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It is a few days after the picnic when Eloise abruptly says, “I’ve been thinking about it and if your maid says it could be about love, maybe it’s being alone with the one you love?”
They are alone in the Bridgertons’ sitting room and still Penelope finds herself looking around, as if to make sure there’s no one to overhear before she hisses, “Eloise!”
“Otherwise why is it such a scandal to be alone with a man? It does make sense.”
“Oh Eloise, plenty of people are alone with the people they love and don’t fall pregnant. That can’t be it.”
“Well what about kissing then?”
“What about kissing!”
“Maybe that’s how one gets pregnant. It is even worse than being caught alone with a man.”
“I don’t think it can be kissing,” Penelope says but she’s hesitant because she’s not sure. And then because she’s thinking of it and because who do you tell those sorts of thoughts to if not your dearest friend, “I would like to be kissed.” It comes out more wistfully than she means it to.
“There are so many better things to do, Penelope, things to learn, accomplishments to acquire,” Eloise says, though for once she doesn’t sound as certain in her convictions. Maybe Penelope isn’t alone in wondering what it would be like to be kissed.
“I suppose,” Penelope says even if she can’t keep the doubt from her voice. “Still, I don’t think it’s quite the same as being kissed.”
“Well if you want, we can practice.” Eloise sounds rather put upon as she turns to face Penelope.
“Practice?” Penelope squeaks which is all she manages before Eloise grabs her arms and pushes her lips against Penelope’s. It is not anything like Penelope had imagined kissing to be. It’s awkward and firm, too firm really. She’s far too aware of her body and also Eloise’s and she doesn’t know what to do with the awareness. She doesn’t know what to do with her arms or how to move and also far too quickly, it’s over and Eloise is pulling away.
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Eloise says, and based on that kiss, Penelope would have to agree. Except there was a moment, at the end.
“I don’t think that was quite right,” she says and she can see the determination enter Eloise’s face, but before she can surge forward, Penelope gently strokes a hand against Eloise’s cheek. She stills at that and Penelope studies her for a moment then cups her hand against Eloise’s face, both a hold and a caress. She pushes closer to her on the chaise, studying her face, and then very slowly leans in and brushes her lips against Eloise’s, soft and light before pulling back and brushing against them again.
The third time she does it, Eloise lets out a little gasp and Penelope’s tongue slips against her lips then past them. It’s an accident, but then when her tongue brushes against Eloise’s, she can’t help but do it again, at which point Eloise pulls her down so that Penelope’s entire body is crushed against hers. Eloise pushes a leg up, somehow working it between Penelope’s despite the material of their dresses and something about it makes Penelope want more, even if she doesn’t know exactly what more is, just that whether it makes the ache inside stronger or makes it subside, she wants it. How did Eloise even know to do that? Or is she feeling just as Penelope does, this frantic need for something? Penelope would ask her, if only that didn’t mean they’d have to stop kissing. Instead she shifts, hoping for something even if she doesn’t know what, only for Eloise to push even more firmly against her, and Penelope finds herself clenching her legs around Eloise’s, holding her in place.
That’s when everything slips from Penelope’s mind: any thoughts she’d had about how women got pregnant or what kissing might have to do with it, any thought other than getting close to Eloise and the warm feeling in her stomach that she’s only previously had thinking about Colin. Or at least the thoughts slip from her mind until she hears the door bang open and someone come in and she has to scramble away from Eloise before they’re caught.
“Oh girls,” she hears in Lady Bridgerton’s lovely, motherly voice, a sound that for some reason fills her with shame. “I didn’t see you there! Penelope, so nice for you to visit.”
She mustn’t have noticed anything strange because she doesn’t say anything. She’s her normal warm, welcoming self, and Penelope finds herself wishing, not for the first time, that Lady Bridgerton were her mother too. Only then Eloise would be her sister, which suddenly seems wrong for the first time. If Eloise were Penelope’s sister then kissing each other would be wrong. Would be more wrong. She finds herself babbling about her own sisters to fill the silence, Lady Bridgerton tolerating her silliness for far longer than her own mother would have.
That’s when Penelope realizes how unusually quiet Eloise is, as she fills the silence between Lady Bridgerton’s good-natured conversation with nonsense. There are no jokes being made about the things her mother is saying, no whispers in her ear even though Eloise’s whispers are generally loud enough for anyone to hear, no significant looks to interpret. Instead, she’s sitting ramrod straight, eyes lowered, her lower lip between her teeth, the lip Penelope had just been kissing. Penelope tries to catch Eloise’s eyes, but Eloise avoids her gaze then suddenly makes her excuses and dashes from the room, leaving Penelope and Lady Bridgerton to stare after her.
“Well, that was sudden, even for Eloise,” Lady Bridgerton says.
“I suppose I had best be heading home as well,” Penelope says, half expecting to find Eloise waiting to waylay her in the hall or on the stairs. When she doesn’t, the warmth in Penelope’s stomach turns to worry that Eloise was upset by what they’d done, that she might be harboring regrets when Penelope found herself wishing they could kiss again. Maybe if Eloise is upset, Penelope should wait and let Eloise approach her. It is always easiest to let Eloise have her head and with some time it might be easier for Penelope to stop from thinking of their kiss.
The problem with waiting for Eloise to approach her is that, after a few days, Penelope is forced to realize perhaps Eloise doesn’t want to. Perhaps Eloise found their kiss so abhorrent that she’s finally realized how little she needs Penelope. That’s when Penelope switches from waiting for Eloise to avoiding her.
It is, given how much of their days had previously been spent together, in some ways remarkably easy to avoid Eloise. She’s not out and so Penelope doesn’t have to worry about seeing her at any of the dinners or balls or musicals she’s dragged to, and avoiding Bridgerton House is simple enough. There are the walks in the park, but it only takes a few comments on the eligible gentleman seen in the north-west enclosure of Hyde Park—a rumor made up out of whole cloth altogether though it was further substantiated by a mention in Lady Whistledown’s column—in front of her mother for her mother to insist they travel halfway across the city for their walks in hopes of casually bumping into him. It is not nearly the most underhanded thing Penelope has done to manipulate her mother, and besides, it is in the name of a good cause: not forcing Penelope to face the fact that she’s lost her only friend. Or, several good causes, because every glimpse of someone who reminds Penelope even slightly of Eloise, in gait or hair or voice, makes Penelope realize how desperately she wants to kiss Eloise again, to shower her in kisses, despite the one sided nature of her affection. After all, Penelope knew better than most Eloise’s lack of desire for any sort of romance. There was no reason to expect their kiss to have changed anything for Eloise, even if it had for Penelope.
Not seeing Eloise gives Penelope quite a bit more time to write and if she finds herself being unusually cruel about how unflattering citrus shades are for her or the stone she’s sure she could have lost if her mother had only not insisted on bringing her out this year, well, it serves as a further reminder as to why Eloise had been so horrified to find herself crushed by Penelope’s unwanted advances.
After all, if Eloise wanted to see her, she could call on her. It had always been comparatively rare that she would call; Bridgerton House was far more welcoming than the Featherington household and Eloise had always been generous in sharing her family and home with Penelope. Still, it had not been unknown for Eloise to relish the occasional escape from the hubbub of her family for the quiet of the Featherington house, particularly when Penelope’s mother and sisters went out on calls and Penelope managed to stay home. With each day Eloise did not call, Penelope grew more and more sure that she had irreparably damaged their friendship.
It’s over a week after the incident, as Penelope had found herself thinking of it, when she runs into Anthony on her way home from a shopping trip and he insists on escorting her home, saying that his mother would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t. When she tries to demur further, he says, “Humor me,” in a tone that tells her quite clearly she hasn’t any choice in the matter.
They walk mostly in silence at first, until apropos of nothing, Anthony says, “Whatever Eloise did, you ought to forgive her. She’s absolutely miserable.”
Penelope stops short so suddenly that Anthony keeps walking for a moment before he realizes.
“She’s miserable?” Penelope questions.
“To be precise, she’s making life miserable for all of us.” Penelope doesn’t entirely know how to respond to that and after a moment of silence, Anthony adds, “I suppose she must be miserable too. I’ve never seen her like this before. I know she can be an absolute bear to put up with, but you’ve been friends for so long. She does quite rely on you.”
Eloise relies on her! As though Penelope doesn’t know which of them had the greater prospects, the greater wealth, the greater everything, even if she had always been intent on making her own way. In some ways, the friendship of the Bridgertons in general and Eloise in specific had always felt like a kindness she wasn’t quite sure what she’d done to deserve, unless it was charity. And now to hear that Eloise relies on her when Penelope had been afraid she was pushing beyond what the strength of their friendship could bear; if it had been anyone but Anthony telling her, Anthony who had no reason to know how much it meant, Penelope isn’t sure she’d believe it.
She ends up lost in thought all the way to the doorstep of her residence. When she realizes where they are, she says, “Thank you Anthony,” before running inside, not even bothering to ask him in or look back to see his reaction. She has quite a bit of thinking to do.
--
Having spent a week avoiding Eloise, Penelope is strangely hard pressed to determine how to stop; it is becoming a not uncommon problem for her, starting things and having them grow out of her control. Her writing, Colin and Marina, now Eloise—everything feels like a strange combination of too much and not enough at the same time.
Before she can figure out if she’s going to spiral or if she’s going to come up with a plan, she hears the sound of something hitting the glass and then something again. When she goes to her window, there’s Eloise, like she’s been so many times before.
“Penelope!” she says in the strangest hybrid of a shout and a whisper.
“I’ll be right down,” she says before closing her window and grabbing her shawl, trying her best not to think about what Anthony might have told Eloise.
She was not successful: by the time she’d reached the door, she’d thought of half a dozen reasons why Eloise might be there, the best of which involved telling Penelope that she was willing to forget the kiss if Penelope never brought it up again. Penelope ought to be hoping for that option, but somehow she felt as though if that’s what Eloise had come to say, it would break her heart.
She takes a deep breath and forces herself to open the door; to leave Eloise in the cold, even at the risk of her own heart, was not something she could do.
“Penelope, where have you been?” Eloise asks, her voice dear and familiar and demanding as ever.
“You know Mama’s kept us quite busy with the season and—”
“If you’ve been feeling awkward because I was bad at kissing, you don’t have to. It’s not like I thought I’d be any good at it, it was just that you wanted—”
“Eloise, it’s not that,” Penelope interrupts. She regrets it, a little, after she had because it would have been so much easier to pretend that’s why she’d been avoiding Eloise. Except she and Eloise were almost always honest with each other and the risk of being honest here seemed to outweigh the risk of not being honest.
“Then what, Pen?” Eloise asks, for once, now that she didn’t want it, giving Penelope time to answer. Though that isn’t fair either, as much as Eloise had her grand plans and hopes, she’d always had time to listen to Penelope. It’s what made her such an excellent friend.
“It is that—I know you’re not interested in kissing and such things and all I’ve been able to think about is kissing—”
“Well, I’m sure not all of the men of the ton are stupid enough to overlook you, if that’s what you want. You can have one of my brothers, for that matter. Anthony’s a lost cause, but Benedict’s not bad and Colin’s young enough to be trainable—”
Penelope can’t help the laughter that bubbles out at that, the ridiculousness of the situation. Even a week earlier, she would have been overjoyed at her name being paired with Colin’s.
“Penelope, what are you laughing at? If it’s truly what you want, you know I will support you.”
Before Eloise can get any further in developing a strategy to marry her off, Penelope grabs her arm and her attention. “All I’ve been able to think about is kissing you,” she says, which takes the wind out of Eloise’s sails altogether.
“Oh,” she says, the sound a full sentence, but not one Penelope is able to interpret. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” she asks and launches herself at Penelope with enough force to push her back against the wall. Eloise kisses her hungrily, desperately, as though she’d been the one pining, which, apparently she had. They both had and it’s so stupid that Penelope wants to laugh or cry, except that Eloise has a hand against her neck and one against her waist so instead of either of those things she finds herself whimpering against Eloise’s mouth.
Eloise kisses her harder in response, almost too hard, so Penelope caresses her cheek, pushing lightly, not so much that Eloise will stop, but enough that she becomes a little gentler. Penelope keeps her hand there because there is something precious about being able to caress Eloise like this, about the way Eloise’s kisses change as Penelope strokes her cheek. Eloise wants this as much as she does, she had to.
They keep kissing until Penelope hears something from the street, a reminder that just because they ought to be in their beds it doesn’t mean there aren’t others who are allowed the freedom to wander. A reminder that people not noticing her presence is something she’d capitalized on extensively and that it would be best if this kiss remains between her and Eloise.
“Eloise,” Penelope forces herself to say despite wanting nothing more than to continue kissing Eloise. “Eloise, we can’t. Anyone could find us.” In the shadows of the house by the servants’ entrance and what would she write about that!
Eloise doesn’t let go of her. “You’ll call, tomorrow?” she asks, staring at Penelope despite the lack of light.
“I’ll call,” she says, punctuating it with a brief brush of her lips to Eloise’s. “I promise.”
Eloise studies her face and then nods. “Goodnight, Penelope,” she says before walking off, the way she had a dozen times before, the only difference being those had been secret assignations to discuss things that couldn’t wait until the next day, not to exchange kisses. Except it wasn’t the only difference because there was the way Penelope wants so badly to run after her and beg her to stay, the way Eloise keeps glancing back at her and smiling. Penelope keeps watch until she can no longer make out Eloise, and then a little longer still, not wanting to let the moment go any sooner than she has to.