Chapter Text
There’s something to be said for the revelation that not only did the only person you’ve ever truly loved ruin your own reputation, your brother’s credibility and the reputation of your brother’s first love, she’s also been in love with said brother ever since they met.
Needless to say, Eloise Bridgerton is absolutely miserable.
Was her entire friendship with Penelope merely a means to an end? Was Eloise a stepping stone on the way to Colin? Penelope had fallen in love at first sight with Colin when she’d looked out their window and seen him, but Eloise had fallen for Penelope when she’d been standing in front of the carriage on the street - she’d looked up and seen a shy-looking girl upstairs, looking through the window at them. How one simple moment could have spiralled to cause so much agony!
Colin hadn’t seen Penelope until she’d bought new clothes with her Whistledown money, developed some confidence. Who had helped Penelope build her confidence? Who had been there for Penelope from the start?
Who had abandoned Penelope for greener pastures and spent the summer with Cressida Cowper after finding out the truth about Lady Whistledown?
Maybe Penelope had been deceptive and under-handed, but surely Eloise deserved this rejection after blatantly favouring Cressida all season. It was the price she ought to pay for her malice. It’s part of why she agrees to ship herself off to Scotland with Francesca and her new husband. Maybe the time away from Penelope can help the bitterness in her heart heal.
She loves Colin, and she knows that Colin is truly head-over-heels for Penelope. She really is happy for them, after all. She just can’t stand the thought of being around them in their nauseating marital bliss, watching Penelope fall pregnant and give birth to someone half-Featherington and half-Bridgerton.
So she runs away the first chance she gets.
She’d felt awkward, tagging along to Kilmartin Castle with John and Francesca, but discovering that Michaela would be joining them helped her feel less alone. Another person to talk to, surely. A whole castle to explore, surely with a library too. It was not to be, however.
Scotland is miserable, with Michaela drifting in and out of Kilmartin Castle as she fancies. Eloise supposes it is her right, as the daughter of the late Earl’s younger brother, but it still hurts that Michaela won’t be her friend. Francesca and John spend virtually all their time in their chambers no doubt enjoying beautiful marital bliss. No doubt Pen and Colin are doing much the same back in Mayfair. Yet another thing Eloise will never know the truth of. Even Michaela seems to be having a good time, whenever she’s actually around. She and Francesca seem to bicker incessantly, and Eloise is left out yet again.
She’d assumed (correctly, of course) that Francesca wouldn’t pay her much attention, given how devoted she is to John. It’s nothing like that all-consuming passion she’d noticed between Anthony and Kate, nor is it like that slow-burning fire between Colin and Penelope that seemed to have come out of nowhere, but really had been simmering for years. To Francesca, love seems fairly straightforward and easy. Her mother doesn’t believe it, but Eloise knows her mother only seems to understand one kind of love.
What would Violet say, if she knew how Eloise loved Penelope? How instead of fantasising about a strong, handsome man to take her away, she dreamed of holding hands with Penelope as they strolled through the market, snickering away with one another in a corner of the ballroom?
How many times had she stood with Cressida in the thick of all the other debutantes, cursing her wandering eyes for anchoring themselves to Penelope no matter what? Wanting nothing more than to flock to her? Stared shamelessly at the new dresses she’d bought and how they made Penelope look more beautiful?
She’d taken a perverse joy in watching all the men see Penelope in a new light, so eager to speak to the woman who had captivated them. The second they’d actually talked to her, however, they’d left, intimidated by her intellect. Eloise hadn’t ever thought Penelope was boring, and her strangeness was what had made her fall for Penelope to begin with.
She had judged her intelligence, however. Though in fairness, Penelope-as-Whistledown had nearly wrecked her reputation permanently.
The months go by, and Eloise befriends several sheep. “Befriends” in the loosest sense of the word, of course, but there’s one with a mole on its side that regularly follows her around, which is more than she can say for Francesca.
For all her love of letter-writing, Penelope is very lazy when it comes to regular correspondence with Eloise. Maybe she lost the habit once the two of them had separated after Eloise’s discovery of her secret. She writes faithfully every few days, but Penelope’s replies are so sporadic it is as though they don’t exist at all.
Ironically, during her time in Scotland, her closest confidant ends up being Gregory, of all people. Daphne writes from time to time, but her Duchess duties are apparently time-consuming and so is motherhood. Kate sends her many letters, though by the time she gets them they’re all obviously five months out of date. They’re fairly interesting, as they give Eloise a glimpse of India in a way Colin’s letters from the continent never really could. Kate writes as though she’s finally returned to the one place she ever felt like she belonged, and has several humorous stories to share. There’s one of Anthony’s indigestion after his very first korma, as well as several gripes about pregnancy and how she cannot wait to finally give birth to the future viscount (she’s firmly convinced the baby is a boy, whilst Anthony is holding out for a daughter).
Eloise worries that, despite her family’s best efforts, Kate still feels firmly like an outsider. Simon and John had been welcomed to the family with open arms, as had Kate, but the two men had been well-accustomed to the intricacies of high society. Kate hadn’t had any of that, she’d spent her life a six month boat ride away. Another language, culture, set of rules - it was a wonder she had managed to stay in England so long. But surely that means love is worth all this discomfort? What fundamental feeling does Eloise seem to lack?
Somehow, it gets worse - she gets the long-anticipated letter from Penelope announcing that she and Colin are expecting a baby. There will indeed be the dreaded Featherington-Bridgerton offspring, and she will have nothing to do with it. She’s half a mind to run off with Philippa or Prudence at this point just to spite Penelope.
The child should be born long before Eloise’s return to London, and she has half a mind to stay back in Scotland just so she doesn’t have to see the wretched thing. But she’s absolutely fed up with the isolation that Kilmartin Castle provides, and despite this betrayal, she misses Penelope dreadfully. There’s something just so horrific about wanting nothing to be near the person that has caused you the most grievous heartbreak. The pain, the fear, the nausea bubbles up in her stomach, and she can feel it threatening to explode.
A thousand spiders seem to run through Eloise’s digestive tract all at once, quite possibly the worst sensation she has ever had in her life. She rushes from her spot on a bench in the garden, wishing she’d had Benedict and their swingset or something comforting to that effect, before she promptly vomits into a rose bush. She hasn’t had anything to eat all day yet, so it’s quite strange that Eloise is vomiting right now.
It’s not when the nausea finally abates and she looks down to assess the damage she’s done to the rose bush. Amidst the red blooms lie a heap of deep pink rhododendrons, crumpled and sticky with spit. Eloise doesn’t have it in her to panic, she merely curses her lack of gloves this morning and fishes out her rhododendrons from the bush, before digging out a fistful of dirt and shoving them in the hole. The rest of their Scottish entourage will be none the wiser, she’ll make sure of it.