist’s notice, for the deceased gentleman had been the easily mocked embodiment of male vanity long before the caricaturist took notice of him. Agatha’s depiction added nothing to the conversation.

The drawing needed to be refined. She would heighten the color on Sir Waldo’s face, perhaps tint it a bright shade of purple to reflect his struggle for breath, and add a few droplets of sweat to his temples. Miss Harlow’s face also required adjusting. She had to sharpen her expression to one of satisfaction. That, too, would work on two levels. To the unaware, her satisfied look could stem from the simple pleasure of having achieved a difficult goal, for what woman did not know the challenge of lacing a corset.

With her concept established, Agatha began to work on the drawing in earnest, adding color and texture and the tiny details that gave movement to a face. She had to stop a few hours later when her mother sent Ellen to change her for Lady Kennington’s rout. As always, she resented the intrusion, but in this instance she admitted it was timely. By all accounts, she was finished with the illustration and was making only minor changes. Something about the image did not sit right to her, for no matter how closely and carefully she examined it, she did not feel the usual fissure of excitement that accompanied the completion of a work.

Something was most definitely off.

“It seems done to me, my lady,” Ellen said when her opinion was sought. “I think it’s as good as anything you’ve ever done. And really funny, too. Imagine a man that size trying to squeeze into such a tiny corset! I’m surprised he hasn’t suffocated himself.”

Her maid’s comments should have put Agatha’s mind at ease, for she had said exactly what any artist hoped to hear. “But does it look like the lady is trying to suffocate him?”

“Lawks, no, milady!” Ellen said with a surprised lift of her head. “She’s just helping him. Putting on corsets is no easy business, I can tell you.” Then she colored brightly, tilted her head down to study her finger and said, “Not that I’ve ever had trouble putting on your corset.”

“At ease, my girl!” Agatha said on a trilling laugh. “I assure you, the thought never occurred to me and even if it had, I would not care either way. You are free to grumble about tightening my stays belowstairs to your heart’s content.”

Her mood much improved, Agatha decided she was being too particular in her taste, which she attributed to tiredness. Between her Addlewit drawing and the mysterious letter, she had gotten very little sleep the night before. Clearly, that was why she wasn’t quite satisfied with the drawing. Ellen, who appeared well rested, thought it a harmless representation of vanity and suffering. She should be pleased.

I
am
pleased, she told herself, signing the drawing with a flourish. Then she wrapped it for transport to Mrs. Biddle’s shop, left it on the table for Ellen to deliver and followed her maid to her bedchamber to change for Lady Kennington’s rout.

Chapter Six

As soon as Viscount
Addleson saw the drawing of him carrying his own seat in the House of Lords, he presented himself at 227 St. James’s Street and demanded to meet the artist.

Mrs. Biddle had heard many such requests in the six years she had owned her shop, for none of the gentry liked to see themselves represented as fools, deviants or scoundrels and often wanted to enact some sort of revenge on the perpetrator. It made no difference if the subject was male or female, as both sexes had easily punctured vanities. She knew what it was like to find yourself under attack—as the owner of a print shop, she suffered verbal assaults almost daily—but she never took the insults to heart. It genuinely did not bother her if Mr. So-and-So thought she had the face of a cow or if Lady This-and-That questioned the legitimacy of her birth. She had a business to run and no time to nurse wounded egos.

Likewise, she had little patience for the righteous outrage of an angry public and had developed a strategy for handling complaints. When she first opened her shop, she had vigorously refused to provide any information about her associates. That practical approach, however, yielded little success, for the sanctimonious targets of cutting satire could not easily be swayed from their purpose. Undoubtedly, another tactic was in order and Mrs. Biddle (née Miss Biddle) found it in the person of Mr. Biddle, a fictitious husband who could never be located when he was most required. He was a very useful creature, for not only was he intractable and often drunk, but also he allowed Mrs. Biddle to side with her victims. She would happily provide the information if only Mr. Biddle would relent.

Mrs. Biddle employed this ruse now as she beheld the elegant figure of Jonah Hamilton, Viscount Addleson. He was a dandy, she could tell that immediately, for only a dandy tied a cravat so elaborately. Mrs. Biddle had a special contempt for dandies because they were the most entrenched objectors. Placing a high value on perfection, they could not bear to see a version of themselves that was less than ideal.

“Sorry, I am. Really. I would gives you the name if I knew it,” Mrs. Biddle said, feigning agitation. “Me ’usband, Mr. Biddle, ’e runs the place. I’m jest ’is servant. I’d find ’im for you, really I would, but I don’t knows where ’e is. Prolly drunk in an alley, the no good louse! Rumming it up all the time and leaving me ’ere to deal with the likes of you. I don’t knows anything, I tell you! I don’t knows anything.”

Here Mrs. Biddle scrunched her face up and squeezed out one melancholy tear that slowly glided down her pale cheek. A second and third drop followed in rapid succession until her entire body was wracked with anguished despair.

The tears were, in fact, Mrs. Biddle’s pièce de résistance. She used to bring them out only as a last resort, but she had discovered through a process of trial and error that they effectively brought all encounters to an end. No man wanted to assuage a crying female with whom he had no familial or contractual obligation.

“Brava!” Addleson cried out, clapping his hands in enthusiastic appreciation. “Brava!”

Mrs. Biddle contrived a sad little hiccup and raised her head slowly to find the viscount grinning at her broadly from ear to ear.

“A magnificent performance, my dear,” he said approvingly. “Quite one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen.” Addleson bowed. “You have my compliments. Now do be so kind as to give me Mr. Holyroodhouse’s direction and I shall get out of your way posthaste.”

Addleson watched in amusement as the shopkeeper tried to make sense of his response, which was, without a doubt, a first for her. Clearly, she had expected him to react to her own helplessness with either sympathy or frustration or even pronounced indifference, but he was surely the only gentleman to express admiration for her presentation.

And the admiration was genuine. Rarely had he seen a more affecting or sincere performance. Her tears in particular—the way they started slowly and gradually gathered momentum like a rainstorm—were humbling to behold. If he didn’t fear she would bash him over the head with a broom, he would ask her to teach him the trick. As a frequent dissembler himself, he knew being able to cry on command was a worthwhile skill.

Precisely because he was a dissembler, he had easily recognized a like-minded soul. As he had said, her performance was impeccable, but she had done little things that gave her away, such as peeking up at him out of the corner of her eye to see how her tears affected him.

Although his response had put a cork in her wheel, the determined Mrs. Biddle refused to abandon her role. “I don’t knows wot you’re saying, melord, I don’t. Was you banged in the ’ead before coming in?”

The viscount applauded again, then smothered a smile when he saw annoyance flash across her face.

“I appreciate your dedication to your craft, Mrs. Biddle, but it is wasted on me,” he explained calmly as he rested an elbow on the counter. “No doubt, many an outraged customer has been turned away by your deft simulation of misery and so they should be, for anyone who is fooled by your performance deserves to depart in ignorance. Now, as I said before, point me in Mr. Holyroodhouse’s direction and I will leave you in peace.”

Mrs. Biddle examined him silently for a long moment, then sighed. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I cannot help you. It is my established policy not to give out private information for the men who provide me with illustrations.”

Addleson wasn’t at all astonished to hear the woman speak in clear, modulated tones. Nor was he surprised to hear her talk of policies. As the owner of a large estate, he knew much about the policies of tradespeople, and the policy they held most dear was that money was dear. He, therefore, offered her a tidy sum in exchange for the address.

“I don’t know his address,” she said.

Addleson doubled his offer.

She shook her head regretfully. “You are killing me, my lord, because I haven’t given an honest answer in half a dozen years. But it’s the God’s honest truth that I don’t know where Mr. Holyroodhouse lives. My contact with him is very limited. I promise, however, to convey your anger and righteous disapproval for his drawing in my next communication.”

Now the viscount lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Disapproval?” he asked, his tone full of wonder. “How can anyone disapprove of such a brilliant depiction? I don’t want to take Mr. Holyroodhouse to task. I want to hire him to do a large reproduction of the masterpiece to hang in my study at home.”

At the mention of the word
hire,
Mrs. Biddle’s whole demeanor changed: Her eyes lit up, her mouth softened, and she leaned forward against the counter. “Hire, you say?” she asked softly.

“Hire,” Addleson repeated firmly. “As Mr. Holyroodhouse’s representative in all business matters, you would no doubt get a cut of that commission.”

“And how large a commission will that be?” she asked.

“Very,” he said.

Mrs. Biddle nodded and the viscount could see her doing the arithmetic in her head: price of illustration + finder’s fee – artist’s compensation = large and well-deserved reward for dealing with the inconveniences of owning a print shop.

In truth, Addleson would be genuinely shocked if Mr. Holyroodhouse earned more than 10 percent of the payment.

Satisfied with her calculations, Mrs. Biddle promised to get in touch with the artist that afternoon. “I said I don’t know where he lives and that’s the God’s honest truth, but we have a system for communication. I expect to hear back from him in a day or two. How may I reach you?”