“Do you truly carry a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons in your pocket?” she asked curiously.
“Dear lord no,” Melville said, pulling from his coat instead a small leatherbound notebook. “The day I read Fordyce to Caroline will be the same day I die under suspicious circumstances.”
“And what would you have done if Somerset had asked you to read a sermon?” Eliza said, smiling.
“I am surprised he did not,” Melville said. “The man is so determined to challenge me on every suit.”
Eliza’s smile faded.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I do not know why he does so.”
That was not entirely true. She had thought, before, that Somerset’s behavior might be inspired by jealousy, but after last night, that seemed less likely.
“He is jealous,” Melville said. “As you are fully aware, and no doubt aptly exploiting.”
Eliza jerked her head around, startled.
“I am not,” she protested. “And he is not, either.”
As much as she might wish differently.
“It is nothing to be ashamed of,” Melville said. “We have all done much worse in love’s name, and I myself do not mind in the least being used in such a way. In fact, I beg you use me more, my lady.”
Eliza flushed a deep, deep red, her shoulders creeping up toward her ears, but Melville was not done. As he had on the day they first met, he dislodged Eliza’s hand to spread his arms wide, as if encouraging inspection.
“I offer myself to your use,” he declared, and Eliza looked wildly up and down the tree-lined path to check they were not being observed.
“You must stop,” Eliza said. “You are being absurd.”
Absurd and improper, even for Melville, and she hardly knew what to say in response to such outrageousness, whether she ought to laugh or—
“Perhaps we might today find ourselves caught alone in some romantic bower,” Melville suggested, “leaving Somerset with no choice but to call me out. Or do you think there is an orangery in these gardens? I have always been partial to an orangery.”
Now Eliza was laughing—it was impossible to do otherwise.
“She laughs!” Melville crowed. “At last.”
He offered his arm once more, and as Eliza took it, she noticed that the cuffs of his shirt were faintly stained with ink.
“Were you writing letters this morning?” Eliza asked.
“Not letters,” Melville said. He waved the notebook at her, again, before putting it back in his pocket.
“You are working again?”
“I have not told anyone,” he said, “but yes. Medea. Vengeance, passion, heroic couplets, etcetera . . .”
His tone was flippant, but there was genuine pleasure in his face.
“I can hardly wait,” Eliza said, with perfect truth. “Though I thought you were here to holiday.”
“I tire of rest,” Melville said. “It’s terribly dreary.”
“And so, the notebook is for ideas?”
“Of a sort,” Melville said. “Phrases I like, words I wish to use—stuff and nonsense, really.”
“My grandfather used to do the same,” Eliza said, remembering. “Not words, but he would sketch scenes or objects to recall them more easily later. He told me that any artist worth their salt should do so.”
“And did you take his advice?”
“I am not an artist.”
“I believe we have already disagreed on that point once,” Melville said—and there it was. They had finally reached the topic Eliza had been aching to raise all morning. She fell silent as the canal came into view ahead, pretending to admire the intricate Chinoiserie bridge gently sloping over it while mustering up the courage to ask the questions that had been playing on her mind since last night. To broach them, in so public a setting, felt a risk but then, with the thick verdure around them, the hills of Bathampton just visible in the distance, and only the sound of the breeze moving through the trees to accompany their footsteps, one could easily imagine she and Melville to be lost somewhere in the countryside, quite alone. Eliza took another sidelong glance at Melville.
“Were you being truly serious, about the portrait?” she asked.
She would react with equanimity if he was not.
“Gravely,” Melville said. “Will you agree to do it?”
“Its purpose is to be included at the front of your volumes?” she checked.
“Yes,” Melville said. “I am advised that it might help broaden my reach.”
“Is your current level of fame insufficient?” she asked. “Is there a lady in the ton who has not read your volumes?”
“The ton, little though we like to think it,” Melville said, “makes for the tiniest proportion of England, my lady, and I should like my poems to be read more widely.”
Eliza absorbed this silently.
“I realize such ungentlemanly motivation does not at all fit in with my careless joie de vivre,” Melville added.
“But if it is so important, this portrait,” Eliza said, “why ask me? I have very little formal training, and if convenience is my only advantage, you must know you could very well ask Mr. Berwick—he is said to be very talented!”
“And so I could,” Melville said. “But that would require me to speak with him, my lady, and that I will not do. I’d much rather be painted by a beautiful woman than some bumptious gentleman.”
“I think that is exactly why I oughtn’t agree to such a scheme,” Eliza muttered, half-flattered—for it was not every day one was called beautiful—and half-crestfallen, for if Melville had only picked her out of a desire to flirt . . .
“I would not ask you, if I did not think you capable,” Melville said, his voice so suddenly serious that Eliza was almost shocked to see him without his usual air of flippancy. And, as it had the night before, hearing such praise—such confidence in her ability—made her feel as if she could breathe more deeply and more fully than she had ever done before.
“I want it to resemble me,” Melville said, “not some puffed-up fool in a library holding a globe—and I do not believe anyone else could do that better.”
Eliza could not imagine the Balfours, or the Selwyns—or even, truthfully, Somerset—thinking this the sort of behavior that befitted a countess in her first year of mourning. If it was discovered that she was spending so many hours with such an infamous gentleman, the safety of her fortune would unquestionably be at risk. To agree to such a scheme was an act of lunacy, but . . . To decline the kind of opportunity she had dreamed of ever since she was a child? That seemed an even greater act of lunacy.