“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.