For one warm, golden, glowing moment, Penelope basked in the hope that she wasn’t broken, that her secret flaws were overlookable, that she could throw open the welcoming doors of her heart and having something other than the cold wind answer.
“Besides,” Griffin added, “after the Wasp business, it will do us all good to get away from London for a little while.”
Golden hope vanished, smothered under shadowy wings. This wasn’t about Penelope, not in the way that she thought. She was only one of many things on Griffin’s mind.
She wanted to be so much more important to Agatha than that.
Realization would have knocked her legs from under her, if she weren’t already sitting down. Good lord, when had she gone and fallen in love with Agatha Griffin?
And how did she not realize earlier, when she might have properly nipped it in the bud? It was in full flower now, a dark, dangerous rose unfolding in the heart of her, petals climbing up her throat and threatening to spill from her lips.
She knocked down another moth, breathed in the scent of the dying year, and hoped winter would take pity and freeze that love all the way down to the root.
Chapter Seventeen
Before Agatha could contemplate Christmas, and having to be civil to the man whose wife she pined for, there was work to do: the Queen’s trial was coming to its conclusion.
The verdict, when it came, raced through the city like a fire: the Pains and Penalties Bill had narrowly passed. The Queen was guilty.
The Lords were, however, still arguing about the whether or not to keep the clause mandating divorce, which would thrust the Queen from her throne and title. Agatha, etching another scene of Queen Caroline sitting stiffly in the dock, wondered how the woman bore the weight of so much naked cruelty. To be so loathed by your husband that even a continent’s distance wasn’t far enough; and now, out of pettiness and selfish power, to have him shine the worst possible light on the private details of your life and household.
It was public humiliation on an imperial scale, and it lit a sick, slow-burning flame in Agatha’s heart that no amount of distraction or discipline seemed able to snuff out.
It was one more appalling outcome of the risk every wife took when she said her vows and handed herself over to a husband’s legal rule. Agatha had loved being married, mostly—but she couldn’t deny that there were times she felt much more secure as a widow than she had during her marriage. Loving and kind as Thomas had been, Agatha was a pragmatic person, and she’d been well aware Thomas’s kindness had been just that: a kindness. Not something Agatha had a legal claim to. To have the bearability of one’s existence depend on whether or not one’s spouse was inclined to be generous, well...
She had trusted her husband. But not the law that gave a husband so much power.
She thought of Penelope Flood, whose husband was not unkind, but that didn’t seem to help. Flood found her marriage uncomfortable, and took all the blame for that feeling upon herself.
Agatha dug the graver doubly hard into the wax, her heart bubbling like an acid bath as she sketched in the angry shapes of the men in Parliament. The curling wigs and crowded benches looked like storm clouds, swirling with chaos.
This treason wasn’t anything like Cato Street. Queen Caroline hadn’t attempted to murder anyone. She’d only dared to return to England and remind her husband she existed. And now the whole engine of the government was turned against her, simply because her husband—one man—wanted out of an unhappy marriage.
The unspeakable, unbearableunfairnessof it all seethed in her breast like a canker. She silently cursed King George’s name, along with all self-serving, neglectful men.
Men like John Flood.
Agatha carved away another line: another lordly figure asking primly prurient questions of a likely bribed informant. Agatha was only a printer’s widow; she had no vote, no power. There was nothing she could do to help the poor Queen now.
Sydney burst into the workroom, collar askew and face flushed despite the November chill in the air. He declined to meet his mother’s eye—since the argument, they’d stepped too carefully around one another, as if avoiding the shards of something precious lying broken in the space between them. He made a face and announced to the room at large: “They’re keeping the divorce clause!”
Crompton shook his head, and one or two of the journeymen muttered cynical disappointment. Small Jane’s eyes were wide as she looked to Eliza for guidance.
Eliza was watching Sydney intently. “So there’s to be another vote, in the Lords?”
He nodded.
Eliza’s mouth set in a thin, angry line.
Sydney cast a defiant glance at his mother. Agatha could guess why. One of the Widow Wasp’s most popular songs had been a parody of the old tune “Once Again I’m Vainly Dreaming,” a ballad depicting Anne Boleyn’s last thoughts before King Henry sent her to be beheaded. The original was melancholy and nostalgic, a woman condemned by her husband, hearkening back to the days when love was fresh and young.
In the new ballad, Queen Caroline’s faux-wistful asides comprised a long, long list of King George’s many scandals and failings and insults as a husband. The lyrics were bitter and pointed and side-splittingly funny.
It was the ballad Sydney was proudest of, and it would never be more apropos—or more saleable—than right now.
“There’s another caricature caption to be composed, if you please,” Agatha said coolly.
Sydney’s expression soured, and he stomped across the room. His hands were shaking as they pulled type from the cases and slid it into the composing stick. Every tiny chink of metal on metal was like a barb sinking into Agatha’s bruised heart.
