After she’d seen the baroness settled for the night, Nora closed the door to the rear parlor Lady Roundtree had given her companion leave to consider her own, in addition to the guest chambers above stairs.

She tossed her gloves onto the single chaise longue and seated herself at the beautiful escritoire the baroness had installed to ensure Nora had a comfortable spot to draw.

Tonight, she was still fuming over that prat Phineas Mapleton’s unconscionable comportment toward Lady Roundtree.

Usually, after returning to the town house from some event that made her feel tiny and insignificant, Nora unloaded her emotions into a secret sketchbook containing painstakingly rendered images far too intimate and raw to send home to her family.

She shoved that sketchbook aside. Tonight wasn’t about Nora’s feelings of inadequacy when surround by the beau monde.

Phineas Mapleton had made Lady Roundtree’s eyes shimmer with tears. And he considered such reprehensible behavior a success. It was all Nora could do to refrain from dumping the lemonade bowl atop his carefully coiffed head.

At the start of the evening, Nora might have privately found humor in the discussions on how to best stage Lady Roundtree’s entrance so as not to put a dent in her standing—or her sitting, as it were. But she would have never disrespected the baroness.

After Nora had been sent to fetch ratafia and sponge cakes, Mapleton had been so taken with his hilarious jests at Nora and Lady Roundtree’s expense, that he had circled back for more… and eventually misjudged the distance between them.

Nora would never forget the shocked expression on the baroness’s hurt face when she overheard Mapleton say it was little wonder her husband preferred the company of a pretty roundheels over wrinkled Lady Roundtree. Nora’s fingernails dug into her palms.

Mapleton had terrorized London long enough.

Nora could no longer passively allow such toxic arrogance to stand. She might be a stupid country peasant from a ragtag little sheep farm, but she wasn’t as powerless as bullies like him believed.

She was an artist.

Hands shaking with anger on kindhearted—still perfectly elegant—Lady Roundtree’s behalf, Nora stabbed a plume into her inkwell and began to draw.

Was Phineas Mapleton a stallion among pups? Perhaps that was the problem.

Nora dipped the tip of a plume into the inkwell.

Men like him might think they ruled over country-born women like her and baronesses of an advanced age, but Nora’s pen was about to exert dominance over Phineas Mapleton.

She adored Lady Roundtree. The baroness might have just started to consider Nora as something more than a paid companion, but Nora had come to think of her as family. This had become her second home. She would not allow a bully’s ridicule to harm anyone in it.

“Stallion,” she muttered beneath her breath. “Ha.”

Mapleton had been trying to get people to refer to him as a stallion among pups for as long as Nora had been in Town. Tonight was the first time it had worked. At her expense. At Lady Roundtree’s expense.

He wasn’t superior to the baroness. Mapleton wasn’t worthy of the title of gentleman. How high could a society be if its pillars were based on casual cruelty? How lowly would Nora be if she did not stand up for those she loved?

But her options were limited.

Causing a scene in the middle of a ballroom would only have humiliated the baroness more. Their abrupt departure, when others had tittered uncomfortably at Mapleton’s remarks, had mortified Lady Roundtree enough.

Although she wished she could do more, Nora could only stand up for the baroness from the anonymity of a penny cartoon.

This would be her best yet.

Her plume sailed across the page, filling the pristine white foolscap with sure black lines. The caricature bloomed into focus.

Mapleton would finally learn that words had consequences. That her pen was sharper than his tongue.

A sennight from now, she would no longer be present to give the baroness company, to protect her from those who would mock her. This was Nora’s last chance to use her limited power for good.

She finished the drawing and carefully laid it flat to dry. None of the aristocrats would recall a dandy’s brief interaction with a country mouse. But every one of them had heard Mapleton repeat his pet phrase all Season long.

Now they could have an image to match.