“Shall we go inside?” Margaret said quietly, her eyes watchful on Eliza’s face. Eliza nodded.
They retreated to the first-floor parlor. It was the least grand of all the rooms, its drapes moth-eaten and brocaded carpets faded, but Eliza’s favorite, for upon the wall hung a seascape that had been painted by her grandfather. An artist of superior talent and some renown, the painting—of a tiny boat sailing through cold, unfathomable ocean—had been brought to Harefield by the previous countess and it was a daily comfort to Eliza. An enduring reminder of the golden afternoons she had spent with her grandfather, learning to paint, in the simpler days of girlhood, before her skirts had been let down and her hair put up, when Eliza had naively believed she might follow in his artistic footsteps.
“Would you care for a pot of tea, my lady?” Perkins asked quietly.
“Oh, I think we need something considerably stronger than tea,” Margaret declared, as she wrenched the lace cap from her red hair and the satin slippers from her feet. “A drop of brandy, if you will!”
Not by a flicker of an eyebrow did Perkins betray any surprise at such an unladylike request, and he returned promptly with a tray bearing the late earl’s finest cognac.
“Thank you,” Eliza said, as he poured them each a ladylike tipple. She would miss Perkins, when she left for Balfour.
“Famous!” Margaret agreed, though as soon as Perkins departed the room, she was reaching for the crystal decanter and liberally topping up both glasses.
Eliza would miss Margaret most of all. The last nine months, trapped within Harefield’s walls for the strictest period of her mourning, might have been interminable, had not Margaret been sent to accompany her. Having her cousin—her dearest friend—at such close proximity after so many years apart, had been an unexpected joy, but now . . .
“Are we to toast our imminent return to the loving bosoms of our families?” Eliza asked, accepting a glass.
“Certainly not,” Margaret said. “I think it a terrible idea.”
“I know,” Eliza said, for Margaret had made this opinion quite plain. “But I cannot remain here, Margaret. He was perfectly civil—but I think I might have preferred hostility to such nothingness.”
Eliza did not have to clarify who “he” was.
“It has been ten years,” Margaret said. “Surely you cannot still . . .”
Eliza sipped at her glass. The brandy burned her throat on the way down.
“I know it is foolish,” Eliza said. “But when I saw him again . . .”
She remembered the jolt that had run through her, body and soul, as soon as he had stepped into the room.
“I might have been struck by lightning,” she said, flushing to hear herself speak such a high-flown sentiment aloud.
“How uncomfortable,” Margaret observed. “It makes me rather glad I have never been in love. Did he look the same as you remembered?”
“Better,” Eliza said morosely. “Unnecessarily handsome, in fact. Could he not have returned just a little ugly?”
“Are you sure he is handsome and not simply very tall?” Margaret asked. “I have often noticed the two are confused.”
“I am sure,” Eliza said, taking another draught of the brandy.
“The Dower House is a little way from Harefield,” Margaret said. “You might easily avoid him from there. Could you truly not abide that?”
Eliza shook her head.
“To linger on the outskirts of his life,” she said. “Always wishing I were sharing it with him, while he thrives and marries and has children with someone else? No, I cannot.”
Yet once more, as she considered the alternative—Balfour with her mother—she shuddered.
“But to return to being badgered and bullied by my parents,” she said. “I—I think I will simply disappear. There is not enough of me left to endure it.”
“Have you truly been so miserable, these past years?” Margaret said quietly.
Eliza did not answer. She had avoided telling Margaret, in their weekly letters and infrequent visits, details of her marriage, not wanting to be thought dramatic or spoiled. And, truthfully, while the late earl had not been the husband she would have chosen, nor life as Countess of Somerset one she enjoyed, the years had not been without their pleasures or joys. It was just that, in a life spent trying to please a man whose natural inclination was to disapprove, Eliza had had to find small pleasures, quiet joys. Until she had begun to worry that she herself had become so small and quiet that she might easily be tidied away into a cupboard with the crockery—and left there until she was required to adorn the table once more.
“There is no point worrying over it,” Eliza said, after a pause. “I shall return to Balfour. I have no other choice.”
She felt a pathetic, forlorn figure and hoped Margaret might say something appropriately soothing, perhaps while stroking her hair.
“I must say, I think you are making a great cake of yourself,” Margaret said acidly.
This was not at all what Eliza had in mind.
“Excuse me?”
“Have you forgotten that you are now one of the richest women in England?” Margaret sat up and flapped an accusing hand at Eliza, who watched its progress with some alarm—it was straying dangerously close to a very expensive Ming vase.
“I have not forgotten,” Eliza said, “but I am not sure it makes a difference, Margaret. I am just as trapped as I was before.”
“Then the fortune is wasted on you, if you are going to act so damnably defeatist,” Margaret said, shaking her head.
“Where else would you have me go?” Eliza demanded. She had thought Margaret understood.
“Anywhere!” Margaret snapped back. “You can most certainly afford to set up your own establishment, now. Have you never considered it?”
In truth, Eliza had not. Mrs. Balfour had always said the only unmarried women who set up their own establishments were either very eccentric, very elderly or both. Eliza was neither.
“Margaret, be serious.”
“I am perfectly serious,” Margaret said.
“What would I even do?” Eliza asked.
“Oh, only anything you want, Eliza!” Margaret said. “Have you really become so downtrodden that you do not want anything anymore?”
Eliza stared at Margaret, shocked at the venom in her voice.
“Not want anything?” she repeated. “Not want anything? Margaret, I want . . . endlessly.”
“Is that so?” Margaret asked, sounding so dubious that Eliza began to lose her temper.