13
Will you try to sit still?”
“I am.”
“You are fidgeting.”
“If you count breathing as fidgeting.”
Eliza gave Melville a hard stare over the top of her portfolio, trying to emulate her grandfather’s implacable manner of staring down his most demanding subjects.
“Are you well?” Melville asked, with a glint in his eye as if he knew very well what she was trying to do and had decided to be as difficult as possible. “You look dreadfully uncomfortable.”
Eliza hid a smile behind the page. It was Thursday morning and this would mark the second of Melville’s sittings. Eliza had decided, dredging up her recollections of how Mr. Balfour Sr. had conducted his portraits, to spend their first hours together capturing Melville in a variety of poses in order to decide upon the painting’s composition. It was more challenging than she had expected. Partly because Eliza had never met anyone who sat with more animation than Melville, but mostly because Eliza felt so flustered to be sitting with him quite alone. It had not been what she had imagined, upon Tuesday, when Melville and Lady Caroline had called soon after breakfast, and they had sat cloistered together in the parlor with Lady Caroline examining Eliza’s paintings.
“Do we have to indulge in such a charade?” Melville had protested, when Eliza had reiterated the need for some excuse for the hours he would need to spend at Camden Place.
“Yes,” Eliza had insisted. “I cannot be seen making such a spectacle of myself.”
This solution, in the end, had been Margaret’s.
“What if Lady Caroline were teaching me French?” she had suggested. “Melville would be escorting her to and from the house and visiting with you during the lessons.”
Lady Caroline had raised her eyebrows. “And I just . . . dawdle here, for the duration of the sitting? How thrilling.”
“Or you could actually teach me,” Margaret had said mildly. “I have always wanted to learn and . . . I should not think it your first time in the role of tutor, is it?”
At that, Lady Caroline looked hard at Margaret for a few beats. Margaret returned her gaze steadily.
“It is not,” Lady Caroline agreed with a slow smile. “Very well.”
Eliza had imagined that they would conduct their lessons in the parlor, too—Eliza and Melville seated at one end, Lady Caroline and Margaret upon the sofa—a cramped affair, yes, but warm and companionable. Today, however, Lady Caroline had thrown that idea out.
“We have not enough space,” she said, beckoning to Margaret. “We shall have to station ourselves in the drawing room.”
“But . . . what about chaperonage?” Eliza said. At her age and as a widow, chaperonage was not perhaps as essential as it was for a young lady, but given the intimate connotations of a portrait sitting, it felt only wise.
“We shall poke our heads in every half an hour to ensure nothing untoward is occurring!” Margaret suggested brightly, and they left.
And that was that. It felt very quiet, in their absence, and Eliza’s face flushed for no reason at all. Nothing untoward is occurring, she reminded herself. You are doing nothing wrong. She wished, unfairly, that Melville would not look at her so very directly—her hands were becoming unsteady, her lines wobblier than they had been for years.
She wondered, briefly, what Somerset would think if he knew what they were doing today—and immediately banished the thought. She and Somerset were friends, no more—and barely that, for their interactions these past few days had been . . . tentative to say the least. She banished that thought, too, trying to rescue her first attempt at Melville’s face which had become sadly mangled.
“You must have had a prodigious drawing master,” Melville commented, as Eliza began to sketch out his profile again.
“Yes,” Eliza said. He had been a portraitist himself, in fact, a Mr. Brabbington, employed at the direction of her grandfather.
“And did your grandfather have a hand in your education, too?”
“Yes,” Eliza agreed again. In her girlhood, the whole family would spend the summer at Balfour House, and while her cousins played on the rolling lawns, Eliza would sneak into her grandfather’s painting room to watch him at work. He had tolerated her presence when she was small and quiet enough to not become a nuisance, and then slowly, as he started to recognize some aptitude in Eliza, he began to treat her almost as an assistant.
“Do you miss him a great deal?” Melville asked.
Eliza met Melville’s gaze briefly, before returning her eyes to her paper. Melville’s line of questioning encouraged Eliza to unburden herself, but to discuss such intimate subjects whilst alone did not sit well with her.
“Yes,” Eliza said. The senior Mr. Balfour had passed away when she was only fifteen years old, taking with him the only ally she had in the family—aside from Margaret—who thought of her as something other than a bartering tool.
“And your late husband?” Melville said.
Eliza looked up from her page, stunned. The impertinence!
“You do ask a great many questions, my lord!” she said, in reproof rather than answer.
“No more than you evade,” Melville pointed out. “I do wish you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“I wish to get to know you,” he explained. “You are familiar with the concept?”
“And I suppose if I asked you a great many personal questions,” Eliza retorted. “You would feel comfortable answering them all?”
“Why, of course,” Melville said. “You may ask me anything.”
Eliza let out a sigh. She ought to have expected he would answer with such a challenge.
“Since I know very little about you, aside from what the scurrilous gossips say, I would not know where to begin,” Eliza said evasively.
“Let us then begin with what the scurrilous gossips say!” Melville suggested. “Don’t be shy! I promise to answer truthfully.”
When Eliza did not immediately speak, he made a chivvying gesture, as if she were a horse. Eliza was struck with an unbecoming desire to shock him; to rock his indefatigable good humor for a single moment. She put down her pencil and folded her hands.
“They say the Melvilles are mad,” she said, the worst thing of which she could think.
Melville considered this.
“It is difficult, as I am sure you will allow, for me to say whether I am or not,” he said. “I never met my grandfather so I can’t speak to his sanity, but he was certainly a brute. It’s why my father fled abroad as soon as he could and didn’t come back until the old man was dead. What else?”
“They say you’re a rake,” she said, boldly. Her mother would faint to hear her speak so.
“I spent some years deeply studied in petticoats, I will admit,” Melville said thoughtfully. “Though I should not think more than the other gentlemen of our circles.”
“Is that so?” Eliza said skeptically. It was not what she had heard.
“Society delights to imbue me with preternatural charm,” Melville said. “It deems any lady that dares speak to me as lovelorn, any woman with whom I dance my mistress, and every unmarried chit that crosses my path as needing protection from me. It has been so since I was a schoolboy.”
He was still smiling, but an edge of rancor had entered his voice that had Eliza eyeing him uncertainly, wondering if their game had gone too far.
“What else?” he prompted.
She hesitated.
“Come now, Lady Somerset, you were doing so well.”
“They say that you came to Bath because of a scandal,” she said.
“My point exactly,” Melville said with a sardonic twitch of an eyebrow. “They say I go everywhere because of a scandal.”
“Well, this time, they say it involves the Paulets,” she said, and the smile slid off Melville’s face at last.
“Do they now,” he said.
“They do,” Eliza said triumphantly, picking up her pencil to recommence sketching. That he clearly did not want to answer. “Do you have anything to say on that matter, my lord?”
Melville let out a sudden laugh.
“You could be a little more gracious in victory, my lady,” he said. “But I shall cede the ground nonetheless—for discretion, on that subject, does indeed forbear me from speaking.”
“Exactly!” Eliza said, more triumphant still, and Melville held up his hands in playful supplication, laughing again.
“Stay like that!” Eliza instructed, rushing with her pencil to try and grasp the expression—but it had slid off his face as easily as water off sand. She gave a little sigh.
“Am I being very difficult?” Melville asked, more amused than apologetic.
“No, no,” Eliza said. She did not want to be thought ungrateful and truthfully, while it might be simpler if he was an easier subject, the challenge of it all was rather thrilling. She would have to move faster, keep her pencils sharper and watch him more closely. Her grandfather used to say that the secret to art was not learning to paint, but learning to see. To be able to put his lessons to practice properly, after all these years, made Eliza feel as if she were back in the painting room at Balfour, as if his hands were still guiding hers.
“I shall get there eventually,” she assured Melville, her hands steadier now.
“Of that I have no doubt,” he said.
She blushed at the certainty in his voice and Melville laughed gently.
“That was not even truly a compliment,” he teased.
“If you cannot sit still, my lord,” she said, flushing harder and staring at her paper, “perhaps you might instead remain quiet.”
“Can’t do that,” Melville said cheerfully. “Do you think you will cease to blush after a few sittings?”
Eliza doubted it. She did not reply.
“I hope not,” Melville decided.
The sound of the clock striking quarter to the hour had Eliza startling—and Melville frowned at it as if it had personally offended him.
“Must we finish so soon?” he asked.
“I do not want to be late for the Pump Room,” Eliza said, setting down her materials with a little relief.
“No, God forbid we leave Somerset waiting for more than a second,” Melville said, standing obediently.
Eliza avoided his gaze. Somerset had appeared at the Pump Room every day this week, for no other reason, it appeared, than to speak quietly with her for a few minutes, and each day their tentative accord became a little less strained.
“You need not accompany us,” she reminded Melville.
“Oh, but I must—Somerset does so miss me when I am absent.”
Eliza did not reply. She could not be sure, but it felt more and more as if Melville reserved his outrageous raillery for Somerset, as if his entire life’s purpose was now to infuriate him. It was for this reason that Eliza might have preferred she and Margaret not arrive at the Pump Room with the Melvilles, but there was no helping it.
Somerset was already there when they arrived, making his way toward the door as soon as she crossed the threshold, proffering a goblet of the waters.
“Oh you shouldn’t have, Somerset!” Melville declared, intercepting the goblet and taking it for himself. “I do not deserve such gallantry.”
Somerset inhaled very slowly, and then turned to Eliza.
“May I escort you to the Pump?”
She accepted at once, leaving Margaret with the Melvilles, Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher. The further Somerset and Melville were from each other, the more comfortable she would be.
“Have you had a pleasant morning?” Somerset asked.
“Yes,” Eliza said carefully. “Margaret, of course, had another French lesson . . .”
“Accompanied by Melville, I perceive,” Somerset said.
“And I received a letter from my mother,” Eliza added quickly.
“How is Mrs. Balfour?” Somerset said. “She seemed . . . the same, when we met at Harefield.”
“She is very much the same,” Eliza agreed.
“She writes often?” Somerset guessed.
“Sometimes twice a day,” Eliza said, smiling as Somerset barked a laugh. “She and my father have a volume of opinions on how I should be conducting myself and my lands. One letter would simply not do.”
“My family is similarly preoccupied,” Somerset said. “My sister demands such a minute account of all my doings that I should think her quite able to become my biographer.”
“Do you think such a text would make for interesting reading?” Eliza asked teasingly.
Somerset shook his head.
“Not unless the reader desired a lengthy education in crop rotation,” he said, “the subject in which Mr. Penney and I are currently immersed—one of my land stewards, you know.”
“Oh, yes he shall be mine, too,” Eliza said. “I am to meet with him upon Friday.”
“Yes, he mentioned it this morning,” Somerset said. He hesitated. “Mr. Penney wondered, in fact, if I ought join your meeting.”
Eliza frowned. Mr. Walcot had had his qualms, of course, about Eliza’s direct involvement in her estates, but she had thought he now accepted it, however reluctantly. For Mr. Penney to have contacted Somerset regarding her lands, without even consulting her . . .
“It is merely so we may discuss where we border,” Somerset added swiftly.
Perhaps that was it. Perhaps Eliza was being overanxious.
“If there are matters that pertain to both our lands, then of course we must confer,” she said.
Having fetched Eliza’s glass of water, they completed their circuit slowly—he asking after her nephews, she after his nieces—arriving back at Margaret’s side just as Mrs. and Miss Winkworth bustled up.
“Oh my lord, we hoped to find you here!” Mrs. Winkworth trilled up at Somerset. “Winifred was hoping you might frank a letter to Miss Selwyn?”
Mrs. Winkworth nudged her daughter forward. With her simple muslin dress, straw bonnet and a blush lighting up her cheeks, Miss Winkworth looked very becoming; she might easily, indeed, have been the inspiration for one of Mr. Woodforde’s shepherdess paintings and any umbrage Somerset might have taken at her mother’s encroaching softened at the sight.
“I would be glad to do so,” he said, taking the proffered billet carefully in hand.
“That is very kind,” Miss Winkworth said quietly.
“Oh, you have made Winifred’s week, my lord! She will be in transports over your amicability all day, I am sure!”
“All day?” Eliza said in a voice sufficiently lowered that only Miss Winkworth might hear it.
“Perhaps . . . perhaps only the morning,” Miss Winkworth whispered back with a hesitant smile.
“Have you all heard that Mr. Lindley is to perform at the concert next week?” Mrs. Winkworth ostensibly spoke to the group, but her whole person was turned only to Somerset. “A coup, indeed, for Bath. Somerset, do you think Lady Selwyn should be invited? I am persuaded it is just the sort of thing she would enjoy.”
“I am sure she would,” Somerset said, shooting Eliza a quick look. “In her last letter, she bade me pass on her well wishes to you all.”
“Did she?” Mrs. Winkworth looked pleased as punch.
“She also bade me deliver a message to Melville in particular,” Somerset went on.
“Oh, yes?” Melville said. “Can you share it now, or is it of such a nature that I must receive it privately?”
Somerset’s jaw clenched.
“Lady Selwyn has heard that you are writing again,” Somerset said, “and wishes to express how pleased she is—and her impatience for news, when you have it.”
“Is that true, Melville?” Margaret demanded.
“Did Lady Somerset not already tell you so?” Melville asked.
Margaret turned on Eliza, frowning.
“I did not know if it was a secret,” Eliza defended herself.
As if in proof, Melville raised his forearms up to indicate the ink stains marring the pristine white of his shirt cuffs, without any sign of embarrassment. And, indeed, why ought he to be embarrassed? For somehow, on Melville the blemishes only added to his elegance—and Eliza promptly decided that she would include them in the portrait.
“Splendid!”
“Are we truly meant to interpret such marks as accidental,” Somerset asked. “Not an affectation meant to convey an artistic mystique?”
Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher looked on, startled. This being the first time they had witnessed Somerset and Melville sniping at one another, they had no context for Somerset’s sudden sharpness.
“Do you really think I have mystique, my lord?” Melville said. “How wonderful. I was beginning to think no one had noticed.”
“Once again, you take a compliment where none exists.”
“It makes speaking with you more enjoyable, you see.”
“Will everyone attend the concert next week? I think we certainly will, now Lindley is to play,” Eliza interjected, before Somerset could retort. He only seemed to anger further the more cheerful Melville remained.
There were murmurs of agreement around the group.
“I will,” Somerset said. “May I offer my escort?”
“I am afraid Lady Somerset has already agreed to join our party,” Melville claimed and Eliza shot him a startled look, for this was entirely untrue.
“Did she? Before even she decided to attend herself?”
“Ah, I have long known her to be prescient,” Melville said.
“You have not known her long at all,” Somerset snapped.
“We ought to go, now, Max,” Lady Caroline interjected before Melville could respond—to Eliza’s relief. The men were beginning to give her a headache.
Naturally, it was just as they were on the point of exiting that the heavens decided to reopen.
“Oh blast!” Margaret said improperly, staring out into the mizzle of rain. “Just when we shall never be able to get a cab.”
With so many persons streaming in and out of the Pump Room, hackney cabs and sedan chairs would be in short supply.
“Not the thing,” Mr. Fletcher agreed.
“We shall be drowned!” Lady Hurley declared.
“Do you intend to lay face down in a puddle?” Lady Caroline said, amused.
“I think it would be best if we make a dash for it now,” Eliza said, looking up at the sky, which was darkening ominously. “Before it becomes any worse.”
“Brava, Lady Somerset the brave,” Melville said. “It will make for a romantic vista, at least.”
“That is all very well, my lord,” Somerset said, pulling his coat around him. “But Lady Somerset is wearing silk.”
He strode out into the road and they watched him go, skeptically.
“Perhaps this is the last time we shall ever see him,” Melville wondered.
In a trice, however, Somerset was returning, and the sight of him striding purposefully back toward them through the rain, with a hackney cab following closely behind as if he had conjured it up by sheer force of will—well, it was certainly affecting. And once again, Eliza could not help but notice how admirably Somerset’s dark frock coat lay across his frame. He, of course, had no need of the buckram wadding some gentlemen used to pad out their outerwear.
“The gentlemen will have to walk,” he said, “but the ladies shall be dry.”
“You are a magician, my lord,” Lady Hurley said.
“Flatterer,” Somerset accused her gently, and Lady Hurley chuckled, accepting his arm up into it.
Margaret and Lady Caroline followed, and then it was Eliza’s turn. Somerset extended his hand, and as she took it, she thought she felt him squeeze her fingers ever so slightly. She turned her head to regard him, but his expression was smooth, unreadable. Perhaps she had imagined it.
“I shall see you tomorrow, my lady,” he murmured, before shutting the door.
From the street, Melville raised a hand to give a cheery wave.
“Lawks,” Lady Hurley breathed, as the cab drew off. “You’ll have all of Bath’s quizzes talking if that keeps up, Lady Somerset.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Eliza said, avoiding her eyes.
“For a moment they looked about to duel,” Lady Hurley said. “It was . . . most affecting.” And though the carriage was not warm, she began to fan herself vigorously. “I should not mind seeing it again,” she added.
“Do you need smelling salts, my lady?” Lady Caroline asked with an amused smile.
“Since their behavior is motived by dislike of one another,” Eliza said, “it gives me no pleasure.”
It was mostly true—what lady would not feel a fleeting enjoyment for being competed over in such a way, whatever the motive? But to witness such a competition and prevent oneself—by force of will—from taking any meaning from it . . . There was something slightly torturous about it. Melville was a flirt, Eliza knew this, and Somerset was . . . Eliza did not know what Somerset was, but she would not be reading into his behavior again.
Across the carriage, Lady Hurley regarded her for a moment, as if deciding whether she believed her—then cackled.
“If you say so!” she said.