Chapter Text
Eloise Bridgerton was an idiot.
Surely that was the only diagnosis. Gone completely mad from age, spinsterdom, and, perhaps most egregiously, Colin’s ramblings. Definitely Colin’s ramblings. Why else would she have spent the last day and a half trapped inside a stuffy carriage, jostled over every single rock between London and Gloucestershire?
And honestly, could the region not afford smoother roads?
She leaned her head against the carriage window, watching as gentle rolling hills gave way to the trees showing the first signs of their autumn colors. She tried not to think about how he’d once described this very view in a letter. The same letter that had seemed harmless enough to answer. The same letter that would eventually bring her here.
She wished she’d brought them. To reread. Again. Not that she needed them at this point. She had nearly every line of their year and a half of correspondence committed to memory. Still, there was comfort in seeing the ink, tracing the familiar slant of his hand. Somehow, the letters had taken on the shape of something…else. Something more than pleasantries. Something promising.
It had all started innocently enough. A quick note of sincere condolence for the loss of Marina, her dear cousin, and although they weren't particularly close, it was always stinging when a familiar acquaintance passed away.
It hadn’t surprised her when Sir Phillip Crane responded. Decorum demanded as much, though Eloise often found the rules of decorum tedious and outdated. What she hadn’t expected was a reply filled with such disarming honesty. Or that one letter would turn into two, and then a dozen, and then…well, here she was. On a carriage bound for nowhere and somewhere all at once.
She had laughed at his dry humor. Admired his scientific mind. Felt seen by him in a way that unnerved her because how could one who had never laid eyes on her understand her like he was able to? Was it friendship? Certainly. But perhaps it was friendship with potential. And that was uncharted territory for Eloise.
It bothered her immensely that she couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment things had changed. When the comfort of words had shifted into something charged. And then—his proposal. Well, almost a proposal. He had written: “I was wondering if you’d consider marriage.” Not so much a proposal as a theoretical inquiry into a major life decision.
But it hadn’t repulsed her. That was the most alarming part. It was the first proposal she hadn’t dismissed out of hand.
Had she even been wishing for it? No, surely not.
That was the real trouble. Because if she had, if she was wishing for it, then everything she thought she knew about herself was called into question. Her conviction that marriage was a trap. That husbands were an unnecessary luxury. That corsets were evil, well, no. That one still held true.
But what if she woke up one day and wanted a corset?
Much like she’d woken up one day and wanted a husband?
Not a husband exactly. That sounded far too broad.
But she had wondered if perhaps, marriage to Sir Phillip would not be quite the prison sentence Eloise had once thought the institution to be.
But then again, what if she was wrong?
What if - oh, gosh – she had imagined the chemistry entirely? The warm flush of connection she swore she felt through his words, the way his wit wrapped around hers like a kindred spirit?
What if it had been a one‑sided delusion brought on by loneliness, boredom, and an overactive imagination?
Because now, with the manor house in sight and her nerves tying themselves in maritime knots, one thought whispered louder than the rest:
Perhaps, I shouldn’t have come.
She inhaled slowly, the fragrant country air filling her lungs. No, she had not imagined it. He must have felt something too. Otherwise, he would never have proposed. Never would have invited her here to “see if they were compatible in the ways their letters suggested they might be.”
Not exactly the words of a romantic poet, but Eloise had never claimed to long for poetry.
She hadn’t exactly handled her departure with tact. But wasn’t that the nature of bold choices? One couldn’t make history while waiting for approval.
Then there had been the matter of her non -reply, or her RSVP to Sir Phillip’s invitation that never quite made it to paper. Hesitation had nearly paralyzed her. Should she go? Shouldn’t she?
It wasn’t until she told herself that visiting was not a commitment, that she could just as easily turn back if she wished, that the decision finally settled.
Didn’t she owe it to herself to at least meet this man? That was the argument she let herself believe when she began to call her motive into question at least. Showing up wasn’t an acceptance of his proposal - it was merely thorough investigating skills. And once she convinced herself that there was no harm in at least meeting the one man who peaked her interest in six years on the marriage mart, there was no reason to linger at Bridgerton House. She did want to see if what the letters hinted at could be real.
If it could be the start of something magnificent.
Or a mistake.
Or perhaps a magnificent mistake.
So deep in thought was she, Eloise barely noticed the carriage had stopped.
The door swung open with a creak, and waning Gloucestershire sunlight pouring through in brilliant shades of pinks and purples. The footman cleared his throat and offered his hand.
Eloise stepped down, smoothing her skirts as if doing so might also smooth her nerves. The grounds were immaculate. Precisely trimmed hedges lined a modest gravel path. Late-blooming foxglove, delphinium, and columbine layered the garden with carefully curated wildness, each color and fragrance thoughtfully arranged.
The house itself was less polished. A smaller manor, more practical rather than picturesque, though ivy crept up one wall, lending it an air of romance she was certain Sir Phillip had not intended.
The gravel crunched beneath her boots. The air smelled of wet stone and something earthy. Greener than Mayfair. And quieter. So much quieter. No chatter, no horses, no gossip. Just the steady thrum of her heartbeat and the dreadful realization that she hadn’t the faintest idea what to say when the door opened.
Would she curtsy? Shake his hand? Launch into a monologue about carriages and the absurdity of travel?
It was the 1820s, after all. Shouldn’t someone have invented a better mode of transport by now?
Would she remember how to form actual human sentences ?
She stood at the doorstep.
Lifted her hand.
Paused.
What if this was the stupidest thing she had ever done?
Which was saying quite a lot, given her history.
*****
Eloise paced on the tiny porch in the dwindling daylight. She was Eloise Bridgerton. She would not back down from a challenge. Even if that challenge was marriage.
Potential marriage, she reminded herself.
She wiped the sweat accumulating on her palms onto her muslin dress. Her mother would be mortified. For several reasons, most likely.
She stopped in front of the large, faded door. She poised her hand to knock, but stopped.
Perhaps she shouldn’t knock at all. Perhaps she should get back in the carriage and demand to go home.
Home felt like a lifetime away. And terrified as she was, Eloise knew with sudden clarity: if she returned without even meeting Sir Phillip, it would be a failure she’d regret for the rest of her long, spinster-filled life. And she could not live with that uncertainty.
She raised her hand again, intent on following through with the first of many momentous actions, but a voice – loud, demanding, and self-assured – rang out behind her.
“Who are you?”
She turned so quickly she nearly slipped, but didn’t see anyone immediately. Until she looked down.
Standing before her was a child. Judging from his freckled cheeks, height, and stature, a very young child. He looked about the height of her nephew Miles who was five.
“Are you lost?” he said again, tipping his head with narrowed eyes, as if trying to determine whether she was real or just some strange hallucination from a storybook.
“Yes,” Eloise answered. “I must be. I was looking for Sir Phillip.”
“Who’s that?” Another voice, this one belonging to a girl who appeared, quite alarmingly, from behind a bush.
“I don’t know,” the boy answered. “She says she’s lost.”
“You never get the full story,” the girl said matter-of-factly, brushing a leaf from her sleeve as if she hadn’t just materialized from a shrub.
She stepped forward, joining her brother. Now two pairs of the same dark blue eyes blinked up at Eloise.
“Who are you?” the girl repeated.
“I’m—”
But Eloise never got the chance to finish. At that exact moment, the door behind her opened, and the children’s expressions morphed from curious to perfectly innocent.
“You two should be upstairs getting ready for bed,” came the voice from behind her, deep, firm, and vaguely amused in the way only a parent accustomed to mischief could be.
“Oh, pardon me. I didn’t realize we had a guest.”
“Yes, we were just welcoming her,” the girl said sweetly.
“Well, thank you for acting as footman,” he replied, giving them a dry look. “Now, off you go.”
He waited until the two had disappeared back into the house, then leaned back slightly to ensure they weren’t lingering to eavesdrop.
“I apologize about that,” he said. “How may I help you?”
The man before her was towering. Eloise considered herself tall, taller than Daphne certainly (a fact she still offered up at every opportunity), but this man made her feel quite small. His sun-kissed skin peeked from beneath the rolled sleeves of a dirt-stained shirt, though not in a way that seemed unkempt. More like someone who’d put in hours of work on this crisp fall day.
His brown eyes, kind and steady, smiled at her with polite curiosity.
Eloise had never found herself in this position before.
Well. Obviously, she had never stood on the porch of a man she had written to for over a year, never met, and was now, somehow, considering marrying. But more alarming than the situation was the fact that she, Eloise Bridgerton, proud possessor of endless opinions and an unrelenting need to voice them, had absolutely nothing to say.
Her mouth wouldn’t move.
Her brain, which usually ran miles ahead of any conversation, had completely abandoned her.
She always had many words. Many glorious, rambling, occasionally inconvenient words.
So why, in this moment, had all of them vanished?
“I’m sorry, I seem to have the wrong house,” she blurted, latching onto the first semi-logical conclusion. Maybe the Fates were offering her an escape hatch. “I’m looking for Sir Phillip Crane.”
“I’m Sir Phillip Crane,” he said plainly.
“You are Sir Phillip Crane?” she repeated, her brow furrowing. Something about that logic didn’t compute.
“I am,” he replied. “May I ask whose acquaintance I’m making?”
The slight reminder of decorum snapped Eloise to attention. “I’m Eloise Bridgerton.”
Silence fell, heavy and thick, making everything move slower. They stared at each other, slightly slack-jawed. Phillip opened his mouth and closed it promptly, as if he was having the same trouble forming words, and more basically, thoughts, that Eloise was experiencing.
“You are Eloise Bridgerton?” he asked at last, the disbelief and speculation clear in his voice.
“I am. And you are Sir Phillip Crane?” Eloise willed her voice not to shake, to sound calm and confident—two things that couldn’t be further from the truth of the moment.
“I am.”
“There are tiny humans living in your house,” she blurted, wide-eyed, the observation striking her only now.
At the same time, Phillip replied, “You cannot be Eloise Bridgerton.”
“Why, pray tell, is the validity of my identity so unbelievable?” she demanded, though she too was beginning to question everything, right down to her own existence.
“The Eloise Bridgerton I’ve spent the last eighteen months corresponding with said she was a woman of eight and twenty. Set on the path to spinsterdom. You don’t exactly look—spinstery.”
“What exactly does ‘spinstery’ look like?”
“Not like you,” he admitted, sounding almost awed. There was something in his tone that made Eloise think it was the good kind of disbelief, like when you pluck a book off the shelf at random, open the pages, and quickly discover a novel so engrossing and delightful that you finish the whole thing before it’s time for luncheon. A novel that grows to consume your waking thoughts for the next fortnight, one that challenges your preconceived notions but coddles those essential truths.
“Well, I am she. And anyway, how am I to be certain that you are Sir Phillip Crane?” she shot back.
“What leads you to believe I’m not?”
“Well, as I mentioned previously, the tiny humans.”
“Tiny humans?” he echoed, circling back to her original accusation. His brows knit together, the kind of expression one makes when trying to do difficult arithmetic.
“Two of them.”
“My children?”
“Ah. They belong to you,” she said, matter-of-factly. Eloise couldn’t risk not getting the facts straight.
“I should hope so,” he replied just as quickly, his voice matching her wit with a spark of his own.
“I just wasn’t sure, since you failed to mention them in your letters.”
“Surely you’re mistaken. I must have mentioned them.”
“I have an incredible memory. Possibly the best you’ll ever encounter. For example, in your third letter, second paragraph, you mentioned your fondness for a mare named Merriweather. In your sixth letter, you said you disliked fish—the food, not the creature—but were quite fond of koi ponds. In your—”
“Okay,” Phillip interrupted, “You’ve made your point. You have an excellent memory. Perhaps you could use that memory to remind me when you accepted my invitation.”
“There was nothing about children,” she stated again. As if the simple omission could still count in her favor. “And I’m accepting it now. In person.” That was a lie. She could not possibly begin to wrap her mind around the two tiny humans – no, it was worse, children – who now came as a package deal with this proposal. She would deal with that later.
“In person?” he echoed. “I must not have gotten around to writing about them.”
“You wrote very long letters.”
“I apologize?”
“You wrote very long letters but forgot to mention your children.”
“You wrote very long letters but forgot to mention you were coming.”
“It would appear we have that much in common. You did not also forget that you proposed?” Eloise asked, growing bolder.
“Hypothetically proposed,” he countered. “And no. I have relived that fact every day for the last four weeks while waiting for your response.”
“Hypothetically proposed,” she amended, willing herself not to smile. As silly as it was, stepping into an immediate tête-à-tête with someone nearly made her feel at home.
“You did not forget that decorum typically dictates that a proposal deserves a response?”
“I did not, though seeing as how this was a hypothetical proposal, as you put it, I’m not sure the rules apply. And I do despise decorum.”
At that, Sir Phillip smiled. “Your letters did reveal that much.”
Eloise straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and tilted her chin in the way her siblings often mistook for arrogance, but which Kate had once correctly identified as fear dressed in defiance.
"Well," she said, brushing an invisible speck of dirt from her dress. "This has been…enlightening."
"I'm not sure if that is a compliment or an insult," Phillip pondered.
“Neither am I,” she admitted. “But at any rate, I think I shall be off.”
“Off?” His brows rose. “Off where?”
“Back to Mayfair, I suppose.”
He hesitated. “Miss Bridgerton…is it my children?”
“You didn’t mention them in your letters,” she repeated. It was the only argument she could hold onto in the moment.
“I know. And I regret that. But I understood it would…change things.”
“Such as the conditions of a hypothetical proposal.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, though his expression tightened.
He paused, then tried again. “You can’t leave tonight.”
“I can’t?” she asked, the slight raise of her brow ready to challenge any command.
“I only meant,” he began, took a calming breath and tried again. “It is already late. The nearest inn is fifteen miles away. I could not, in good conscience, send you off into the night to fend for yourself when I have a perfectly good guestroom right here.”
“I can assure you, I am quite capable of fending for myself.”
“Of that I have no doubt. But still I would not be able to.”
Eloise chewed her lip, a habit her mother had spent years trying to break. Perhaps staying the night wouldn’t be the worst idea. She was exhausted, after all, and the thought of another fifteen miles in a carriage only to stay at an inn was…less than ideal. And staying one night did not mean she was accepting his proposal. She could sleep, tick meet the man from the letters off her list, and still be back in Mayfair by tomorrow evening. Her family need never know she had almost married a man who neglected to mention he had two children.
“Alright,” she said at last. “I’ll stay for the night. But then I must really be on my way.”