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I. THE DRESS
It is high noon in the country, and Cressida’s mother has already claimed that her nerves are playing up again, in the way that tends to mean that she desperately wants Cressida and her father, Lord Cowper, to leave. Cressida, who believes passive aggression is the height of cowardice, has resolved to stay in, but her father gives her a stern look as he adjusts his hat.
“There is nothing to do here,” she complains. Elyton-upon-Mare is the prototypical do-nothing seaside town, a favorite retreat for those of the aristocracy trying to escape the heat of London, but they go to the small house every year, and Cressida is bored stiff.
“Your friends are here, are they not?” Her father peers suspiciously from around the closet door. “Certainly, you can see the modiste in town, or whatever you do with Lady Orrin…”
She wonders if her father means this as a slight, at first, if he somehow knows something more than he’s supposed to. But no, she thinks. That would be absurd; he is much too self-obsessed to worry about these things: what she has heard him call, in smoke-filled rooms, to his friends, “women’s trivialities.” “The fashions are positively ancient here, Papa. There is no chance of finding anything decent.”
“But cheaper, certainly, than those Mayfair frocks.” He clears his throat, and she catches the dismissal in his tone. When it comes down to it, he is just as passive-aggressive as her mother. So she does just as he suggests and walks across town to the dingy shop by the waterfront, a shabby copy of the modiste’s back home in London. The walk is pleasant, despite the few judgmental-looking girls, sporting light summer dresses, arm in arm in a way she longs for, that she has to skirt around. She can feel the whispers, pernicious against her skin, and she rubs the sapphire around her neck for luck, smiling as their eyes follow it, envious, wanting. A unique piece , the appraiser in Islington had said, when she’d asked. Good fortune for uncertain times. She would not dare wear it back at home, for fear word would get back to Rina, or worse, her family. But now, in the middle of nowhere, with only her plotting for company, she feels brave enough to wear it, to feel the cold silver against her throat.
As she had predicted, the shop is thoroughly unimpressive. Most of the dresses are unfashionably high-necked, like something she’s seen her mother wear in old portraits, and the dirty-nailed milliner who seems to be minding the place openly gapes at Cressida, taking in the willowy-tall of her, her smile with all her teeth, golden hair shining and the sapphire, of course, sparkling on her decolletage. She immediately directs “milady” to what is clearly the most expensive dress in the shop: a royal-blue satin, displayed in the window, with draping Grecian sleeves. “Feel the quality. There’s nothing else like it in all England, I’d wager.”
“Ah.” Cressida hides a smile behind a gloved hand. True, it is a comfort, to run fingers over the satin, to feel its ebbs and flows like water, gently breaking against the shoreline. But it is obvious to a seasoned London debutante that this one is not particularly of a high quality. There is a thinness to the weave that belies a somewhat less-than-perfect manufacturing job, but the color is stunning 一 midnight royal-blue 一 that everyone who knows Cressida always says brings out her eyes. Actually, Cressida’s eyes are smaller than average and unlikely to be emphasized by something as trivial as a color, but the hue is unique . No one in town will have it, to be sure, but it is at the same time, not so unique as to make her a laughingstock, like those awful Featherington girls’ dresses. And isn’t that the height of the season’s fashion, to have that one thing that no one else does, that one piece that causes even the wealthiest girls’ jaws to drop with envy? Egged on by the shopkeeper’s eager eyes, she is about to inquire about price, when a clear, decisive voice calls from across the modiste’s shop, “Is that one available, by chance?”
Cressida starts, but it is only Eloise Bridgerton, she of the unfortunate fringe and too-pointy nose. She suppresses a surge of envy. Eloise is not a great beauty, by anyone’s standards, but she does have a particular force of character that, when employed in conjunction with her family name, means her faults, which are numerous, get spun into idiosyncrasies. Cressida, whose family is rather less well-off, is not allowed any license to be “eccentric.” Of course, Eloise’s brand of eccentricity is the kind of condescending monologuing that just makes it abundantly obvious no one has told her to shut up once in her life. Today, though, bereft of her boisterous (Cressida’s father would call them obnoxious ) family and that sad little Featherington who follows her around like a lost puppy, she seems rather smaller than normal. So…“No.” she says, emerging from behind the form that houses the dress.
Eloise looks surprised , and (to Cressida’s amusement), injured . “Is it yours, then?” The shopkeeper’s eyes dart back and forth between the two of them, as if she’s trying to decide which one of them is more important.
Cressida tosses her hair.“It will be.”
“Really?” Eloise raises her eyebrows. “It’s a bit…I didn’t think it would be to your taste.”
“How so?”
“Don’t you normally prefer sort of…” She points, and Cressida takes stock of her own ensemble, the intricate beading on the false shoulders, overlaid with yellow feathers.
“True, but I had heard minimalism is in. In Paris.”
“You have never been to Paris.” Eloise scoffs. “If you did, we should never stop hearing of it.”
“Neither have you, and if you did, you would be no better.”
She is expecting Eloise to argue with that, but she just shrugs, and says, “True. The country is the only place my mother ever lets me go, and it’s the same every year. I was just granted license to go to this shop, unchaperoned, even though I am not far away from anyone or anything-”
“Are you coming to a point?” Cressida interrupts.
“My mother has just given me the oh-so-important-task of selecting my own dresses for the season. I had thought to start early. Be pre-emptive .”
“Is the selection not up to your standards?” She can see Eloise sizing up the rest of the store’s inventory, most of which is unflattering shades of brown. “I had thought you immune to the whims of fashion.”
“I don’t care for fashion. That does not mean I lack all taste .” This makes the shopkeeper gasp, and Eloise to color, quite amusingly. “Oh, no, I did not mean that I found the selection tasteless , madam-”
“Such poor manners.” Cressida directs her attention to the older woman. “I, however, have excellent taste, and I find the dress to be uncommonly fine.”
“Do you really think so?” The shopkeeper glares at Eloise, who quails. “Clearly, it is not up to the standards of the ladies of London.”
“I-” Eloise starts to say, but Cressida gives her a firm nod.
“Good.” she says, with another malevolent look in Eloise’s direction. “I’ll get your measurements, milady. You, however-” She sniffs. “You can go.”
“This is your fault.” Eloise hisses, on the way out. “You know perfectly well what I meant.”
“Undoubtedly. But I need something to match this,” she gestures to the pendant. “And you were in my way.”
II. THE PLAN
“The shopkeeper says I have the proportions of a Renaissance woman,” Cressida goes to special pains to tell Eloise, who’s lingering by the refreshments table with all the other girls who have not been deemed suitable enough dance partners. They do not have proper balls in the off-season, so it does become more about dancing prowess. Cressida is a good dancer; she’s taken lessons since she was young. It’s her nose that is the trait that holds her back; she has taken to wearing a large clip on the end of it, at night, to make it not as pointy. The clip has left a smudge of purple bruises on the bridge of her nose, which all the powder in the world cannot quite hide, which could also be the reason, she reflects, she is left partnerless, not like Eloise, who she’s fairly certain has stepped on an older gentleman’s foot on purpose to get out of it. The world, especially where gentlemen are concerned, is not particularly fair. “She says I should suit the dress most handsomely when she is finished. Her only concern is that I do not bring my ill-bred friend back to the shop. I said she must be mistaken. All of my friends are of impeccable breeding.”
Eloise scoffs. “And which one of us has sought out the other to relay this news? If I didn’t know better, I would think you were growing fond of me.”
Cressida tosses her hair. “Nonsense. I just like to win.”
“And I do not see these well-bred friends of yours around.” Eloise has a rather cat-like twitch to her nose, when she is trying to be unkind, a skillset in which Cressida can easily surpass her. But Eloise is eyeing her, in a way that makes her think she has not likely forgotten about the pendant, the sapphires blue like her eyes.
“Nor I yours.” Eloise stiffens at the mention, and Cressida wonders what sad little Penelope Featherington might have done to lose her favor. Most interesting. “I may have her alter it, anyway. I am not convinced about the bodice.”
“But I thought it was the fashion in Paris?” Eloise mocks, leftover champagne sparkling on her lips.
Cressida shrugs. “It is. I don’t like it.”
“Oh, but fashion is irrelevant to what you like, I thought?”
“However so?”
“Namely, that what is in fashion has nothing to do with what women like or feel comfortable in, and everything to do with what several old men who run a select few European fashion houses are interested in at the minute.” This is said with all the satisfaction of someone who thinks they have made a very profound observation. Cressida raises an eyebrow. Honestly…
“You are aware that it is women who buy the clothes?”
“With your husband or father’s money.”
“All the same. All the fashion houses on the Continent couldn’t make me wear that dress as it is. Because I don’t like it. And if I don’t wear it, then I doubt Ruby Kilmartin or Grace Cho or Elena Hempstead will touch it either. And those old men in their fashion houses will have to concede the war, that none of their horrid ideas will sully the who’s who of England.” She grins. “Besides, I do quite like a statement shoulder.”
“Yes, I know.” Her eyes rake over the paillettes on Cressida’s puffed sleeves. “Maybe I’ll get her to make me one just like it.”
“She hates you. And besides, I thought you didn’t care about fashion.”
Eloise colors. “I do not! I am just…It would be for the wit of it.”
“You know-” Cressida lowers her voice. “I know you think yourself rather above us all, but no one will hold it against you, if you would just like to see yourself in a beautiful dress.”
“I do not think myself above anyone.”
“It might even go a way with making you somewhat tolerable.”
Eloise grins. “Well, we can’t have that, as I have set out to be intolerable in the extreme.”
“Oh, hush. You honestly mean to tell me, you have never desired to be beautiful? That is a farce, and a poor one at that.”
She looks up, embarrassed. “I… may have thought the sleeves would make me look like one of Diana’s nymphs.”
“You see? That is honest.”
“But it does not matter , as I spoke unwisely and…She will not want me back again. And what good will Diana’s nymphs do, if I still have to marry some ogre of my mother’s choosing?” This last part was said petulantly.
“You are lucky, then. At least people want to marry you. Most of the men my father selects think I am too old.”
“They do not wish to marry me . They think my brother will give them thousands of pounds. I am just a well-insured womb.” Her face falls. “I am the third girl in my family to be out, and I am not…good at it. I am not beautiful, as you are; that is part of it.” She blushes. “If I seem as though I believe myself above the rest of you…that is why. I have never been very good at admitting when I am unskilled in an area. Penelope helped me not see that, so much. Now…”
“I would rather be one of Diana’s nymphs as well, you know. I shot a bow and arrow at my cousin’s estate in the Low-country; I should think I would take to it.” She pauses. “I am glad that you find me beautiful; however, I do wish you would relay that to one of your brothers.”
Eloise laughs. “You are devilish. And I did not know you knew of Diana.”
“There are many things you do not know about me.” She thinks of the sapphire pendant, and her heart constricts.
“I think…” Eloise cocks her head to the side, and she suddenly breaks off into a brilliant smile. “I would like to learn.”
III. THE FITTING
“Jane Austen, of course!” Cressida laughs from behind the screen, as the modiste adjusts the waist of the new and improved dress. As it turns out, a well-placed smile and effusive praise from Cressida is all that she had needed to allow Eloise back into her shop. (Well, that, and Cressida informing her of Eloise’s status as one of the wealthiest women in London.) “What are men, to rocks and mountains, indeed?”
Eloise sounds dumbfounded; she can imagine the look on her face, and smiles. “How did you know that? I didn’t know that.”
“I know you think that I am witless, but I do read. You really ought to know Jane Austen. She’s one of the most interesting women alive.”
She can practically hear the sniff in her voice, though Eloise is behind the screen. “I do not think you are witless. I think that you are shallow and have a cruel streak. There is a difference .”
“Is it quite alright that she talks to you like that?” the shopkeeper wonders aloud.
“Oh, Eloise- Lady Bridgerton -and I are old friends. You needn’t worry. What magnificent work this is! You really are a master of your craft.”
The older woman nods. “Ought you to show her? It’d make her terribly envious.”
“I do adore being envied.” With a flourish, Cressida pulls back the screen, just to watch Eloise’s jaw drop, to watch her take in the slightly lowered neckline that bares just the tops of her breasts, the silky, see-through sleeves. To her credit, Eloise is quite charitable, complimenting the woman’s work mightily all while ignoring Cressida’s eyes. After they’ve stroked her ego enough, and Cressida has paid, she says, quietly. “Would you fancy a walk? I have not yet seen the ocean.”
“Very well.” It is an easy choice, with Eloise beside her. She feels somehow impervious to any stares that come her way, any whispers. It is easy to shut out the world with another girl on her arm. It is easy to forget her troubles, on the white sand, with the late afternoon sun bearing down on them, with this new girl, this not-like-Rina Rina.
“Penelope would have a fit if she heard that I was talking to you.” Eloise says at last, in a way that is part amusement, part sadness. “She says you are conniving and ill-tempered.”
“R-My friends would say the same, only that you are sanctimonious and unpleasant.”
Eloise shrugs. “That is all right. I rather think she is worse off for it. After all, she did not hear the comments you made about Lady Halston’s brocade. A damask dinghy , you called it. Everyone else thought it was too harsh, but I laughed for days.”
“It was dead ugly.”
“And beaded overlays haven’t been fashionable for at least ten years.”
“I did not think you cared about what was fashionable.”
“Perhaps someone has changed my mind.” She grins. “I have been reading. You were right. It is more than what some men in fashion houses cobble together. It is the one thing we get to decide for ourselves. The one choice that hasn’t already been made for us.”
“Trust Eloise Bridgerton to make it into some high and mighty statement.” Cressida giggles. “You can just tell the truth: that you would like to look like one of Diana’s nymphs. Honestly, it would provide much better conversation than your rambling on about books you know we have not read.”
Eloise bristles. “I cannot lie , as you do, nor pretend to enjoy something I find intolerable. It is not my fault that girls here show no desire to better their minds or expand their horizons.”
“Oh, nothing is intolerable for you, not truly. And if you spent half as much time trying to amuse us as you do using your cleverness as a club to beat us into submission, you might even become somewhat well-favored.”
“I do not care about popularity.”
“Lies. Everyone cares about popularity.”
“ You do not.” Cressida had stiffened, at that. Could Eloise know of what had transpired that April, of her disgrace? You are no longer welcome here, Lady Winthrop had said, with her ever-present saccharine smile intact, while Cressida had looked at her feet, praying for the ground to swallow her whole. But Eloise was still smiling, which she would not do if she had known. “You seem much the same with or without all of your friends around you.” By this, Eloise means the vapid gaggle of marriage-obsessed chits Cressida normally surrounds herself with. She does not particularly like any of them, nor them, her. They had all been Rina’s friends, and after it had happened, they had faded, one by one, from her side, mumbling tired excuses and making eyes at each other across the room whenever she had entered, whispering about how they’d all found her too rude, too forward.
“And you are more interesting, without Penelope Featherington cleaving to you like a leech.”
“See, that is cruel!” Eloise says, but she is laughing. “Oh…I don’t know. Penelope was always much more romantic than I. I think I knew all along it wouldn’t last. In her heart, she longs to be an ordinary woman.”
“And you yearn for the extraordinary.”
“Precisely. Or if not, to be a wise old witch, snipping away at the strings of fate in whatever way I please.”
Cressida laughs. “I can see you in your cottage in the woods, hunched over your book of spells.”
“None would dare test me.”
“There were three of the Eumenides.” Cressida teases. “You could not take on the hands of fate alone, surely.”
“You do read.” Eloise grins. “I had assumed you would come with me. You have a witch-like temperament.”
“I shall take that as a complement. Who would we curse?”
“Could we not be good witches?”
“No such thing. My mama says witches make deals with the devil. Who would we curse?”
Eloise pouts. “If I had to…the queen, I suppose. Did you know she thought I was Lady Whistledown? The nerve. She could certainly use a good cursing. Make it so none of her wigs fit.”
Cressida is surprised Eloise did not pick Penelope (and a little disappointed.) “That is properly diabolical.”
“I do not think she has the stomach for minor inconveniences. Who would you pick?”
“I can’t say.”
“Now you must.” Eloise positions herself very winningly, head balanced on her chin, and just for a second, she looks just like Rina. But Cressida just shakes her head, because she is not going to succumb, not as easily as she would have before. “Oh, all right. I suppose it’s just foolish. But if you could do anything, anything at all…what would you do?”
“That is easy. I would go to the Continent, and live just the way I like. I would not rise until three or four in the afternoon, and I would smoke cigars like Lady Danbury, and I would go to the theater three times a week and bet a small fortune on horses, and I would dance every night away in a different city. Rome, Madrid. Vienna.”
Eloise chuckles. “That is…quite a way to live.”
“Don’t tell me Lady Bridgerton disapproves.”
“No, I like it. Would you go alone? Keep a lover for company?”
“A different one, in every city.”
“I should get jealous, I would think, of all your lovers, shut up in my cottage.”
“Of course, I would have to come back to your cottage, to bring you news of the outside world. A favor to a trusted friend. Witches alone in this world have few friends.”
“Is that what we are? Friends?”
“Of a sort. I rather think you are like Sappho’s apple. High, out of reach, but…tempting, to those of us who are allotted that luxury.”
“You have read Sappho?”
“Yes.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
“With Penelope?”
“Good God, no.” Eloise laughs. “By…” She blushes. “By myself. When everyone else is asleep. I like her words. She lets them dance before she makes them mean something.”
“You are a mystery to me.”
“Really? I flatter myself that I am quite simple.”
“Simple-minded, for certain.” But Eloise, rolling her eyes, ignores her. Instead, she lifts the hem of her skirt, and dips a pale foot into the water, and then another, eyes on Cressida, as if to dare her to follow. So Cressida follows her in, after, arms pressed together, hip-to-hip. It is close, but not uncomfortable, as the water moves across their toes.
“Is this…what you want?” she asks.
“Undoubtedly.”
“But you still think that I am Sappho’s apple.”
Eloise doesn’t answer, but keeps her eyes fixed on the sky above. Later, Cressida will not be able to speak about this moment, the two girls in the water, bodies pressed up against each other, heartbeats furious loud. It will quicken her breathing, when she calls it up, her lips pressed against the nape of Eloise’s neck, breathing in the salt scent of her. She will not know the way to dance the words, like Sappho, will instead prefer her silence. But for now, she keeps her eyes in the same place as Eloise, watching the sun drift behind a cloud, her former heartsickness a lifetime away.