“Oh lord,” Margaret muttered, spotting Lady Selwyn, too.
“Do try to be polite,” Eliza reminded her.
“I am always polite,” Margaret said with a sniff. “Unless I am irritated.”
Lady Caroline let out a low laugh and, twining their arms together, they strode into the room with all the conviction of an especially glamorous coven of witches.
“ ‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’ ” Melville quoted softly in Eliza’s ear and she laughed. Melville appeared in the highest of spirits, tonight, positively glittering with energy.
“Writing is going well?” she guessed, as they wound their own way through the crowd.
“A thousand lines done so far,” Melville said. “I should have written more were I at Alderley; Meyler’s and Duffield’s stock only Porson’s Euripides, and it is not my preferred translation, but I am pleased. How could you tell?”
“You are . . . liveliest, on such days,” she said, half embarrassed to have noticed.
“Idleness does not suit me,” Melville said. “Despite what Somerset might think.”
He lowered his voice as they reached the fireplace. Eliza took another steadying breath as she curtseyed her greeting. She would bear Lady Selwyn’s presence with grace and fortitude. Grace and fortitude, she repeated, as if it were a prayer.
“What a marvelous magpie you make, my lady!” Lady Selwyn said cattily, reviewing Eliza’s black-and-white ensemble.
“Yes, ‘magpie’ was certainly my intention,” Eliza snapped, vow instantly forgotten. “Or gull.”
“Your gown is fine, too, Lady Selwyn,” Margaret said sharply. “My mother had a very similar one last Season.”
Lady Caroline snorted and Lady Selwyn flushed.
“You have a good eye, Miss Balfour,” Lady Selwyn said. “I did not think it quite right to waste a new gown on so provincial an event.”
“Such condescension is truly admirable,” Lady Caroline said smoothly.
“I am not sure a Bath concert can ever have enjoyed such an esteemed audience!” Mrs. Winkworth chirped from where she hovered at the edge of the group.
As with Eliza’s dinner party, it was plain that such an ill-matched party could only end in calamity but unlike her dinner party, Eliza found she did not care to prevent it.
“This evening’s concert is certainly far more attended than any in recent memory,” Lady Hurley observed, gazing about.
“I should think we have Melville to blame for that,” Somerset said. “The scores of young ladies desirous of receiving his signature seem to climb by the day.”
“My dear Somerset, while I may take blame for the ladies,” Melville said, “I can assure you that the gentlemen are not here for me.”
He turned to look pointedly to Eliza, who avoided flushing red only by sheer force of will.
“Whatever can you mean, Melville?” Lady Selwyn asked.
“Let me enlighten you, my lady,” Melville said. “Bath is becoming quickly riddled with gentlemen desirous of fixing their attention with our own Lady Somerset. Once she throws off her widow’s weeds, Bath will be besieged.”
Losing her internal battle, Eliza blushed red and Melville grinned as if he had won something.
“Perhaps if I were a younger woman,” Eliza demurred, “but I am far into my dotage.”
This was greeted with cries of outrage from the group.
“Not the thing,” Mr. Fletcher disagreed heartily.
“To mine eyes, you are still a very green girl,” Lady Hurley said stoutly.
“I did think you had begun calcifying,” Lady Caroline said, pretending to look Eliza over.
Eliza laughed.
“You are all very kind,” she said, meaning it. Ten years of marriage to a husband more inclined to admonishment than admiration had not given Eliza much reason to believe in her own desirability—but with friends such as this, she was beginning to stand a little taller.
“It is not kindness but prophecy,” Melville said. He looked to Somerset. “In the absence of Lady Somerset’s father, are you to act as gatekeeper, my lord?”
Somerset’s face was rigid.
“I do not need a gatekeeper,” Eliza put in hastily.
“And I could not perform the role if I wanted to,” Somerset said. “For this marks my final night in Bath.”
Which Eliza knew, of course, had been counting down the days with rising trepidation, but nonsensically, it still felt a blow to hear.
“You are leaving?” Melville asked, clasping a hand plaintively to his chest. “But we have only begun getting to know one another!”
“There are some urgent matters at Harefield I must attend to,” Somerset told the group, ignoring Melville. “And as my business with Mr. Walcot has concluded—”
“Oh, have you finally graduated from Earl School?” Melville interrupted. “You know, I am a little offended that you did not seek my tutelage on the subject, Somerset.”
“Are you?” Somerset said flatly.
“Indeed,” Melville said. “Having been an earl myself for almost five years, I daresay I know a thing or two about it.”
“And why,” Somerset bristled, “would I receive instruction from a gentleman who I doubt even knows his own acreage?”
Lady Hurley and Mr. Fletcher gasped at the insult while a smirk curled its way onto Lady Selwyn’s face.
Melville merely smiled. “Twelve thousand,” he said. “My acreage, that is.”
“And your principal crops?” Somerset demanded.
“Oh, a quiz,” Melville said. “Marvelous. Turnips, my lord—my answer is turnips.”
Somerset glared at him as if he suspected Melville of naming the first vegetable that sprang to mind.
“You practice the Four Field System, I imagine?”
“Of course.”
“And what are your views on the Tullian drill?”
“Good lord, man, I don’t have any!” Melville said. “I concede—may I offer you a bushel of turnips as your prize?”
The whole company laughed, but Somerset, his face still flushed with anger, looked rather as if he should have liked to hit him.
“Are you still thinking of bringing your daughter to Bath, Lady Selwyn?” Mrs. Winkworth tried to reclaim the Baroness’s attention.