Before she could implement it, before she could even formulate the next syllable, Townshend grabbed the neat stack from her hand and grinned evilly at her, his gun trained on her forehead with such steadfastness, she feared he meant to kill her anyway. Then, as fast as it had formed, the smile turned to confusion as the image of his own thin, emaciated face stared back at him.
Now, her mind screamed. Now.
But she didn’t move quickly enough, for it was already there in his face, the flash of understanding, the bolt of enlightenment, and she saw the moment his confusion solidified into hatred and the moment he decided he didn’t care that she was Lord Bolingbroke’s daughter or that pulling the trigger meant the fulfillment of the horrifying future he was staring at and she saw the moment his finger twitched on the trigger.
And then the door was opening and Vinnie Harlow was striding into the room and she was marching toward Agatha and she was slapping her in the face and she was saying, “You are vile, Mr. Holyroodhouse.” And then into the confusion and chaos—Townshend’s understanding no more keen than Agatha’s—Addleson flew from behind the curtain, his body soaring through the air as he unleashed an inhuman growl, and landed on Townshend with a raised fist.
The gun discharged.
Agatha’s eyes searched frantically for the spreading splotch of blood, for the telltale red that would reveal who had been hit. But she saw none, certainly not on Addleson, who was vigorously pounding his fist into Townshend’s face, and certainly not on herself, for she didn’t feel any pain. She looked at Vinnie, whose face was ashen, saw Emma behind her and suddenly felt the hard floor of the backroom as the Duchess of Trent shoved her to the side just a second before a chandelier crashed a few inches from her head.
Uncomprehending, Agatha stared up at the Harlow Hoyden, who, as calm and composed as ever, explained that the bullet had frayed the rope that suspended the candles.
It made perfect sense, but Agatha was still unable to understand it. She stayed where she was, lying on the hard floor of the tavern, watching as the Duke of Trent removed Addleson from Townshend’s chest and the Marquess of Huntly wrapped his arms about Vinnie and the Runners dragged Townshend to his feet and Emma called for the barkeep to clean up the broken glass.
Then suddenly Addleson was at her side, helping her sit up with excessive tenderness and examining every inch of her for evidence of injury. Finding none, he gathered her roughly into his arms and hugged her with such crushing force he risked causing the injury he had been unable to locate. He sighed deeply, as if expelling all the air in his lungs, slowly loosened his hold and pulled back until he was staring into her eyes. Agatha stared back, marveling at how his eyes could look so wild when his touch was so gentle, and her head, as if by its own volition, leaned toward his and her eyes fluttered closed as she anticipated the feel of his lips….
“My chandelier!” screeched a shrill voice, calling Agatha to her senses. She jerked away from Addleson and leaped to her feet as a short man with an apron kneeled beside the shattered fixture.
“Who broke it?” he asked accusingly, not at all concerned by other recent events, including the cause of the gunshot that led to the destruction of the lighting fixture. “One of yez broke it. Who did it?”
Addleson stepped forward and announced he would assume responsibility for all damages as well as compensate for any inconvenience endured. The tavern owner’s tragic demeanor was immediately supplanted by a look of calculation.
“Me mum picked out that chandelier, milord,” he said. “She loved it. She’s gone now, me mum, died last spring. That chandelier was all I ’ad to remember ’er.”
“No doubt your suffering is great,” Emma said with a cynical smile, leading the little man to the door, “but I’m confident you and the viscount will arrive at a sum sufficient to make the pain bearable. Now do excuse us, my good man, for we have a lot of business to settle first.”
After she pushed the tavern owner gently out of the room and shut the door firmly in his face, Emma said, “Well, this is quite a morass. Now where should we start sorting it out? Truthfully, I cannot decide between Townshend and Lady Agatha.” She looked at her sister, whose color had started to return. “Vinnie, what do you suggest?”
Agatha startled at the mention of her name, for she had thought herself still adequately disguised, and realized now that her wig had come off in the struggle, exposing her secret to the person from whom she most wanted to keep it hidden.
Vinnie turned seething eyes from Townsend to Agatha, then back to Townshend, who was struggling to free himself from the Runner’s grasp, and dipped her head. “I defer to you, Emma.”
Townshend, however, did not appreciate any deference that was not directly aimed at him and immediately protested that he had been tricked by a well-organized conspiracy determined to ruin him and that everyone in the room would suffer for the injustice inflicted on him. With his customary elegance, Addleson withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket, crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it into Townshend’s mouth to cut the clamor off at the source. Then he drew the villain to the love seat, bound his hands and feet with what remained of the chandelier cord and asked the Runners to wait in the taproom.
“I will call you when we are ready for further action,” he explained as he shut the door firmly. Then he turned and addressed the occupants of the room. “If no one else is prepared to offer a preference, I’m most curious about the source of Mr. Townshend’s great hatred of Miss Harlow. He has been set on her destruction with an obsessive devotion that Lady Agatha and I have found puzzling. He contacted Agatha, vis-à-vis Mr. Holyroodhouse, with the accusation against Miss Harlow, and Agatha, not truly understanding how eloquent an artist she is or how enthusiastically the
ton
laps up any hint of iniquity, drew the caricature with which we are all familiar.”
Listening to Addleson make excuses for her, Agatha felt the last remnants of shock, fear and confusion fall away. All those years of mercilessly mocking the
beau monde
for its foibles were finally coming home to roost, and she would not dodge the consequences. She had thought herself motivated by resentment of her parents alone, had believed her crusade to be wholly personal, but now she understood—finally—that her impulse to ridicule the
ton
was actually a desire to punish it for denying her the freedom to be herself.
“When Townshend approached Agatha about a follow-up drawing,” Addleson continued, “she resolutely turned him down and—”
Agatha could not listen to a single word more. She stiffened her shoulders, walked over to Emma and looked her squarely in the face. “I have wronged you,” she said, her hand trembling with greater vigor now than when Townshend had held a gun to her head. “I have wronged you because you possess the strength I lack to flaunt society’s expectations. I have punished you for having the bravery to be exactly who you are. You are foolish and wrongheaded and reckless to the point of stupidity, but you fearlessly live your life, accepting the consequences, and rather than respect that, I resented it because I could not act with the same courage. Unable to bring myself to reject society entirely, I have worked tirelessly to make society reject me.”
Next she turned to Vinnie. “When you decided to seek membership in the British Horticultural Society, I tarred you with the same brush because with that single act of boldness you became another hoyden and yet another rebuke of my cowardice. And then,” she continued, ruthlessly swallowing the knot that rose in her throat, for she would not let herself unravel until she had said it all. “And then, when I allowed myself to behave impetuously for the first and only time in my life, when I gave myself the freedom to act without caring what society thought, you laughed at me. All of you laughed at me, and I took the shame of that ridicule and put it into the drawing. What Addleson said is correct. I did not realize how clearly the illustration leveled the accusation. I honestly thought it was a code to be deciphered by its subject alone. I was horrified when I discovered the truth. But that is neither here nor there, for it does nothing to exonerate my guilt and I seek no exoneration. Here is what matters: This afternoon, Lord Addleson and I have gathered enough evidence against Mr. Townshend to ensure his silence forever. He will never bother you again.” Now she looked away from Vinnie, for she had only so much nerve. “I hope this can be some compensation for the pain I have caused you.”
“It is little compensation,” Emma announced in a hard voice that did not at all surprise Agatha. The woman whom she had described as foolish and wrongheaded and reckless would not forgive easily. “Because we already had Mr. Townshend dead to rights on charges of treason for threatening to reveal secret government information. On one word from me, the home secretary would toss him into Newgate and throw away the key.”
The warmth rose so swiftly in Agatha’s face, she thought she might faint from the heat. The one mitigating factor she had to offer and it had no value at all. She had not been seeking exoneration, no, but an offer of penance would not have been inappropriate.
“I see,” she said softly, her eyes focused on a candle that had snapped in two during the fall. “Of course.”
“Or, rather, that’s what I wanted Mr. Townshend to believe,” Emma said with a brief glance at the offender, whose face was red with his struggles to free himself, “but clearly he was not the least bit intimidated by my threats, for almost immediately after I issued them he recruited you in his plan for petty revenge. This time, the noose is securely in place and for that I am genuinely grateful.”
Agatha’s eyes flew to meet hers.
“I would not forgive you,” Emma added, “for it seems to me the scale still tips out of your favor, but Vinnie will. In fact, she already has because she is too practical to nurse a grudge, and being too practical to nurse a grudge, she will nag me about the impracticality of my nursing a grudge. As I wish to avoid many unpleasant years of determined nagging, I am prepared to forgive you now. But you must comprehend that I do it only out of concern for myself, not for you.”
Agatha had not expected kindness from the Harlow Hoyden, only lifelong animosity, and being forgiven so quickly and so graciously made her dizzy with relief. She had to close her eyes to regain her balance, and when she opened them a moment later, she felt herself smiling. “Thank you. After all the harm I’ve done Miss Harlow, I would hate to have added the burden of years of nagging.”
Vinnie, who did not seem immune to the significance of the moment, for she had given her sister a very fond look, spoke with the same nonchalance. “Years is rather overstating the case. With my skill, it would have taken only months. I appreciate, however, being spared the obligation of having to make the effort.”
Huntly nodded with approval, for he, too, was prepared to forgive her. “Although I question your methods, I’m grateful to you for revealing our weak spot where Townshend is concerned. As Emma said, we had thought him well routed.”
Agatha looked at Huntly—indeed, she looked at all of them: Huntly, Emma, Vinnie, the duke—and wondered how they could all be so kind in the face of her abuse. She had portrayed Huntly as a helpless hothouse flower in the hands of a conniving, monstrous female.
“You mustn’t be grateful,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “I am glad my actions have been of some use to you, but you mustn’t credit me with pure intentions. My goal, first and foremost, was to extricate myself from Townshend’s control. Having discovered the truth of my identity, he threatened to reveal it to the
ton
if I did not publish a second or third drawing and that I could not bear. Naturally, I had hoped to discover information that would help Miss Harlow as well, but that was not my primary concern. It is I who must be grateful, for your timely arrival surely saved my life.”
At the mention of their timely arrival, Addleson leaned against the door and considered the group of unexpected visitors thoughtfully. “I, too, am grateful for your well-timed entrance, but I’m also curious to know by what devising it was contrived. How did you discover Mr. Holyroodhouse’s true identity and how did you know he would be here this afternoon?”
Emma laughed with genuine amusement, for his question made the four of them seem preternaturally prescient. “Rest assured, we had no idea Mr. Holyroodhouse was Lady Agatha until Townshend called her that in their struggle, and I, for one, was entirely shocked. It was very clever of you,” she said with an admiring glance at the artist, “to publish caricatures of Lady Agony. Such pointed mistreatment would throw anyone off the scent.”
Townshend snarled as best he could from behind the handkerchief as Agatha shrugged in modesty.
“We thought Mr. Holyroodhouse was a footman in her father’s house called Joseph Williams,” the duke explained. “Our investigator, a remarkably capable man named Mr. Squibbs, had been surveilling Mrs. Biddle’s shop to gather information and while he was there, he witnessed an exchange between Mr. Holyroodhouse and Mrs. Biddle in which the former announced the end of their association. He followed Mr. Holyroodhouse back to Lord Bolingbroke’s town house and saw him disappear into a window in the servants’ quarters. Further inquiries confirmed that the description of the gentleman matched that of Joseph Williams. One of Squibbs’s associates had been watching the residence for further movements of Williams and when the man presumed to be Williams left the house through the same window this afternoon, he followed him here. Squibbs alerted us immediately and we rushed to the Rusty Plinth to confront him.”