Perhaps it would be wise to keep Melville at arm’s length, in public. For while Eliza might know herself to be as good as engaged to another man, Bath’s quidnuncs did not and there was no need, truly, for them to spend any time in one another’s company outside of sittings. Wise—but tedious. Hang it, Eliza declared to herself, as they pushed into Madame Prevette’s shop. Eliza was not about to make herself unhappy for the sake of appeasing some imaginary gossipmongers. Let them stare, if they like.
The black gossamer was everything Lady Hurley had said it would be, and Madame Prevette promised to have a new creation ready for Eliza by the time of the rout.
“You will be wanting a whole new toilette, soon, will you not?” Madame Prevette asked Eliza, as Margaret considered the merits of primrose versus pomona-green silk. “For your half-mourning?”
“Yes, I suppose I will,” Eliza said, a little surprised. With everything that had occurred with Somerset, she had almost forgotten that the ending of her full mourning meant more than being able to marry him. It would mean the re-entry, at last, into the world of color: very soon, she would be permitted to lighten her dresses and gowns to the greys and lavenders of half-mourning. “Yes indeed, Madame Prevette, I will most certainly need to buy everything new.”
“Perhaps I may show you some of my latest plates from Paris,” Madame Prevette offered, and disappeared briefly into the back. When she returned, it was to find Eliza running her hand enviously over a roll of bronze-green satin, newly arrived. The color was so beautiful.
“Perhaps something in that color? It would suit you very well,” Madame Prevette suggested.
“I would love to . . .” Eliza said. “But even half-mourning would not allow such a rich hue.”
“Not even to save, to look forward to the day you might wear it?” Madame Prevette was an astute saleswoman, and Eliza was immediately intrigued. The idea of the dress of her dreams, hanging in her wardrobe like a promise of better things to come . . .
“Perhaps over a satin slip,” Madame Prevette wondered aloud. “And matching slippers to complete the ensemble?”
Oh, why not?
“You have my measurements?” Eliza said. “And I can count upon your discretion?”
“It will be our little secret,” she said.
Eliza and Margaret bade her farewell with a smile before hurrying home to meet the Melvilles.
“I suppose I ought to have asked if you had a preference on style,” Eliza mused to Melville later, regarding the canvas critically. She hadn’t allowed him to look at the canvas out of an anxiousness that to do so would be to spoil it in some way—though she was pleased with her progress. Without sufficient time to dry the portrait between sittings, Eliza was painting alla prima—laying fresh paint onto wet canvas—and a fortnight in, the bulk of the work was already behind her.
“I’m not sure I have one,” Melville said. “As long as it combines the grandeur of Thomas Gainsborough and the playful insouciance of Thomas Rowlandson, I will be well satisfied.”
“Oh, you want both Thomases, do you?” Eliza said, smiling.
“If you could.”
“I’m afraid it is not at all what I had in mind.”
“No insouciance at all?” Melville checked.
“Not even a little,” she said gravely.
“Alas—though if you can capture my new pantaloons, I shall be satisfied,” Melville said. “Do not, I beg you, heed Caroline: they are the very height of fashion, you know.”
The pantaloons in question were a bright yellow—Caroline had dubbed them, moments before, as “too natty by half”—and appeared to have been veritably molded to his leg in a manner that Eliza might have thought brave, had Melville’s legs been any less fine.
She shook her head.
“I am fixed on the pose,” she told him. “Torso and head, only.”
“Is it a compliment to my face that it is the portrait’s focus?” Melville wondered. “Or an insult to my body to have it ignored?”
“Neither,” she said, smiling. “Merely a reflection upon my lack of study—my full-body portraits always have a somewhat dislocated appearance. To truly be able to convey the proportions of the human form, I would need to study it—fully, privately, as they do at the Royal Academy. But of course, this is certainly not a lesson allowed to women.”
Melville leaned back in his seat, surveying her with a mischievous eye.
“Was this not a tutelage the late earl could offer to you?” he asked.
Eliza did not flush at the question, which she saw as proof of her increasing immunity from his outrageousness.
“The late earl would not have been at all receptive to such a request,” she said. “Had I ever dared to make it.”
“Yours was not a . . . passionate marriage?”
He raised his eyebrows at her, challenging—as if to communicate that he knew full well that this was another shockingly inappropriate line of questioning, and was waiting for her to put a stop to it. But, this time, Eliza would not give him the benefit of feeling smug.
“The late earl saw to his husbandly obligations in the same manner as all his other responsibilities,” she said archly. “That is to say: faithfully, dutifully . . . and with a great deal of brevity.”
Melville gave a shout of surprised laughter. Eliza grinned, giddy and irresponsible.
“Well, as your current subject,” Melville said, “if a more—ah—natural style of deportment would be beneficial to your education . . .”
He lifted his hand playfully to his cravat.
“Please leave your clothes where they are,” Eliza said hastily, though she was still smiling. “Perkins will arrive with refreshments soon, and the sight would only disturb him.”
“I would merely explain to Perkins my altruistic motivations,” Melville said earnestly. “I have long been a supporter of the arts—indeed, I have offered my services to actresses, opera singers, dancers . . .”
Eliza laughed again, loud and uncontrolled, and from the open door came the sound of Margaret cackling, too. The French lesson had been long abandoned—when Eliza had popped into the drawing room to locate her maulstick that morning, both Caroline’s and Margaret’s faces had been worryingly full of smirks. Eliza did not quite like to wonder what they had been discussing, but no doubt it was that particular sort of serrated humor these ladies seemed to enjoy with one another—since February it was as if they had been sharpening their wits upon each other as knives upon whetstones.
“Are you to attend Lady Hurley’s rout?” Melville asked. “I am greatly looking forward to it. Dinner, cards, a little dancing . . .”