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Eloise Bridgerton knew that she was naive in certain aspects of the world. Particularly, that of the ins and outs of a romantic relationship between a man and woman. Unmarried ladies were not permitted to know certain things, and it frustrated Eloise to no end to be aware that there was something she didn’t know… yet be unable to find out what.
She knows about kissing - of course. And she knows that it is considered a scandal to be found alone with a man before marriage, or to be found kissing one - and then she’d overheard mutterings between the servants once, discussing how outrageous it was that some couple had been found in a state of undress in each other's presence. So Eloise is quite certain that whatever this thing is, it involves the removal of one’s clothing, and kissing.
And so it is, therefore, that late one evening after a ball,it takes a mere two seconds for Eloise to realise exactly what she had walked in on when, upon seeing that her brother’s candlelight was on underneath his door, she had burst into his room.
“ El!” He splutters, scrambling upright and grabbing for the sheets to cover his bed partner.
“Oh god, Eloise!” Squeaks said bed partner.
Penelope.
Penelope Featherington.
In bed with her brother .
Naked.
“O-oh my,” Eloise gasps, sharply jerking her gaze away from the scene in front of her, from all of that bare skin, and tousled red curls and lips plump from the kiss her entrance had pulled them from. “Oh my god .” She claps a gloved hand over her eyes, then, realising she should probably leave , turns on her heel and flees.
“El, wait, let me explain!” She hears Colin call out behind her, and a thump she thinks might be him tumbling from his bed, but she’s already halfway down the corridor.
She slumps back against the wall, hand on her heart as she tries to process what she’d just seen.
Oh god, oh god …
What on earth had her brother been thinking? What had Pen - god. Of all the people she’d thought might be inclined to engage in such activities outside of the marriage bed, Penelope Featherington, her former best friend, Lady Whistledown herself had been the last person she’d ever have guessed.
Eloise supposes she really never has known Penelope at all.
And Colin! She’d asked her brother not to bring Pen to their house, did he really think it was acceptable to sneak her into his bedroom? And how could he do this? Surely he knew the consequences for Penelope if this got out - she had thought he was her friend!?
“El! El!”
At the sound of her brother’s voice, she takes off again, feet quick on the floor as she hears his door close, and hasty footsteps chase after her.
She has nearly reached the landing of the stairs when he catches up - thankfully with his trousers back on and shirt over his shoulders. His hands frantically yank the buttons closed when she whirls to face him. She doesn’t know what she’s feeling, but she’s shaking, and Eloise realises that at least some of it might be rage .
“Do not worry brother,” she says to him quickly, unable to meet his eyes. “Your secret is safe with me; though I admit Penelope is not my favourite person presently, I do not wish to see any woman ruined by the carelessness of a man.”
“It is not like that,” he shoves a hand through his hair with a sigh.
“Though I must say I am surprised at you of all people to take such little care - in our own home!? With Penelope!? I thought she was your friend, how could you -”
“El - will you listen!?” He grabs her arm before as she goes to whirl away from him again. “We are engaged: Penelope is to be my wife.”
Eloise’s eyes widen, if possibly, even further, and her stomach clenches in an uncomfortable knot.
“ Penelope Featherington?” She grinds out.
“Yes! I asked her to marry me,” Colin exclaims, and there’s a grin on his face that quickly falls when Eloise just looks at him in dismay. “Look, I know the two of you have had some falling out, but things can surely be mended between you. You are to be family now.”
“ No , Colin,” she shakes her head, taking a step back. “I do not think they can be. And… nor do I think that you would marry her , if you knew -” She cuts herself off, glancing around. She’s glad that the hour is late and most of the servants are abed already, leaving the space empty and keeping their tense words private.
“Knew what?”
She tightens her jaw. “It is not my place to tell you.”
“Sister, you cannot possibly say such a thing and then refuse -”
“You would hate her if you knew.”
“What?” Colin shakes his head, brow furrowed in a deep frown. “Knew what?”
She takes another step back. “I cannot.”
“El!”
“Colin, you should ask her!” She scoffs, shaking her head. “Although it is unlikely she would admit such a thing, especially after what’s clearly taken place -”
“Eloise -” He grabs at her arm as she turns to leave again. “I am convinced there is nothing you could tell me that would make me hate Penelope Featherington -”
“I am convinced that there is.”
“Like what !? What could you possibly tell me that is so awful that could make me -”
“She is Lady Whistledown!” Eloise explodes, and a sudden, sharp silence follows her words. She’s breathing hard, she realises, a turmoil of emotions inside of her, and Colin pants just as hard, his hair and clothing still in disarray and good lord , Eloise is glad there is nobody else around at this moment.
“What?” He finally utters, his voice scarcely above a whisper.
Eloise closes her eyes, guilt sliding through her. She shouldn’t feel guilty… he needed to know. Yet she is aware that she has just ruined her former best friend’s life with four words.
“It’s her, Colin. It always has been. All that hurt, all those things that were said… it was all her.”
--
Unable to sleep, Eloise paces her bedchamber.
A quarter hour previous, her brother had stared at her in dismay on the stairs, before spinning away from her and disappearing back off up into his own quarters. She hates that she has caused him hurt, but she hates even more what she’d seen with her own eyes that night.
How could she dare… how could Penelope do such a thing, agree to marry a man she had slandered in her horrible little pamphlet just a few weeks prior? Was this all a game to her? Were people’s feelings of no consequence in her mind?
Eloise scoffs as she paces, shaking her head. She could write a whole scandal sheet of her own on what she’d seen that night.
Lady Whistledown herself, otherwise known as the one Penelope Featherington, unwed and in bed with a man! The true scandal of the season…
She doesn’t know what’s happening at the other end of the hallway… doesn’t know what Colin is saying to Penelope inside of his room. Surely he would see that he couldn’t marry her, now that he knew what she’d done to Eloise, to him - to their family. And yet… should he refuse…
Eloise hates that she feels sorry for Penelope. But she does. Sorry for her and quite ashamed of her own brother for taking such liberties. Surely he knew the consequences for her should their dalliance get out?
On her next turn of her room, Eloise is halted by a noise coming from outside her door. She stops, listening, trying to make out what she’s hearing - it almost sounds like an animal of some kind, a puppy whimpering, or -
Striding to her door, she flings it open, only to find Penelope herself, sitting on the floor in the hallway, only half clothed with her dress in her hands, face pressed into it as she cries in distraught, choked sobs.
Her stomach ties in a knot, and Eloise frantically looks around before striding over to her.
“Lord above, come here, inside before someone should see you.”
Penelope looks up at her with confused, red eyes as Eloise tugs her off the floor, and hurries her back down the corridor towards her room, pushing her inside and closing the door behind her.
Penelope sinks immediately to the floor again, pressing her face into her dress and dissolving back into tears.
Feeling awkward and helpless and downright uncomfortable, Eloise turns a circle on the spot before deciding to grab for a handkerchief and move over to Penelope, holding it out to her.
“Here.”
She looks up, taking it and bringing it to her nose.
“I s-suppose you got what you wanted,” she cries miserably with her gaze cast down. “Colin called off the engagement.”
Eloise swallows, discomfort inside her.
“I never wanted this. I never wanted any of it.”
Penelope shakes her head, burying her face again. “Well, it is done now. He said… he d-didn’t know who I am. That he n-never wanted to see me again… oh god,” she cries.
The discomfort inside her ties in a tighter knot. “I am sorry,” she utters.
Penelope continues to cry, words coming out in stilted spurts between gasps. “I’ve never - s-seen him - so angry…”
“Can you blame him?” Eloise finds herself asking with a hint of bitterness she clearly cannot shake, despite the way seeing her former friend so distraught is making her feel.
“No,” Penelope says thickly, sniffing. “I can not. And now he hates me like you do.”
Eloise looks at her kneeling on the floor, a mess and in tears, her breath coming quicker and quicker until she fears she’s going to make herself unwell, and she crouches down before her, awkwardly reaching for her hands.
“I do not hate you, Pen,” Eloise sighs. “I am… angry and disappointed. And hurt - both by what you wrote and by the fact that you kept your identity a secret - I thought we were friends -”
“We were - you are my friend Eloise, I -”
“I didn’t think we kept things from each other!” Now she has begun, she cannot stop everything from spilling out. “All that time - you entertained me searching for Lady Whistledown, all the while clearly laughing behind my back knowing that it was you all along -”
“I never laughed at you! You have no idea how guilty I felt for that!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me!?” Those words come out louder than the others, and thicker, and Eloise realises with some amount of surprise that she is crying now too. She sniffs hard, wiping at her eyes.
“Eloise,” Penelope utters, “If I could go back in time and change that now, I would…”
“No,” she shakes her head. “I do not think that you would. “I think that if you could have kept me forever in the dark you would have preferred it. Is that what you planned to do with my brother?”
“I…” Penelope looks down away from her eyes. Another tear spills down her cheek. “It all happened so fast. I did not think about it.”
“Well you should have,” Eloise finds herself snapping. “Preferably before you got into bed with him.”
Penelope nods, still looking down, and more tears spill down her face and splash into her hands in her lap.
She looks utterly miserable, and pitiful. Her face puffy and tear-stained, usually neat red curls in a tangled disarray around her, her dress clutched in a rumpled heap on her lap, dressed only in her petticoats and stays, which have clearly been pulled on it a hurry, half unlaced and hanging off her shoulder. Eloise’s chest twinges again, and she hates how awful she feels. She cannot help it. Despite what Pen had done, despite how little she’d clearly ever known her, she had been her closest and dearest friend since they were just children, and it kills her to see her so distraught.
She is not Penelope. Unlike her, she simply cannot sit back and watch her friend suffer because of her.
Sniffing back her own tears, and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, Eloise clambers to her feet before reaching out a hand.
“Come,” she says gently to her. “Let us get you cleaned up.”
Although clearly baffled, Penelope lets Eloise help her to her feet, and sits quietly on her bed, sniffling softly as Eloise fetches a cloth and dabs at her face, takes her dress and folds it neatly over the back of a chair and even carefully brushes out her tangled hair.
“You cannot leave in this state at this hour,” she tells her when she is finished, and blue eyes look up at her in confusion. “You will stay here, and come morning we shall tell the servants and mama that you decided to come back with me after the ball and we fell asleep talking.”
Penelope’s bottom lip trembles. “But your mama knows that we have not been speaking lately, does she not?”
“Well. We’ll say that things were mended between us.”
“Can they be?” Pen whispers, eyes glistening with new tears.
Eloise looks away. “I do not know.”
“Eloise, please,” she begs, reaching for her hands. “I am so, so sorry for all the hurt I have caused you - I never planned for Lady Whistledown to get as big as she did, and by then I was in too deep… I only wrote that about you to get the queen to leave you alone -”
“Well you succeeded,” she snaps, but doesn’t pull her hands away. “In that, and causing me social ruin last season.”
“I -”
“You should have just told me,” she says where she sits next to her on the bed, and there is a lump in her throat again. “Perhaps… perhaps I would have agreed that the story would be the best cause of action, but at least it would have been my choice.”
“I was afraid,” Penelope whispers. “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you as a friend.”
“Well you have,” Eloise snaps, and Penelope looks down, sniffing as she nods sadly. Eloise feels that pang in her chest again, and lets out a sigh.
“Look,” she says. “Let us just… not speak of it tonight. Pen…” she swallows hard and tentatively places a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t stand seeing you like this.”
Penelope gives another small sob. “I’m sorry. It’s just… Colin…”
Eloise swallows tightly, heat coming to her face when the image of all that bare skin flashes through her mind again. “My brother should not have taken such liberties with you,” she says quietly, a hint of bitterness in her voice when she adds, “Even if he does plan to marry you.”
“Did,” Penelope corrects miserably. “He does not want me now… truly it was a miracle he ever did.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. You know it’s true.” She looks up at her then with sad, shining eyes. “I love him, Eloise,” she admits in a whisper. “I have done since we were children.”
Startled, she blinks at her. “My brother?” She knew that Penelope and Colin had always gotten along but certainly hadn’t been aware her friend had been harbouring feelings for him.
“Yes. I’ve been in love with him for as long as I can remember. Truly, I do not remember what life felt like without yearning for him. He said he had feelings for me tonight,” she whispers, another tear sliding down her cheek. “I knew it felt too good to be true…”
Eloise is stunned by her words. She had no idea . Absolutely no inkling all of these years that her best friend had been in love with her brother. How hadn’t she seen it? Now she is thinking of it, Penelope’s face had always lit up whenever Colin entered a room. She’d always asked Eloise about him when she hadn’t seen him a while, always wanted to know whether he would be attending whatever event they were scheduled for.
Yes, she'd seen it, hadn't she? But she hadn't seen it . Just like she'd never really listened when Penelope spoke of the ton gossip until that night she suddenly had, and it had all clicked into place.
For the first time that night, Eloise feels a little ashamed of herself. Had she really been so wrapped up in her own head that she’d missed so much of what was going on inside of her best friend? Suddenly, everything that had happened with Marina made more sense. Penelope must have been hurting, knowing the man she loved was about to marry another - and one who was tricking him at that. Had she really written what she had purely out of a wish to save him? Eloise had been so angry at her that she hadn’t been able to consider all of the words she’d written in Whistledown as having been written with anything other than spite. Petty amusement. A will to bend the ton to her whims for her own entertainment.
Perhaps… perhaps Eloise had been wrong.
She swallow, hard, throat tight again.
“I’m… sorry Pen.”
She shakes her head. “You do not have to pretend to care. I understand your feelings towards me.”
“I’m not pretending.” Eloise sighs. “Perhaps… I may have … judged you a little harshly,” she admits, and Penelope’s wide eyes snap up to hers. “I’m not saying I agree with any of what you’ve done, but. But… when you wrote about Marina… you were protecting Colin, weren’t you?”
Penelope nods. “I tried talking to him,” she whispers. “But he would not listen to me.”
“And me? What you wrote about me…”
Penelope reaches over to cover Eloise’s hands with her own. “I only wanted to save you from the queen, I swear . I swear there was no mal intent behind that story. It was the only way out I could see…”
Eloise is quiet a moment. She believes Pen - yet she still feels stung that she hadn’t confided in her. She doesn’t think she will ever not be hurt by that, but perhaps… yes, perhaps she can understand why she’d kept such a secret so close to her chest. Eloise had never really showed Penelope’s feelings much care, had she?
“Alright,” she says quietly, and Pen inhales sharply, her hands twitch on Eloise’s own.
“Alright?”
Eloise nods, and turns over her hands to take Pen’s, giving them a squeeze. “Let us… speak no more of it. I’m not saying that I’ve fully forgiven you, but… perhaps that trust can be re-earned.” She chews on her lip as she looks into Pen’s hopeful eyes. “Perhaps I need to show you that you can trust me with your secrets first.”
Penelope’s brow crinkles. “I do trust you. You haven’t told a soul about Lady Whistledown, even though you despised me for it.”
“No,” she agrees. “But you never felt you could tell me about Colin.”
She looks down then, and a flush comes to her cheeks. That sad look in her eyes that makes Eloise’s heart ache returns.
“I was embarrassed. I never thought I was worthy of his affections.”
Eloise squeezes Pen’s hands again. “I couldn’t think of a single soul more worthy of my brother than you,” she says honestly.
Penelope’s eyes water again. “El…”
Thinking that she looks like she might hug her, and Eloise doesn’t think she’s quite ready for that level of affection again yet, she stands from the bed, pulling back the covers.
“Come,” she mutters, “It is very late; we should get some sleep.”
--
A while later, once she and Penelope had settled down in her bed, and she’d blown out the candles on the nightstand, Eloise twists about, unable to find rest. Not surprising considering what the evening had entailed, and that the person that had caused her so much drama last season is laying by her side, after doing - well - that - with her brother.
Frowning up at the ceiling, Eloise tries to get the image of them together out of her mind.
She cannot.
She’d seen couples sharing kisses before - her sister and the duke, Anthony and Kate, and even her own parents when she was small. But those had been chaste; sweet. A gesture clearly meant to convey affection and nothing more. That had not been what she’d seen between Penelope and her brother.
They’d been completely naked, for a start, tangled in bedsheets with Colin on top of Penelope and her leg curled round his waist, kissing each other like one of them might die if they stopped. And they’d been moving… grinding rhythmically on the bed and good lord is that really what one had to do with a man behind closed doors?
“Are you asleep?” She suddenly hears whispered into the quiet of her room, hauling her from her racing thoughts. Her cheeks flush at where they had been taking her, and she’s glad Penelope cannot see her blushing in the dar.
She turns onto her side to face her with a sigh. “No. I cannot.”
“Me either.”
She sounds miserable, and when she twists to face Eloise too, her eyes shine just enough in the moonlight filtering in through her window for Eloise to recognise that fresh tears have gathered. She sighs.
“I am sure things can be worked out with my brother,” she finds herself comforting her, although Eloise is not certain of her own words.
Penelope shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’ve hurt him. I don’t know how he’ll forgive me…”
Eloise stays quiet, and Penelope draws in a deep, shuddering breath before whispering her next words as if she dare not speak them out loud.
“What if I am with child?”
Eloise feels her belly flip at that admittance that what she’d expected had taken place in full, had. Her brother and Penelope. She swallows, stomach churning uncomfortably.
“Pen,” she sighs. “My brother would not leave you to deal with that alone, I know that for sure. No matter what happened between you, he is a man of honour.”
Penelope doesn’t answer and Eloise thinks perhaps she doesn’t believe her. What would that be like? If Pen was to have Colin’s child? Her niece or nephew? Despite everything, Eloise feels a little tingle of excitement at the idea, but it is quickly squashed down by those thoughts of what would have caused it to occur again, until she can suppress them no longer.
“What is it like?” She finds herself blurting out.
“What?”
“With… it - what - what you had with my brother.”
“Love?”
Eloise shakes her head. “No. The -.. act, ” she stumbles over the word, “ - that causes women to become with child.”
“Oh.”
She doesn’t answer for a long moment, and Eloise wonders if she is going to.
“Did you know?” She prompts. “Before tonight?”
Penelope nods. “My sisters told me.”
“Of course, they are married now. I asked Daphne but she refused to speak of it to me,” she frowns in frustration.
“They shouldn't have. I think they meant to embarrass me. Or gloat perhaps, I don't know. In any case I’m glad that they did and I was prepared. Perhaps I should not have jumped into things so quickly but truthfully, Colin is the only man I could ever imagine doing such things with. It felt as though I were in a dream to learn he felt the same…”
“Does Colin know? How long you have loved him?”
Penelope chews on her bottom lip and shakes her head once. “Truly we have not spoken much at all since he told me how he feels in the carriage on the way home.”
“Right,” Eloise says, and tries not to think of the image of all that bare skin again. She clears her throat. “So… what was it like?” She repeats her earlier question.
“Like… nothing I can describe,” Penelope finally answers quietly.
Eloise snorts. “You seem to have no trouble finding your words to describe most other things.” She cannot resist the jab, and Pen inhales sharply.
“Yes. Well. I probably should not speak of it. I’m sorry for what you witnessed…”
A frown pulls at her brow. “You should not speak of it? Because you are worldly now and I am still a stupid, clueless young girl?”
“That’s not what I mean, El. Only that it’s not my place to tell you…”
“Pen,” she says firmly. “Were we not both pondering this same question together just two seasons past? You would really deny me the knowledge now that you have it?”
Penelope is quiet for a moment, looking down as she fiddles with the bedsheets, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “It was… pleasurable.”
“ Pleasurable?”
She nods. “And a little painful too, although only a first. Colin was - well, he was very careful with me.” Her eyes shine again in the dark, and Eloise thinks she’s going to start crying again, and almost regrets asking.
Pen closes her eyes tightly for a moment, and seems to get ahold of herself before she continues.
“It was wonderful. When he was inside of me I think I forgot the whole world for a moment.”
“ Inside of you!?” Eloise’s eyes widen in alarm. Her eyes briefly skitter down over Pen’s form where she lays beneath the bedsheets, and widen further. “What do you -?”
Penelope chews on her bottom lip, her cheeks flushed enough for Eloise to note even in the dark of her room. “If you truly wish for me to explain it to you, then I shall.”
“You’re going to have to now,” Eloise insists, “because I cannot tell you the things my mind is conjuring up in rumination.”
Pen smiles then, just a little as she raises a hand to her mouth to muffle a giggle. The motion releases the tension that, despite having sort of worked things out, still lingered in the air between them, and Eloise suddenly finds herself laughing too.
It’s a sound of relief. A sound of their youth that puts her in mind of sharing a bed with Pen like this when they were girls, giggling into the night and sharing secrets and gossip they’d overheard over the biscuits Eloise had snuck up from the kitchens.
Their giggles dying down, some of that sadness returns to Penelope’s eyes, and Eloise wishes fervently that she could make it leave and bring back those days. She vows silently then to do everything in her power to help to mend things between Pen and her brother, because Eloise acknowledges for the first time since their falling out, that nothing is more important to her than getting her friend back - and her friend’s happiness. She loves Pen like a sister already, and Eloise doesn’t think anything would make her happier than having her as one for real.
“Come on then,” she reaches out and pokes Penelope. “Are you going to tell me before I imagine all kinds of absurd things or not?”
Pen forces a smile for her, and nods, shifting about a bit to get comfortable next to her before she begins.
“Well…”
--