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Chapter Text

Eloise did not suppose that her return to Society after nearly a year’s absence would feel quite so… heavy.

She meant in a rather literal sense, given that she had insisted upon a custom piece for her shawl that resembled chain mail—its composition at the hands of the master craftsman commissioned to create it having dearly cost her nearly two month’s allowance. She spent less than half that on the gown itself; her mother cajoled her into a fine lining of thunderstorm grey, with silver accents woven through the primary fabric itself. Textures aided the effect, such that Eloise was rather taken with the gown and the overall aesthetic—far more than she had ever been for any of her previous sartorial choices.

Her mother had insisted on a dropped hem, to which Eloise acquiesced (only because she knew that she would be sporting her chain mail shawl for much of the evening, as fine a piece as it were). Though, she supposes, the bill for the chain mail probably was not affixed to the shawl itself, but rather to the sword attached to her hip and dangling perilously close to her ankles. She had only been able to practice a few flourishes here and there over the past week, but in Eloise’s mind, it was all rather worth it.

She’d had to promise her mother she would dance no less than five times to even get her to agree to such an outfit for the masquerade, but they finally reached an accord. Eloise would dance, and say the proper things, and pretend to go about opening her third season with intention, as long as she could dress as Joan of Arc.

Eloise hoped the character itself would prohibit any bachelors from approaching her, given the wide berth her family had given her in the previous week as she practiced walking from room to room with the sword and scabbard slung upon her hip. Her hair was unbound, and the blunt, straight cut she sported made her feel perfectly attuned to the woman she was emulating, and less attuned to the innumerable ladies of the Ton who emphasized every ounce of femininity with softer curls and swirling locks.

Her costume would surely secure her a night of revelry with little interference from over-eager bachelors, as long as her mother could be held at bay. With Hyacinth still two years away from debut and Gregory preparing for Eaton, unfortunately her mother’s attentions were focused almost entirely upon her.

But not this night.

For this wasn’t just any ball—it was the masquerade ball.

Violet only hosted the Bridgerton masquerade once every five years. It was that grand, that opulent, that spectacular. Every half decade would more than suffice for the reoccurrence. It lasted longer than other balls her family hosted, with a full plated dinner at sunset and a departing breakfast offered as fires were lit on the grounds just before daybreak. Instead of limiting the invitations solely to the London set, Violet sent the notices well in advance, as a party of this scale could not be held within Bridgerton House.

No--this sumptuous display of decadent hospitality took place in the countryside of Kent at Aubrey Hall, stirring the staff into a fitful tizzy as Violet and Agatha Danbury drafted plan after plan, Kate’s occasional input reigning in more of their outlandish ideas.

“If you continue to add live animals, the Queen will simply think we are trying to outshine her zebras,” Kate offered measuredly, to which Lady Danbury had arched a critical brow, but nonetheless, nodded her agreement.

“But the fireworks are essential, of course,” Violet said.

“We are all certainly amenable to fireworks,” Kate had answered her, grinning over her cup of steaming chai and annotating the note within the estate’s household ledger.

And that was only one of the conversations Eloise had overheard. Much of the planning had taken place while Eloise was in Scotland with Francesca and John, which meant she had missed out on what she assumed were a handful of more tense negotiations between all of the women and her eldest brother, who could do little more than bow his head and open his pocketbook.

With Edmund still so young, Eloise could only imagine that Anthony and Kate had been more concerned with keeping their offspring alive than curtailing the wild imaginings of their mother in cahoots with Lady Danbury. Eloise had wondered if her mother tried so hard in an effort to create some sort of overwhelming splendor that might bewitch her two most headstrong children—herself and Benedict—into a night of romantic fantasy. Eloise did not hate disappointing her mother (she had rather gotten used to it), but she did not want to actively discourage her ideas, either. Especially when the event held nothing but magical nostalgia in her own mind’s eye.

At twenty years of age, this would be only her fourth masquerade; the third of which she might remember. She was undeniably excited. Especially after a year spent in Scotland, which was rather more lonely (and damp) than Eloise had supposed it might be.

The sound of rushing footsteps and a knock at her bedroom door tore her attention from where she regarded herself in the mirror, feeling a slight thrill at her appearance for the first time… perhaps ever. Most girls felt confident at their debut, but this costume, with the accessories she chose and the hair that she had a hand in styling—something about it felt complete in a way that made Eloise feel powerful.

“Make haste, Eloise!” Gregory called as he thumped twice more on the door. His voice had finally dropped to a level resembling Anthony’s, and Hyacinth teased him mercilessly for sounding just like their eldest, bothered brother.

“I thought it was practice for host families to be fashionably late,” Eloise remarked, swinging the door wide to find her brother’s eyes level with her own, a brown mask of leather obscuring the upper part of his face as he tugged his hood even higher upon his head.

“Here to steal from a martyr and return taxes to peasants?” Eloise chuckled, feeling rather excited that she would not be the only Bridgerton with a weapon at their side this evening. Gregory had upgraded his toy to a proper bow last year and had truly taken to archery, his Robin Hood outfit an intriguing choice as long as he stayed out of view from the Queen and her retinue.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, eyeing her outfit as Eloise handed over the silver mask to complete her look.

“Never mind. Can you you tie my mask, please?” she requested, partially grateful that Gregory finally had matched her in height, which meant that he could assist her in her own escapades but still had the youthful gullibility not to question her as much as he should. She turned round while he fiddled with the strings at the base of her skull, tucking the ribbons over the tops of her ears securely.

“What do you think?” she asked, twirling about as Hyacinth approached them both in the hallway.

“Are you done yet, Eloise?” she asked. “Mother sent me to fetch you both.”

“Mother sent me to fetch Eloise!” Gregory insisted.

“And you failed to do so, hence my presence,” Hyacinth argued, adjusting the transparent gauze wrapped round her eyes for her Lady of the Lake costume.

If she hadn’t been so insufferable in the weeks leading up to the party, Eloise might’ve complimented Hyacinth, who’d likewise matched Eloise in height and had slowly developed from her gangly, tag-a-long of a sister into another woman from the Bridgerton line. Eloise, however, wasn’t feeling particularly generous.

Two weeks previous, she had offered to have two swords made, given that Hyacinth’s character likewise should’ve distributed a sword to a worthy king at the evening’s festivities. But her younger sister was rather more concerned with the movement of the fabric emulating current and wake upon some non-existent lake supposedly located in Wales, and whether or not such fabric matured her enough to argue for an earlier debut (yet again). So, Hyacinth’s Viviane would not be distributing a sword to some Arthur tonight, not that Hyacinth was particularly well-versed on the Arthurian Cycles’ details. But she sure could regale Eloise endlessly about cut, stitch, and seam, despite the fact that Eloise had been plugging her ears and pivoting on her toes from the room with every further detail shared.

“Come on you two,” Eloise said, gathering up both of her younger siblings on either arm and preparing to march into battle for the evening ahead. “Let’s show the Ton exactly how marvelous a Bridgerton Bash can be!”

The warm glow from a what seemed like thousands of candles cast a lovely golden shimmer across the swirling couples on the dance floor. Eloise paced along the edges, observing, smirking, pausing here and there to chatter with those she knew and those she didn’t. The masquerade offered her a marvelous anonymity that all-but erased her minor political scandal from two seasons prior, leaving her the delight of the ballroom.

She heard the murmurings about the clever, outspoken Joan of Arc, the graceful way she carried herself in and out of conversations.

She had never once considered herself graceful before, but perhaps that was more to do with the state of the attendees than to any sort of natural grace she exhibited, even if she had been practicing a bit more on her posture since strapping the sword to her side. She recalled Benedict’s initial directions with balance and foundation and poise. It was not proper fencing, but holding a broad sword up at arm’s length left her muscles shaking and a firmness in her arms that she had not experienced before. The soreness was exhilarating in a novel way; and, it focused her wandering mind by attuning it to physical form.

Postures lessons had been a waste on her.

But fencing? Swordplay? Eloise once again lamented the fact that she was not afforded the same opportunities as her brothers growing up—she might have come into her own gracefulness far more quickly.

The Ton was abuzz, tittering here and there over potential matches with the upcoming commencement of the social season; discussing the minor changes Kate had made as the new lady of Aubrey Hall; whispering about characters whose identities everyone actually knew, even if those behind the masks behaved as if the others did not.

Eloise loved it—understood that mystery could lead to moments of drama more interesting than what gentleman was courting which lady—and how masks and outlandish fabrics allotted more freedom. Those who had never smoked cigars before could now partake, even if they were not known to be partial to such. Gentlemen too shy to approach ladies as themselves grew bolder with their suits, writing not their names upon the dance cards but the names of their characters, offering kisses to the backs of gloved hands with little regard for what the rest of the Ton thought… as if no one would ever know, behind the safety of the mask.

So maybe Eloise was enamored with the intrigue of it all, the freedom, the loosening of the strictures to which she had adhered for so long. The absolute wall-to-wall smattering of people, and the occasional comment that wasn’t so ignorant she felt as if she could jump into the conversational fray and proceed to decimate-placate-debate, depending upon the commenter and the atmosphere.

As a result of this good humor, perhaps she was a little… tipsy. Not inebriated to the point of excess, certainly not, she would never—except that one time in the gardens with Benedict and Colin, and the other time with Michaela in the library after the concert with the Scottish lords, and that night in the coaching inn on the way home, when she’d observed a band in a pub near the town square and had dragged John and Francesca along for a dose of revelry.

So, maybe Scotland had been somewhat lonely, but it had taught her that Scottish whisky was a lovely, burning distraction. She swooped behind another column and took a swig from a gifted flask Benedict had given her, the fraternal Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, still ringing in her memory from when he had discretely delivered the present to her upon her arrival back at Aubrey Hall.

She whipped round and waved at Colin and Anthony after slipping the flask back into her side pocket, then trotted through the crowd as the band took their first break for the evening.

Imbibing was fun! And harmed absolutely no one, given the state of the other attendees. Plus, her mother had been marvelously preoccupied most of the night thus far. Eloise had been able to lose herself to the sea of bodies lined up for the La Boulangere and additional Cotillion sets in the great ball room of Aubrey Hall. The space overflowed with gowns and glitter and the sheen of gentility teetering upon raucousness. One wrong move between a spurned suitor and an escaped lover could result in fisticuffs, which Eloise was not opposed to.

It would certainly make the night more interesting.

“And where have you been hiding?” Penelope asked, her pirate’s hat cocked jauntily atop the sea of red hair cascading over her shoulder.

“Me?” Eloise responded. “I have been nothing short of a social butterfly this evening. Was even called a delight by a gentleman—a delight! Mr. Caldwell said as much earlier.”

“Does that mean you have danced with Mr. Caldwell?” Penelope responded knowingly.

“Of course not, but I played the martyr rather wonderfully,” Eloise said, placing her palm atop the handle of her sword and the other over her brow, “claiming I did not wish to handicap such a fine dancer as himself with my weaponry.”

Penelope narrowed her gaze at Eloise. “You chose this outfit on purpose.”

Eloise shifted her shoulders and offered a smug grin. “Should we not all live our lives with purpose?”

“Your mother will not let you renege on your agreement to dance with potential suitors, Eloise.”

“My mother is preoccupied, or did you not see Lord Prine nearly choke when he inhaled the shrimp at the refreshments table?” Eloise asked with an impolite cackle. “She’s been overseeing footman for going on six hours.”

“But no longer, dearest,” Violet emerged, speak of the devil-esque fairy queen Titania her mother had decided to costume herself as for the evening’s soiree. “In fact, I just handed over the rest of the ball’s administration to Kate, per her suggestion.”

“Wha—what do you mean?” Eloise asked, shaking her head slightly and willing sobriety to return to her swiftly in her mother’s presence.

“Kate understood the massive undertaking of the masquerade, and how important it was to our family tradition,” Violet explained, smiling serenely at Penelope—who was doing a rather poor job of hiding her giggling from Eloise. “It had always been our intention to trade off the times of managing the whole event so that each of us would have several hours to enjoy it as participants, not hostesses.”

“Well, isn’t that… considerate,” Eloise grit out, her tight smile doing little good as she swatted at Penelope behind her.

“And I found you just in time before the third sets begin,” Violet smiled serenely back at her daughter, though Eloise sported more of a grimace. “Lord Martindale has asked after your time in Scotland. Perhaps you could discuss some of the things you saw there during the next set.”

“Ohhhhh…. I did not see much,” Eloise insisted. “You know. I was… reading,” she nodded, as if that would get her out of it. “—for so much of the time.”

“Lady Bridgerton,” Penelope interjected, “Might I steal Eloise prior to her pass on the floor with Lord Martindale? The Queen has been infatuated with her outfit for much of the evening. Eloise will certainly have time to dance the third set after midnight tolls.”

Violet cast a long-suffering sigh toward the clock behind the refreshments table, noting the hour at fifty past eleven. There had been half a night spent already, and Eloise could tell that her mother did not wish to let her escape so easily. But when it was the Queen who requested her presence… well…

“I will not be long, Mama,” Eloise promised, noting that the Queen’s dias had been erected near the exterior doors to the gardens. Running over scenarios in her mind, she wondered if she might be able to manage a sneaky escape after her majesty’s summoning.

“Your dance card is empty, Eloise,” her mother chastised.

“I’m not wearing my dance card,” Eloise said, twisting her wrists this way and then the other.

“Precisely why I know that it is empty,” her mother said. “You said that you would dance tonight, at least five times, no less, and it is nearly midnight.”

“I am merely… warming up to the idea,” Eloise said. “It is rather relieving that I have another six hours to complete such an endeavor for you.”

“Eloise,” her mother chastised, “surely you know this is not about me. This is about you. Is there not one person that you have spoken with tonight that could’ve sparked interest?”

“Interest? Certainly,” Eloise said, for she was interested in a variety of topics—politics, foremost, though travel, writing, oration, economic policy, an occasional diversion into artistic endeavors—these subjects all interested Eloise. But so did Gregory’s fascination with the Scottish grouse, but that did not rouse any sort of romantic feeling within her. “The queen is waiting,” Eloise eventually said, even though that is not the sentiment she wished to convey.

I am still discovering myself, Mama. She wanted to proclaim. Why would you wish me to give that away so quickly?

“You are my savior,” Eloise declared as she and Penelope pushed through the crowd and toward the Queen’s make-shift throne.

“Do not thank me just yet,” Penelope insisted. “Until you have spoken with Her Majesty.”

“Why does she wish to interrogate me?”

“She has heard how well you are performing.”

“Is that what these events amount to these days?” Eloise despaired. “A performance? Perhaps I should quit the Ton altogether and join up with one of those traveling bands of entertainers on the continent—the ones with acrobats and animals.”

“From what I can tell, she wishes to pay you a compliment. The least you could do is accept it from your sovereign,” Penelope countered.

“And if you have read her wrong?” Eloise pressed, grinding her response out of the corner of her lip as she and Penelope both approached Queen Charlotte’s ginormous skirt with two deep curtsies. “And she wants my head?”

“You’re the one with the sword at the moment, Eloise,” Penelope stage-whispered back towards her.

“Joan of Arc,” her majesty stated with no small measure of amusement as she and Penelope approached. Her lilt of amusement was indeed pleased, not cutting. “Our rogue pirate has been telling me of your escapades this evening.”

“They are hardly escapades of note, your majesty,” Eloise said, inclining her head. “Though if you have found some mite of entertainment within them I will gladly take credit for whatever tales Mrs. Bridgerton has shared, inaccurate as they may be.”

“Do you plan on leading any uprisings against the crown?” the queen cocked her head to the side, indulgent skepticism on full display after two glasses of champagne. It seemed even the Queen was not quite herself this night, even if she was the only one in the room without a mask.

“Ah, well, as it did not end very well for the real Joan, I do not think I have quite the confidence nor the skill to attempt rebellion of that sort,” Eloise replied obligingly.

“And what sort of rebellion might you attempt?”

Attending university was on the tip of her tongue, but as the clock struck twelve, a series of gasps rippled throughout the ball room, followed by one shrill scream. The queen stood from her chair in a rush as Eloise whipped about, her gaze captured by the queerest sight she had perhaps ever seen at a ball.

For there, striding through the middle-most set of the open glass doors that led out to the gardens, was a horse. And not just any horse—but a stallion black as midnight, its long mane trailing down to its knees, free of bridle, reign, or saddle, standing more than seventeen—perhaps even twenty hands high! The massive beast parted the crowd with little to-do, its slow gait utterly baffling as it clop-clopped across the marble ballroom floor. It snuffled hotly in the night air like a medieval charger lacking ornament, but remained utterly composed in its approach.

But what was even more mysterious than the sheeny onyx Shire was the… the absolute scandal situated atop its back.

A woman sat astride the horse, staring straight ahead and paying absolutely no mind to the queen upon the dais at her side, nor to the lingering stares of the many men and women of the Ton. Eloise could not remember her mother’s plans of such a spectacle, and, judging by the paralyzed look of fear etched upon her mother’s face, Eloise could see that this occurrence was not only unplanned—it was egregiously unexpected. She tried to catch her mother’s eyes, to no avail. She saw Francesca, whose mouth was fully hanging ajar as her eyes tracked the mystery before them. Eloise scanned for Benedict, but he was nowhere to be found. She saw her two youngest siblings, who seemed the only ones with sense enough to whisper to themselves.

Eloise felt her heart thud in her ears as she returned her focus to the scene, for this was no ordinary woman.

Her hair was auburn and fell straight down her—Eloise gulped—her bare back. The sheathed wrapping of fabric covering the woman’s breasts glimmered with flecks of gold, but it was obvious to all this woman wore no corset, no chemise, no… well, not much of anything.

The transparent costume clung to her slender, tall frame, covering what was absolutely necessary so as not to have her forcibly removed from the premises. If not for the weight of her unruly hair, flowing in untamed waves over her shoulders and partially obscuring her face, Eloise might have assumed this woman making such a brazen ride through the middle of a ballroom was indeed nude, caked in shimmering golden pigment with a coal-black stripe painted across her eyeline like some barbaric warrior—Boadecia, bare-breasted and hurtling head-long against the Roman legions.

The horse came to a stop in the center of the ballroom floor, its cumbersome movements echoing even amongst the swirls of fabric and upholstery. Eloise watched as the woman’s powerful legs squeezed the sides of the animal, signaling some silent instruction to her steed as his hoof clopped against the dance floor in time with the final chime of the Bridgerton’s family clock.

The last bell of the midnight hour.

Eloise was fascinated; not merely by the woman’s state of undress, but by the sheer audacity she had to enter such a notable family’s home with curious fanfare and yet—no fanfare at all. The lady was pulled by no gilded carriage; no footman assisted her dismount; and she was hardly dressed like she owned anything of note.

She was hardly dressed at all.

The only truly remarkable thing was the regal way she carried herself, chin held high as she slid from the beast’s back by tangling her long, lithe fingers into the mane of the animal and using her arms to help guide herself to the floor. Eloise could see the ways the woman’s muscles tensed along her shoulder blades and biceps as she lowered herself.

Eloise thought back to that moment where the muscles in her own arms strained in the mirror as she held her sword and arm fully extended. The tremor in her tendons, on the precipice between glory and collapse.

The strength was rather… captivating.

The woman circled toward the front of the animal but none could hear the murmur she issued to the towering horse, whose head dipped as she pressed her face against its long nose and seemed to hum some enigmatic note to him. With a toss of its mane, the animal twisted and trotted off, exiting the same way from which it came. Eyes followed the animal first, then turned back to the woman, who now approached the collection of nobility with her head bowed low and her step light-of-foot. In her full glamour, she dropped to one knee before the Queen, but not before locking her eyes upon Eloise for a beat.

A breath.

Eloise could not be sure, but she felt as if the woman’s lips twisted into an almost-grin, a small betrayal of her own neutrality.

One could hear the night birds singing in the gardens beyond.

The room was that quiet.

Eloise dared to look askance, taking in the Queen’s displeased features and the deepening scowl that boded ill for the mysterious lady seeking supplication before her. She knew nothing of the woman’s true identity, but if the masquerade character she embodied was any indication of forthcoming action, Eloise wanted no part in it. She averted her gaze toward the floor even as the ballroom stared viciously at the form crouched at the Queen’s feet.

“Your majesty!”

The Queen did not have a chance to speak before Anthony was striding across the floor, ripping his own mask from his reddening face.

“Please forgive this distasteful display!” Anthony bellowed, standing uncomfortably close to the kneeling woman. He flung a cloak over the back of the woman’s body before standing to attention as if before an Army General, his posture so stiff, Eloise wondered if he might actually shatter into a million pieces at the Queen’s word. “This was not a part of the evening’s festivities, and I assure you—”

“Your assurances intrigue me far less than our bowing guest, Viscount,” the Queen declared flippantly. “You may rise.”

Eloise would not look, no matter her temptation. Instead, she focused on the woman’s bare, dirtied feet, the way the gold seemed to be painted directly onto her ankles, her toes, and drifted off of her body like snowflakes from December clouds. The cloak Anthony had thrown over her back slipped off, pooling into a lump of fabric at the woman’s feet.

Another gasp crawled through the room.

“Your majesty,” the woman spoke, and Eloise could not place the accent. Not with only two words.

“Have you anything more to say?” the Queen asked. Eloise could see the Queen’s manservant—Barnaby, or Barry, something of that sort—inch infinitesimally closer to the Queen’s side.

“I have much to say, but nothing so important as to cease the celebrations on my behalf,” the lady in gold replied serenely. “I certainly did not intend to incur the Viscount’s ire.”

“And yet you have,” the Queen remarked. “And mine along with his. What sort of display is this?”

“No display, your majesty,” the woman responded meekly. “Merely a commitment to character. This is a masquerade ball, is it not?”

“What is she blathering on about?” the Queen muttered, only for Eloise to hear Penelope respond at the Queen’s side.

“She claims to be in character, your majesty,” Penelope explained. “Know you the legend of Lady Godiva?”

“What?” the Queen asked, just as Eloise turned her gaze away from the golden lady’s feet and over toward the pair of women at her side. The Queen stared down imperiously from her seat, but Penelope… likewise averted her gaze.

Eloise shouldn’t have been surprised. Penelope had always been well-read.

“Lady Godiva of Coventry, your Majesty,” Eloise offered. “Her husband, Leofric of Mercia, was cruel to his subjects over his taxation policies. She interceded upon their behalf, but no amount of pleading would soften his heart. Only when she rode through the town, unclothed, incurring shame… did he relent in his treatment of the people. Her body…” Eloise’s voice trembled as she gripped the pommel of the broad sword upon her hip, some sort of revelation taking place in the awkwardness of the moment. Eloise wondered how many ill-suited bachelors she might’ve had to dance with if she didn’t have a literal weapon swinging at her side. “It was her only leverage.”

Queen Charlotte sniffed distastefully. “And you thought this an appropriate costume for a masquerade ball?” she asked.

“I thought it an appropriate topic for the night, yes,” Eloise heard Godiva reply.

“Taxation?”

Eloise did not dare to look upon the woman, but her heart hurt as she felt the next words pierce the chain mail obscuring her chest.

“No, your majesty,” Godiva said. “Shame.”

Chapter Text

“Shame,” the Queen repeated, even as Eloise heard Lady Danbury clear her throat behind them. She had not noticed the woman approaching alongside the Queen’s manservant. “Of which you have none,” the Queen declared, awaiting the golden lady’s response at her feet.  

“Correct, majesty,” the lady answered blithely. “Not any longer.”  

“And why ever not?”  

“Heard you not the fair Joan speak before you?” Godiva returned, and Eloise wondered, simply from her tone of voice—a Welsh lilt underscoring a mixture of midlands and London etiquette (perhaps intentionally diverting?)—if she was smiling. Eloise could not tell, so flustered was she by being called fair from another woman before the entire Ton.  

“If the human form is shameful, we should not gaze upon it in galleries,” Godiva posited. “I was ashamed of my form, yet still undertook that fateful ride through Coventry. But, perhaps worst of all… if I cannot be shamed, then debutantes, Lords, and Ladies, bachelors, widowers, all—neither can they be shamed. And in that, they have no power over me. Nor each other.”  

“You are flirting dangerously close with treason, young lady,” Agatha Danbury spoke up at the Queen’s side.  

Godiva smiled, and Eloise felt something warm and unfamiliar curdle in her stomach. “As I am hundreds of years old and already dead, I cannot believe I could commit such a crime.”  

“Indecency begets arrest!” the Queen insisted.  

“If you must,” Godiva said, placing her hands before her. “But this night, I am Godiva, and I find myself amongst revolutionaries, highwaymen, pirates, adventurers, warriors… all who have made far more egregious affronts to royal sovereignty than a mere woman in her true form. Will they, too, be arrested? For pillaging the crown’s ships? And brandishing their blade against the Crown’s soldiers?”  

“You know that is not the same.”  

“In what manner is it not?” Godiva countered. “For if I rode through Mayfair unclothed, I would surely be guilty of indecency. As I am merely Godiva, a legend of Shame throughout the whole of Britain, perhaps Joan, too, a revolutionary, should be arrested and then burned?”  

Eloise dared take a step forward, compelled by something she could not name.  

“Or shall your Pirate queen, who has pillaged ship after ship of British commerce, also be hanged for her character?”  

Penelope gasped, and that was enough to spur Eloise into action. She drew her sword and held it to Godiva’s throat, her arms steadier than they had ever been in practice. Gentlemen moved in but did not fully approach, as Eloise’s jaw tightened while she studied the woman before them.  

“You will not threaten us,” Eloise said sharply.  

“If you believe logical reasoning to be a threat, I fear I may not accomplish what I came here for at all.”  

“Eloise.”  

Eloise heard Lady Danbury call her name from just over her shoulder, but she dared not take her eyes away from the woman across from her. Eloise was on two steps above the dance floor, holding the tip of her sword precariously against the other woman’s throat.  

She did not seem fearful whatsoever.  

Instead, the woman pressed closer against the blade, and Eloise relented the moment she saw the sword pierce the smallest sliver of flesh in the soft dip above the woman’s sternum, a bead of red blood blooming against the metal of Eloise’s weapon. She retracted her weapon as the woman turned her gaze back to the Queen, quizzically deferential.  

“And what is it that you wish to do this night,” the Queen continued cautiously, “if I do not have you carted off to the Tower?”  

“What anyone wishes to do at a ball, majesty,” Godiva replied. “To dance.”  

“And that is all?”  

“That is all,” the lady responded. “Though, the lemonade does look particularly refreshing, perhaps in between sets.”  

“Well, if any gentleman will have you…”  

No man stepped forward to claim a dance with the golden lady, and Eloise had to forcibly stop herself from taking a step forward in her silver slippers to stand at the woman’s side—if only to watch her like a hawk. It felt insane. Exhilarating. She wondered whether she truly wanted to run the woman through upon the tip of her sword, or dance with her for the rest of the night, just to glean some modicum of understanding.  

For Eloise thought she understood. Hypothesized as to what the woman truly meant with this display; this talk of shame in the Ton and the effects it imposed upon Society. She understood so clearly what this woman was attempting to convey, even if no one else did.  

“Forgive me, your majesty, but I think you mistake my intention,” the golden lady replied. “I have no shame, so I will not abide by convention. A man may ask for my hand, but without shame, I may reject or accept as I please. I cannot be shamed into dancing with a partner in which I have no interest.”  

“And what, exactly, are you interested in?” the queen continued with her questioning.  

“That which we acquire without communal shame,” the lady said. “Freedom.”  

“How will you be free, then? Though I caution you, your answers best be concise and exact. I tire of the inquisition.”  

“May I approach, your majesty?”  

“…if you must.”  

Eloise dared to allow her gaze drift up and down, cataloging the woman with no further embarrassment, if she intended to parade about thusly. But to be only a step away was even more salacious than the view of the woman from when she rode into the hall; more salacious even than holding her at her sword’s edge.  

The bands of fabric covering the swells of her breasts were gold-stained. Her abdomen was completely bare, and the gathering of fabric that rested upon her hips barely covered the woman’s buttocks and center, falling away in shredded strips. It resembled the crudest, shortest skirt Eloise had ever seen. Her kneecaps were round, her thighs muscled and smooth-looking. The way her waist curved looked like the marbled statuettes and life-size figures she had gazed upon in salons, but had never truly paid attention to. Eloise would look again once she revisited an artistic exhibit; for how could someone render in stone what she was too fearful to view in the flesh?  

Eloise gulped as she felt the heat from the woman’s body radiating through her own gown—she truly was so close. She could not recall the last time she had seen another woman’s stomach beyond that of her younger sister’s.  

Painted from head to toe in gold, save the black stripe of paint across her eyes, Lady Godiva looked completely alien and yet startlingly familiar. Her lips were peony pink. Arresting. She sported a cunning, beguiling tilt to her mouth that Eloise felt as if she had seen before. Eloise could not place her voice, but she was almost certainly familiar with that gait. That… posture.  

But where—where on earth did she come from?  

And why, why could Eloise not place it?!  

“Freedom comes only with power, of which Godiva has none,” the woman said. “So instead, I seek a dance with the most powerful person in the room.”  

The blood surging in Eloise’s ears stopped flowing altogether. Surely she did not mean—  

“—you, your Majesty,” Godiva said with a smile, and extended her hand gallantly as she dipped her chin low. “Would you do me the immense honor?”  

The crowd could not see the interaction between everyone upon the Queen’s perch, but Eloise just knew that if they could hear what was taking place, shouts of protest would ring through the hall.  

Queen Charlotte’s skeptical brow rose sky-high. “Surely you jest, girl,” the Queen responded.  

“I do not, your majesty. I am hopeful that you would dance with me, for tonight, I am Godiva, and you are… ah,” Godiva’s smile was blinding and affectionate, the way her black-lidded eyes tracked over the canopy of budding flowers, painted baby animals, and small, downy feathers arranged into the Queen’s towering wig. “Ēostre, is that right? You have always stated that spring was your favorite season. If we are not ourselves, what should stop a goddess and a legend from taking to the floor together?”  

“You are…daring,” the Queen offered, her cadence not unamused. Eloise looked back upon the Queen, marveling at the indulging set of her mouth and the slightest curve of a dimple upon her mature cheek.  

Bloody hell, the woman had pleased her.  

Queen Charlotte—notoriously particular—one might even state unrelenting later in life. Entirely diverted by a half-nude woman with the audacity of… of… Eloise could not even say!  

“One can afford to be daring,” Godiva replied. “When one is not oneself.”  

“And if I tire of dancing?” the Queen parried. “If that is all you wish to do this evening, you will need more partners.”  

“Of course,” Lady Godiva said. “I should hope to escort the dowager Queen Titania, our hostess for the evening, to the floor. If only to congratulate her on such a splendid event. I’ve heard guests raving about the shrimp.”  

“Haha!” the Queen barked, and Eloise could not tell if it was a true laugh or a bellow.  

Could not imagine her mother stepping in time and following the half-nude woman who had interrupted the party of the decade at Aubrey Hall. But as Eloise searched the crowd for Violet’s steady stare, she could not help but notice the high color in her mother’s cheeks, the wine glass in her hand, and Lord Marcus at her side, nodding as he chuckled into her ear.  

What in heaven’s name was happening?!  

“And who do you suppose the gentlemen will dance with, if you continue to dance only with women? You can’t solely fill the debutante’s slots upon their cards.”  

“Why, with each other,” Godiva said, as if it came naturally as breathing. “They, neither, are themselves this night. If they need to exchange words, do business, have out some sort of disagreement under the guise of other identities, then perhaps they should see if they can dance alongside each other.  We each of us might learn something new when we are free of ourselves,” Godiva’s eyes dipped downward in deference once again. But when she raised them, she caught Eloise’s gaze, and held it. “Free from shame,” she stated, and Eloise felt her chest roar with an untamed heat.  

“A compelling argument,” said the queen.  

Godiva offered a small smile, and turned her attention back to their sovereign. “I rather thought so.”  

When Queen Charlotte rose and gave Lady Godiva her hand, Eloise almost choked on her tongue. Instead, she gripped the pommel of her sword tightly, and pushed down the burning sensation that seared through her chest like magma.  

“Brimsley,” the Queen called out. “Have the maestro play the Sudden Spring minuet. I am feeling generous this evening.”  

“If you grip that glass any tighter, you are going to shatter it,” Benedict stated, grinning maliciously down at Eloise in his dashing highwayman costume. Notably askew, which Eloise was gracious enough not to comment on. “Lemonade on chain mail. Seems… sticky.”  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  

“You’ve been staring at our mysterious guest since she trotted into the room.”  

“Perhaps because I’m waiting for her to pull out a knife and hold it to mother’s throat, given her close proximity in the quadrille.”  

“From where?” Benedict snickered, even as she swatted him with all the strength she could muster. Which really wasn’t that much, laden with sword and lemonade.  

“You’ve been conspicuously absent most of the evening,” Eloise redirected, eyes flicking up toward the unkempt nature of his hair. “Excepting your interlude with that woman in white. You danced with her no less than three times at the commencement of the evening.”  

“Why on earth were you counting?”  

“Even if I do not care for courtship, and balls, and this whole spectacle, I still know what repeated dance engagements mean in this opaque societal language,” Eloise countered.  

“So is that why you seized the chance to dance with whomever you chose, given the lax rules with partners tonight? I heard mother’s insistence on five, and you’re more than halfway there… but I fear Kate’s feet with never recover from your slippers.”  

“She said no such thing!” Eloise insisted, thankful that her dance card was indeed full with three names thus far. It mattered not that those names belonged to Gregory, Penelope, and Kate.  

In fact, the lackadaisical rules for dancing partnerships instituted by Godiva’s conversation with the Queen for one-night-only had led to even more intrigue, more passionate declarations, and even more entertainment than any other ball Eloise had attended. She heard whispers of Lord Carmichael agreeing to the land purchase initially proposed by a Baron in Gloucestershire—a discussion which Parliament had quarreled over given a new poll taxation placed upon inland roads and byways running across estate lands.

There was a rumor that a glove was thrown, two Lords locked in something of a ferocious pas de deux that resulted in one demanding satisfaction over a perceived slight. Young Gregory had danced with no less than four different debutantes after showcasing his nimble footwork alongside Kate, and Hyacinth had all but metamorphosed into Lady Whistledown, Jr., affixed to Penelope’s side as she inquired after the men and women of the Ton making broad assumptions and intense discussions with their dance partners. Eloise thought she saw one man drop to his knee before a girl in a navy gown, but could not be certain—they had snuck out to the gardens and found the dark walk, alone in the night.  

“Nevertheless,” Benedict said, “I think you owe your Lady Godiva a measure of gratitude, given that you have only two more dances to fill with whomever you choose. The technicality has bought you time, but it will be sun-up in an hour.”  

“I don’t suppose you would extend an air of graciousness and be the fourth name on my card if I must prance about? And she is not my anything,” Eloise stated brusquely, turning her attention to the windows and the deep black of the sky beyond—darkest before the dawn.  

“Such a rejection!” Eloise heard over her shoulder as Benedict’s eyes grew wide and his legs beat a hasty retreat. “And I would hardly call what you do prancing, Lady Joan.”  

Eloise whipped around with her mouth half-open, ready to rebut whomever was behind her and to verbally accost Benedict the second she dismissed herself and went staggering after him, only to be met with an eyeful of gilt.  

Godiva.  

A light sheen of perspiration gleamed upon the woman's brow. A lemonade touched her lips, only to be removed so that she could smirk down at Eloise. Her gaze glittered with something that almost resembled fondness, though Eloise surely had to be mistaken.  

“I do believe myself to be yours, in some small way, at least for the rest of the night,” Godiva declared.  

“Wherefore would you think that?”  

“I wear your mark,” Godiva said, bringing her tapered fingers to the slice of skin still glistening red within the hollow of her throat.  

“Pffft,” Eloise replied, for she could think of little else to say that would not land her in another prolonged argument. She’d likewise promised her mother she would be civil, though it was taking all of her willpower not to launch into an intense debate with the woman at her side.  

Godiva sidled up close to her, hovering silently as they watched the rest of the room sway with a slight drunkenness and the onset of fatigue. Those with stamina enough would take to the floor for the final few sets before the departing breakfast, but there were a number of others who looked as if they were prepared to call it a night. Too bad Eloise still had two dance slots to fill before she could avail herself of that departing luxury.  

“You are not often so quiet,” Godiva said.  

Eloise cut a suspicious glance toward the woman at her shoulder. “You do not know me.”  

Godiva merely stared down at her, scrutinizing Eloise in such a way that made the roaring, overwhelming wave of heat return to her chest and the blood come rushing back into her ears. Eloise had stopped drinking ever since the woman had crashed the party, feeling as if she needed to be on her guard for some reason or another—even as the majority of the guests grew more and more inebriated, their movements uncontrolled, their speeches more daring.  

“Will you tell me about your costume?” Godiva asked, hand flitting out to motion toward the sword at Eloise’s hip. “For a woman who despises the opulence of a standard ball gown, your entire ensemble is tailored so exactly—it seems as though you had a hand in its design.”  

“How do you know that I do not like ball gowns?”  

“It is no secret that Eloise Bridgerton despises the marriage mart, and all the so-called frippery that accompanies the tradition,” Godiva said. “But it is Eloise who hates sartorial details. Joan of Arc insists upon sturdy chain mail, slippers that allow for ease of movement, and a weapon—perhaps not the weapon of words, this night—but a weapon nonetheless. I daresay it cuts just as deeply as your words can.”  

“Who are you?!” Eloise insisted, all but stamping her aforementioned slippered foot onto the tile below. “You waltz in here—”  

“Ride.”  

“—oh, forgive me, I do not wish to be inaccurate due to a technicality with my cutting words!” Eloise rolled her eyes. “You ride in here and turn this entire affair on its ear, giving the Ton enough fodder for gossip and drama for years to come, dressing in… in… practically nothing and completely side-stepping any accountability whatsoever!”  

Well, Eloise thought to herself. So much for civil.

Godiva merely shrugged, set her lemonade aside, and gazed back out at the dance floor, beginning to fill with the next round of dancers.  

“That was rather the point, Joan.”  

“That’s not what I—I mean, what I’m trying to say—” What was she trying to say? “You’ve only gotten your way because your face is painted and you’ve completely hidden yourself!”  

“There are a number of gentlemen and ladies who probably wouldn’t be staring at me if I was as ‘hidden’ as you claim.”  

“You know what I mean. Do not be intentionally argumentative and obtuse,” Eloise grumbled.  

“I rather think you enjoy an argument, if the flush on your cheeks is any indication,” Godiva dared to reach out and chuff at her chin, but Eloise snatched her wrist before she could complete the action.  

“I’m not—you can’t—! I am not flushing.”  

Godiva's perpetual smirk was exceedingly vexing, even as she rotated the arm in Eloise’s loose grip, and brought her warm—too warm—hand up to Eloise’s face, running her thumb along the line of bone that formed her cheek.  

“I wish you would simply accept the compliment,” Godiva murmured closely to her. Eloise could feel the other woman’s breath ripple along the bridge of her nose. “The coloring is so very becoming.”  

“Stop!” Eloise insisted, pushing her hand away as the conflagration exploded and spread from her chest to her stomach, her shoulders, her legs, her center, her brain—her entire body was on fire. “You can’t just—just—”  

“Just…?”  

“You are flirting with me!”  

“Very good, Eloise.”  

Godiva had the gall to wink at her, as if she were… as if they… she…

Eloise knew her mind worked faster than the average debutante’s, but she was wondering if this indescribable stalling of coherent thought is what took over her peers whenever forced into an interaction in which they had little control. She was not so much embarrassed as she was affronted, which irked her even more, for she recognized the irony in it all. For all her talk about throwing the rules of society to the wind, she was doing a patently poor job of maintaining the repartee for which she had been complimented on earlier that evening.  

“You danced with my mother!” Eloise finally managed.  

“And the Queen as well,” Godiva laughed, full-throated and unabashed and rather… well, lovely. But Eloise had no intention of communicating that observation.  

There was a moment… something incorporeal, an echo of a memory. So fleeting it was impossible to identify, but Eloise knew she’d heard it before. It was indeed a familiar tone, like laughter from across the room that pierced through the chatter of tea cups on saucers and fans fluttering in stagnant summer air; something in the back of her brain she had heard a dozen times before, but she simply could not piece the puzzle together. Was it a conversation from a season past? Two seasons? Something from earlier in her adolescence?  

And in all of that confounding foreign familiarity, why did Eloise find this woman cloaked in scandal so perfectly riveting?  

The entire evening had turned from delightful to infuriating, and compelling, and utterly maddening. And Eloise’s body was tightening and tensing in a way that had only happened once before, in a print shop in East London that she purposely resolved to forget more than a year ago.

But this woman invoked similar feelings of challenge and interest, even though she was a woman, and a complete stranger at that, so Eloise could ask nothing more than—  

“Then what on earth do you want with me?” Eloise nearly whimpered, turning her back upon Godiva and watching as the last few dancers took their places. “Besides to antagonize me to within an inch of my life,” she griped.  

“I said so from the start,” the lady whispered in her ear, over her shoulder, and Eloise felt the brush of the woman’s arm upon the exposed skin at her own elbow. She could feel Godiva reaching down, grasping her bare hand, and pulling her forward. “I care only about the most powerful people in this room. Dance with me, Eloise.”  

“I—“  

She was being dragged before she could protest, not that her body would let her. She could remember circumstances where she had, indeed, physically thrashed away; awkwardly shrugged from the hold of a gentleman; or fully pivoted from someone else’s grasp, but the connection between her feet and her brain didn’t seem to be working, because her ankles and knees bent to propel her into a forward motion, blindly following the golden girl to the edge of the floor.  

“Do not trod upon me,” Godiva chided, just as the musicians finished their warm-up for the upcoming set.  

“I would think you might fear that behemoth of a stallion you came in on more than me,” Eloise muttered to herself, not entirely out of earshot. “I am all but dainty in comparison.”  

“There is nothing small about you,” Godiva said, bowing to Eloise as the opening melody of the set began.  

Eloise was not one for dancing, especially something so intimate as a allemande. Her mother rather loved this dance above all others, for she and father would dance, dance, and dance until they tired with all the children toddling about in her youth. But something about the closeness—the complicated intertwining of arms, stepping right next to someone without the benefit of changing partners—the coming together and then moving apart… Eloise had danced this particular dance only a handful of times in her lessons, and never at a ball since her debut. She was lost in the memory of her lessons, until Godiva took her arms, and spoke closely to her as they made a turn:  

“You are thinking much too hard for an act that is more physical than mental.”  

Eloise could feel the pinch of her own brow; could imagine Benedict smoothing his thumb in that fraternal way of his when he, too, rebuked her for allowing her mind to take over something that he claimed should have been fun.  

“I do not wish to embarrass myself,” Eloise admitted.  

“You are dancing with a woman who has completely bared herself to society,” Godiva replied. “I promise, they are not looking at your footwork. Though if you dared remove that chain mail, your dropped hem could cause quite a stir, as lovely as you are.”  

Eloise did blush at that, but found that she had not missed a step since Godiva began their private exchange in the dance.  

“Dancing is a language, Eloise,” Godiva guided her, fingers brushing over patches of exposed skin that lit Eloise’s nerves like the fuses on those fireworks her mother would shortly unleash over the grounds. “It is movement, it is felt—it is not heard.”  

“I am not so eloquent as I imagined myself, then,” Eloise said, unable to take her eyes off Godiva as they circled each other, shoulders brushing and fingers, indeed, dancing and twining about each other when there really was no need for a hold in this portion of the steps.  

“I’ve never know you to be anything other than articulate to a maddening degree,” Godiva answered her. “And you are, you know. Maddening. Dazzling, really; with the reflections of light hitting all of your silver metal, and the way your chin tilts when you are puzzling out your next thought. The entire effect is… resplendent.”  

“Queen Charlotte was right,” Eloise started, leaving the air open as Godiva took her hand and they spun together, a swirl of silver and gold. “You are very bold.”  

“Thank you,” Godiva said, dipping her face closer to Eloise’s as she led them in a turn around another couple, two gentlemen seeming to have it out about the woman watching anxiously from the crowd. “That means a lot, coming from you. Especially after a prolonged absence from stimulating society.”  

“You’ve been gone?”  

“I’ve been… somewhat alone,” Godiva said, moving so that Eloise twirled under her arm as Eloise fell back into her hold, the pressure of Godiva’s hand between her should blades grounding her in the moment.  

“I was alone,” Eloise admitted, moving forward, moving back. “In Scotland this year. I thought it would be good to see more of the world, and yet… I find myself drawn to the same pages no matter the setting. Lonely, sometimes. I suppose through no one’s fault but my own.”  

“A rather depressing self-assessment,” Godiva responded. “Though I understand that consequences of one’s own actions, or choices… have a way of revealing things to oneself that one never supposed to be true.”  

“Exactly,” Eloise agreed, yet another commonality of understanding blooming between them. “It is almost a self-fulfilling—”  

“Prophecy?” Godiva finished for her, and Eloise shuddered when she felt Godiva’s chin intimately brush her cheek in a moment where she held her close.  

Godiva’s entire body came closer as well, moved around Eloise, and Eloise allowed her arm to rest against the other woman’s shoulder, flesh upon flesh. Eloise cleared her throat, unable to focus too much on the physical sensations without wanting to melt. Had dancing always felt this... hedonistic? The thrills firing through her muscles at every brush of contact left her slightly breathless.

“Earlier you... you spoke as if we knew each other well,” Eloise dared, feeling the sticky heat upon Godiva’s skin. “Do we?”  

Godiva was quiet for the next series of steps, squeezing Eloise’s hand, or her wrist, or allowing her eyes to roam over Eloise’s gown while deftly avoiding the swinging sword upon her hip the entire time they maneuvered about each other. If it were not for the murmurings just beyond, Eloise would’ve been totally transfixed—as if all that existed was music, breath, and movement. And Godiva swirling around her, making her blush.  

“I do not think so,” Godiva answered, finally bringing Eloise close to hold her from behind as their arms moved in tandem. “Not any longer.”  

Why was every answer even more cryptic than the last?  

“Tell me what you mean,” Eloise mumbled against Godiva’s cheek. Eloise could feel the tension of the moment coming from the other woman’s body… she may have been completely exposed in one way, but Eloise felt as if this woman, in her mystery, wore a different sort of armor.  

“Please,” Eloise acquiesced.  

They continued to turn and promenade, gliding rather more gracefully than Eloise ever had before upon the floor. The other woman was quite good at dancing, though where she learned the gentleman’s part, Eloise supposed she would never know. Eloise, in her own right, had mastered the art of moving about with the sword upon her hip, and felt so caught up in the enigma of her dance partner she hadn’t the time to grow anxious over steps or twists; over other’s opinions of her movements or their judgement of her partner. Four dances down, she thought. And not enough night left to spend with this exasperating woman.  

“You know my story better than you think you do,” Godiva answered her, as their pace slowed, and they took deeper breaths. “I was shamed for something I did, long ago, and was cast out for it. But being ostracized, away from all of this…” Godiva walked them in a circle as her arms came over the back of Eloise’s shoulders to hold both of her hands, embracing her so close from behind that Eloise could feel the press of the other woman’s front against the back of her dress. Eloise forgot to breathe as the last notes of the song played.  

Godiva dipped down and all but pressed her lips to Eloise’s ear.  

“My ruin freed me. And I am grateful for it.”  

All at once, Godiva was gone, two paces away and bowing in time with those who had danced the gentlemen’s part in the latest of sets, awaiting the other line of partners to do the same. Eloise’s knees could not bend. Her chin could not dip. Her mind was speeding past her like one of Anthony’s prized bets at the races, and none of it, absolutely none of it, made sense to her. So she did not wait. She did not curtsy, and she did not stay for the final dance she had promised her Mama. Instead, she took those two paces back and reached for Godiva’s hand, squeezing it once to communicate her desperation.  

“Follow me,” she said. “Please.”  

And with that, Eloise pivoted away, weaving through the crowd taking to the floor for the next pass in the set; side-stepping servants preparing the send-off breakfast; and moving through the familiar twists and turns of Aubrey Hall, seeking out the privacy that she needed for an impending interrogation.  

Chapter Text

“Get out,” Eloise commanded, her voice firm and unyielding.  

The woman pressed against the shelves in the corner squeaked, and the man with his hand round her rear grunted indecorously, readjusting his mask and smoothing a palm over his hair as Eloise moved further into the library.  

“Now,” Eloise said, as the couple made a hasty shuffle out the door, only to be brought up short by the ethereal figure that had followed Eloise into the depths of her home.  

“Lord Saunders, Mrs. Pardue,” Godiva inclined her head, and Eloise smiled broadly at the synchronized gasp the couple released at being recognized after their compromising interlude.  

Eloise was pressing a latch that released a secret compartment built into a console topped with figurines, a globe, a spyglass, and an astrolabe—Gregory’s various trinkets having ended up in the secondary library with nowhere else to store them. In the side compartment, tucked behind a travel journal Colin had taken upon his second trip to the continent, was a glass decanter filled to the brim with Scotch whisky. Eloise’s sobriety had returned, but she did not feel as if she wanted to continue being herself in this moment, when the woman she had danced with was clearly anyone other than herself.  

“Shut the door,” Eloise told Godiva, pouring herself a hefty serving of liquor. “And lock it.” 

“I’m not sure what you walked in on, but I’m not looking for that kind of scandal.” 

“I’m not offering it,” Eloise stated blankly, moving the glass to her lips for her first full sip in hours. “Though I am tempted to hold my sword back to your throat and demand your identity.” 

“That is not a terribly compelling argument if you wish for me to lock myself behind closed doors with you.” 

“And yet you followed me anyway, when you say that all you wished to do was dance,” Eloise countered, tapping her finger thoughtfully on the glass. Beyond the library, deep, echoing booms sounded across the northern lawn. The commencement of the fireworks display, Eloise supposed. And though she rather loved fireworks, there was something far more spectacular unfurling before her. 

“Why is that?” Eloise pressed, moving her glass back to her nose for another whiff of the alcohol. 

For the first time that night, Godiva didn’t seem to have an answer. Instead, she wiped the sweat from her brow, twisted the lock behind her, and moved further into the room.  

“Have you any cider?” 

“Not yet the season,” Eloise answered with a shrug, attuned once more to the random booms beyond the window.

She wondered if Godiva enjoyed fireworks. If she had danced beneath them, stolen away for a midnight kiss and found herself compromised beneath a shower of color. Was that the reason for her banishment? Her ruin? Or, was Godiva completely unimpressed by such things, having traveled to see auroras or other astrological phenomena that far outshone man’s meager attempts at entertainment?  

Eloise wished to know. To know everything.   

“Hmm,” Godiva answered, and stared at the liquid in the glassware anyway. “What is it?” 

“Whisky,” Eloise responded. “Would you like a splash?” 

“I don’t think I will enjoy it.” 

Eloise gnawed at the inside of her cheek, grabbing an empty glass with her free fingers and the decanter by the neck before moving toward one of the massive armchairs within the smaller room. Thankfully, the previous couple had sense enough to light candles even though there was no fire burning in the hearth. Godiva was dressed in half as many clothes but looked even warmer than Eloise, if the sweat on her face was anything to go by. 

“You’ve been sweating for most of the evening,” Eloise remarked. 

“Blame the costume.” 

“You’re not wearing much of one.” 

“The hair,” Godiva admitted. “It’s a wig.”  

“I should hope so,” Eloise said, looking at the too-long lengths that nearly bypassed the woman’s hips. “Seems like an awful lot for a maid to manage.” 

“Good thing I have no maid to worry with it,” Godiva remarked coolly, following Eloise and taking up space on the floor, knees tucked beneath her as she dared try to pour a mere two fingers of scotch into the glass. She gathered up the cup and stared into its depths, as if reading tea leaves. Eloise watched her with unbridled curiosity, candlelight casting shadows upon a severe jaw line and an elegant face.  

“Here’s to… hmmm,” Godiva chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “Living without shame.”  

Eloise clinked the glass with her own and took a large swallow, watching as Godiva brought the liquid to her lips and immediately grimaced.  

“Oh, it is foul!” she sputtered. 

“Then why on earth did you drink it?” Eloise laughed, feeling a momentary lightness overcome her. 

“I am not sure,” Godiva said, suddenly wistful. “I thought perhaps this ‘me’ might possess more of an affinity for the taste.” 

“This ‘you’,” Eloise repeated, offering a small smile. “Is it so separate from a previous you?” 

“Very much so,” Godiva answered. 

“Will you not sit upon the arm chair? Or the chaise?” Eloise asked, feeling strange to be hovering at the edge of the sofa, Godiva curled like a cat at her feet below.  

“I do not wish to ruin your furniture,” Godiva said. “This paint is… it can stain.” 

“What happened to living without shame?” Eloise checked her.  

“Shame is not quite the same as common courtesy,” Godiva answered softly. “Though it seems I cannot hold fast to my declarations… not when it comes to you, anyway.” 

“What on earth does that mean?” Eloise asked, still so perplexed and confounded she could not imagine what she might’ve done to warrant such a response from the woman at her feet. 

Godiva stared back down at the glass, screwed up her face, then threw the rest of her drink back with a massive gulp. She coughed, and hiccuped a little, and Eloise was just about to call for a servant to bring a pitcher of water when Godiva settled them both, placing her open palm on Eloise’s knee and shaking her head as she steadied herself. 

“There were moments when I envied you, Eloise Bridgerton,” Godiva finally said. “Moments like these, on star-filled nights in Kent, with the entire Ton at your feet. Actual fireworks, swirling about you and all you hold dear.” 

“Well, the Ton hardly stand in solidarity with me,” Eloise objected. “They were fairly quick to turn on me when I stepped out of line a couple of years ago.”  

“Yes, but you had your family to protect you, did you not?” 

“I… I mean, I suppose so,” Eloise thought back to that year in-between, a time when she’d lost Penelope, when her family had guarded her, when she had found some measure of restraint and kept her head down, acquiescing to ruffled sleeves and chattering with fellow debutantes that could barely keep up with her banter let alone any deeper topics of conversation. Well, there had been Cressida Cowper in that summer after, who was at one point admittedly engaging if not likewise infuriating, but that relationship ended poorly as well. But through it all—her political radicalism morphing into a beleaguered compliance to society—her family had been there for her.  

“As I said, I used to envy that,” Godiva stated, the gold on her skin shimmering in the cool air of the abandoned library. Eloise noted a small freckle upon an otherwise flawless complexion. A constellation of minute sun spots upon the other woman’s forearm. The way the tendons flexed, the articulation of her fingers with every inconsequential movement. 

Eloise knew it was lust, unfamiliar and exhilarating. Her desire to trace the points on the skin openly displayed before her was so overwhelming it made her want to drink herself into oblivion. 

Godiva cleared her throat when she caught Eloise staring. “But now, I know better.” 

“…used to?” Eloise tore her gaze away from Godiva’s forearms, daring to remove the clasp at her own neckline where the chain mail gathered together. The piece felt so heavy, and Eloise wished for a moment of cool. “Whatever do you mean?” 

“Your family will always be there for you,” Godiva explained. “No matter what scandal comes, you Bridgertons remain steadfast toward each other.” 

Eloise tried to tamp down the thrill she experienced when Godiva’s eyes watched her as she slowly shrugged out of the chain mail, the dropped hem Godiva had previously mentioned now on fully display. Eloise knew her chest was just as flushed as her cheeks had been.  

She did not shrink from the obvious appraisal. Not when Godiva’s sightline lingered on the open expanse of her skin, a gentle curve growing upon those positively frustrating pink lips.  

The attraction between them was untenable. Unsustainable, but conspicuous to anyone with eyes.

Impossible.  

Almost as impossible as two ladies dancing in each other’s arms before the whole of society. Or two gentlemen. Or a nude woman, drawing forth a grin and a chassé from the sovereign of the United Kingdom herself. 

And yet this night… there were no more impossibilities. 

“I believe that to be one of the more charming elements of my family’s nature,” Eloise returned to the conversation, not really seeing the other woman’s point. 

“Perhaps, but doesn’t it make you beholden to them?” Godiva questioned, dragging her eyes up toward Eloise’s face. “Do you not fear you will disappoint them?”  

“I have already thoroughly disappointed them, thank you very much,” Eloise insisted, taking another drink from her glass. Her head was starting to experience that pleasant fuzz, a slight delusion of sensation. Godiva's golden body shimmered with an almost hazy outline. “And yet… they still care. Benedict still—“ 

“Your unmarried brother, Benedict, yes?” Godiva said. 

Eloise didn’t appreciate the interruption. “Yes, though I hardly see what that has to do with—” 

“And you confessed earlier, did you not, that Scotland was not all you thought it might be? That you were lonely, despite staying with your sister, who, as Lady of Kilmartin, had other duties to oversee.”  

Eloise scoffed. “One year in a new location—with dreadful weather, mind you—hardly means that I am only relying upon the unmarried members of my family for company.” 

“How often did you write your dearest friend Penelope, and your brother Colin, from Scotland? Now that they are busy grooming their son to be the newest Lord Featherington, I’m assuming there were gaps in the letters that you received?” Godiva pressed, hitting so many points in a single declaration Eloise hadn’t the time to refute any of them before Godiva started up again: “A year gone, after a year in which you were arguing over that stupid Whistledown nonsense—” 

“You seem to know a great deal about my personal life to have traveled six hundred years into the future and all the way from Coventry, m’Lady,” Eloise sneered, knocking back the final gulp of her whisky. If the conversation continued thusly, Eloise feared she might strike the woman. Or worse… kiss her, if only to stop her tongue from rolling with debilitatingly accurate summations of her circumstances.  

She did not appreciate the look of pity in Godiva’s eyes. Not when she hid like a coward behind her costume.  

“I do not have a family,” the woman confessed. “But I do have my freedom.” 

“Is that what you call that shameful display on the horse—” 

“Once more, shame is a tool used by society to upbraid young women for independent thought,” Godiva cut her off, again. “You of all people should recognize that.” 

“I certainly do!” Eloise said. “And have first-hand experience of such!” 

Godiva offered a pitiable laugh, the cut of her chin glowing as a moonbeam struck her face from behind the panes of the open window, throwing the sharpness of her cheekbones into stark, skeletal relief. She looked terrifying in that moment. Beautiful, but terrifying. “And what repercussions have you faced from that shame, hmm? Truly? Name one way in which your life is different now, than what it was when you were eighteen and sneaking off to those political rallies in East London.”  

“That’s not—that is…” Eloise stammered, quick to retort but coming up with little substance so quickly. “The change in circumstance is neither here nor there! I experienced it and I—” 

“But it is, Eloise! It is the very heart of the matter!” Godiva insisted. “I cannot say that you did not feel pain in your shame; or discomfort, or sadness. But there are others who lose their entire livelihoods due to shame, because they do not have similar support systems. Women lost to love or infatuation find themselves with child before marriage are then shipped off, never to be heard from again, even though a man had an equal part in those circumstances. Women who dare speak out against cruel husbands, who are then locked inside of the their own homes, their allowances withheld, their movements restricted… any small measure of joy choked to death at the hands of the men who dole out the punishments society deems fit to overlook, merely because those men are members of the peerage.”  

“I—I know all of this,” Eloise huffed, wondering how on earth this conversation of discovery had turned swiftly to a philosophical debate upon the ills of society. If Eloise hadn’t been so aggrieved from their earlier interlude, she might’ve actually enjoyed the debate. “And I agree with you, a hundred times over, but I fail to see what your point has to do with me.” 

Godiva took a long moment to catch her breath before moving to her knees and rising to face Eloise head on. Eloise watched the woman’s chest rise and fall, the way moon and candlelight danced over her skin as she dared to reach out, dared to touch her again. Taking Eloise’s face in both of her hands, she ran the pads of her thumbs just under the edge of the mask Eloise had all but forgotten she was still wearing.  

She was close enough, the sensation foreign enough, that Eloise noted the feeling of a rough patch of skin upon the woman’s finger… a callus, perhaps? A blister burst and healed over? Eloise had assumed from cadence and posture that this woman was a member of the Ton, but the feeling of the soft skin from wrist morphing into something courser upon her hands… was this woman in fact a servant? Perhaps in another household? Is that where Eloise knew her from? 

Eloise held her breath, the piercing scrutiny with which Godiva regarded her unsettling in a way she had never felt before. The heat returned, beckoning Eloise to lean closer, to consume what little space remained between them and… and… 

Eloise allowed Godiva to stroke gently against her face, sat stock-still, fearful of what she might do if she dared to move. Dared to breathe. Godiva proceeded to untie the ribbon behind her head and removed the mask from Eloise’s eyes. 

“I believe your books call this… foreshadowing,” Godiva whispered. 

“What are you on about?” Eloise rasped, her fingers flying to the woman’s wrists and gripping hard enough to bruise. Smooth wrists, but there, at the heel of her hand… another rough patch of skin. Eloise allowed her thumbs to brush gently over her skin. 

Working hands. 

“Please,” Godiva said, leaning closer so that her forehead pressed delicately against Eloise’s own. “I fear for you… for your goodness, inspired by the love you have for your family.”  

Eloise could feel her lungs squeezing, the roil of the hastily consumed liquor churning in her stomach as her mind fluttered with wooziness. This woman, this unsettling magnetism between them, overtook every rational thought she might’ve formulated prior to this night. A legend was kneeling before her, nearly nude, just as she had at the beginning of the evening. Eloise felt the stirrings of a deep, recognized attraction, but what was she to do with it?  

And to top it all off, Godiva was chastising her for… what, exactly?  

Being too loving? 

“I fear you will martyr yourself to them,” Godiva finally breathed, tilting to press her lips to the fringe that covered Eloise’s forehead.  

Eloise gasped.  

Quiet, close. She felt her pulse thundering in her neck where the night air whisked across the fabric covering her shoulders—the air much too cool against her skin, especially when Godiva’s lips were a brand upon her forehead. Of which Eloise was now painfully aware. The overwhelm of nervous sensation was so suddenly onset, she wondered if she had ever been so aware of her body in another’s presence before. Wondered if Godiva had felt this very same way, aware of every inch of skin, tendon, muscle, joint, displayed brazenly for everyone, not the least of all… Eloise.  

She allowed her nose to sweep against the golden woman’s cheek, face just barely touching as they breathed each other in. Eloise smelled something familiar—a perfume? No, nothing quite so strong… maybe the lingering scent of a bath oil, or soap… but would a servant have access to such sweet-smelling toilette products?  

Godiva lingered near Eloise’s forehead momentarily, then moved to put her lips to the skin of Eloise’s temple before drawing away. “You are so bright, Eloise Bridgerton. Quicksilver in moonlight. I only hope that you will remain true to yourself, and not acquiesce to some version of society’s demands of women. Do as you wish. Not as your family wishes. Even as they move on. Even as you grow lonely. There are so many others who would relish your friendship; your companionship; your passion.” 

“What wishes do you suppose my family has for me?” Eloise dared to breathe as she turned her chin just slightly, her lips lingering against the other woman’s jaw.  

So tantalizingly close.   

“That you marry and settle into a domestic life that you have never wanted.” 

“And what makes you think I would do such a thing?” she murmured. 

“Because you don’t want the rest of your family to think you unhappy,” Godiva whispered. “For that would make them unhappy. When they are all wrapped up in their own lives, and the solitude settles in, will you have built something else that can sustain you? If that is love, then I wish you every success in the effort. But if it is marriage for the sake of appeasing your family and assuaging your own loneliness… I hope you will reconsider.”  

“What do you know of loneliness?” Eloise ground out, feeling her eyes start to sting again. She dared think back to Scotland, on the nights where Francesca and John were needed in Galway, when Michaela was off cavorting with others on extended travel Eloise hadn’t the foresight to schedule for herself.  

Those nights, in a castle with no one…her books hadn’t been enough. And her tears, and her fears… they had come, manifested against her will. Her family had always been big and loud and too involved and too overbearing and too interested in things that she was not, and yet… she really did not want to disappoint her mother, even if she could never be Daphne. Could never be the role model Hyacinth needed, or talented in an avenue society deemed worthy, like Francesca.  

Didn’t want her family to feel… sorry for her, as if her existence was something to be pitied because it was not the same as their own.  

Eloise could find companionship beyond marriage, but… was society constructed in such a way to afford that graciousness to a spinster? 

“I have been lonely since childhood,” Godiva answered her eventually, drawing back slightly. Eloise did not realize it, but her tears had come in the silence, and Godiva brushed them away gently, and pressed another kiss to her cheek. It felt as if some greater force had reached into Eloise’s thoracic cavity, grabbed her heart, and squeezed. “And there were moments of that loneliness that even I didn’t recognize. Now, though…” 

Godiva stared off toward the window, the first tints of a lightening purple sky winking out over the horizon, foretelling dawn’s breaking.  

“I know myself better than I ever have,” Godiva whispered in the closeness between them. “It took losing everything I had—and I had so much in some ways, and little to nothing in others. But that ruin… it revolutionized my entire being. I have read more, laughed more, cried more, learned more, in the past year, than I ever had before. And it took losing resources and scraping together my own to recognize I was never wholly myself until I found such independence. Understanding who you are, beyond a love match, beyond your family name… just determining what you want, Eloise, out of your singular, incomparable lifetime. That has meant more to me than every Cotillion lesson or abysmal etiquette tutor ever could.” 

“Everyone assumes I am fully opposed to love, though I do not know why it is so,” Eloise argued, a wad of granite seemingly lodged in her throat. Her fingers released the firm hold she’d had round the slender wrists holding her own head, moving her hands to smooth gently down toward Godiva’s biceps. Eloise was afflicted with something; she simply could not stop touching her. “I am not so naive that I equate love and marriage. It is the latter that I take issue with—that it seems expectant, or predestined, merely because of how I was born.” 

“Indeed,” Godiva nodded solemnly, drawing back further as Eloise’s tears stopped falling. 

Eloise caught her hand, wishing, inexplicably, that the woman would not leave so soon. When she caught her, Eloise looked down at her fingers, covered in golden residue, and smiled. 

“You have stained nearly everyone in that room with a gilded lesson,” Eloise chastised, moving her other hand to her own forehead and wondering if she had been baptized with sparkling paint. 

“Indeed,” Godiva leaned back languidly, but continued to hold Eloise’s hand. “That was rather intentional. I wished to… leave my mark, metaphorical as it were.”  

“Your mark?” Eloise asked. “So you might revel in the knowledge of your influence when you see them again overmorrow?” 

“I have no intention of returning to the Ton. That world is not real, Eloise. And, as you stated, you know that more than any of us.”  

“What mark might you leave on me, then?” Eloise dared to ask, low and desiring. “Even as we danced, you never touched me as you did others. You held me closer. It felt… familiar. As if we had walked arm-in-arm before.” 

“What need have you of my mark, or any?” Godiva questioned, smiling as she skirted her fingertips against the sword Eloise had discarded upon the sofa at her side. “When you ornament yourself in literal armor to keep others at bay?” 

Eloise tensed at the response, her anger flickering hot to the surface and manifesting on her tongue. “I am not intentionally standoffish.” 

Godiva leveled her with a knowing look. 

“Often,” Eloise amended, abashed. “I am not often intentionally standoffish.” 

Godiva ignored her correction. “I am more concerned with the mark you’ve left on me,” she said, pressing so harshly against the cut at her throat that the wound started to weep with dark red blood.  

“Don’t!” Eloise insisted, reaching out to wrap her hand round the column of the other woman’s long, lean neck. She pressed her thumb against the wound, holding firm. Eloise wondered, if held long enough, whether the pattern of her fingerprint would etch itself across the other woman’s skin in the sticky, hot blood.  

Her mark. More than a mark, really. 

A wound.  

“Where did you come from, if not the Ton?” Eloise asked, fingers pressing against the tendons on Godiva’s neck. “Where are you going?” 

“You need not concern yourself with such things.” 

“I don’t think you came here to dance,” Eloise dared to broach the topic. “I think… I think you came here to gloat over some past wrong. You getting away with such a great scandal, with no repercussions this time around. And you came to…to warn me.”  

Godiva blinked slowly, and pressed harder into Eloise’s grip at her neck. As if she wanted to feel it. Savor it. The pain of Eloise's hand wrapped round her throat. The pleasure... of the very same action.

“You have always been very clever, Eloise,” she rasped. “But the night is nearly over. I must take my leave.” 

The words didn’t fully translate—Eloise felt almost as if the night were endless, some sort of enchantment over the whole glittering affair: lengthening hours, quarters, minutes, and seconds. Strung together like lanterns in too-dark gardens. Like a line of thread, leading out of a maze. She wished it would last all the longer, just to live another life, despite knowing everything would eventually return to status quo.  

This night, though… held a moment of forever.   

“Wait,” Eloise whispered, staring at the blank space before her.  

Godiva had moved, and quickly, rounding the corner desk and leaning over the cushioned reading alcove to fling wide the window pane as she hooted—hooted!—like an overlarge barn owl into the open air.  

“Wait!” Eloise said again, scrambling to her feet as her mind worked to catch up with itself. She heard a lumbering sort of gait, unable to discern if it was her own leaden footsteps or something far beyond.  

Godiva hooted again, and the big black beast from earlier that evening came cantering across the lawn.  

“How on earth—?” 

“Mining draught horses are a marvel,” Godiva smiled as the stallion drew closer, lining himself up with the side of the building. 

“…surely you aren’t going to mount the horse from the windowsill?” 

“And how else would you like me to climb atop him, Eloise?” Godiva asked, reaching out to pat his massive flank. “And Samson is no beast; he is a consummate gentleman.” 

“Better than what we can say of half the dancers in the ballroom.” 

“Perhaps,” Godiva said, reaching for Eloise’s hand as she prepared to depart. “I wish you every happiness, darling Eloise.” 

“You cannot be serious,” Eloise said, wrenching her hand away from the polite gesture the woman was surely about to perform. “You cannot come in and turn my world upside down, and simply disappear into the night!”  

“…it is morning.” 

“You know what I mean!” Eloise rebutted, yanking Godiva back onto the banquet at the window sill by her waist. Godiva kneeled awkwardly upon the cushion fashioned into a reading nook at the window, her puzzled expression somehow both incensing and endearing.

Surely, the other woman knew. Knew what she was doing to Eloise. Knew just what running off before some resolution took place would leave them both with. Dissatisfaction. Lack. An unsatisfying ambiguity.

Eloise had stymied the heat all evening.

But in the morning light, she was due for an eruption. 

“Ruin freed you, did it not?” Eloise asked her, lost in black-lined eyes that Eloise had seen before. Often, fondly, and frustratingly.  

Blue.  

Blue and cunning and prone to action without fully thinking through it all, driven by desperation.  

Eloise had to be sure. She had to know. 

“Ruin me, then,” Eloise declared. 

Eloise cupped the back of Godiva’s neck and guided her down, pressing her lips into peony-pink ones tasting of salt and whisky. Her other hand dug into the giving flesh of Godiva’s waist, warming her palm like hearth fire at Christmastide.  

Her senses exploded; her emotions ran rampant. Eloise felt sated and wanting and totally out of control, a momentary awkwardness overtaking her action as lip mushed lip until something more natural occurred: she tilted her head, and with that tilt, her mouth slotted over Godiva’s upper lip in the most delicious suction, allowing a full, elaborate indulgence against the other woman’s body.  

Eloise pressed forward and breathed through her nose, inclining her head ever-so-slighty to encase her lips over Godiva’s lower lip, pecking and then sucking again, then alternating back toward the top with the most deliberate, indecent attention. 

When Eloise moaned and dared run her tongue along the seam of Godiva’s mouth, the other woman wrenched back, pressing one hand against the center of Eloise’s chest. 

They both huffed, the lack of air between them leaving them wanton, startled messes of makeup and costume. Godiva’s eyes flickered over the whole of her, and Eloise could feel that gaze on her skin like a physical touch. 

It burned, God—did it burn! 

“That’s not—“ Godiva gasped, “you said…”  

For the first time this entire night, Eloise finally had the woman on her heels. 

“You said you were offering no such scandal,” Godiva huffed out, so adorably flustered Eloise wanted to coo her comfort into the other woman’s shoulder. 

“I lied,” Eloise said, and pressed another kiss to the underside of Godiva’s jaw, just where the lines of her neck stood out, that smear of blood tangy like iron on Eloise’s lips. Something inhuman must’ve possessed Eloise. She wished to run her tongue over the wound; to taste Godiva’s vulnerability. “Give me the ruin you claim freed you so totally.” 

“This is…” Godiva groaned as Eloise’s mouth worked against her neck, and Eloise smiled into her skin with every swipe of her tongue. “…not quite the ruin I foresaw for you,” Godiva protested, but did not pull her away. Instead, when she buried her fingers into Eloise’s hair and steered her attentions back further up her neck, Eloise gripped the other woman’s shoulder all the harder. Godiva shuddered against her, and Eloise felt a rush of pride raze through her body.

“You’re a legend. Not an oracle,” Eloise countered, as they both came back together in another passionate embrace, humming into each other’s mouths and growing in confidence with pressure and touch.  

Eloise explored handful upon handful of the other woman, all the while Godiva succumbed to Eloise’s careful strokes, her sounds the first non-frustrating utterance Eloise had heard from her all night. It was the first time Eloise had ever touched another person’s thigh, or belly, or the notches along a curving spine. She was still fascinated by the roughness of the other woman’s hands, when everything else about her seemed so… not delicate, but polished.  

Delighted, pleasured hmms and gasps caught in Godiva’s mouth as Eloise allowed her tongue to brush against the other woman’s in a moment of pure, blissful insanity. She felt her teeth, tasted that whisky again, and the slight squirm of muscle, twirling about in the heat of her mouth as Eloise swallowed another full-on groan with the brush of their tongues. Godiva was sitting, her legs spread upon the banquet and her back arched sensually, as if to press herself even closer into Eloise’s hovering form. Eloise’s knee was propped between those bare legs for balance, allowing her to lean down and gather up red hair and what little of her heart the woman would share with her.  

The scent of hay hit her nostrils—Samson, Godiva’s only means of escape—but Eloise continued to press and murmur and take and touch, feeling more like Joan the Conqueror than she ever had before, sword or no sword.  

Samson whinnied as dawn broke fully over the grounds and Eloise’s hand slipped, tugging on Godiva’s wig to reveal a shock of flaxen hair slicked to the crown of the other woman’s head that quite nearly confirmed Eloise’s suspicions. 

“Christ!” Godiva swore, twirling with a deftness that surprised Eloise, the both of them panting hard as the taller woman extracted herself from the hold and clambered onto the back of the horse. She set her wig to rights, and stared down in awe at Eloise.  

“Thank God he’s big enough to block a window,” Eloise heard the other woman grumble, still unable to shake the image of long blond hair from her mind’s eye. Eloise watched as Godiva swiped inelegantly at her mouth, a smear of lint tint staining her cheek. 

“I asked for it,” Eloise looked up at her, a little wonderstruck.  

“What?” 

“The ruin.” 

Godiva rolled her eyes and tittered out the most obnoxious, vexed snort that Eloise had ever heard.  

She knew with a certainty, then. 

“Cress—” 

”I had more assumed you’d crop your hair and outfit yourself in trousers,” Godiva gathered up the strands of Samson’s long mane and threaded them through her fingers, turning him 180 degrees so that he faced the front lawn and the departing road ahead. “And sneak off into Oxford. Outperform all of your classmates. Fall madly in love with a married professor. Something of that nature.” 

“A different sort of ruin,” Eloise said, crossing her arms over her chest to accentuate her dropped neckline.  

As if she hadn’t learned anything from the woman on the horse in front of her. 

Godiva blinked, then nodded once, staring back down at the window where Eloise watched her, practically eclipsing the morning light.  

“Your hands,” Eloise said, before she could ride away. “What have you been doing that they have become so rough?” 

Godiva’s brows shot up, or at least, that’s what Eloise thought. She could no longer tell, in the morning brightness, whether the woman was smiling or frowning.  

“…needlework.” 

Eloise sighed. “Tough needles.” 

“Tough work,” Godiva said, cryptically. “Textiles are—they are their own art form, I suppose. Wool, and trade, and—it is no matter,” Godiva said, her face hardening as Eloise stepped up on the cushion beneath the window and placed her hand upon Samson’s back. 

“You cannot come with me,” Godiva insisted. 

“I know,” Eloise said. “Kiss me farewell? So I know—I’ll know it’s not a dream.” 

“You were kissed thoroughly earlier, Eloise.” 

“But I want more,” Eloise insisted, reaching out for her. 

“Don’t we all?” Godiva acquiesced to the hold of her hand, and dipped down to press a kiss against the back of it. As she did, Eloise smirked, and made to grab at the long, loosening, red hair that had slipped earlier during their heated touches. Godiva, keen to Eloise’s ploy, rammed her heels into the sides of Samson, and took off across the lawn, her long blonde hair streaming behind her.  

“CRESSIDA!” Eloise called, only for the woman to check up for a split second at the gate. She twirled Samson round with the practice of a woman who’d been riding bareback for ages—a year spent in Welsh exile having done much more for her development than whatever Eloise hoped she might find in Scotland. 

Alright, then.  

Challenge accepted.  

Cressida made another motion with her arm over her mouth. Eloise repeated it, an oblique, careless swipe as Cressida cackled and rode away, just as Eloise pulled her hand back from her mouth and found it covered in pink lip-tint and golden paint.  

“Damn,” Eloise griped, grabbing at whatever piece of her garment might reach her mouth to wipe the evidence from her lips. She looked down at her dress, but there was no denying it. She was a canvas of silver and gold splotches, blemished by mere proximity. Eloise supposed she could pass off the stains on her dress from the moments of their public dance, but her face? Her lips?  

Eloise peeked out the secondary library door, hoping to avoid any lingering guests or members of her family before she could make it back to her chambers.  

She only hoped she found a looking glass before someone else found her first.  

If only to see where the gold lingered, and the blood. 

And the ghost of Cressida’s kiss, seared into her very being.  

Eloise would find her—would discover her secrets from the Welsh countryside, even if she did have to cavort about in trousers and assume an identity and do all sorts of other ridiculous things to lay hands on that infuriating woman again.  

After all, she had one more dance on her dance card. And because Eloise had to tell her, had to make sure she understood… 

That the sparkle of ruin looked so very good on Cressida Cowper.   

And that was nothing to be ashamed of.