“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?