Free The Bolingbroke Chit: A Regency Romance by Lynn Messina Page B

found him to be unworthy of the effort. I assure you, I am quite capable of offering a cutting reply when necessary.”
    Addleson’s smile flashed quick and bright. “I am very flattered, then, that you don’t find it necessary now. I shall take that as a compliment.”
    Oh, Lady Agony did not like that—the acceptance of a compliment she had not offered. With deliberate calmness, she looked him in the eye and explained she could not in all good conscience abandon an elder in his time of need. “Decency requires that I remain long enough to establish your welfare. Having ascertained that information, I’m now free to leave. Do be careful on your way out, my lord, as the threshold at the front door is a little steep. Perhaps Gregson can lend you his arm. You must not be too ashamed to ask for help.”
    With that parting barb, delivered with a glimmer in her eye, Lady Agatha curtsied with all the practiced charm of a girl in her first season and returned to the soiree. When she came to the worn patch of rug he had tripped over, she stepped with exaggerated care and with what Addleson would swear was a grin on her face. He saw it only briefly—just a fleeting glimpse before her expression assumed its customary scowl—but in that moment, Addleson thought she was beautiful. The shine in her eyes complemented the glow in her cheeks, making the sharp lines of her face seem soft and perfect and lovely.
    Struck by it, Addleson watched her pass through the crowd, her blue dress darting to the other side of the room, where she stood apart from the assembly like the wallflower she was.
    No, the viscount thought, not like she was but like she pretended to be. Lady Agatha Bolingbroke was no shrinking violet, excluded from the assembly on account of crippling timidity. He had never met a less shy young lady, and she certainly did not suffer from awkwardness or discomfiture. If she was separate from the company, it was because she chose to set herself apart.
    The question, of course, was why.
    As the daughter of a well-to-do peer, she had everything to recommend her: modest fortune, excellent pedigree, circumspect upbringing. Granted, her looks were unconventional, the chiseled features at odds with the ideals of classical beauty, but her appearance wasn’t off-putting or displeasing. Indeed, there was something oddly appealing about the unexpected originality of her countenance.
    By all measures, Lady Agatha was a prize on the marriage mart, and the fact that she didn’t exploit her superior circumstance to attract a husband made her a most curious creature. If anything, she had done the opposite of pressing her advantage, acting with deliberate offense to keep all suitors away. Even fortune hunters seemed sufficiently cowed by her unpleasant disposition to not make the attempt.
    Addleson could not imagine what she stood to gain with her unusual behavior, other than a life of loneliness and regret—a strange choice for a woman in the first flush of youth. One dwindled into spinsterhood; one did not vigorously pursue it. Her perverse decision indicated she had an alternative plan for settling her future, one that did not include hearth and home.
    It was an outrageous theory, to be sure, but a logical one as well, given the evidence, and Addleson, who rarely showed interest in women toward whom he had no romantical intentions, discovered an odd compulsion to confirm it. Lady Agatha meant nothing to him—his acquaintance with her parents barely extended beyond nodding—yet he suddenly felt a desire to know everything about her.
    Naturally, it was the mystery she presented that intrigued him, not the chit herself, and as soon as he unraveled the riddle, he would cease to find her of interest. He knew this because that was the pattern that had repeated endlessly throughout his whole life: Something held his attention only as long as he didn’t understand it. Once he figured out the mechanism by which a device or person functioned,