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.
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.