28
Eliza and Margaret traveled to London by hired post chaise, only in the company of their maids; Perkins and the rest of the household were to stay in Bath, to await their homecoming—though Eliza could not yet conceive of when this might be. When one was running away, one did not like to consider such practicalities as the return journey.
When she and Margaret had traveled to Bath, Eliza’s mood had been anxious but jubilant, as she was equal parts thrilled and fearful. This time, there was an air of manic determination in the manner with which she directed their hundred-mile journey to London as fast as she possibly could. Attending the Summer Exhibition when it opened in two weeks—seeing Eliza’s portrait exhibited there, with their own eyes—was by far the least important reason for their departure. Far more pressing to Eliza was flinging herself and Margaret into so much distraction that they might be able to outrun both their heartbreaks.
When London crested on the horizon ahead of them, Eliza was more certain than ever that this had been the right decision. In the serene elegance of Bath, one could not help but turn one’s thoughts inward, but in the insistent grandeur of London—Bath’s noisier, messier, demanding older sister—one could not help but be distracted.
The post chaise took them all the way to Russell Square, where they were greeted enthusiastically by none other than Lady Hurley herself.
“It is so wonderful to see you, both!” she sang, holding out her hands in welcome. “Hobbe, see to their bags at once!”
Eliza had written to Lady Hurley just as soon as Margaret had agreed, tearfully, to the scheme, and in her return letter Lady Hurley had at once invited them to stay at the lodgings she had taken for the Season. Lady Hurley was certainly not the only person of Eliza’s acquaintance in London, and nor was she the grandest—her townhouse, while spacious and lavish, was on the less-established Russell Square rather than the more fashionable Grosvenor or Berkeley—but she was the only one whose acquaintance Eliza wished to renew at such a time.
“To allow yourselves to think would be disastrous,” Lady Hurley said, clapping her hands—without being given any specific detail, she appeared to have surmised an accurate enough picture of what had occurred. “Let us go to the theater.”
And though every bone in Eliza’s body felt leaden with fatigue, she agreed at once: to think would, indeed, be catastrophic. Lady Hurley’s box at the Theatre Royal was well situated both to regard the stage, and also—as was just as important, for not even The Beggar’s Opera could hold Eliza’s restless attention for long—their fellow audience members.
“Last night we saw the Duke of Belmond,” Lady Hurley confided in Eliza and Margaret, as she brought her opera glasses to her eyes and began scanning the boxes across from them. “With a lady amongst his company who was most certainly not his wife, may I add.”
“Not the thing,” Mr. Fletcher said with smug relish. Mr. Fletcher, who had taken lodgings in Duke Street for the Season, appeared as much in evidence upon Lady Hurley’s arm in London, as he was in Bath.
As Eliza gazed around at the ornate interior, she noticed the glint of a fair number of opera glasses being turned in the direction of their box, too.
“Why are they looking at us?” she asked Lady Hurley.
Lady Hurley lowered her opera glasses and looked at Eliza as though she was denser than mud.
“My dear Lady Somerset,” she said, sounding greatly amused. “You are an unusually young widow of great fortune. Did you imagine you could join the Season and not cause a stir?”
The words were so close to ones that Melville had remarked to her, not so many weeks ago, that Eliza had to press a hand momentarily to her breast to soothe its pang before she could respond.
In the two weeks they were to spend in London ahead of the opening of the Summer Exhibition, it proved that on this matter Lady Hurley and Melville were both quite right. The last time Eliza had spent the Season in London, as Miss Balfour, it was only by the sheer force of her mother’s will that anybody had taken much notice of her. This time, however, she was the widowed Lady Somerset, and rich to boot, and not even her half-mourning prevented the ton from taking notice of her. By the next morning, they were besieged by invitations and very soon Lady Hurley was shepherding them from breakfast parties to morning visits, to picnics and promenades. In the evenings, they attended the theater, the opera and even a few balls—and if Eliza could not yet dance, she could certainly watch, she could certainly chat, and, as it happened, she could certainly flirt.
For while Melville had not given Eliza much reason to believe in any gentleman’s trustworthiness, he had certainly made her a better flirt. And once she had overcome her incredulity at the number of unattached gentlemen who were now dancing attendance upon her, Eliza’s overpowering need to keep her mind occupied made her quite motivated to engage in as many—somewhat frantic—flirtations as she could manage.
“One almost feels sorry for the poor lambs,” Lady Hurley said, with a cluck of the tongue, as several such lambs reluctantly left their box upon their second visit to the theater, the bell having rung to indicate the end of the interval. “The competition is so dreadfully fierce.”
“I do not feel sorry for them in the slightest,” Margaret said. “From birth, they are overpraised, overindulged and overvalued by society.”
Margaret had begun to regain some of her habitual sharpness.
“I notice that you, too, are not without your share of admirers, Miss Balfour,” observed Lady Hurley, an amused sparkle in her eye.
This was true, and though Margaret dispensed snubs and set-downs with almost vicious liberality, she did at least appear to derive a manic sort of enjoyment from the exercise.
“Do you have a favorite gallant, yet, Lady Somerset?” Lady Hurley asked, not bothering to hush her voice as the curtain rose again. This time it was The Two Spanish Valets and Eliza averted her eyes from the stage—Melville had so enjoyed the play when it had been performed at Bath—to shake her head in response.
There was the sweet Mr. Radley, of course, who made up in compliments for what he lacked in liveliness; the grey-haired and distinguished Mr. Pothelswaite, an amusing conversationalist with pleasing manners; the handsome but tedious Sir Edward Carlton. But none of them—no matter how amusing, how interesting, how engaging—could inspire in her any fraction of the feeling she had held for either Melville or Somerset. And try as she might to be distracted by London, Eliza still found herself dwelling—as she lay in bed or watched the opera—on both these gentlemen, still, and one most especially.
Eliza had chosen to end her relationship with Somerset. She made that decision herself, and before anything else had happened that horrible night, she had thought it the right one. She would always have mourned him—mourned what they had lost, what they might once have shared—and though she would always carry a small torch just for him, she could understand it. It made sense why they could not be together. Whereas Melville . . . Until the very moment Somerset had revealed the truth, Eliza had still wanted him. Still wanted him, now, despite everything. And none of London’s entertainments could take her mind off that fact for a single moment.
Eliza would just have to try harder. And if the very proper evenings of entertainment Lady Hurley had thus far been chaperoning them through would not serve, then perhaps some of the faster entertainments London had to offer might.
“I cannot thank you enough for your hospitality, my lady,” Eliza leaned in to whisper to Lady Hurley.
“Think nothing of it, my child,” Lady Hurley said with a wave of her hand. “Have you been enjoying yourself?”
“I have,” Eliza said. “Though I was wondering . . . Tomorrow, might we partake of supper at the Royal Saloon?”
Under Mrs. Balfour’s strict chaperonage, the Royal Saloon in Piccadilly had been one of the many locations Eliza had been forbidden to visit, but Lady Hurley was a very different sort of duenna. The very next night they spent a fabulous evening dining in one of the saloon’s most public booths, in the company of Mr. Fletcher and a highly painted cousin of Lady Hurley’s, before attending a rather rowdy card party at this lady’s house, where Eliza and Margaret were introduced to the previously mysterious games of loo, faro and whist. The day after, the whole company took a steamboat to Margate with a different group of Lady Hurley’s friends, and the day after that they spent a very diverting afternoon wandering around a spring fair in their plainest gowns, mixing amongst both respectable tradesmen and less-than-respectable tradesmen, and gazing at the attractions.
And if Eliza were beginning to turn more heads than was advisable, and if London were beginning to gossip of how fast Lady Somerset had become, and if each day Eliza were receiving fewer and fewer invitations to tonish parties, it seemed a satisfactory price to pay. For when she was laughing in a supper box, or dallying pleasantly with a crowd of gentlemen, or drinking far too much punch at the Opera House, she could pretend, for a few blessed moments, that she was still not missing a man who had been as good as paid to ruin her.
• • •
On the day before the exhibition’s opening, when Eliza had exhausted all of these possibilities and more and could not think of a single other place left to visit, or a single other amusement left to peruse, she suggested they all attend the masked ridotto at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
At this, even Lady Hurley had paused. Public ridottos of this sort were looked down upon by the Polite World as ghastly and vulgar affairs.
“They are not, perhaps, very genteel,” she warned, but Eliza was not to be deterred. The more outrageous the diversion, the better the distraction—and the better the distraction, the less she felt as if she had been cut wide open.
Lady Hurley persuaded, they set out that evening in Lady Hurley’s coach, and if Eliza felt more wan than excited, well . . . It had been a tiring few weeks.
“I received a letter from Caroline this morning,” Margaret said, apropos of nothing.
Eliza felt her heart begin to race.
“Oh yes?” she said, striving for unconcern.
“They have arrived in London,” she said. “For one day, before they travel to Dover for the crossing. Melville is going to Paris, too, now.”
“I see,” Eliza said, as if Margaret had just informed her that vegetal hats were back in fashion.
“He wants to see you,” Margaret said. “He wants to explain.”
Lady Hurley’s eyes traveled from Margaret to Eliza and back again.
“That is all very well, but I do not want to see him,” Eliza said savagely. “Goodness knows what lies he will have come up with, with so much time to prepare for such a meeting.”
“Do you not think it might be easier,” Margaret asked, “to speak with him, rather than try to busy yourself out of feeling this way?”
“No,” Eliza said.
“Eliza . . .”
“No, Margaret,” Eliza said. “No.”
The sound of music upon the air alerted them that they were approaching Vauxhall, and Eliza leaned toward the window more out of a desire to avoid Margaret’s conversation than anything else. Yet as she gazed out upon the acres of pleasure gardens, its intricate walks lit by a thousand golden lamps, the hundreds of persons streaming in and out of its pavilions and lodges, Eliza felt a stirring of genuine excitement in her breast. She turned to look at Margaret, her greatest friend in the whole world, and took a moment just to marvel at how very fortunate she was to have been born related to such a creature.
“Once more unto the breach?” she asked.
And Margaret grinned with shining eyes.
“Certainly,” she agreed.
“Splendid,” Mr. Fletcher said with great feeling.
They placed their masks upon their faces and wrapped their dominos about them. Under these half robes, they were both wearing evening gowns: Margaret’s a beautiful blue silk, Eliza’s the magnificent bronzed-green creation of Madame Prevette. While it was still months too early for Eliza to wear such a color, the mask would conceal her identity so that it did not matter. Lady Somerset might be in half-mourning, but tonight she was just Eliza.
They climbed out of the carriage and were immediately immersed into the sound of music and merriment, of loud voices and louder laughter, of more accents and languages than Eliza was accustomed to hearing. Outside the confines of the ton, this was an assemblage of classes and nationalities far more variegated than Eliza was used to: it was a London she had not seen before, and it was magnificent.
They went first to the supper-boxes, to partake of a simple supper of sliced meats, bread rolls and custard tarts with glasses of claret as accompaniment and then headed for the rotunda, to join the glittering, shifting throng of dancers.
Here, Eliza could see, for the first time, why public ridottos were considered by the ton as so very indecent. For the manners were so much looser than what she was used to, in every way: bawdy witticisms were shouted from one dancer to another, hands were clasped tighter and lower than would ever have been allowed in a high society ballroom, scuffles broke out over imagined slights between the young bucks, the punch was served freely and drunk with abandon. It might very well have been the most high-spirited evening Eliza had ever spent and, safe in the company of her trusted three, she danced quadrilles, cotillions, country dance after country dance, laughing as they tried to keep up with the music and swapping partners with abandon.
The first waltz, when it began, degenerated into chaos almost immediately. Danced closer and faster than any Eliza had ever done before, and so busy laughing her way through the steps that she was not paying attention, not even looking at her partners, really. For once, Eliza did not feel overwrought with thinking, and it was such a release that she felt almost giddy, hardly caring which arms caught her as she threw herself around the dance floor, spun first by a man in a black domino, then a red, then a purple, and then into the arms of a partner more graceful than the rest. A partner who did not merely clasp her hands, palm to palm, but deftly intertwined his fingers with hers. And Eliza looked up into dark brown eyes flecked, just in the middle, with the tiniest suggestion of gold—eyes she would have recognized anywhere.