“I thought perhaps . . .” Eliza said.
“We think it best if you make Hector’s boy your heir,” Mrs. Balfour said briskly.
Hector was Eliza’s youngest brother.
“I don’t know that—”
“Rupert, I think, would benefit most,” Mrs. Balfour’s voice overrode Eliza’s.
Of all her brother’s entitled weasels, Rupert was the worst.
“I think I would prefer—”
“Mr. Balfour can organize the papers as soon as you return home.” Mrs. Balfour patted Eliza’s cheek in a concluding sort of way.
It is not yours, Eliza might say to her mother, if she were braver. It is not your fortune to spend, or to assign or to organize out of my reach.
“Yes, Mama,” Eliza sighed, defeated.
“It is decided. Goodbye, then—we shall see you anon. And recollect that you are still the countess, darling: you oughtn’t to allow those Selwyns to run roughshod over you.”
The irony of Mrs. Balfour issuing such advice was not lost upon Eliza—nor Margaret, who only barely suppressed a choke of laughter—and with this final instruction delivered, Mrs. Balfour left.
“I know she is your mother and my aunt,” Margaret said, as they watched Mrs. Balfour climb into the carriage. “But if I saw her balanced precariously upon the edge of a cliff—perhaps about to fall into the ocean—I would hesitate to act. I wouldn’t push her, but I would most definitely hesitate.”
Unlike Eliza, Margaret’s general manner of conversation was to say exactly what she thought, at exactly the moment she thought it, a trait their family deemed as the reason she had never married. Eliza was just sparing a moment of thanks that Mrs. Balfour was at least no longer in earshot, when a quiet cough had them both turning. Somerset had appeared in the doorway and, by the humorous cast of his expression, had overheard Margaret’s less than respectful remark. Eliza flushed pink on Margaret’s behalf.
“Ah,” Margaret said, not sounding particularly worried.
“I shall pretend I did not hear that,” Somerset responded, amused. In their youth, he had stood upon friendly terms with Margaret and it appeared his indulgence of her incivilities remained.
“If you could,” Margaret said.
Somerset grinned, his smile breaking through his reserve just as the sun shone through clouds, and Eliza’s breath caught—but then he turned toward her, and the warmth vanished as swiftly as it had appeared.
“Your father has informed me that you intend to return to Balfour, my lady,” he said, and though he was making direct eye contact, Eliza felt as if he were gazing straight through her.
Look at me! Eliza wanted to shout at him. I am here, look at me!
“Yes,” she said instead, voice as quiet as a mouse. “I do.”
Ladies did not shout, no matter the provocation.
Somerset nodded, his expression giving away nothing. Was he relieved? He must be.
“If that is what you wish,” he said.
It was not. It was not what she wished at all. But what other choice was there?
“You may of course have any of the carriages for the journey,” he went on. “And if you wish to take any of the household servants . . .”
“That is kind,” Eliza said.
“It is nothing,” he said, and he sounded as though he meant it. Could there be anything more excruciating than this apathy?
“Nevertheless, you have my thanks,” Eliza pressed.
There was a pause.
“You need not thank me,” Somerset said quietly. “It is no more than my duty, as head of the family.”
A remark which was, in fact, more excruciating than his apathy. Duty. Family. The words burned.
“Farewell, my dear Lady Somerset!” Lady Selwyn sang with affected sweetness, as she swept through the doorway. “We cannot thank you enough for your hospitality.”
“Farewell, my lady.” Mrs. Courtenay, not so skilled an actress as her daughter, did not smile.
“You behave yourself, now!” Selwyn said, wagging a finger in Eliza’s face. “We wouldn’t want to take that fortune away from you, would we?”
“Selwyn!” Somerset said, in sharp remonstration.
“Lady Somerset knows I am only funning!”
“Of course she does,” Lady Selwyn agreed. She looked from Somerset to Eliza, and her expression tightened. “Somerset—may I borrow your arm to climb into the carriage?”
“Will your husband’s arm not serve, Augusta?” Somerset suggested mildly. “I have a few matters to discuss with Lady Somerset.”
Lady Selwyn shot Eliza a stinging glance, as if this were her fault, but reluctantly retreated with her husband and mother.
“I will be in town for the next fortnight,” Somerset said to Eliza. “If there is anything at all you need assistance with, please do not hesitate to write.”
Eliza nodded.
“Good day, Lady Somerset,” he said, bowing his head over her hand.
“Lord Somerset,” she said in return. There was something dreadfully ironic about their sharing the same name, now. Fate’s cruel jibe at what they might once have shared, had Eliza’s mother not been so eager to secure a title for her daughter—and had Eliza’s will not been so very easy to bend.
As Somerset raised his head from her hand, their gazes met. And whether Somerset had lowered his guard, now that he was about to leave, or whether he was simply surprised by the sudden proximity of her face to his, as their eyes met, his neutral mask slipped. His polite expression turned abruptly arrested, even stricken, and his gloved hand tightened convulsively upon hers. And Eliza felt, at last, truly seen.
Not just looked through, as if she were some peripheral stranger, or looked upon, as if she were a mildly inconvenient duty, to be resolved, but seen: she as Eliza and he as Oliver, two people who had once known each other as deeply as it was possible to know someone. And though the moment could not have lasted for more than two seconds—the length of three quickened heartbeats—it was as if someone had thrust a hand directly into Eliza’s chest and squeezed.
“Somerset! Do hurry up, old thing!”
And then it broke. Somerset dropped her hand as if it had burned him.
“Farewell, Miss Balfour,” he said hurriedly. “Though I would wish it to be under happier circumstances, it was good to see you both.”
He ran quickly down the steps and into the carriage.
“And I you,” Eliza whispered to the empty space he had left behind—as ever, a little too late.