“If such a feat is even possible in so short a time,” Eliza said reflexively.
The process for submission to the Summer Exhibition was the same in ’19 as it had been in Eliza’s grandfather’s day: non-members of the Royal Academy could submit their work to a committee of academy council members, in a rigorous five-day selection process in early April. Eliza would have less than four weeks to complete a task that might ordinarily take four months.
“Why are you trying to convince me out of it?” Melville asked. “I should think you perfectly able to meet such challenges.”
Rarely had Eliza encountered such unassailable belief in her abilities. Margaret’s support, of course, approached the evangelical—but it felt profoundly different coming from Melville. Margaret had known Eliza her whole life, after all; it was positively her duty to support Eliza and Eliza her. But Melville had no such motive and nor did he offer praise blindly, as his frequent castigation of Mr. Berwick proved. His belief existed purely because he considered her deserving of it . . . and Eliza felt herself unfurl toward the light he offered.
“Do you wish to enter?” Melville asked, with a quizzical smile.
“Yes,” Eliza said, finally allowing herself to feel the rush of excitement that had been building all morning. “I do.”
“Then . . .” He spread his arms invitingly. “We have work to do, do we not?”
And that very day, with pale morning light streaming through the window, a fire dancing in the grate, the sound of Margaret’s bright laughter filtering across the hallway and a paintbrush in her hand, they began in earnest.
Eliza had always painted quickly—one had to, when one was always on the point of interruption—but in the coming days she moved with a swift purpose, unhesitatingly, as if Melville’s confidence in her was catching. She positioned Melville exactly as she wanted him—facing the window at an angle, for the best light, and began the next layer of the painting, intent and determined. She deliberated over the exact shades upon her palette, returning to Mr. Fasana’s shop to consult him upon new mixes, electing to use as many with linseed oil bases as possible, for the quickest drying time.
Working to a new deadline, Melville had to lend Eliza far more of his time, and he did so without complaint. Indeed, within a se’nnight of Melville’s agreeing to the exhibition, it seemed that she and Margaret were rarely without the Melvilles’ company, so frequently did they encounter one another in Meyler’s library (Lady Caroline and Melville loudly denigrating the poets they did not like upon the shelves), attend the same musical performances (Melville whispering such a wildly inaccurate translation of the opera that Eliza had to press a fist against her mouth to keep from laughing) and drive together in Lady Caroline’s phaeton (for Eliza’s lessons continued at pace).
It was enough, truly, to make Eliza feel a little guilty.
“I am grateful you are sparing so much of your time,” Eliza told Melville the following Thursday, palette balanced in one hand, brush in the other. After weeks of working with oil now, Eliza’s paintwork was becoming freer—in the cursive sweeps of her loaded brush, she could feel her body, her arm, her grip upon the brush were all looser. “I do hope we are not taking you away from your writing desk?”
“Fret not,” Melville said. “I always write in the early hours and I am grateful, indeed, that your driving lessons take Caro away before breakfast, for it leaves the house so blissfully quiet. Long may it continue, I say.”
“She may well lose patience with me soon,” Eliza warned him.
“You are not a nonpareil yet?”
“Hardly,” Eliza said. “I should not think I could drive as she does, if I spent years practicing. Has she always been so absolutely fearless?”
“Caroline?” he said. “About horses, yes, it is how we were raised. My parents were almost as mad for horses as they were for each other.”
Eliza was startled, as always, by the frank and easy way Melville could speak of such warm subjects.
“They married for love, didn’t they?” she asked. She was familiar with the story, of course, but Eliza knew better than to trust a fourth- or fifth-hand account of gossip from before she was born.
“At first sight, if my mother is to be believed,” Melville said, his eyes resting warmly upon Eliza’s. “My father visited Hyderabad in ’85. He was already acquainted with the Company’s Resident there and being the runaway lord gave him glamour enough to be invited to court. Mother never told us quite how they met. She was the youngest daughter of the nawab—the governor—and ought never to have come near him, but I suspect my grandmother helped arrange it.”
“And then they married?” Eliza asked. Melville shook his head.
“Not for two more years; her father had to be convinced, and the Nizam—the ruler of Hyderabad—petitioned too,” Melville said. “And meanwhile, they courted discreetly. They conversed first in Persian, which my father knew a little, before he learned Urdu and she English.”
“It sounds most romantic,” Eliza said.
“It did not come without trials,” Melville said. “Her family objected until the last, and when my grandfather died they had to remove to England—to a disgraced family name, an estate on the point of ruin, and an England absolutely consternated to have its first Indian countess. But we were happy, despite it all.”
“They were affectionate parents?” Eliza asked.
Melville smiled.
“Very much so. They told Caroline and me almost every day how precious we were—although it was a shock indeed to arrive at Eton to find it an opinion not universally shared.”
“They were unkind?” Eliza said.
Melville shrugged.
“It is as you might expect. Roughhousing, name-calling: the ‘piebald’ lord they used to call me, amongst other hugely derivative epithets.”
The lightness in his voice was forced. Eliza might not have noticed the change weeks ago, but she could hear the difference now. She lifted the brush from the canvas, to regard him with her full, careful attention.
“It would have been worse, I am told, if we had remained in India. The British there are increasingly hostile toward persons such as us. I would have been dreadfully out of fashion.”
Melville’s voice was beginning to wear at the edges and Eliza was not surprised when he changed the subject soon after.
“What of your parents? Are they happy?”
“They are well suited, I believe,” Eliza said, considering the matter. “They share in each other’s aims and beliefs, although I have never considered either of them particularly romantic.”