5
Lady Hurley could not have designed a more perfectly dramatic moment. As one, they all looked to the doorway just as the Melvilles appeared within it: Lord Melville, dressed tonight in a long-tailed coat, knee breeches and silk stockings, and beside him his sister, standing almost as tall as he and exquisitely gowned in a gossamer satin dress of a celestial blue that shone beautifully against her brown skin. Lady Hurley beckoned to them with one heavily bejeweled hand, and as they walked languorously over, more heads began to turn and crane in their direction. From the excited murmurs and whispers that began filling the room, they had been recognized.
“Oh. My. Goodness,” Margaret breathed from beside Eliza, speaking each word as if it were a separate sentence.
“Good evening, my lord, my lady,” Lady Hurley said in loud, smug welcome. “I am so pleased you have come!”
“It is our pleasure,” Lady Caroline said, in a low and musical voice. “I became acquainted with Madame Catalani in Rome last year—I am looking forward to hearing her perform again.”
The tripartite power of Lady Caroline’s literary reputation, her alluring air of fashion, and the reference to European travel proved immediately irresistible to Margaret, who opened her mouth eagerly, and stepped a little forward as if to immediately engage Lady Caroline in conversation—until Eliza laid a cautionary hand upon her arm. They had not yet been formally introduced.
“May I introduce you to my very dear friend, Lady Somerset?” Lady Hurley said, and Eliza forced herself to remain calm. Melville would surely recollect her request for his discretion at their last meeting—but as he turned and their eyes met, Eliza gave him a look of great meaning just in case. Melville raised his eyebrows, a faint smile at his lips.
“Lady Somerset,” he said. “We meet again.”
Oh, lord.
“You are already acquainted?” Lady Hurley asked immediately. “How so? Lady Somerset, I did not think you had visited London in many years.”
“Would you like to tell the tale, or shall I?” Melville asked, a glint of mischief in his eyes. Eliza’s heart began to gallop. “It is most amusing.”
“We met very briefly many years ago, at a—a ball,” Eliza blurted out, before Melville could utter another word.
“That does not sound very amusing,” Lady Caroline said.
“Surely that cannot be the whole story,” Lady Hurley agreed, with an intrigued flutter of her fan.
Eliza felt as if she were standing under a very bright light and tried desperately to think of a response to the question that would satisfy their curiosity, leave her reputation blemishless, and avoid insulting Melville all at once—but no such magical answer presented itself to her. Fortunately, just at that moment they were interrupted by the Master of Ceremonies, who indicated it was time to be seated.
“Shall we lead the way, Lady Somerset?” Melville said, with a flourish of his hand.
After a beat of hesitation, Eliza took it.
“I do not consider myself a forgettable man,” Melville said, as they made their way to the concert room. “Perhaps you so frequently find yourself in carriage crashes that my memory has faded into insignificance?”
“I—I do not—it h-has not,” Eliza stammered out. “It is just that—I should not particularly like the—the circumstances of our meeting to become public knowledge. Their being so particularly unusual, you understand, they would easily become gossip fodder. R-recollect I did mention the need for discretion, on the day in question!”
This last remark was said a little defensively, and Melville smiled.
“So you did,” he agreed, escorting her toward the front rows of chairs rather than the retired location Eliza had planned. “My lamentable memory. May I compliment you upon your charming toilette, this evening?”
“Oh—yes,” Eliza said, startled. “Yes, I suppose you may.”
“I think it a great improvement that I can now see your face,” Melville said. “It suits you.”
“My face . . . suits me?” Eliza repeated slowly.
“Fortuitous, is it not?” Melville said.
Fleetingly, Eliza wondered if Melville were flirting with her before dismissing it immediately as improbable. Melville’s flirts were usually found amongst the most dashing and charismatic ladies of the ton—Lady Oxford and Lady Melbourne, if gossip were to be believed—which Eliza most certainly was not.
As the rest of the audience filed in behind them, their row was the recipient of eager glances and craning necks, though as Melville did not appear perturbed, Eliza assumed he must be well used to such notice: the Melvilles, born to both Indian and British nobility, had been a source of national fascination since they were born.
Even as Madame Catalani appeared, the audience’s attention seemed terminally divided—staring just as much to their row as the stage—until the moment the soprano began to sing, when her voice, so clear, so pure, so heavy with emotion, enraptured them all.
“Do you understand Italian?” Melville leaned toward Eliza so he could whisper close to her ear.
“No,” Eliza admitted.
“Nor I,” he said. “Of what do you think she sings?”
“I do not know,” Eliza said limply, though this was not true. Catalani invested each note with such meaning, such sorrow, that Eliza did not need to understand the words to know of what emotion she was singing: heartbreak. One could not hear her without being reminded of times of such melancholy within one’s own life and Eliza’s mind went, inexorably, to Somerset, before she forced the thoughts away.
Too soon for Eliza’s liking, it was the interval, and so distracted had Eliza been by the glorious music that she only remembered her intention to remain piously seated once she was already in the tearoom, and Lady Hurley had concluded the rest of her introductions. Fortunately, it seemed the mystery of how Eliza and Melville had met had been discarded in favor of a new line of interrogation.
“How long have you been in Bath?” Mrs. Winkworth had the first volley.
“A day,” Lady Caroline said.
“And a half!” Lady Hurley interjected.
“Yes, you ought not overlook the half, Caroline,” Melville chastised.
“And is this your first visit to our town?” Mr. Berwick asked.
“Oh no,” Lady Caroline said. “I once spent a whole month here in my girlhood, on a whim from my mother to see me formally schooled.”
“Oh, the Bath Seminary for Young Ladies?” Mrs. Michels asked. “Miss Winkworth, were you not educated there?”
“Yes, she was,” Mrs. Winkworth said, speaking for her daughter as if she were a child.
“Why only a month? You did not care for it?” Admiral Winkworth said, moustache bristling in anticipatory offense.
“Rather, it did not care for me,” Lady Caroline said, with an eloquent and elegant shrug of one shoulder. “But as I already knew everything in French a woman ought to know, my mother allowed me to withdraw.”
Eliza badly wanted to ask exactly which French phrases in particular Lady Caroline thought essential, but refrained; whatever the answer, it would surely only end in Mrs. Winkworth clapping her hands over her daughter’s ears.
“And are you pleased with Bath, on your second visit?” Margaret asked her, eagerly joining the fray.
“In so much as one can be, in only a day,” Lady Caroline said coolly.
“And a half, Caroline,” Melville corrected. “That is twice now you have neglected the half.”
“How long do you plan to stay?” Margaret asked.
“Oh, only as long as we are welcome,” Melville said.
“Careful, my lord,” Lady Hurley said, with a flirtatious sweep of her fan. “If that is your only condition, you may find yourself staying here a very long while indeed.”
“Would that be such a terrible fate?” Melville said, leaning in closer than was customarily considered appropriate. “Now that I have seen Bath’s diamonds for myself, I am in no great hurry to leave.”
Lady Hurley glowed at the attention. Beside her, Mr. Fletcher had puffed up like a disturbed pigeon, and beside him, Mrs. Winkworth was fanning herself with such aggression that she looked almost about to take flight. The scene was so delightfully ridiculous that Eliza tried consciously to etch every detail into her memory, so that she might attempt to capture it when she returned home. Pencil and watercolor, it would have to be, to convey the intricacies of expression.
“Do you mean to write while you are here, my lord?” Mrs. Michels asked.
“I do not,” Melville said, and seemingly unruffled by the sea of enquiring eyes, took a snuffbox from his pocket and offered it to the person next to him—Miss Winkworth, who blushed as rosily as if it had been a ring box and hid behind her hair.
“You must put an end to our misery,” Lady Hurley said. “When can we expect you next to publish?”
“We have come to Bath for a rest,” Lady Caroline said.
“Well deserved, I am sure,” Mr. Berwick interjected, “for I hear your industry has otherwise known no bounds, my lord—from Lord Paulet, in whom I believe we share a mutual friend.”
“Indeed?” Melville said, the tiniest of frowns appearing between his eyebrows.
“I credit his patronage entirely for my acceptance into the Royal Academy,” Mr. Berwick said eagerly. “I was very grateful that my dear friends Mr. Turner and Mr. Hazlitt saw to introduce us.”
Melville appeared to regard the floor in some astonishment.
“Do be careful where you step, Caro,” he said. “There are a great many names upon the floor.”
At this, Eliza could not help letting out the tiniest choke of laughter—hearing it, Melville threw her a surreptitious wink. He was flirting with her—a wink was, after all, the most flirtatious act an eye could perform. Well. This was—this was highly inappropriate. Eliza was a widow in her first year of mourning, and Melville ought to know better. Clearly his libertine reputation was well-earned! But the outrage did not sound convincing even in the privacy of Eliza’s own mind. It had been such a long time since Eliza had received any such regard from a gentleman—and certainly never from one as sought-after as Melville—she could not help but feel warmed.
“I believe we are to take our seats again,” Mr. Broadwater said gruffly.
As Eliza took her seat, this time seated a little away from Melville, she could not help but glance at him sidelong; one could not deny he was very handsome, with such elegance of carriage, too!—but when she found her gaze caught and returned by the amused gentleman, she looked quickly away.
The performance finished to a general murmur of applause and cheer and Madame Catalani unbent to mingle with the audience members afterward, attaching herself immediately to Melville’s side and engaging him in animated conversation that necessitated the frequent touch of her hand upon his arm. Eliza and Margaret, however, could not linger—they had stretched the bounds of appropriate behavior as far as they could and made instead straight for the cloakroom.
“Thunder an’ turf!” Margaret declared improperly as their cloaks were being retrieved for them. Eliza empathized entirely. Their fortnight in Bath had felt more variegated and interesting than their entire lives up until this point, but the addition of the Melvilles to the city . . . It was as if an already delicious wine had been rendered abruptly sparkling, and as much as Melville’s flirtatiousness ought to concern one whose entire life rested upon pristine behavior, she, too, was brimming with excitement.
“Later,” Eliza promised. They would stoke the fire and ask Perkins for tea and discuss everything. But it took such a long while for their cloaks to be located that by the time they exited the building—Staves the footman striding ahead to hail a cab—they found that the Melvilles had overtaken them. They were standing on the cobbled street just ahead, Lady Caroline fiddling with the clasp to her cloak and Melville bouncing impatiently upon the balls of his feet.
“Let us bid them goodnight,” Margaret whispered, making as if to walk forward, but before she could say anything, Melville’s voice rang out.
“Do hurry up, Caroline,” he said. “I wish an end to this tedious night. Never in my life have I endured such insipid company. I cannot comprehend how we are to survive here.”
“There is less than an ounce of spirit amongst them,” Lady Caroline agreed. “Let us hope for a swift return to London.”
“Hope and pray,” Melville agreed. “Lord save us from bumpkins, spinsters and widows—bores, the lot of them!”
Lady Caroline laughed, and then, clasping his arm, they walked off into the night.
“Oh,” Margaret said, her voice small.
Eliza’s face was burning. They stood there, blankly staring after the Melvilles.
“I suppose,” Margaret said—and there was no excitement in her voice anymore, “I suppose we are dull in comparison to their usual set.”
“We are not dull,” Eliza said, trying to control the wobbling corners of her mouth. “A-and we would not deserve such disrespect, even if we were.”
She felt hot and cross and as if she might weep, all at once. She climbed rigidly up into the carriage when it arrived, and clasped her hands tightly, holding herself together as best she could.
It was hardly the first time she had not been liked. On the contrary, a lifetime of slights and snubs meant that she usually navigated the world in expectation of such censure, but she had not expected it tonight. She had not expected it from him. Eliza’s face was scarlet with mortification. She could not believe that such a short time before she had been so thrilled to receive the flattery of his attention, when all the while, that was what he was truly thinking. She was a fool.
By unspoken agreement, Eliza and Margaret took straight to their bedchambers when they arrived home. There was no longer any pleasure to be had in discussing the evening, but neither did sleep appear at all likely. After Eliza had been helped to undress by Pardle, she sat motionless upon her bed, the Melvilles’ words repeating in her mind like a children’s rhyme being sung in the round: boring, insipid, spiritless. The insults might have hurt less, had Eliza been sure they were untrue. But as it was . . . “Obedient and dutiful,” her husband had called her in the will; “incapable of causing a raised eyebrow,” Somerset had deemed her at the reading; and now, after only two encounters, Melville seemed to think just as little of her. Eliza had thought, by coming to Bath instead of Balfour, that she had proved her bravery, but that was not true, was it? For it had been Margaret’s courage, and not hers, that had led them here. And since they had arrived, had not Eliza been quite as much ruled by the opinions and wills of others as ever?
The sensible course of action to take, when one is feeling particularly worthless, is to try to cheer oneself up with happier thoughts and distractions. In that moment, however, Eliza was tempted instead by the more compelling idea of making herself feel a great deal worse.
Standing, she walked over to the writing desk that stood in the corner of her bedchamber and opened a drawer to extract the small wooden box that she had carefully placed inside weeks before. She placed the box on the table and sat down before it.
Eliza ought to have burned the contents a long time ago. Instead, she had smuggled it into Harefield at seventeen, and ten years later brought it to Bath. Perhaps the collection inside went some way to explaining why the flames of Eliza’s affection for Somerset still flickered on even now—for whenever his memory risked growing faint, she could open this box, and be reminded of how terribly in love they once were.
On the top of the pile of papers that lay inside the box was a portrait. It was not Eliza’s best work, just a pencil sketch of Somerset’s face and torso, drawn from memory rather than in person, and it lacked detail and precision as a result. But even so, one could tell, just from a glance, that the artist had loved the subject. Eliza’s grandfather always had said that Eliza drew as much with her heart as she did with her hands and it was there, plain as day, in the careful strokes of the pencil, the effort that had been invested in capturing every detail of his eyes . . . Their expression—well, the expression was everything. The soft way the sketch-Somerset was regarding her, as if she were something infinitely precious—exactly how he had used to look at her, before . . .
Eliza lifted the portrait out and placed it gently to the side. Underneath lay the letters, wearing thin and yellow from age. The ink had grown fainter with each year that passed, but Eliza did not need to be able to read the words. She could tell their story from handwriting alone: at the beginning, his script was neat and precise, on the notes that had accompanied the flowers he had sent her after their first meeting. Theirs had been as traditional a courtship as could be, and she had the dance cards, all littered with his name, to prove it. They met at one ball, danced at another, they spoke and flirted at garden parties and card parties and excursions to the races and in a matter of weeks they were penning each other sheets and sheets of heartfelt confessions in handwriting that was quicker, closer, more urgent—until the very last letter in the box, that ended with words that Eliza had traced with her finger more times than she could count. The depth of my regard for you is such that I am driven to action. Tomorrow I shall pay a visit to your father.
It was the last item in the box. One could almost fool oneself into thinking that was how the tale ended. A father’s permission sought, granted, the question asked, and answered. Marriage. Children. Happiness. But it had not happened that way. And the fact that their last, bitter words to one another had been spoken, rather than written, did not make them any less true.
“You must tell them you will not, Eliza,” he had urged her, face as white as the moon above. “You must tell them you have a prior attachment.”
“I have tried,” she had whispered, voice choked. “They will not listen.”
“Then make them listen!” he implored. “They cannot force you into accepting his suit!”
“I cannot defy them, you must see that,” she had begged, trying to hold onto his hands even as he pulled them away. “The things such a match would do for my family—I cannot go against their wishes.”
“My uncle, Eliza! You cannot—you surely cannot do this to me.”
She had tried to make him understand—she thought she might die if he didn’t understand—but he had not. All he could see was a weakness of character.
“You have no spirit,” he had said, at last. “You have no spirit, Eliza.”
Then, as now, the words had hurt because they felt true.
Eliza snapped the box shut. Enough. She could not allow herself to be haunted by Somerset’s words any longer, and nor could she allow Melville’s to ruin the life she and Margaret had been building here. And if she could not prove to either gentleman that she had spirit, then she could at least prove it to herself.
Eliza pulled out a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer. Perhaps her avoidance of writing to Somerset had been due to more than simply the awkwardness of such a correspondence. Perhaps she had known that it would feel so final, writing to him in such a formal manner, knowing he would respond in kind—knowing that she would be placing in the box a letter that proved, irrefutably, that their romantic relationship was truly and permanently at an end. But at an end it was. And she could not avoid that truth any longer. It was time to cease allowing events merely to occur to her, and to commence acting for herself.
Eliza dashed off a short note, wishing him well, informing him briefly of her decision to remain in Bath for the foreseeable future, and begging his pardon for the delay in her correspondence. This done, she folded the paper, waxed it closed, and wrote his address on the front. She would post it tomorrow. It was a small step, but it felt a good start. Eliza would not be spiritless anymore.