12
The Sunday services at Bath Abbey were always as dry as dust, but Reverend Green’s ponderous drone the next morning was particularly unbearable. Usually, Eliza was able to sink into languor—perhaps idly deciding which of the congregation’s dresses she admired most—but this morning such distraction was impossible. She had awoken just as unsettled as she had been upon going to bed, the events of the previous evening circling around her head, sharp and painful, and her agitation had been in no way eased by Somerset’s decision to seat himself directly in the pew in front of her.
He might easily have chosen another row. For as much as the abbey was always busy—another place to see and be seen—it had space sufficient to choose a position to one’s liking. As Eliza and Margaret had, ignoring Mrs. Winkworth’s beckoning wave to slide in beside Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher, newly returned from their visit to the country.
“. . . for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man . . .”
Eliza shifted in her seat, Somerset turned his head a little and she averted her eyes. She felt sure that if she looked at him, she might burst into tears right here and now and she did not think it wise to feed Bath’s gossips any more than Mrs. Winkworth had likely already done. Eliza instead resolved not to look at him at all. Though how she was to maintain this, when his shoulders were filling up her entire view with the kind of breadth that might well make an oak tree jealous, she could not imagine.
“Would you like to take a stroll around Sydney Gardens after the service?” Lady Hurley whispered in Eliza’s ear—she had ceased paying attention, too. “Melville and Lady Caroline are game.”
Eliza turned her head to look at Melville. He and Lady Caroline had arrived late, causing a flurry of heads to turn in their direction and Eliza to feel an unexpected surge of relief. For as much as she had been thinking obsessively over Somerset’s words, last night, she had been musing upon Melville’s, too. And though he might have forgotten—he might not have meant his offer seriously—she could not help hoping he might ask her again.
Melville’s eyes slid from the Reverend to catch Eliza’s stare—and he winked. Eliza turned hastily back around.
“Yes, that sounds very fine,” she whispered to Lady Hurley.
The sound of a hundred persons murmuring a final “amen” indicated at last the end of the service, and Eliza stood with the rest of the congregation, willing the persons ahead of her to move swiftly.
“My lady?”
Eliza pretended she had not heard Somerset’s voice, keeping her head turned forward. Hurry up, she urged the ancient Mrs. Renninson. Hurry up.
“Lady Somerset.”
When still Eliza did not turn, Somerset touched her very lightly upon the arm and, though he was wearing gloves and she a thick pelisse, she drew back as if scalded.
“I did not mean to startle . . .” he said.
Eliza looked up at him, felt her eyes begin to smart, her throat tighten—and looked hurriedly away.
“Good morning,” she said, regarding her shoes. “Did you enjoy the service?”
“My lady,” Somerset said quietly, “I wish to apologize for last night.”
Of course he did. Of course his sense of decency would not allow him to pass over such an evening without addressing it, but since she could certainly not maintain composure through such an ordeal today, it would have to wait.
“We are blocking the way,” she said, moving down the aisle after Margaret.
Somerset followed close behind her as they spilled out into the courtyard, and Eliza and Margaret made a beeline for the spot where Lady Hurley, Mr. Fletcher and the Melvilles were gathered.
“What a tedious service,” Melville was saying.
“Not the thing,” Mr. Fletcher—who Eliza suspected to have been asleep for the entirety—agreed emphatically.
“The reverend does always run on when he’s preaching against temptation,” Lady Hurley said. “The poor man can’t help himself.”
“And now it appears he means to mingle,” Lady Caroline observed, as the vicar emerged from the entrance and began shaking hands.
“He enjoys speaking with the congregation,” Lady Hurley explained.
“What is there left to speak of?” Melville said.
“Damned if I know,” Mr. Fletcher said.
Melville clapped Mr. Fletcher on the shoulder.
“We understand one another perfectly, sir,” he declared. “Thank goodness you are here.”
“Splendid!”
The dreariness of the service aside, Melville seemed in higher spirits than Eliza had ever seen him—eyes so bright and smile so wide that even Eliza’s mood began to lift out of the clouds.
“I hear you are to join us in Sydney Gardens, my lady,” Melville said, turning to offer his arm to Eliza with an extraneous flourish. “Shall we be off?”
“I had not thought you much interested in outdoor pursuits, my lord,” Somerset remarked.
“Oh, you wrong me,” Melville said. “Lady Hurley tells us they are pleasure gardens finer even than Vauxhall and I am most intrigued to see the labyrinth.”
“I should not have thought the labyrinth a particularly appropriate activity for Sunday,” Somerset said.
“Wrong again,” Melville rebuffed cheerfully. “For I mean to read aloud from Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women as we navigate, which will render the whole activity pleasingly godly.”
“Splendid . . .” Mr. Fletcher said dubiously.
“Would you care to hear one now, Somerset?” Melville asked, patting his pocket pointedly. “They do so clarify the mind.”
“Thank you, but I do not lack for clarity,” Somerset said, before turning to Lady Hurley. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, madam,” he said. “May I join your party?”
“Oh, how delightful,” Lady Hurley trilled. “May I claim your arm? Mr. Fletcher is to visit his mother this morning and I do so suffer without a gentleman’s shoulder to lean upon.”
She wound her arm through Somerset’s, batting her eyelashes up at him—Somerset swallowed—and set off at a decisive pace that he had no choice but to obey.
“I also walk very quickly, Lady Caroline,” Margaret said in undervoice, shaking out her skirts. “Are you certain you will keep up?”
“I assure you, Miss Balfour,” Lady Caroline said, “it is most certainly I who shall be setting the pace.”
They followed swiftly in Lady Hurley’s footsteps, leaving Eliza and a smiling Melville to take up the rear, with Pardle a few steps behind.
The Sydney Gardens were only a short distance from the abbey—across the Avon and down to the end of Pulteney Street—and with the leading couples walking at such a fast clip, once they were within the garden walls, they soon disappeared around the curve of the winding path ahead, leaving Eliza and Melville strolling behind. There were all manner of sights to admire: shady bowers, romantic water features and swathes of cultivated wilderness lining the serpentine paths, but Eliza dispensed with the view to regard Melville.
“Do you truly carry a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons in your pocket?” she asked curiously.
“Dear lord no,” Melville said, pulling from his coat instead a small leatherbound notebook. “The day I read Fordyce to Caroline will be the same day I die under suspicious circumstances.”
“And what would you have done if Somerset had asked you to read a sermon?” Eliza said, smiling.
“I am surprised he did not,” Melville said. “The man is so determined to challenge me on every suit.”
Eliza’s smile faded.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I do not know why he does so.”
That was not entirely true. She had thought, before, that Somerset’s behavior might be inspired by jealousy, but after last night, that seemed less likely.
“He is jealous,” Melville said. “As you are fully aware, and no doubt aptly exploiting.”
Eliza jerked her head around, startled.
“I am not,” she protested. “And he is not, either.”
As much as she might wish differently.
“It is nothing to be ashamed of,” Melville said. “We have all done much worse in love’s name, and I myself do not mind in the least being used in such a way. In fact, I beg you use me more, my lady.”
Eliza flushed a deep, deep red, her shoulders creeping up toward her ears, but Melville was not done. As he had on the day they first met, he dislodged Eliza’s hand to spread his arms wide, as if encouraging inspection.
“I offer myself to your use,” he declared, and Eliza looked wildly up and down the tree-lined path to check they were not being observed.
“You must stop,” Eliza said. “You are being absurd.”
Absurd and improper, even for Melville, and she hardly knew what to say in response to such outrageousness, whether she ought to laugh or—
“Perhaps we might today find ourselves caught alone in some romantic bower,” Melville suggested, “leaving Somerset with no choice but to call me out. Or do you think there is an orangery in these gardens? I have always been partial to an orangery.”
Now Eliza was laughing—it was impossible to do otherwise.
“She laughs!” Melville crowed. “At last.”
He offered his arm once more, and as Eliza took it, she noticed that the cuffs of his shirt were faintly stained with ink.
“Were you writing letters this morning?” Eliza asked.
“Not letters,” Melville said. He waved the notebook at her, again, before putting it back in his pocket.
“You are working again?”
“I have not told anyone,” he said, “but yes. Medea. Vengeance, passion, heroic couplets, etcetera . . .”
His tone was flippant, but there was genuine pleasure in his face.
“I can hardly wait,” Eliza said, with perfect truth. “Though I thought you were here to holiday.”
“I tire of rest,” Melville said. “It’s terribly dreary.”
“And so, the notebook is for ideas?”
“Of a sort,” Melville said. “Phrases I like, words I wish to use—stuff and nonsense, really.”
“My grandfather used to do the same,” Eliza said, remembering. “Not words, but he would sketch scenes or objects to recall them more easily later. He told me that any artist worth their salt should do so.”
“And did you take his advice?”
“I am not an artist.”
“I believe we have already disagreed on that point once,” Melville said—and there it was. They had finally reached the topic Eliza had been aching to raise all morning. She fell silent as the canal came into view ahead, pretending to admire the intricate Chinoiserie bridge gently sloping over it while mustering up the courage to ask the questions that had been playing on her mind since last night. To broach them, in so public a setting, felt a risk but then, with the thick verdure around them, the hills of Bathampton just visible in the distance, and only the sound of the breeze moving through the trees to accompany their footsteps, one could easily imagine she and Melville to be lost somewhere in the countryside, quite alone. Eliza took another sidelong glance at Melville.
“Were you being truly serious, about the portrait?” she asked.
She would react with equanimity if he was not.
“Gravely,” Melville said. “Will you agree to do it?”
“Its purpose is to be included at the front of your volumes?” she checked.
“Yes,” Melville said. “I am advised that it might help broaden my reach.”
“Is your current level of fame insufficient?” she asked. “Is there a lady in the ton who has not read your volumes?”
“The ton, little though we like to think it,” Melville said, “makes for the tiniest proportion of England, my lady, and I should like my poems to be read more widely.”
Eliza absorbed this silently.
“I realize such ungentlemanly motivation does not at all fit in with my careless joie de vivre,” Melville added.
“But if it is so important, this portrait,” Eliza said, “why ask me? I have very little formal training, and if convenience is my only advantage, you must know you could very well ask Mr. Berwick—he is said to be very talented!”
“And so I could,” Melville said. “But that would require me to speak with him, my lady, and that I will not do. I’d much rather be painted by a beautiful woman than some bumptious gentleman.”
“I think that is exactly why I oughtn’t agree to such a scheme,” Eliza muttered, half-flattered—for it was not every day one was called beautiful—and half-crestfallen, for if Melville had only picked her out of a desire to flirt . . .
“I would not ask you, if I did not think you capable,” Melville said, his voice so suddenly serious that Eliza was almost shocked to see him without his usual air of flippancy. And, as it had the night before, hearing such praise—such confidence in her ability—made her feel as if she could breathe more deeply and more fully than she had ever done before.
“I want it to resemble me,” Melville said, “not some puffed-up fool in a library holding a globe—and I do not believe anyone else could do that better.”
Eliza could not imagine the Balfours, or the Selwyns—or even, truthfully, Somerset—thinking this the sort of behavior that befitted a countess in her first year of mourning. If it was discovered that she was spending so many hours with such an infamous gentleman, the safety of her fortune would unquestionably be at risk. To agree to such a scheme was an act of lunacy, but . . . To decline the kind of opportunity she had dreamed of ever since she was a child? That seemed an even greater act of lunacy.
“Will you paint my portrait, Lady Somerset?” Melville asked, again.
Eliza looked away. She ought not. She wanted to.
“I will,” she said.
Melville let out a whoop of celebration.
“I have conditions!” she added hastily. “I insist upon discretion!”
“I am very discreet,” Melville said.
“Nevertheless it must remain a secret,” Eliza said, amused but impatient. “A permanent secret—my name must never be attached.”
“Done,” Melville agreed cheerfully.
“And we shall have to think of some pretext, to excuse your visits,” Eliza said. “For you to haunt Camden Place without explanation would do as much damage as the truth.”
“When shall we begin?”
Ahead of them, Somerset and Lady Hurley came into view—gathered before the grand gate pier with Margaret and Lady Caroline alongside. They had completed a circuit.
“Tomorrow?” Melville suggested, and Eliza hushed him.
“Tuesday,” she murmured. “Early, so we are not interrupted. And you must bring Lady Caroline—I should like as much chaperonage as I can muster.”
“Chaperonage?” Melville repeated, amused. “Lady Somerset, do you not trust yourself around me?”
Once again, Eliza’s cheeks pinked.
“There you are!” Margaret called. “We were on the point of sending out a search party.”
“Lady Somerset was just drawing my attention to a particularly wonderful orangery,” Melville said, shooting Eliza a grin.
“I will escort Lady Somerset and Miss Balfour back to Camden Place,” Somerset said authoritatively.
“Are you tired, Caro?” Melville asked his sister.
“Not in the least,” Lady Caroline said instantly. “Shall we locate this labyrinth?”
And after a quick round of farewells, they strode off, leaving Eliza and Margaret staring after them.
“Come, Miss Balfour, I would have you accompany me now,” Lady Hurley said, taking Margaret’s arm and leading her back through the gates.
There seeming no way for Eliza to avoid Somerset this time, she joined him reluctantly, leaving an impersonal gap between their shoulders. He made as if to offer his arm—then after a beat, returned the limb to his side, as they began to walk, allowing the two ladies to draw ahead on the pavement. After the verdant peace of the gardens, Pulteney Street was grey and noisy, but Eliza stared determinedly ahead as if it were the most fascinating view she had ever clapped eyes on.
“Lady Hurley is certainly fast,” Somerset said quietly.
Eliza did not know if he was referring to her walking pace or . . . something else.
“Isn’t she marvelous?” Eliza said pointedly. Somerset frowned.
“I know it is not my place,” he began, “but my lady, I wonder if you ought to be more careful, with the friends you make here. Lady Hurley is . . . Well. And the Melvilles—I do not trust them. I do not know what, truly, has brought them to Bath, but I do not think it so innocent a reason as they would have us believe.”
“No, it is certainly due to a scandal of some sort,” Eliza said. Didn’t everyone know this by now? “Perhaps an affair.”
“My lady!” Somerset said, and Eliza pressed her lips together. Walking with Melville had loosened her tongue.
“I am sorry, my lord, I did not mean to shock you,” she said.
Somerset let out a bark of surprised laughter.
“Shock me?” he repeated, as if this were amusing. He looked down at her, shaking his head. “You did not used to be so worldly.”
“I used,” Eliza said, very quietly, “to be seventeen.”
The smile faded from Somerset’s face. They were no longer speaking about the Melvilles.
“My lady,” Somerset began again, voice rougher now. “My lady, you must let me apologize.”
“There is no need,” Eliza said, voice shaking. If they could just reach Camden Place . . .
“There is,” Somerset insisted. “I was unforgivably rude—”
“Indeed, I would prefer to move past the incident,” she interrupted. Somerset’s regret could only be for his ungentlemanly conduct, and to have to hear and forgive such an apology—when the pain it had caused was not truly due to its rudeness, but to its honesty—was more than Eliza could bear.
“I think it best we discuss—”
“I do not think that—”
“By Jove, would you let me speak?” Somerset demanded, drawing to a sudden halt. Eliza considered walking on without him, but stopped, too. She would have to hear him, it seemed.
“I am sorry—that was impolite,” Somerset said. “Again. I—I have been so unpardonably uncivil to you.”
Eliza could not trust herself to speak. She merely gave a jerky nod.
“I wish to apologize—for everything that occurred last night,” Somerset continued. “I was unkind and disagreeable and any apology I make would be insufficient.”
He took off his hat, unheeding of the cold air.
“But I am sorry,” he said. “If you wish me to leave Bath today, I will.”
Eliza raised her eyes to the sky, in the hope it would keep any tears unspilled.
“No,” Eliza said. “I do not want you to leave.”
It was true. Even when it felt impossible to remain in his presence, even if he could never reciprocate her feelings. She had spent ten years without him and she could not wish him away, even now.
“I had been enjoying our reacquaintance,” she said, bracing herself, at last, to meet his eyes. Really, did anyone have a right to eyes so blue?
Somerset gave a grimace.
“I had been enjoying it, too,” he said.
Eliza looked ahead to where Margaret and Lady Hurley had stopped and were looking back at them enquiringly. “We ought to catch them up.”
Somerset did offer Eliza his arm, this time, and she took it. The air between them felt less fraught than it had done earlier, but no less heavy.
“I ought to apologize, too,” he said. “For my sister.”
“Is there anyone you are not to apologize for?” Eliza asked, with her best attempt at a smile.
“Selwyn too,” Somerset said doggedly. “I had intended to berate them most severely this morning but they were up and out so early that I could not. They were most unkind—more affected, perhaps, by the change in my uncle’s will than I had realized.”
“They have never liked me much,” Eliza said. “I have grown accustomed to it.”
“I wish you had not,” Somerset said, so softly that Eliza was not sure he meant her to hear. “I wish . . .”
He trailed off and they walked on in silence for a moment.
“I hope I have not ruined things,” he said roughly.
Eliza caught her breath and let it out in a slow, long exhale. What ought she say? Things had been ruined—for her, at least. But . . . She still wanted him in her life, even if she would have to put to bed her other sentiments, would have to learn, once and for all, how to fall out of love with him.
“Perhaps we were foolish to think we could simply spend time together, again,” she said, “without the subject of our past arising, on occasion.” Eliza looked up at him, forcing herself to hold the eye contact. “But perhaps now it has, we may be able to start our friendship, afresh.”
“Do you truly wish that?” he asked. “Even after . . .”
“Yes,” she said.
It was better than nothing.
“Friends . . .” Somerset sounded thoughtful.
“Only if you wish it, as well,” she added hastily. She would not again make the mistake of assuming she knew his feelings.
“Do you think,” Somerset asked abruptly, “that friends, while in Bath, might meet at the Pump Room each morning?”
“I would,” Eliza said cautiously.
“Perhaps they might attend concerts together, as well?”
Eliza could not read his expression.
“They might.”
“And ride out together, when the weather allows it, do you think?”
A small smile was pulling at the corner of his mouth and Eliza returned it very, very tentatively.
“I do,” Eliza said.
Was it only to her ears that such a friendship sounded so akin to courting? Eliza tried desperately to banish the hope that was trying to unfurl once again in her chest.
“Then yes,” Somerset said, bowing over her hand in farewell, “I should like to be your friend very much.”
Balfour House
February 14th ’19
Dear Eliza,
Though I received your last letter safe in hand, I will not answer here any of your questions regarding the family—you may assume all of their health—for a piece of most disagreeable news has reached mine ears.
I have received report—by way of Lady Georgina, by way of her cousin, and thence a Mrs. Clemens of Bath—that Lord Melville and Lady Caroline Melville have made their home in Bath. Can this indeed be true? If it is, you can only guess at my horror! And I wonder that I should receive such reportage from Lady Georgina—by way of her cousin, etc.—and not from you, yourself!
I must instruct you to act with great prudency around such persons. The disgraces associated with their name are numerous, disparate and, indeed, recent—there are whispers that an affaire d’amour has been occurring between Lord Melville and Lady Paulet for years. Lady Paulet, you will recollect, is the female painter whose work was so lauded by the ton last year and the fury of Paulet—Melville’s most loyal patron—upon discovering the cuckolding was reportedly great. With such a scandal as this brewing, I trust that you will give Lord Melville no encouragement as to any pretensions of friendship.
You may expect more anon—there are a few expenses regarding Rupert’s education that I have agreed to on your behalf. He is—though you have demonstrated a shocking lack of interest in your heir—in possession of a further molar.
Your affectionate mother.