14
As February drew toward March, the weather turned inclement. Each day brought fresh sheets of icy rain and vicious winds, filling Bath’s streets with puddles and bending its trees to inconvenient angles. Inside Camden Place, however, life felt warm. To the undiscerning observer, the pattern of Eliza’s days was no more variegated than it had been before, with most activities still prohibited by her mourning. Onlookers could not know, of course, that twice weekly found Eliza busy with the most unladylike employment of portraiture—outlining Melville’s shapes and shadows upon canvas—nor that the most regular of excursions had been invested with much excitement now she was accompanied, almost everywhere, by Somerset.
Friendship had truly never been so pleasurable. As discussed, Somerset and Eliza met with the land steward, and though Mr. Penney spoke to her with a condescension that made her want to scream, Somerset so considerately listened to Eliza’s opinion throughout that she still, somehow, enjoyed the appointment. It was very agreeable to finally have a person with whom to discuss the complexities of land ownership: she could not do so with her family, for they would certainly try to take over, and Margaret had neither an ounce of interest in farming, nor a single qualm about telling her so. Somerset, however, occupied the same position as Eliza: trying his best to learn a duty he had not been born to.
“You have a good head for this,” he complimented her, once Mr. Penney had left Camden Place while he had remained for a further pot of tea. “Most ladies would find it a dead bore.”
“Is that perhaps because most ladies are not permitted the chance?” Eliza suggested, archly.
“Ah, you may be right,” Somerset said. “Though I still think your interest commends you. My uncle would have been proud that you are taking your stewardship so seriously.”
“Perhaps,” Eliza said.
“You disagree?” Somerset said.
Eliza dithered for a moment. While she had felt sufficiently unencumbered these past few days to ask after Somerset’s life in the navy—where he had traveled, what he had seen, of the friends made—the subject of the old earl was one neither was yet confident navigating.
“I did not generally inspire pride in him,” she said carefully. Even in the beginning—most especially in the beginning—the late earl had been frequently disappointed by her ignorance. The Balfours’ family line was certainly genteel, but they were not from aristocratic stock, and there had been much—so very much—that Eliza had not known. You foolish girl, her husband would often say, when she had made yet another error, when despite her carefulness, she had done something wrong again. You foolish girl.
“In the will,” Somerset began haltingly. “He mentioned your loyalty and—”
“Obedience!” Eliza snapped. “Yes, I remember.”
Somerset blinked.
“I am . . . I am grateful, of course, for the lands I have been given,” Eliza said more calmly. “But to think he was motivated merely to reward me? It would not be very like him, you see. He changed the will the morning after he and Selwyn quarreled, in anger. If he had lived longer, he might well have changed it back.”
Most probably the very next time Eliza mixed up the Baroness Digby and the Baroness Dudley—a mistake that always sent him into a rage.
“He was not a naturally affectionate man,” Somerset conceded.
“He showed more affection to his horse than he ever did to me,” Eliza said, throat a little constricted.
There was a pause. On the sofa, Somerset’s hands lifted, stilled, and then returned to his side.
“But then, I suppose, Misty was an Andalusian grey,” Eliza added, and Somerset laughed gently, seeming to understand that Eliza wished to abandon the subject for now. And if, in this moment and each of the five days since—as he fetched her water at the Pump Room, promenaded with her whenever rain eased, escorted her around the livery stables of Bath to choose mounts for her and Margaret—Somerset proved himself to be just as kind, just as considerate, just as capable as he had been when Eliza first fell in love with him . . . Why, were such qualities not also those that one might admire in a friend?
“A friend you want to kiss, perhaps,” Margaret remarked tartly, when Eliza voiced this thought aloud. She was sitting in the window embrasure of the drawing room, watching the street below through the rain-stained glass.
“Oh shush,” Eliza said, walking over to adjust her hairpiece in the mirror. It was Wednesday evening and they had dressed for the concert in their finest gowns: Margaret’s a blue crêpe dress over a white satin slip, ornamented with earrings, necklace and bracelets of sapphire mixed with pearl—a set that looked even more divine on than it had in the jeweler—and Eliza, now that she was almost eleven months into her mourning, had begun to incorporate some white into her wardrobe with a gown of black figured lace over a white robe.
“Are you prepared for how you might feel when he leaves?” Margaret said now. “For it is this week, is it not?”
“Tomorrow,” Eliza said, keeping her eyes steady upon her reflection. “And yes, I am.”
Her voice did not waver—Eliza knew it did not, because it took such an effort—but Margaret still snorted.
“You have your head firmly in the sand,” she said. “On more than one front, I might add.”
“Pray tell,” Eliza said without enthusiasm.
“Have you given any thought to what you will do when I leave?” Margaret asked. “As little as I like to think of it myself, it will be April in a month, and Lavinia will be approaching her seclusion. You ought consider finding a new companion. There are plenty of respectable women in Bath who would also be agreeable choices.”
“Such as who?” Eliza said grumpily.
“What about Miss Stewart?” Margaret suggested.
“She’s too . . . brassy,” Eliza decided.
“Mrs. Gould, then? She is amusing enough.”
“In a very literal sort of way.”
“When did you cultivate such a high standard for wit?” Margaret wondered. “Come, they would not be so bad.”
“They are not you,” Eliza said.
“That is not their fault, precisely,” Margaret said, her smile turned melancholy.
Eliza rather thought it was.
“The Melvilles are here,” Margaret said, with a glance out of the window. “Once more unto the breach?”
Eliza nodded, throwing on her cloak and picking up her reticule and fan. They set out for the concert, everyone on fine form, Melville regaling them with an amusing tale of a hackney cab he had once shared with a well-known actor and his pet monkey while Margaret and Lady Caroline heckled him good-naturedly. Only Eliza was quiet. She could not shake off her conversation with Margaret so easily and remained ruffled by unease. Her current state of content had been hard-won, and only recently reached; to dwell upon its very real precariousness was not pleasant.
They reached the Upper Rooms and cast off their cloaks and pelisses.
“A new gown?” Eliza asked Lady Caroline, re-engaging herself in conversation with an effort, to admire Lady Caroline’s dress of shining white lace—its skirt festooned into a bell shape far fuller than any Eliza had seen before.
“Yes, finally,” Lady Caroline said, casting a dark look toward Melville.
Melville cast his eyes to heaven.
“Caroline has liked to characterize me as a pinchpenny,” he said to Eliza, as they began to walk through the hall, “ever since I once dared to query if diamond-encrusted shoes might be a little . . .”
“De trop?” Margaret suggested impishly and Melville gave a delighted laugh.
“I shall not have my lessons used against me,” Lady Caroline told her severely, rapping Margaret’s arm with her fan.
They paused in the doorway. In a perfect mirroring of the last time Eliza had attended a concert here, the whole room turned to stare at the entrance, only this time, she and Margaret were standing with the Melvilles. She peered through the crowd, locating Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher standing by the fire, Somerset and Lady Selwyn next to them. Eliza took in a deep, shaky breath.
“Oh lord,” Margaret muttered, spotting Lady Selwyn, too.
“Do try to be polite,” Eliza reminded her.
“I am always polite,” Margaret said with a sniff. “Unless I am irritated.”
Lady Caroline let out a low laugh and, twining their arms together, they strode into the room with all the conviction of an especially glamorous coven of witches.
“ ‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’ ” Melville quoted softly in Eliza’s ear and she laughed. Melville appeared in the highest of spirits, tonight, positively glittering with energy.
“Writing is going well?” she guessed, as they wound their own way through the crowd.
“A thousand lines done so far,” Melville said. “I should have written more were I at Alderley; Meyler’s and Duffield’s stock only Porson’s Euripides, and it is not my preferred translation, but I am pleased. How could you tell?”
“You are . . . liveliest, on such days,” she said, half embarrassed to have noticed.
“Idleness does not suit me,” Melville said. “Despite what Somerset might think.”
He lowered his voice as they reached the fireplace. Eliza took another steadying breath as she curtseyed her greeting. She would bear Lady Selwyn’s presence with grace and fortitude. Grace and fortitude, she repeated, as if it were a prayer.
“What a marvelous magpie you make, my lady!” Lady Selwyn said cattily, reviewing Eliza’s black-and-white ensemble.
“Yes, ‘magpie’ was certainly my intention,” Eliza snapped, vow instantly forgotten. “Or gull.”
“Your gown is fine, too, Lady Selwyn,” Margaret said sharply. “My mother had a very similar one last Season.”
Lady Caroline snorted and Lady Selwyn flushed.
“You have a good eye, Miss Balfour,” Lady Selwyn said. “I did not think it quite right to waste a new gown on so provincial an event.”
“Such condescension is truly admirable,” Lady Caroline said smoothly.
“I am not sure a Bath concert can ever have enjoyed such an esteemed audience!” Mrs. Winkworth chirped from where she hovered at the edge of the group.
As with Eliza’s dinner party, it was plain that such an ill-matched party could only end in calamity but unlike her dinner party, Eliza found she did not care to prevent it.
“This evening’s concert is certainly far more attended than any in recent memory,” Lady Hurley observed, gazing about.
“I should think we have Melville to blame for that,” Somerset said. “The scores of young ladies desirous of receiving his signature seem to climb by the day.”
“My dear Somerset, while I may take blame for the ladies,” Melville said, “I can assure you that the gentlemen are not here for me.”
He turned to look pointedly to Eliza, who avoided flushing red only by sheer force of will.
“Whatever can you mean, Melville?” Lady Selwyn asked.
“Let me enlighten you, my lady,” Melville said. “Bath is becoming quickly riddled with gentlemen desirous of fixing their attention with our own Lady Somerset. Once she throws off her widow’s weeds, Bath will be besieged.”
Losing her internal battle, Eliza blushed red and Melville grinned as if he had won something.
“Perhaps if I were a younger woman,” Eliza demurred, “but I am far into my dotage.”
This was greeted with cries of outrage from the group.
“Not the thing,” Mr. Fletcher disagreed heartily.
“To mine eyes, you are still a very green girl,” Lady Hurley said stoutly.
“I did think you had begun calcifying,” Lady Caroline said, pretending to look Eliza over.
Eliza laughed.
“You are all very kind,” she said, meaning it. Ten years of marriage to a husband more inclined to admonishment than admiration had not given Eliza much reason to believe in her own desirability—but with friends such as this, she was beginning to stand a little taller.
“It is not kindness but prophecy,” Melville said. He looked to Somerset. “In the absence of Lady Somerset’s father, are you to act as gatekeeper, my lord?”
Somerset’s face was rigid.
“I do not need a gatekeeper,” Eliza put in hastily.
“And I could not perform the role if I wanted to,” Somerset said. “For this marks my final night in Bath.”
Which Eliza knew, of course, had been counting down the days with rising trepidation, but nonsensically, it still felt a blow to hear.
“You are leaving?” Melville asked, clasping a hand plaintively to his chest. “But we have only begun getting to know one another!”
“There are some urgent matters at Harefield I must attend to,” Somerset told the group, ignoring Melville. “And as my business with Mr. Walcot has concluded—”
“Oh, have you finally graduated from Earl School?” Melville interrupted. “You know, I am a little offended that you did not seek my tutelage on the subject, Somerset.”
“Are you?” Somerset said flatly.
“Indeed,” Melville said. “Having been an earl myself for almost five years, I daresay I know a thing or two about it.”
“And why,” Somerset bristled, “would I receive instruction from a gentleman who I doubt even knows his own acreage?”
Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher gasped at the insult while a smirk curled its way onto Lady Selwyn’s face.
Melville merely smiled. “Twelve thousand,” he said. “My acreage, that is.”
“And your principal crops?” Somerset demanded.
“Oh, a quiz,” Melville said. “Marvelous. Turnips, my lord—my answer is turnips.”
Somerset glared at him as if he suspected Melville of naming the first vegetable that sprang to mind.
“You practice the Four Field System, I imagine?”
“Of course.”
“And what are your views on the Tullian drill?”
“Good lord, man, I don’t have any!” Melville said. “I concede—may I offer you a bushel of turnips as your prize?”
The whole company laughed, but Somerset, his face still flushed with anger, looked rather as if he should have liked to hit him.
“Are you still thinking of bringing your daughter to Bath, Lady Selwyn?” Mrs. Winkworth tried to reclaim the Baroness’s attention.
“No, we have decided against it in the end,” Lady Selwyn said. “If anything I should think Annie too confident and really it does—”
Eliza took a tiny, instinctive step back, trying not to listen. She twisted the ring upon her right hand, and then fussed with the clasp of her bracelet, which was not sitting quite right, until, under her anxious fingers, the clasp sprang open. Eliza made a grab for it, but it slipped from her wrist, only to be caught, just prior to it smashing upon the floor, by Melville.
“Oh—thank you,” she murmured, accepting it back.
“Can I help?” he asked quietly, and they drew a little away from the rest of the group.
“I can do it,” Eliza said—to have Melville’s hands upon her wrist would feel too intimate. “Perhaps you might hold my fan . . . ?”
“By all means,” Melville said, taking it from her.
Eliza wrapped the bracelet around her wrist. Next to her, totally unconcerned by the delay, Melville regarded the fan thoughtfully. It was a silk and lace creation held together with fine sticks of dark tortoiseshell—her most expensive purchase to date.
“I wish it were still the fashion for gentlemen to carry fans, too,” he said. “They are such useful creations.”
“Do you think so?” Eliza said abstractedly, as she struggled with the clasp. Almost there.
“Oh yes, the expression one can achieve! As so.” He unfurled its leaves and began to flutter it close to his face so only his eyes were visible—dark and laughing. “Perceive, I am now shy.”
“I perceive it,” Eliza said, smiling up briefly, before returning her eyes to the clasp.
There!
She straightened. Melville swapped the fan to his left hand and rested it briefly against his neck.
“And now?” he asked softly.
Eliza pulled at the thread of her memory—the language of fans was old-fashioned, now, but her governess had instructed her just in case . . .
“You are desirous of my acquaintance,” she said. “Melville . . .”
She cut her eyes to the room—their party was not attending them, but there were still many eyes gazing in their direction.
“And now?”
Melville flipped the fan upside down to press the handle against his lips—kiss me—and Eliza blushed fiery red.
“Melville, I know you are merely funning,” she hissed. “But we are observed!”
“I am aware,” Melville murmured, at last snapping the fan closed and handing it back to her. “Somerset blushes, too—not as charmingly as you, of course, but nonetheless I am hopeful he will turn puce this evening.”
Eliza looked reflexively toward the fire where Somerset’s eyes were now on them, heavy and frowning, and Lady Selwyn’s, too, darting ravenously between her and Melville. She felt her face heat even further.
“I should prefer,” she said, very softly, “that you keep me out of your squabbles; I do not care to be used as an intermediary.”
“I did not—”
She rejoined the circle before he could finish his statement, finding even more faces turned toward her—Mrs. Winkworth’s sour, Lady Hurley raising her eyebrows significantly. Eliza raised her chin determinedly.
“Yes . . .” Lady Selwyn said at last, turning back to Mrs. Winkworth. “And Somerset has promised us the use of Grosvenor Square for her coming-out ball.”
She threw her brother a coy glance.
“One of many promises he will have to keep soon enough!”
Somerset jerked his head around to his sister.
“Not now, Augusta,” he said in warning.
“Goodness, how intriguing,” Eliza said, trying to keep her voice light.
“My brother,” Lady Selwyn said loudly to the whole group, “has promised this will be the year he finally secures a wife!”
“My, my, Lord Somerset,” Mrs. Winkworth said. “Are there any hats in the ring already?”
There was an odd roaring sound in Eliza’s ears. She did not think she could bear to listen to a second of this.
“My lady . . .” Mr. King, the Master of Ceremonies, appeared at Eliza’s elbow to speak in a funereal whisper, and Eliza had never been so glad to see a person in her life. “I have saved a seat at a retired spot for you and one other.”
“I shall be happy to accompany you, my lady,” Melville suggested quietly.
“Yes, Somerset, perhaps you might escort me—” Lady Selwyn began.
“That is quite all right, Melville,” Somerset said. “I shall be escorting her ladyship.”
He offered Eliza his arm and she took it automatically, her mind still reeling.
“My apologies, for Augusta,” Somerset said in a low voice as they followed Mr. King. “She can be—”
Oh, was he truly asking her to discuss it, right at this moment?
“There is no need to apologize, my lord,” she interrupted.
“Of course there—”
“You shall have to . . . to let me know when I am to wish you happy,” Eliza said hoarsely.
Somerset’s arm tensed under hers and he took a sharp intake of breath as if to speak but the Master was indicating the area he had demarcated with a flourish, and Somerset remained silent. It was a little retired from the rest of the audience, and therefore away from the prying eyes of the public, and though it was a few more minutes yet before the performance began, Eliza did not prompt him.
The music struck up. The first few pieces, performed by an accomplished soprano and tenor in turn, were unknown to Eliza, although well performed. Then it was the turn of Mr. Lindley and his quartet, shuffling their music and tweaking their instruments, and Eliza wondered if she might take this moment to flee the evening entirely. They began to play, and as the first notes soared through the air, Eliza realized that this was a piece she recognized. Not that she knew its name, or even its composer, for she had only heard it once before: at Lady Castlereagh’s summer ball in ’09, she had danced to it with the man sitting next to her.
As the violins began to sing that unmistakable melody, Eliza’s breath caught. Pleasure and horror warred for dominance in her chest. Pleasure, for to hear such a piece was to be reminded of one of the happiest memories of her life. Horror, because she did not think she could bear to sit there, next to him, while she listened—close enough to touch and yet as far away as he had ever been.
Eliza closed her eyes and tried to master herself. It was just music. It was just a memory. She could bear this, as she had borne everything else. But just when she thought she had done it, just when she thought herself able to breathe normally once more, Somerset took in his own ragged breath, and spoke.