“You cannot tell anyone!” Somerset said at once. “Eliza, you cannot, the dishonor—”
“Oh I could,” Eliza threatened. “And it would be no less than you all deserved.”
“I am not the villain here!” Somerset said. “Let us remember it is he who—”
“I care not,” Eliza said, stamping her foot in her rage. “You have both made a fool of me!”
With every word she spoke, her volume grew louder.
“Keep your voice down, Eliza,” Somerset snapped. “The servants—”
“She has a right to shout, Somerset, you pigeon,” Melville said angrily.
“Get out! Both of you!” Eliza cried.
Somerset and Melville both stared at her, unmoving.
“Oh, just get out,” she said, voice suddenly small and cracking. “I cannot bear to look at you any longer.”
The tinkle of crockery had them all looking to the door, where Perkins was standing.
“Gentlemen,” he said, with more authority than Eliza would have believed possible in a man bearing a tea tray, “may I escort you to the door?”
“That won’t be necessary, Perkins,” Somerset said. He started toward the hallway.
“If I hear even a whisper of that morality clause being used against me,” Eliza said to his back, her voice containing a venom it never had before, “I shall tell everyone what the Selwyns planned to do. I promise you I shall.”
Somerset turned to look at her for a moment. There was no warmth in their eyes as they stared each other down. Finally, he nodded, and left the room.
“My lord,” Perkins said sternly. Melville had not moved. He was still standing there, staring at Eliza as if she held the whole world in her hands.
“I ought never to have agreed to it,” he said. “But they lied to me, d-did not tell me—”
He was stammering. Eliza had never seen him so discomposed.
“You heard all my confidences,” Eliza said. “You encouraged me to unburden myself. You flattered me and flirted with me and fed me nonsense about my worth—all so that I might hang myself out to dry.”
Melville pressed a hand to his forehead.
“I am sorry,” he breathed. “It was never my intent—it was not nonsense, you have to believe me!”
“I don’t believe you,” Eliza said, shaking her head slowly.
Melville squeezed his eyes momentarily shut as if to protect himself.
“I don’t know how I can . . . fix this,” he said. “I came here to . . .”
“Please just go,” Eliza whispered.
Melville looked at her.
“I love you,” he said.
It was the killing blow for Eliza. Tears began to stream down her face in earnest, and she gripped her elbows in her hands as if to let go would be to crumble into nothingness.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, her chin wobbling.
Melville nodded silently, looking up to the ceiling as if he, too, were fighting tears.
And he, too, walked away.
27
Eliza did not leave Camden Place for a week. To leave would require assuming a socially acceptable veneer and Eliza . . . Eliza had been cut wide open. It was not a wound she could hide for the sake of small talk. And so Camden Place became her harbor, as it had been since the very moment of their arrival, and within its walls, Eliza crumbled as she had never done before.
The loss of both Melville and Somerset in one night, in one fell swoop, felt unfathomable, and at first Eliza could not parse which pain belonged to which loss. She wept for the loss of both of them, for the life she had thought she would have with Somerset, for the months of joy she had thought was hers with Melville, for the love she had given up and for the love that had never truly been real in the first place.
“It was all a lie, Margaret,” Eliza whispered to her cousin, on that first night. “It was all a lie.”
They were lying in Eliza’s bed and Margaret was stroking her hair. She had not asked Eliza if she’d wanted company—indeed, since the moment she had found her, crumpled on the drawing-room floor, she had not left her side.
“I am so sorry,” Margaret said, wiping the tears gently from Eliza’s cheek with her thumb. “I am so sorry, my darling.”
Eliza hung onto Margaret’s hand as she fell asleep, in the vain hope it might anchor her, and when she woke the next morning—so early the sky outside was only just light—their fingers were still wound together. Eliza stared vacantly up at the ceiling as dawn broke, not moving a single muscle in her whole body.
Who was she now, Eliza wondered, if the person she had become was built upon falsities? What did it make her? Not wanting to make herself small, for Somerset, seemed faintly ridiculous, for she was smaller now than she had ever been. Smaller than the mousy Miss Balfour he had fallen in love with, smaller even than the feeble countess she had used to be before Melville had dusted her off and made her feel shiny again.
She was not an artist, really, for how could she know, now, if she had any talent at all? Perhaps she was as bumptious as Mr. Berwick, blundering about with no sense that she was being laughed at behind her back. If she had ever thought herself desirable, for having two gentlemen fighting over her, then what was she now that she had neither?
The ceiling had no answers for Eliza, but still she continued to regard it.
“Shall we go down to breakfast?” Margaret whispered when she woke—seconds, minutes or perhaps hours later, Eliza did not know.
“No thank you,” Eliza said politely. She would stay here in bed a little longer, she thought. Perhaps it might be her home forever.
The ceiling turned yellow, pink, purple and blue with the light as the day passed, Margaret returning at intervals with tea or lemon cakes or a magazine she might enjoy—and Eliza did her best to sip, nibble and leaf obediently, for it was not Margaret’s fault that things had turned out so dreadfully, and really, she ought not be forced to caretake in such a way on her remaining days of freedom. But neither was Eliza capable of looking after herself—or rather, she probably was capable, it was just that she did not care, anymore. She simply could not fathom feeling anything but hurt ever again and there was, as yet, no part of her that felt ready to try.
It took two more days for Margaret to begin to lose her softly-softly approach toward Eliza’s depression, and on the fourth day, Eliza found herself positively dragged from bed, stuffed into a loose gown and chivvied down to the drawing room.
“I might have an easier time with Lavinia’s baby!” Margaret remarked tartly, trying to make Eliza smile, but Eliza could only look balefully about her.