For the second time that evening, Eliza stood. Her heart was beating as quickly as if she were about to leap off a precipice.
“I am afraid I have the headache,” she said briskly. “And so, while I am sure Miss Winkworth’s performance would give considerable pleasure, I must now retire.”
The shocked silence that lay in the wake of her declaration might have made her wince had Miss Winkworth not been gazing at her with the stunned air of a mouse unexpectedly freed from a trap.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Eliza said.
Lady Caroline set down a half-drunk teacup with a clink and stood. Silently, still stunned, the rest of the party rose to take their farewells.
“Brava,” Melville whispered, bowing over her hand. Eliza did not respond, instead extending her hand next to Lady Selwyn, whose eyes were flicking between them with more calculation than Eliza should like. Somerset was the last to leave, hesitating at the doorway and opening and closing his mouth as if he were a fish.
“My lady—” he started.
“Goodnight, Somerset,” Eliza said.
Whatever he wanted to say to her, whether to apologize for his rudeness or castigate her further, she did not want to hear it tonight. Not when she was so close to falling apart.
In their absence, the house felt blissfully quiet and still. Eliza sat back down upon the sofa and closed her eyes with a sigh. She would no doubt one day be sorry for such a lapse in manners as she had committed tonight, but at this moment she could not bring herself to regret it.
“It was a very memorable evening, at any rate,” Margaret said, and Eliza felt the sofa shift under her weight, too.
“Which was, of course, my chief object,” Eliza said dryly.
“Oh, did you have an aim, then?” Margaret retorted. “You weren’t motivated just by lunacy?”
“I think I have been,” Eliza said, still with her eyes closed. “All that effort to keep Somerset here, to win something over the Selwyns . . . And for what?” She paused, swallowed, and added in a hoarser voice, “He has not forgiven me. I ought never to have expected—I knew it was foolish to hope, but . . .”
She heard a rustle as Margaret shifted, then felt her hand begin to stroke Eliza’s hair.
“With the way he has been acting,” Margaret said, “it was not foolish. I thought as you did.”
Eliza’s eyes pricked with tears as a wave of shame washed over her again.
“Why seek out my company if he holds me in such contempt?” she gulped. “I would never have—if I had not thought—”
“It was unjust,” Margaret said. “And unpardonably rude in front of everyone—there is no excuse. And I am sorry for the part I played in bringing it about. I was trying to make a point.”
Eliza chuffed a slightly bitter laugh.
“I think you did so quite successfully.”
“I am sorry,” Margaret said quietly, and Eliza gave a jerky nod.
Her headache had not elapsed, even in the quiet. It seemed, rather, to be taking over her whole body, moving down her neck and shoulders to meet the throbbing pressure in her chest. You have done this before, she reminded herself. This time will be easier.
“Well, he is only here for a fortnight,” Margaret said pragmatically. “You may easily avoid him for such a time and then you need not see him ever again.”
“Oh, do not say that,” Eliza said. “That is not what I want.”
“What do you want?”
Eliza didn’t know. Her head was hopelessly tangled. She wanted to avoid Somerset forever. She could not bear to never see him again. Both were somehow, incomprehensibly, true.
“I just need some calm,” she said. “It is all so much, with the Selwyns and Somerset and the Melvilles—”
“What have the Melvilles done?” Margaret asked, with a little indignation.
Eliza had not the energy to explain tonight about Melville’s offer: not now, when her thoughts were so knotted that she could not tell if she were appalled or exhilarated by it.
“Nothing. I just—nothing,” she said.
“I admire them very much,” Margaret said staunchly. “Lady Caroline is quite the cleverest—the most amusing—woman I have met.”
“Beautiful, too,” Eliza added.
Margaret inclined her head, eyes flicking away.
“I wonder that she has never married,” Eliza mused. “She must have had scores of offers.”
“I am glad for it,” Margaret said. “Most commonly, spinsters are without standing, consequence, or importance to society. It is a relief to see that is not always the case.”
“You have standing, consequence and importance to me,” Eliza said, turning to regard her dearest friend. “You are the most important person in the world, to me.”
“I cannot decide if that is the most wonderful,” Margaret said, “or most depressing thing I have ever heard.”
But she squeezed Eliza’s arm to take the sting out of her words.
“Shrew,” said Eliza fondly. “That could have been a lovely moment, before you ruined it.”
“That is my finest lady’s accomplishment,” Margaret said. “I may not be able to paint or sing or embroider, but I am certainly quite capable of ruining things.”
Eliza laughed, and it was a relief to do so. Margaret could always be trusted to make her laugh—and Eliza had done so more in the past month than perhaps her whole life put together. It was worth remembering that.
And worth remembering that before Somerset had arrived in Bath—before her world had narrowed again to the point of a single man—she had been happier than she had ever known herself before. She had Margaret. She had Camden Place. She had friends and, even, the possibility—perplexing though it might be—of an artist’s commission. Losing Somerset was not the mortal blow it once was.
She just wished it did not have to hurt quite this much.
12
The Sunday services at Bath Abbey were always as dry as dust, but Reverend Green’s ponderous drone the next morning was particularly unbearable. Usually, Eliza was able to sink into languor—perhaps idly deciding which of the congregation’s dresses she admired most—but this morning such distraction was impossible. She had awoken just as unsettled as she had been upon going to bed, the events of the previous evening circling around her head, sharp and painful, and her agitation had been in no way eased by Somerset’s decision to seat himself directly in the pew in front of her.