“She flirts with you,” Eliza decided. “Most assuredly she does flirt. Perhaps there is a way we could find out—I could—”
But Margaret was shaking her head.
“Even if we could, for what purpose?” she whispered. “Oh Eliza, I have considered it. But we could never be together, not properly.”
“Could you not?” Eliza asked. “Consider the Ladies of Llangollen.”
“Believe me, I have considered the Ladies of Llangollen,” Margaret said.
“The gossip suggests,” Eliza persisted, “that their relationship is romantic in nature, but so long as they give society the excuse of friendship, meet proprieties on the surface, no one does a thing to stop it.”
“Except from gossip,” Margaret said. “And they stare and speculate and laugh—and the ladies may well be happy, but are they invited to dinner parties? Do their families still speak to them? Are they accepted by society?”
Eliza did not reply, for what reassurance could she give? There was a reason, she imagined, that the Ladies of Llangollen chose to live in such seclusion, and their romance was only rumored—and while the consequence of such a relationship being publicly confirmed was not fatal, as it was for men, social exile was still no trifling matter.
“Besides,” Margaret said, “I have no independent means, and in a few more weeks, I shall have no home other than my sister’s—and Caroline and I will not come across one another again.”
It was unlike Margaret to sound so defeated, and Eliza’s chest ached to hear it. Surely there was a solution, a way forward, something, that would give Margaret the future she deserved.
“I do not think you ought to give up entirely,” Eliza whispered. “If it were kept entirely, strictly secret, perhaps . . .”
“I am tired, Eliza,” Margaret said and Eliza did not think she meant just tonight.
Eliza subsided for a moment, closing her eyes, but Margaret’s revelation had made her only more awake.
“Was it her purple dress that made you fall in love with her?” Eliza whispered.
Margaret snorted.
“I am offended you think me so shallow.”
“I have nothing else to go on!” Eliza said. She turned quickly onto her side to try and see Margaret’s expression better. “Start from the beginning,” she instructed. “And do not leave anything out.”
That night, they stayed up into the early hours of the morning, spilling all their thoughts into the darkness between them, small and large and myriad—confidences so grand that not another soul could be trusted with them, trivialities so small that not another soul would be interested in them. And if no conclusions were reached, no solutions divined, then at least by the time they closed their eyes, unable to fight sleep any longer, it was safe in the knowledge that whatever tomorrow brought, they would face it together.
“You did say you would never again marry for duty,” Margaret said, her voice as thick as soup. “If that is what you are doing with Somerset . . .”
“I do love Somerset,” Eliza said. “Whatever I feel for Melville . . . it is nerves, no more. A passing fancy.”
“If you say so,” Margaret said, dubious.
“It is a passing fancy,” Eliza said around the shape of a yawn. “I promise.”
23
It was not a passing fancy. Eliza might have been able to convince herself, had she been able to avoid Melville for anything more than a single day, but as if to make up for his recent string of absences, Melville appeared at Camden Place the very next morning with Caroline. They were both full of vim, declaring their intention of escorting Eliza and Margaret upon a visit to the coach houses of Bath, in order that Eliza might purchase her own phaeton. Had Eliza been able to prepare herself for the visit, perhaps it might have been easier to act normally in Melville’s presence, but as it was, she could not even look at him without blushing. Indeed, even in the space of their short visit, Eliza flushed so often and with such severity that Melville inquired as to whether she had perhaps caught a little sunstroke.
“It is March!” she responded, thrown.
“So it is,” Melville agreed. “But then, I am not the one who has it.”
Instead, Eliza authorized Margaret to act upon her behalf; she was a finer judge of horseflesh than Eliza, anyway, and it would save Eliza from expiring from an excess of blushing.
You are engaged to Somerset, Eliza reminded herself, you are engaged to Somerset.
She did not tell Melville that the portrait was finished—that it only had now to dry—but one look at Margaret’s guilty face, when she returned from the livery, told Eliza that she had let it slip. The next afternoon, therefore, she prepared herself for Melville’s call with grim determination. His presence would not undo her.
“Good morning!” she said, when he entered the parlor, trying to make her voice bright and sunny. “A lovely day we are having!”
He looked from her to the window, where rain was splattering against the panes.
“Oh splendid,” he agreed. “Where is it?”
He was bouncing a little on the balls of his feet with excitement. Eliza tried and failed to not find this endearing.
“Over there,” she said, gesturing toward the easel, which she had shrouded in a white cloth.
“Is it dead?” he asked, eyebrows flying comically up. “Or just sleeping?”
“It is just to hide it from view,” she explained.
“And here I thought the point was for it to be looked at.”
“It is,” Eliza said. “Of course. So I shall show it to you—show it to you . . . Now . . .”
She paused a moment longer, rallied, and then lifted the fabric off.
Eliza turned immediately to watch his face as he took it in—she wanted to see his reaction before he had time to modulate it—but she had not been fast enough, for even in that shortest of moments, he had wiped his face clean of expression, as he only did when he was trying to hide his thoughts. It was the subtlest of shifts, one Eliza would not have noticed had she not spent the better part of a month studying his face in minute detail. What was he trying to hide?
“Melville?” she said uncertainly. “Do you not like it?”
He started a little.
“It is perfect!” he said quickly. “More than . . . more than I could have hoped.”
He looked at her, then back to the painting, and then back to her again. Eliza felt her palms begin to sweat. Why was he behaving so unusually? Was it possible . . . ? Could it be that Melville had been able to divine from it what Eliza had?