“He has an independent income of two thousand pounds a year,” Lady Caroline said. “As he told me himself.”
Eliza digested this for a moment.
“Ambition and pride are not muscles women are generally encouraged to cultivate,” Lady Caroline said. “But that does not mean we are incapable of learning. If your true qualm is a lack of talent, well, rest assured that Melville has known enough artists to know skill when he sees it.”
“Do you refer to Lady Paulet?” Eliza asked, before she could stop herself.
Lady Caroline gave an incriminating pause before answering.
“Yes, we have often been in her way,” Lady Caroline said.
“Is she as wonderful as they say?” Eliza asked.
A landscape artist of great renown even before her marriage to Lord Paulet—himself a great patron of the arts—Lady Paulet’s praises were regularly sung across all the elegant drawing rooms of London’s West End.
“She is as talented as they say, if that is what you are meaning, and quite as capricious,” Lady Caroline said. She did not say “capricious” as if it were a compliment.
“And she is a beauty?” Eliza asked, unable to help herself. She was not sure what she would gain from knowing the lady was beautiful—of course Lady Paulet would be, to have ensnared a gentleman such as Melville—but she found herself ravenous for detail.
“She is certainly not the sort of woman one can easily look away from,” Lady Caroline said.
Eliza nodded tensely. She wished she had not asked.
“The rumors say that she and Melville were . . . closely acquainted,” she said, peeping at Lady Caroline from the corner of her eye.
“I had not realized that particular piece of gossip had already reached Bath,” Lady Caroline said, voice neutral—which was tantamount to an admission, in Eliza’s view.
“Rumor has it,” Eliza decided to risk bluntness, “that Lord Paulet’s discovery of the affair is what led you to come here.”
“I cannot speak to my brother’s private affairs,” Lady Caroline said briskly, “though you may rest assured that all involved suffered a great deal.”
Eliza subsided, feeling herself chastised, and they drove in silence for a while—Eliza admiring Lady Caroline’s graceful handling of the reins.
“How came you to be able to drive so well?” Eliza asked.
“My mother taught me,” Lady Caroline said. “My father taught her.”
“I did not know that she drove, too,” Eliza said.
“My mother was careful always to behave as the perfect lady of quality in public,” Lady Caroline said briefly.
“But she was accepted into society, was she not?” Eliza said, brow wrinkling. “I thought the Queen’s patronage had . . .”
“Acceptance was not so simply achieved,” Lady Caroline said. “There were those who found her a fascination, but to others, she had to do much more than simply change ‘Nur’ to ‘Eleanor.’ Each day was an exercise in proving her refinement, her European sensibility, her knowledge of English custom.” Lady Caroline’s mouth twisted into a rather bitter smile. “While English ladies all around her bedecked their bodies in Bengal muslin, their shoulders in Kashmir shawls and their houses in chintz without a single thought.”
Eliza had not known—well, she had assumed, naively, that save for a few spiteful persons, all had been resolved with the Queen’s blessing.
“And you do not . . .” Eliza said, her mind flickering back to Lady Caroline’s decision to hang social consequence. “You do not feel a similar pressure?”
“It is a little different for me,” Lady Caroline said. “I was born here. I grew up with the sons and daughters of dukes and earls as my playmates. My skin is lighter. It is not easy—but it is different.”
Eliza nodded, silently.
“At Alderley, though, we could always be at ease,” Lady Caroline said. “It was there Mother taught me to drive.”
“I always thought it would be a wonderful thing to know how to do,” Eliza said enviously.
“You can always learn,” Lady Caroline said.
Eliza laughed. “And who on earth would agree to teach me?”
“Why, I would,” Lady Caroline said, quite casually. “Let us start now.”
“You cannot be serious!” Eliza said.
“I am quite serious—you have been observing me do it for a little while now. Come, take the reins.”
“Lady Caroline, I do not think this is at all—” Eliza began to object.
“Oh, do call me Caroline,” she said impatiently, dropping the reins into Eliza’s lap. Alarmed, Eliza seized them and pushed them back toward her, but Caroline whipped her hands behind her back so that she could not.
Eliza looked to Wardlaw, Caroline’s groom, perched behind her, hoping he might offer assistance, but he merely gazed back at her, a hint of amusement in his eyes.
“Do not look to him for help, Lady Somerset!” Caroline instructed. “Come now, I thought you wanted to learn.”
“I have not the faintest idea of what to do!”
“Do not look so frightened!” Caroline said. “Now, hold them as so . . .”
It was far less exhilarating, far more terrifying, to be the driver rather than the passenger, and Eliza hunched low over the reins, her eyes wide with nerves, feeling she might turn to stone with how tightly she held herself.
“Try not to look so pained,” Caroline instructed. “It is not at all dashing if one looks pained.”
“I am trying not to kill us,” Eliza said through gritted teeth.
“At this pace, I think it far more likely that we perish from starvation,” Caroline muttered. “The peril is part of the fun!”
She let Eliza have the reins for a full twenty minutes. As Bath began to rise up around them once more, Caroline took the reins back for the final few miles. They drew up outside Camden Place and Eliza gathered her skirts around her—bone-tired, but thrilled with herself—but Caroline laid a hand on her arm, stopping her.
“Lady Somerset,” she said. “Eliza. You may ignore me if you wish, but . . . I think that to have the means and the opportunity, but to not act, simply because you are afraid—it would be the most terrible waste.”
Her face was uncharacteristically earnest.
“Thank you,” Eliza said. “For today.”
“Please pass on my regards to Miss Margaret,” Caroline said, gathering up her reins. “And inform her we shall be tackling the future tense upon the morrow.”