29
Staring up into Melville’s eyes, the smile slid off Eliza’s face and her heart began to beat faster and faster. As the dancers swapped and exchanged about them, Melville, masked with a plain black domino, grasped Eliza tighter, refusing to relinquish her to the crowd, and she followed his steps automatically, instinctively, while her mind reeled. What was he doing here? The blissful thoughtlessness of the last few minutes was truly gone, and her thoughts bounced from one contradictory feeling to another: she was pleased to see him, she wished he had not come; she wanted to hear his voice, she would not speak with him. Finally, as the dying strains of the violins had everyone parting and bowing to one another, Melville let go, his hands dragging reluctantly from her waist while Eliza took two swift steps back. If she was going to have any chance of thinking clearly, she had to maintain some distance.
Silently, Melville held out his hand and Eliza teetered between the two sides of herself for a long moment, before she took it. She had too many questions. Melville pulled her gently through the dancers and the onlookers, only stopping when they reached the relative quiet of the lantern-lit paths.
A giggling couple dashed past, clearly bent on some sort of carnal mischief, and Eliza pulled her hand from Melville’s grip.
“How did you know we would be here?” Eliza asked.
“Miss Balfour,” he said. “She sent a note to Caroline by postboy—and so we came.”
“I came to London to be away from you,” Eliza said.
“I know,” Melville said. “But I . . . I must be permitted to explain myself. I cannot leave England before I do.”
He drew her over to a stone bench embraced on either side by trees and they sat.
“When the Selwyns approached me,” Melville began, with no preamble and speaking rapidly as if he thought them about to be interrupted at any moment, “I was desperate. I had already spent weeks touring the country, trying to convince some wealthy patron to support me; the day we met, I was on my way back from just such a fruitless quest. No one wanted to defy Paulet: I had thought my career over, my aspirations squashed, thought that Caro and I were to be sentenced to the fringes of society and Alderley to crumble into disrepair.”
Eliza hardened her heart against the sympathy that wanted to stir within it. He was a writer; she ought expect he would tell the tale well.
“When Selwyn explained what he wanted,” Melville was speaking slower now—this part of the story was not so easy to narrate, “it did not seem so villainous. I already found you interesting and he made it sound as if all I had to do was . . . continue. Continue to spend time with you, and flirt, yes, and perhaps even tempt you into bending the rules of propriety a little—but only to hinder your and Somerset’s relationship. I had no notion of the risk to your fortune. Selwyn told me it was only to prevent an alliance between you, and I was happy to stand in Somerset’s way. I never thought he deserved you.”
It was a piece of manipulation that was typical of the Selwyns, but . . .
“Did you, at any point, consider what harm you might cause to me?” Eliza asked. “A lady’s reputation is a fragile thing.”
Melville hesitated and Eliza watched him closely.
“Not for a while,” Melville admitted. “I have never had much influence over my own notoriety: it exists, no matter what I do, and I have had to learn not to censure myself for what I cannot control. If the gossips spread lies about you and me . . . well, I suppose I thought the fault lay with them.”
The slow way he was speaking, as if each word was one he was uncomfortable voicing, suggested that he was trying very hard to speak honestly—and, despite herself, Eliza softened, a little. She had seen for herself the way Melville had been dogged by whispers and rumors and prejudice from the moment he set foot in Bath, long before he had even met the Selwyns.
“It was not until you revealed the truth of the morality clause that I saw how I had been manipulated,” Melville continued heavily. “I ended the arrangement that day, I promise.”
He looked up and caught her gaze, misery and longing clear in his eyes. “And then, the night we danced I realized . . .”
“Realized what?” Eliza asked, breathless.
“That the reason I wanted to spend time with you, the reason I was so unsettled by the news of your engagement, had nothing to do with the Selwyns. It was because I was falling in love with you.”
Eliza let her head drop to rest in her hands. To hear him say such words! It was painfully wonderful. She felt Melville’s hand press gently upon her back, and it was so comforting . . . It would be so much easier to believe him, and allow herself to be held but—
“How do I know you are telling the truth?” she asked, straightening. “I cannot bear to be made a fool of again. You have lied to me so many times, so often and so well and so convincingly—and I have had to question so much since—”
“Eliza, look at me!” Melville pulled his mask off his face, so that she could see him, properly, and grasped her hands in his. “When it came to us, when it came to me and you, I never lied. When we spoke of our dreams, our families, our lives, I was not lying. I promise you.”
“But Somerset said you never ended the arrangement, not until he did,” Eliza said.
“He was lying,” Melville said.
“But—”
“I love you,” Melville said, interrupting Eliza before she could finish. “All you need to tell me is: are those feelings returned?”
Eliza paused and then knocked his hands away.
“What right have you to make such demands?” she said. “It is you who needs to answer my questions, Melville.”
“Are my feelings returned?” Melville asked again, so bullishly that Eliza bristled even further.
“I will not be bullied into making a declaration, when you will not answer me,” Eliza said, shaking her head. “How else am I supposed to know I am not being manipulated again? Lied to, again?”
“Why would I lie now?” Melville said. “What could I hope to gain from lying, now?”
“The same thing you stood to gain last time,” she retorted. “Your circumstances have not changed, have they? You still need money, or a patron. For all I know it might be my fortune you’re after now.”
She had not even truly meant it—it had spilled out of her with her anger and frustration—but Melville flinched back, leaning away from her.
“Is that what you think of me?” he said. “That I am some common fortune hunter?”
“Can you blame me?” Eliza said, feeling a chill in the space his body used to warm. “After what you have admitted already to doing for money.”
“You must know I would never—”
“Must I?” Eliza cried. “I thought I knew you; for months I thought I knew you, and then I discovered everything to be false. How am I supposed to know, Melville? Prove it to me.”
“If you cannot forgive me, then this is all fruitless,” Melville said.
“If you will not prove it to me, then perhaps it is fruitless,” Eliza said.
“You are not trying,” he said.
“You are not trying!” she said. “It is you who is guilty. It is you who has led me so astray that my life risks being every bit as broken as yours!”
In that moment, all Eliza wanted was to hurt him as she had been hurt, and Melville’s face twisted in pain and anger.
“Oh, yes, it would be much easier to blame me, wouldn’t it,” he snapped. “Tell me, what part of your life did I ruin? The part where you spent years pining for a man who doesn’t even see you? Or the part where you waited obediently for society’s permission to be happy?”
Eliza jumped to her feet, tears springing to her eyes.
“The part where I loved you,” she choked out. “That’s the part I regret.”
Eliza turned on her heel, dashing back toward the rotunda, half blinded by sobs. Tearing through the crowd, she looked urgently about for Margaret but trying to catch sight of her in the sea of dancers was as fruitless as parsing a single drop of rain from an ocean. Every time Eliza caught sight of a woman in a pink domino, she was either the wrong height or the wrong shape or just plain wrong.
And then, finally, she caught sight of her. Margaret was in the center of the room, dancing a country dance, twirling around and around with her hands clasped with a lady wearing a red mask and domino. Caroline. Eliza watched them for several moments, spellbound, her tears paused. They were not the only ladies dancing with one another, for there were more women in attendance this evening than gentlemen, and under the safety of their masks and dominos—released from any fear of observation—Margaret and Caroline were spinning and laughing with abandon. As one does when one is dancing with the person that they love.
Eliza waited until the dance had ended to catch Margaret’s eye. Margaret, unlike Eliza, had no trouble recognizing Eliza. She left Caroline’s side immediately and hurried over.
“Did Melville find you?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Eliza said.
“What did—” Margaret began, but Eliza interrupted.
“I am going home,” she said.
“I will come with you!” Margaret said at once.
“No,” Eliza said, gently. “Stay. Dance. Return safely.”
“Are you sure?” Margaret said. Over her shoulder, Eliza saw Caroline hovering at a little distance, her eyes watchful.
“Yes.”
“I do not know what I am doing,” Margaret admitted shakily. “I do not know if this is even possible.”
“Tonight, you are just dancing,” Eliza said, her gut wrenching with the effort it took to speak calmly. “Now, off with you!”
Eliza turned and wound her way back toward the carriages to find herself a hackney cab, alone and unattended, and only once she was safely ensconced within did she give herself permission to weep.