“Lady Somerset?”
Eliza turned her head to see Mr. Berwick
“Good day,” she said, smiling in greeting.
“Good morning!” he said. “You are here early.”
“I wanted to avoid the crowds,” Eliza said simply.
“I see you have located this year’s mystery!” Mr. Berwick said jocularly, with a nod to the portrait.
“I have,” Eliza noted.
“I don’t suppose you have any guesses as to the artist?” Mr. Berwick asked.
Eliza shook her head.
“It is a very good position,” Mr. Berwick said enviously. “Though sometimes they have to give such spots to the more simplistic portraits—they would be quite washed out with anything more challenging, you see.”
“I do see,” Eliza said. “And where is your portrait, sir?”
“Oh, they gave me the location of my choosing, this year,” Mr. Berwick said airily. “It is best viewed at an angle, you see—somewhere high is essential.”
“Of course,” Eliza said, smiling. “Well, it was good to see you, Mr. Berwick—I have enjoyed seeing another Bath face, here.”
“I quite agree,” he said with a bow. “And none of you thought to warn me of your arrival! I had to berate Somerset most severely . . .”
“Somerset?” Eliza said, her attention sharpening. “I thought he was in the country.”
“No, no,” Mr. Berwick said, smiling genially. “I saw him just an hour ago—he would have liked to linger and speak longer, I daresay, but he had an urgent meeting at Grosvenor Square—Lady Somerset?”
But Eliza, with unpardonable rudeness, had left his side mid-sentence. She had thought Somerset at Harefield. She could not believe that all this time he had been in lodgings not a mile away from where Eliza had been.
He must have heard she was in town, must have known where to find her. And he had sent such a missive by way of Mrs. Balfour, anyway.
The serenity that Eliza had found that morning had vanished. She stalked back through the rooms of Somerset House, out into the courtyard, and back into her hackney cab in a steadily climbing rage.
How dare he!
How dare he.
“Grosvenor Square, please!” she called to the driver. “And make haste!”
32
Eliza had not spent a great deal of time in her late husband’s London house—the old earl, as did the new, preferred countryside isolation to city liveliness—but less than half an hour later she disembarked in the grandest square in all of London. As she stood in front of the grand, towering and terribly austere townhouse, Eliza was reminded of how inadequate she used to feel inside. For the second time that day, Eliza squared her shoulders and knocked. The expression that the footman made, upon recognizing his old mistress, approached the comical.
“My lady!” he gasped.
“Is Somerset at home?” Eliza demanded, walking into the entrance hall.
“He is hosting a breakfast party, m-my lady,” he stammered. “H-he has guests.”
“Wonderful! Inform him, will you, that I am here and desirous of having a moment of his time?”
The footman bowed and left, reappearing minutes later with Barns, the Somerset butler.
“Lady Somerset,” he said. “This is an unusual time for a visit.”
“And yet I’m sure we can cope,” Eliza said briskly, her voice, for one moment, sounding extraordinarily similar to her mother’s. “Please inform his lordship of my presence.”
Barns hesitated, left, then returned after only a few moments.
“His lordship thanks you for the visit, and begs that you return later, as he is currently entertaining guests.”
“You may inform his lordship that her ladyship will not return later, for she has urgent business to discuss now; in fact, her ladyship will very much go in to see him at breakfast if his lordship does not come out now,” Eliza said, her smile wide and insincere.
Barns looked at her and then—briefly—to Pardle at Eliza’s shoulder, as if hoping to find an ally there. Pardle returned his gaze with a basilisk stare.
“May I invite your ladyship to wait in the library, while I deliver the message?” Barns said, capitulating.
“You may,” Eliza said graciously. She left Pardle waiting in the hall. This was not a meeting she wished to be observed, even by her.
Only a few moments after Barns’s departure, the library door opened again and Somerset strode inside. Eliza had braced herself to feel something stir at the sight of him, but though her heart did beat faster, it was from anger rather than heartbreak, and this steadied her.
“Eliza!” he said. “I must ask you to return later, I am in the middle of hosting a breakfast party and—”
“How dare you?” Eliza interrupted him. “How dare you write to my father, to inform him of your plans, before you wrote to me! How dare you not deliver such news yourself, when you have been in London and must have known of my presence here, too—how dare you take my fortune from me? I assure you, my lord, I earned every penny of it.”
“How—”
He tried to interrupt her, angry, but she was in full flow.
“You seek to punish me for rejecting your suit. I understand. But is punishing me, is sentencing me in such a way—will that give you the satisfaction you seek?”
“It is—it is not about punishment!” he bit out angrily. “Though I would be within my rights to feel a little anger, it is not about that at all—you wrong me! The gall of you to accuse me of such a thing!”
“You castigated me once for a lack of spirit. Now your issue seems to be my excess of it,” Eliza said. “It seems I cannot please you, no matter what I do.”
He gritted his teeth. “Your fortune was given to you by my family, under conditions that you have flouted extraordinarily—to such a degree that I wonder that you show your face here!”
“How have I flouted it?”
“Only in every possible way you could, Eliza,” Somerset said. “Flirting with every unattached gentleman in London—visiting all the most insalubrious venues in London while in half-mourning—dancing with Melville while you were still wearing black.”
This at last brought Eliza up short.
“Who told you that?” she demanded.
“I see you do not deny it,” Somerset remarked bitterly. “You were seen, Eliza, not that you seemed to care a fig for that at the time! I warned you that you cannot live in a man’s pocket without setting tongues to wagging. Your reputation has been darkening by the day, and you were too busy mooning over Melville to care!”