The Bolingbroke Chit: A Regency Romance by Lynn Messina

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.”
    Ellen nodded understandably as she unwrapped the laces on Agatha’s shoes. “I appreciate your concern, but I don’t mind.” She dropped the fawn boots onto the floor while her charge stood up to give her access to the fastenings on the back of her dress. “A note came for you from Mr. Floris,” she said, using the name