The Bolingbroke Chit: A Regency Romance Read Online Free Page A

reasonable answers that made no reference to windowpane patterns or chartreuse waistcoats.
    Observing the lively scene—the easy way Miss Harlow and the gentleman conversed with each other—made Agatha feel strangely unsettled, as if something worthwhile was happening and she was deprived of the opportunity to enjoy it. The notion was absurd, of course. The only thing she’d been deprived of that evening was the pleasure of not foisting her presence on complete strangers. It was her mother’s fault that she was standing by herself in a crowded theater box with an awkward sense of not belonging.
    “We should allow these ladies to get settled before the performance starts,” Mr. Abingdon announced to his friend, who was smiling at something Miss Harlow said.
    The earl, who had been cut out of his conversation with Miss Harlow, immediately seconded this idea and suggested that Mr. Abingdon and his friend leave at once. Unfortunately, Sir Charles also agreed that the ladies should be given a few minutes to settle and insisted they make their good-byes.
    As soon as the gentlemen left the box, Agatha turned to her mother and asked, “Who was the man who accompanied Mr. Abingdon?”
    Although Lady Bolingbroke took great pride in her vast knowledge of the beau monde, she was too distracted by the events across the way to recite her usual assortment of facts such as lineage, current address and estate value as well as snippets of gossip she deemed relevant or accurate. Instead, she raised her opera glasses, leaned forward in her seat and supplied her daughter with only a name: Viscount Addleson. Then she said with curious excitement, “Mr. Carpenter has been joined by two ladies. The woman in the blue turban is vaguely familiar and is most probably his aunt Calliope Redburne, whose husband is the ambassador to Russia. But I’ve never seen the younger one before. Her brown curls are very pretty, and her eyebrows arch charmingly. She must be his cousin.”
    Agatha didn’t give a fig about Mr. Carpenter or his relations, but she knew better than to inquire further about the viscount. Even with her attention drawn elsewhere, Lady Bolingbroke would immediately recognize an indication of interest on her daughter’s part and pounce. Viscount Addleson would suddenly find himself invited to tea and rides in Hyde Park and intimate dinners at home with the family. It had happened before with poor Mr. Sutherland, whose only crime had been to have extraordinarily symmetrical features, a fact Agatha had the shortsightedness to observe in the presence of her mother.
    Two years had passed since Mr. Sutherland hopped a boat to India to escape her mother’s invitations—at least, that was how Agatha thought of his unexpected, seemingly unplanned journey—but recalling the horror still made her shudder.
    Having learned from her mistakes, Agatha gaped at Lady Bolingbroke in surprised fascination. “Charmingly arched eyebrow? I must see that. May I?” she asked, holding her hand out for the glasses, which her mother surrendered with great reluctance.
    Although Agatha saw nothing remarkable in the arch of the young woman’s eyebrows, she devoted several minutes to praising first it, then the curve of her chin. While she spoke, she scanned the theater looking for the viscount, who was seated several rows to Mr. Carpenter’s left. The two boxes were close enough in proximity that she could examine Addleson without raising either her mother’s or her subject’s suspicion.
    Now that he wasn’t prattling nonsensically about clothes or blatantly mocking her, Agatha could appreciate his aesthetic qualities—the broad swath of his shoulders, the straight line of his nose, the deep rose of his generous lips. He wore his blond hair calculatingly disheveled in a perfect approximation of the windswept style.
    He was not handsome—at least, not in the classical way of Mr. Sutherland, whose physical perfection made her want to place him in a