“Yes.” The girl sat up. “Do you have that, too?”
“No, I haven’t been able to secure a copy.”
“Then I will lend it to you, and you will let me read this, and then we will have something to talk about.”
Eliza smiled brightly. “All right.”
That was the first time she met Mrs. Carrington’s daughter, Charlotte. For the next two years, they shared books about lost loves and stories of haunted castles, dissected the fictional affairs, and swooned over the heroes. She was Eliza’s first true friend.
But that was two years ago. Two years that felt like a lifetime. Where was Charlotte now? Eliza had been staring at the ocean for so long, she was almost grateful for the new thought. A break in the anxiety and tension. But with memories of Charlotte’s friendship came another wave of sadness. It was yet another thing she had lost along the way.
And it all began with that invitation to Bath. Eliza remembered the day well—she had been readingThe Castles of Athlin and Dunbaynefor the third time, trying to keep her mind occupied, when Charlotte poked her head into her room.
“Any news?” she had asked.
Eliza had been staying at the Carrington home for two years by that point. It had been lovely, truly, but now, at sixteen, she was beginning to wonder at the world beyond the walled garden, at what life looked like in places where new people existed everyday. That’s when the often-absent Mr. Carrington appeared from his sickbed and announced he was going away to treat his episodic dyspnea.
It wasn’t that Eliza was glad for Mr. Carrington’s breathing difficulties. Only that the ailment presented a unique opportunity. The gentleman was going to Bath in the hopes that taking the waters would relieve his suffering, and his eldest daughter had been invited to accompany him, along with a friend.
“Nothing yet,” Eliza replied and fell back dramatically on the bed. “Sneak me in your trunk. I beg you. I’m small.”
“I’m sure your uncle will send word soon,” Charlotte said, even as she sent a nervous look to the window.
“But what could be taking him so long to reply? He’s not on the Continent anymore. He’s in Surrey!”
“Maybe there were… bandits,” Charlotte said, turning to give her friend a conspiratorial look.
Eliza recognized the reference to the latest novel they had read,The Orphan of the Rhine, and bit back a smile as she feigned concern. “Or a nefarious monk.”
“And the messenger was kidnapped…” Charlotte whispered.
“Hidden away in a mysterious castle…”
“With a surprisingly attractive Italian nobleman.”
That was as much as they could take before they both dissolved into laughter. It was short-lived, though, as the sound of hooves rose up from the lane. Eliza scrambled to the window, with Charlotte close behind, just as a rider emerged over the hill, galloping toward the house.
Charlotte was clutching onto Eliza’s shoulders with such strength, her friend’s nails digging into her yellow school dress, Eliza thought she’d soon draw blood.
“That has to be it,” Charlotte said, as if trying to convince the both of them. “Don’t you think?”
Eliza didn’t know. But she watched closely as the rider came to a stop at the door below. Then the girls waited, barely breathing. A few minutes later, a knock on the door.
“Miss Williams?” the housemaid asked. “The lady wishes for you to get your things together for the journey.”
Eliza turned back to her friend, smiling even more broadly. “We’re going to Bath!”
Despite the excitement of packing and planning for a summer away, the following two weeks had also been filled with letters from her uncle, outlining expectations and rules, as if Eliza could forget that her freedom had limitations. She was born a girl, after all, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she was also an orphan, two unfortunate strikes against her. Luckily, she was also the beneficiary of her wealthy caring uncle. Without him, she would be out on the streets, like a character from one of her novels.
But that danger immediately vanished from her mind the moment their carriage arrived in Bath.
“?‘No place in England, in a full season, affords so brilliant a circle of polite company as Bath,’?” Charlotte read aloud from her new copy ofThe New Bath Guideby Christopher Anstey, which she had ordered from London especially for the occasion. “?‘The young, the old, the grave, the gay, the infirm, and the healthy, all resort to this place of amusement. Ceremony beyond the essential rules of politeness is totally exploded; everyone mixes in the Rooms upon an equality; and the entertainments are so widely regulated, that although there is never a cessation of them, neither is there a lassitude from bad hours, or from an excess of dissipation.’?” Then she squealed. “It’s perfect!”
It is, Eliza had thought, staring out the small window, awestruck. People paraded down the narrow sidewalk, in and out of shops occupying the tall limestone buildings lining the street. It was unlike anywhere she had ever been before.
The Carrington family had let 13 Queen Square, a substantial townhouse not far from the Royal Crescent. Not only did it come with a housekeeper and a little black kitten that ran about the staircase, but each girl had her own room away from Mr. Carrington’s dwellings in the parlor on the second floor. Eliza’s bed was larger than the one at Ivy House, and she had a nice chest of drawers and a closet full of shelves—so full that there was nothing else and it should really be called a cupboard. Regardless, she loved the room, not just for the shelves or the bed, or the view from her window of three Lombardy poplars in the park across the street. But because this room, this summer, meant freedom.
Every night at dinner, they ate rich meat stews and drank fine wines, and talked about a myriad of subjects from the academic to the absurd. Mr. Carrington made it a point of making plans for them afterward each evening, assuming it was only a matter of time before he would be feeling better and could enjoy a ball or the theater. Unfortunately, such a miraculous recovery never occurred, so Charlotte and Eliza found themselves very often on their own.
