The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,75

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, unbearable unfairness of 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.

She held her tongue, though her throat burned with words unuttered.

As soon as the day’s work was done, Sydney vanished for the evening, and was still not home when Agatha