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 itself 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.
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.