The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,1

stem her desperate tears. Just as he’d offered false support to the son now on the scaffold.

Agatha didn’t approve of violent revolution. No decent person wanted England to go through what France had suffered these past decades. And the recent Radical War in Scotland this past spring had brought the specter of an uprising far too close to home for the government’s comfort. The laws had tightened, because the Lords were scared.

Agatha was no radical, herself. But every time she thought of George Edwards’s deception, well . . . it twisted her stomach into knots.

Or maybe that was only the ache of hunger. How late was it?

Agatha looked up from her work for the first time in hours, and realized the shadows on the walls were from streetlamps and not the setting sun. The two Stanhope presses lurked like rooks against the east wall of the workroom, their long wooden arms skeleton-still now that the apprentices and journeyman had gone home for the night. Drying prints were pinned up around and over them, waving softly like shrouds.

Well, technically speaking, not all the apprentices had gone home. The lamplight coming through the back window cast a halo over the dark hair of Agatha’s best apprentice, Eliza Brinkworth, who occupied the spare bedroom upstairs and who was working quietly and patiently at the next table over, adding careful layers of color to a print of Thisburton’s latest caricature. Her slender shoulders were hunched, her brow lightly furrowed as she brushed amber and ochre over the cartoonist’s dancing fox figures.

Eliza had come to Griffin’s with nothing more than a gift for sketching and a will to work. Now, four years later, she had blossomed into an able assistant in both copperplate engraving and woodcuts, and was the swiftest producer of sheet music blocks Griffin’s had. The ballads she illustrated had become a reassuringly steady profit stream, as subscriptions to the luxurious Griffin’s Menagerie ladies’ magazine declined under the new stamp taxes. If Eliza had been Agatha’s daughter, she would have been an ideal choice to take over the running of Griffin’s.

But Agatha had no daughter. Instead she had only—

Out front the shop bell chimed. Then the door between the shop and the workroom opened.

“Hello, Mum!”

Agatha’s heart soared skyward on helpless winds of maternal fondness at the sight of her son, returning from Birkett’s, where he’d gone to settle the weekly bill for paper. He’d grown so tall and sturdy these past three years, a far cry from the thin and sensitive boy who’d hidden in his room for a month after his father’s death. Nineteen-year-old Sydney was windblown and tousle-haired, bouncing with vitality, eyes bright with eager purpose, and just where the hell did he think he was going?

For after that hurried greeting, her son had vanished up the stair, with a clatter worthy of Hannibal and all his elephants.

Agatha frowned in suspicion. “Sydney Algernon Griffin!” she called. “You promised you’d—”

Before she could manage to set her work aside, block his way, and forestall an exit, Sydney reappeared at the foot of the stairwell. He’d changed his brown coat for one of bottle green, and the flush on his pale cheeks spoke of haste and excitement—but also, to his mother’s keen sight, of guilt. “Going out again, Mum,” he called cheerily. “Back late. Love you!”

“—print this plate—” Agatha managed, but not quickly enough. The doorway was empty, and the chime of the shop bell was the only reply she got.

So much for filial duty.

This was the bane of Agatha’s current existence: she couldn’t very well leave the business to her son if he was never around to run it.

Her temper surged like a storm cloud, and descended upon the only object available. Her apprentice, whose dark head lifted, and whose creamy complexion went rose red at the sight of her mistress’s narrowed eye.

Lord, but weren’t the young astonishing? Even at the end of a day so long as this, Eliza radiated keenness and energy. “Break for dinner, ma’am?” the girl piped. “I know it’s Betsy’s night off, so I could run to the Queen’s Larder for a pie, if you like. One pie ought to be plenty for the two of us.”

An attempt at distraction. It would not work. “Eliza,” Agatha said, with careful clarity, “do you know where my son is off to this evening?”

The girl’s glance flicked down, then back. “I couldn’t say for certain, Mrs. Griffin.”

Agatha’s voice was cool as a razor. “Perhaps he is attending one of the Polite