6
Eliza was not used to thinking of herself as a particularly angry person. She had felt anger, of course, and often, but it had always passed through her as a visiting emotion. Most of the time, there was no use remaining cross for long. Most of the time, one simply had to get on with it. It was to Eliza’s considerable surprise, therefore, to find herself upon waking the next morning quite alight with rage. Sometime during her sleep her humiliation and sorrow and tentative feelings of resolution from the night before had mingled together in a curious alchemy to create an incandescent wrath she had never known before. How dare Melville say such a thing about her—about Margaret—when they had not done anything in the least to deserve it? How dare he try to ruin Bath for her, how dare he think himself so far above them, how dare he! The gall of the man was incomprehensible.
Wrathful indignation was oddly energizing. Eliza had no need, in fact, of the two fortifying cups of coffee at the breakfast table, though she availed herself of them all the same.
“Shall we remain at home today?” Margaret suggested morosely. “That wind looks awfully chilly.”
Eliza and Margaret had, it appeared, traveled on radically different emotional journeys in the night, for Margaret looked distinctly downtrodden as she nibbled half-heartedly at a piece of toast.
“No!” Eliza declared. “We shall be going to Milsom Street as soon as you are finished.”
They left Camden Place at a brisk trot that had Margaret grumbling and were the first customers of the day at Mr. Fasana’s Repository of Arts.
“I should like to purchase some oils!” Eliza declared, as soon as they entered, startling the shop assistant half out of his skin. And when a harassed Mr. Fasana appeared, Eliza held onto her fury, which in some strange way seemed also to serve as a sort of emotional shield, and made a full order of oils in what felt close to every color under the sun, from vermilion and sepia, to Prussian blue and Indian yellow. Mr. Fasana promised delivery later that very day.
“Will that be all, my lady?” he asked.
“Yes,” Eliza said. Then: “No.”
And she proceeded to make such an order of such length—of easels and palettes, and a dozen squires of paper, and paintbrushes from the size of a pin to the size of a finger, jeweling pencils and bristle pencils, primed cloth, canvas and wooden panels that Mr. Fasana agreed to prepare for her—that Margaret commented, as they left the shop, that: “It might have been easier to inform Mr. Fasana what you didn’t wish to purchase.”
They went next to Duffield’s library, where Eliza organized a subscription to the Annals of the Fine Arts magazine and borrowed every text on agriculture she could find.
“It cannot be so hard, to learn these things,” she declared defiantly to Margaret, “whatever Mr. Walcot says!”
Then they stepped briefly into Madame Prevette’s shop to place an order for two riding habits (they would keep a stable in town, for such a freedom would be worth a few raised eyebrows), before heading at last for the Pump Room.
“Tomorrow,” Eliza decided, her walk even faster than it had been on the outbound journey, “I might request from Mr. Fasana the name of a drawing master, for perhaps I will take up lessons again. Why should a woman’s education cease after she is married? Would you like to take French lessons, Margaret? I know you have always wanted to, and we can more than afford the expense, now.”
“Are you quite well?” Margaret asked. “You are looking swivel-eyed.”
“I am very well,” Eliza said. “I merely think it would behoove us to start pursuing our goals with a little energy, Margaret. I shall not be insipid any longer!”
“Ah,” Margaret said. “I see what is happening.”
“Lady Somerset!”
Eliza and Margaret turned to find themselves, for the second time in as many days, borne down upon by Mrs. and Miss Winkworth.
“Good day!” Mrs. Winkworth cried. “Are you bound for the Pump Room, as well? We shall join you.”
“Wonderful,” Margaret muttered under her breath, voice thick with sarcasm.
“Did you enjoy the concert last night, my lady?” Mrs. Winkworth asked Eliza. “It has not tired you out, has it? If I may say, you are looking a trifle fatigued.”
No, you may not, Eliza thought testily.
“We enjoyed the concert very much,” she said. “How did you find it?”
“Well,” Mrs. Winkworth began with great emphasis, “I am not sure I think it wholly wise for Lady Hurley to have so encouraged these Melvilles. She cannot be aware of the family’s reputation—Lady Hurley’s husband acquired his title through trade, you know, so we cannot expect her to be well-versed in such intricacies.”
Mrs. Winkworth made a great deal of her gentility in comparison to Lady Hurley’s—that Admiral Winkworth’s wealth had been accrued just as recently, from his time employed by the East India Company, she elected to overlook.
“The furor when the late earl chose such an . . . exotic lady to wife! I have never known its equal.” Mrs. Winkworth paused, as if expecting Eliza or Margaret to beg her to continue. They did not. As much anger as Eliza felt toward Melville and Lady Caroline, she still did not want to hear such unpleasantness.
“And while I do so hate gossip,” Mrs. Winkworth carried on in a lowered voice, “the whispers were that the late earl spent his time in India wearing the dress of a Musselman, attending all their festivals and goodness knows what else—”
“If the late Queen approved the match, I cannot think why anyone else should object,” Eliza interrupted.
The Melvilles were distantly related to Queen Charlotte on her majesty’s mother’s line and her public friendship with the late Lady Melville had done much to smooth the lady’s way into the ton.
“God rest her soul,” Mrs. Winkworth said at once. Then, as if she couldn’t help herself: “Whatever else, I do not believe that their reasons for visiting Bath can be as innocent as they maintain. And the London gossip will reach us eventually!”
Fortunately, conversation halted as they arrived at the Pump Room. A handsome building inside and out, with two ranges of large windows and a border of Corinthian columns, the Pump Room was where one could partake of Bath’s famous healing waters, whether to bathe in them downstairs, or more commonly to imbibe them in the room above. However, its importance was social as much as medical, as residents and visitors alike gathered throughout the day to take a stroll about the room, meeting friends and surveying for any interesting newcomers.
For each of Eliza’s visits thus far, the room had been pleasantly thrumming with people, with murmurs of chatter heard faintly over the violins that played every day from one o’clock, but today it was a veritable squeeze. And the reason for this change was all too apparent: holding court in the middle of the room were the Melvilles. Today, Lady Caroline was wearing a morning dress of green crêpe, its elegant simplicity making every other woman in the room look dreadfully overtrimmed by comparison, while the clinging fabric showed her fine figure off to perfection.
“And it appears we are to be seeing a great deal of Lady Caroline, in every sense,” Mrs. Winkworth said cuttingly.
“I think she looks wonderful,” Miss Winkworth said, so quietly that Eliza might not have heard her, had she not been standing so close. Unfortunately for Miss Winkworth, her mother heard her too.
“Her dress is indecent—and you ought not to admire it,” Mrs. Winkworth told her daughter severely. “Do you want Lady Somerset to think you fast?”
Miss Winkworth looked up to Eliza with such big, frightened eyes that she might have been eight years rather than eighteen.
“I do not think her fast,” Eliza said hastily. “I like Lady Caroline’s dress, too.”
“Good morning!” Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher had appeared behind them, followed within moments by Mrs. Michels and Mr. Broadwater. “What wonderful sunshine!”
“Splendid!” Mr. Fletcher agreed. In Eliza’s brief acquaintance with the gentleman, it appeared that his opinions on all persons, situations and conversations could be split into three: “splendid,” “not the thing” and, when the situation required, “damned if I know.”
“Are you imbibing the waters, today, Lady Hurley?” Eliza asked.
“Yes indeed, Mr. Fletcher is about to fetch me a glass—would you like one?”
“Oh yes, if it is not too much trouble, Mr. Fletcher?” Eliza said. “Can you carry so many?”
“Damned if I know,” Mr. Fletcher said, setting off with purpose, nonetheless.
“What language!” Mr. Broadwater said, disapproving. “In front of ladies, too.”
“Oh, we don’t mind,” Lady Hurley said, taking a look around the room. “It seems my new neighbors are making quite the stir, indeed!”
“As esteemed persons always should!” Mr. Berwick agreed, appearing at Lady Hurley’s left-hand side and bowing a greeting. His hair today, unlike its prim neatness the day before, had been fashioned into a kind of elegant disorder. It was not difficult to see where such inspiration had come from. “I myself shall be asking Lord Melville to sit for me at his earliest convenience—did you know he has not sat for a portrait since childhood?”
Murmurs of interest greeted this news and Eliza felt a pang of envy—not that she wanted to paint Melville, for after last night she frankly wished him at Jericho—but for the ease with which Mr. Berwick declared such a thing. She had only ever been able to draw and paint members of her own family, and while female artists of renown did exist, of course, scandal and slander still attended upon any woman who sought such public achievement. Even Eliza’s grandfather, her guide and champion, had not felt it proper for women to join the Royal Academy.
“You may well paint him, Mr. Berwick,” Lady Hurley said. “But it is I who shall host their first soiree in Bath. I can only regret that I am away from town Friday and Saturday, or I should have done so then.”
“Is there such an urgency?” Eliza asked, amused at the fretful note in Lady Hurley’s voice.
“Why, I do not want to be pipped to the post again!” Lady Hurley said. “Lady Keith had the hosting of Madame D’Arblay when she arrived in Bath, Mrs. Piozzi had the Persian students last November—but I am determined to have the Melvilles!”
Mrs. Winkworth gave a soft snort, perhaps to intimate incredulity at Lady Hurley proclaiming herself a competitor of such distinguished ladies, but Eliza ignored her.
“Are you not at all worried to have such very—ah—dashing persons in town?” Mrs. Michels asked Lady Hurley, as Mr. Berwick bustled off in Melville’s direction.
“A strong sense of impropriety surrounds them!” Mr. Broadwater declared.
“Oh, pish,” Lady Hurley said scornfully. “It is a boon to have such fashionable persons in Bath, and especially two with such cleverness of mind.”
“Cleverness is commendable—but an excess is fatal in females!” Mr. Broadwater said damningly. With crows of outrage, Lady Hurley and Margaret gave a spirited rejoinder, while Eliza’s attention drew a little away from the commotion, eyes straying to the Melvilles once more. Watching the earl speak—his audience throwing back their heads in amusement around him—she felt an itch in her fingertips as she had last night. Would sketching Melville lost at sea, deprived of entertainment and approaching certain death, offer her satisfaction from her rage? Melville, as if aware of being watched, flicked his gaze up and over in her direction. Their eyes met. He lifted his arm in greeting.
And Eliza, who had never once in her life trespassed into rudeness, turned her shoulder on him, looking deliberately and obviously away, as if to deny his existence. The cut direct.
Even as she did it, Eliza could not quite believe her own daring, her heart quickening and her palms prickling. In seven and twenty years, she had never delivered the cut direct before. She had let countless slights and insults go unchallenged, unanswered, swallowing her pride again and again and presenting a placid smile to the world, but . . . No more. No more. Accepting a glass from Mr. Fletcher with a smile of thanks, she took a sip . . . Only to almost choke on it at the sound of a quiet but very familiar voice.
“Did you just cut me direct?”
Eliza turned quickly, to find Melville standing directly before her, head cocked. Her mouth fell open in horror.
“I—ah—” she stammered, her face growing hot.
“You did!” he crowed, intrigued and delighted.
Eliza stared at him, panicked. She had not expected to have to converse with him. Was not the whole point of cutting a person direct that one did not have to speak with them?
“May I ask why?” Melville said.
He did not seem offended, discomforted or even discomposed, and this fact, rather than calming Eliza, reignited her indignation. Did he truly believe himself to be so above her that he need not be touched in any way by the cut direct?
“Come, my lady,” Melville prompted, when still she did not speak. “In what manner have I offended you?”
Eliza, every ounce of anger she had felt over the past day rising up, drew herself to her full height.
“Only in every possible way you could,” she said, as defiantly as she dared whilst keeping her voice low—although everyone around them was busied in conversation, she did not want to risk being overheard.
“How terribly comprehensive of me,” Melville said, blinking. “May I ask you to elaborate?”
Caution already thrown to the wind, it seemed pointless to try and retrieve it.
“We heard what you said to Lady Caroline last night, as you were leaving,” Eliza said, turning her body slightly to draw him a little further away from the nearest group of potential eavesdroppers.
“You will have to remind me . . .” Melville said, slowly.
“ ‘Lord save us from bumpkins, spinsters and widows—bores, the lot of them!’ ” Eliza quoted.
“. . . Ah,” he said. “How unfortunate, for you to have heard such a thoughtless—if pithy—comment.”
Eliza gaped at him.
“Do you truly feel no shame?” she asked him.
“Why ought I feel shame,” he said, still with that infuriating smile curling his lips. “It is you, not I, that has committed the sin of eavesdropping, after all.”
To Eliza’s horror she found tears of frustration springing to her eyes, and blinked them desperately back.
“And I am glad I did, for now I know how you truly think,” she said, keeping her voice as level as she could. “Though even if we were as dull as you and your sister seem to believe, then we would still not deserve such unkindness.”
Her voice ended a great deal wobblier than it began, and in the face of such audible emotion, the residual humor faded from Melville’s expression.
“You humble me, my lady,” he said, seeming, at last, to take her seriously. “These past weeks have been . . . difficult for Caroline and I . . . But that is no defense. You are correct, it was most unkind. I am sorry.”
The apology seemed sincere. Eliza took a moment to appreciate it, for it was not often that a gentleman admitted wrongdoing, no matter the crime. In all their years of marriage, the earl had not done so once.
“Thank you,” she said at last, nodding her acceptance. Over his shoulder, Eliza saw that they were beginning to attract an audience of impatient ladies.
“I oughtn’t monopolize your attention,” she said. “I believe Mrs. Donovan would like to speak with you.”
“I care not,” Melville said insouciantly. “I wish to speak with you.”
Eliza looked at him with uncertainty, suspecting a joke. She may have accepted Melville’s apology, but she would never again make the mistake of treating his flirtation seriously.
“Is that so surprising?” Melville asked.
“It was only yesterday that you deemed me a bore,” she pointed out.
“My lady, you really must forgive the ‘bore’ episode if we are to be friends,” Melville said.
“Are we to be friends?” Eliza asked, startled.
“Indeed, it is my dearest, lifelong wish,” he said, clasping a hand to his heart. “You must dine with us at Laura Place—Miss Balfour, too.”
“I cannot,” Eliza said.
“Why not?”
“I am not yet dining abroad,” Eliza said, gesturing to her widow’s weeds. “And we have not even exchanged morning visits. It would be . . . odd. People would talk.”
“And what a violent change of circumstances that would be,” Melville said, drily.
Eliza stared. Could he truly care so little for the gossip and the rumors that followed him around?
“The ton have been talking about me since I was born,” Melville said, as if able to read these thoughts from Eliza’s face. “If I started worrying about their opinions now, I would have to immediately consign myself to a nunnery.”
“Do you not mean a monastery?” Eliza asked, rather than acknowledge the more salubrious implications of his speech.
“No, the nunnery,” Melville said. “Surely I must be allowed some fun?”
Before she could stop herself, Eliza let out a choke of scandalized laughter.
“She laughs!” Melville said, grinning victoriously.
“My lady, my lord—good morning! I do hope I am not interrupting?” Mrs. Donovan had finally plucked up the courage to approach, along with her three daughters. All were clutching volumes of Persephone, and clearly bent on receiving his signature.
“Not at all! Do excuse me,” Eliza said, ignoring the dark look Melville sent her, and slipping away to find Margaret. She truly was grateful for the reprieve: one simply could not predict, from one moment, what Melville would say next, and while it was certainly diverting, Eliza was not at all used to having her wits so thoroughly tested.
“The cut direct? Eliza, you did not,” Margaret said on their walk home.
“I did!” Eliza said, not even attempting to hide how pleased with herself she was now that she had only Margaret and, a few steps behind, Pardle as her audience. “And I made him apologize! I have never made a gentleman apologize before!”
As they reached Camden Place, Eliza noticed her boot lace had come untied and stooped automatically to fix it, still talking.
“Not my father, not my husband, neither of my brothers—”
“Somerset,” Margaret said.
Eliza frowned as she tightened the lace.
“I am not sure about Somerset,” she said, thinking.
“No, Eliza, Somerset,” Margaret said.
And Eliza looked up from her stoop, followed the direction of Margaret’s gaze and saw that indeed, a few yards ahead—utterly incomprehensibly—and exiting the front door of her house, was the Earl of Somerset.