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“I’ll confess I’m surprised you’ve come to call again.” Cressida says, sounding genuinely surprised even as she gestures at Eloise to help herself to one of the sandwiches arranged on the serving tray between them.
Eloise is honestly surprised herself. But the season is drawing close to the end now and Mama has had enough excitement—and heartache—to allow Eloise more liberty over how she spends her time. She’s spent most of her time with Francesca, sitting in the library or the parlor while her sister plays her piano, interrupting her from time to time to tell her about what she’s reading. Hyacinth’s ballerina book is more interesting than Eloise anticipated, though she will keep her praise restrained less her sister become insufferable.
But today Francesca was in Benedict’s company, off to talk to solicitors, and Eloise, momentarily at a loss of what to do with herself, found herself dressing and walking to Penwood house. It was rather presumptuous of her, she’d admitted when Cressida met her. “I understand, I mean, if you have other commitments to keep or—”
“Please. The ton might be starving for a ball and a bit of gossip but no one is knocking down my door.” Cressida rolled her shoulders back, determined, the flowers decorating her sleeves rustling like real petals stirred by a breeze. “No matter. I’m in no rush. I’ll still be Lady Penwood next season.”
She might as well have been wearing a crown the way she set her head high as she walked them both into the sitting room, and Eloise admired her, her resolve and new-found patience. Marriage truly could work miracles it seemed.
They sit in a finely crafted silence for a moment, Eloise nimbling on the corner of a sandwich (apple and cheese, she notes, makes a note to tell Hyacinth later. Her sister is utterly fascinated by Lady Penwood, apparently has been since last season when she was the pinnacle of what an accomplished and fashionable lady ought to be. Until she wasn’t. Until she was sent away, single and without prospects, to Wales. And Eloise never even wrote her. She should have she thinks now. She could have sent at least one letter).
“Is your sister—” Cressida starts, stops, “Lord Penwood sent his condolences on the loss of Lord Kilmartin.” She holds herself very still. “He was so young.”
Eloise nods, taken aback. She doesn’t know why. It’s all anyone has talked about for weeks now. Even Benedict’s match wasn’t enough to overshadow the missing piece of their family.
Eloise clears her throat. “Yes. He was.”
Her eyes fill against her will and she blinks, startled.
“Eloise—”
“I’m alright. Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know—” She really doesn’t. For so long Eloise had thought that her sisters’ marrying would be a kind of loss, them going off to a stranger’s home and keep a foreign estate, stripping off the name of Bridgerton and taking on the mantle of another family. It hasn’t been the case of course. Daphne and Simon prefer to keep to the country with their ever growing brood, but they visit Audrey Hall often enough, or host them for weeks on end. And John had opened his home to Eloise from the start of his marriage to Fran. He was never a stranger, never an outsider who had taken her sister away. He was her brother-in-law, yes, but he was her friend too. Funny and charming and collected in a way that perfectly suited Francesca’s tempo, sweet and kind and full of ideas for how to better the country.
He had given Eloise a copy of Robert Burns’ poems with a simple, “Your sister tells me you’re a proficient reader.” She hasn’t finished it yet—poetry has never been her first choice of reading—and now she feels a kind of dread to reach the end.
“It’s alright.” Cressida says, “Charlotte,” She calls and a maid whose been standing near this whole time steps forward, “Some brandy for Miss Bridgerton, please.”
The tears take a humiliating while to abate, no matter how hard she tries, a fury of emotion whirling in her chest and erupting from her face. By the time the worst of the storm passes she’s thoroughly embarrassed. Cressida produces a snifter of brandy and a handkerchief, both of which Eloise accepts with a cringe.
“Everyone says Lord Kilmartin was a good man.” Cressida says gently.
“He was.” Eloise croaks, nodding her head and blowing her nose loudly. She sounds like an upset goose. “He was a very good friend. To me. And my sister.”
Cressida’s smile is small, kind, her pale hand warm when she reaches across the table to grip Eloise’s wrist over the cuff of her glove. It’s a gentle touch, there and gone, but the warmth of Cressida’s naked fingers lingers. “Friendship is the most holy band of society.” She says.
The words ring familiar, but Eloise can’t place them, not then, her head beginning to ache at the temples, her eyes itching. She can only nod again. “Yes.”
“So…you like Lady Penwood now?” Mama asks Eloise later, when she happens upon her in Anthony’s study, Burns opened on her lap.
Eloise picks at her fingers. “I’ve been thinking is all. I wasn’t a very good friend to her last year. That doesn’t excuse her behavior to Pen or anything but—I just think, I would like the chance to be a friend now.” She can’t explain why the picture of Cressida sitting alone in her pink parlor makes her want to rub at her chest. Cressida certainly doesn’t look upset in her new home, even if company is thin. Eloise forces a grin. “Besides, we’ll practically be family once Benedict and Sophie marry.” Cousins. The whole affair is absolute madness.
Mama nods, her brows pinched momentarily. “If you’re sure, dear.”
She read Mary Wollstonecraft because of me. Eloise thinks, pressing her lips together. “I think I am.”
-
Eloise is surprised when Benedict tells her they are expecting guests at Our Cottage. No matter what Benedict likes to joke, they’re hardly hermits out here. Between all the mess of siblings and close friends, there’s little want for company out here, especially now that Sophie is expecting.
“You wasted no time, I see.” Eloise said dryly when she arrived with Mama and Hyacinth to the sight of Sophie’s expanding belly.
Mama had reproached her in her usual warm manner, whisking Sophie away to ask how she’d been, Eloise happy to stay behind until the more intimate aspects of the conversation had passed. She got more than enough information regarding pregnancy when Penelope was carrying Elliot. In fact, there’s a great deal she’d like to forget.
“Worry not, sister dear,” Benedict had assured, “We’ll soon have company to diversify the conversation.”
The company in question was the new Lord Penwood, who, upon learning about an unknown country cousin, had made his introductions via letter almost as soon as Benedict and Sophie had set up house out in the country.
Oscar Ryu is a slender man with delicate features and an unguarded expression that her brother immediately takes a liking to. If he’s guessed at all about Sophie’s true lineage, it’s impossible to determine. He treats her with all the warmth and ease that Eloise has been raised to expect from familial connections. He’s not a reader like Sophie, but like his wife appreciates art and beauty in all forms.
“I am a great admirer of textiles.” He confesses after admiring the drape of Hyacinth’s shawl, a blue silk piece Anthony had brought her from India. This produces a warm smile on Cressida’s features, small and perhaps unnoticeable to the rest of the party before she lifts her tea cup for another sip. She catches Eloise’s eye. It isn’t the sort of look Eloise remembers from their season together, the quick, sharp glance Cressida would share whenever another debutante would make a mistake. It’s softer, kinder, the shape of her eyes the same as they were in the Penwood house when Eloise called on her. Eloise doesn’t know why she feels faintly bereft when Cressida’s attention goes elsewhere, engaging Hyacinth in conversation about ribbon.
Eloise’s attention is not so easily captured.
Her traveling attire is somewhat more practical than the dresses she wears in town, but it is still unmistakably her. Pink and ruffled and intricately gathered. After a season sitting in on Hyacinth’s lessons and appointments, Eloise feels better able to appreciate some of the details Cressida seems to prefer. Not just sparkle but texture, shapes, depth. There’s a particular kind of architecture, as intentional as the pointed arches inside a cathedral.
“Eloise?” Mama’s voice calls her attention.
“Sorry—I—sorry?” she laughs, heat rising along the back of her neck at being caught distracted.
“We’re moving into the garden.”
“Right. Good. Love the garden.”
“These are lovely grounds.” Cressida says when she falls into step beside Eloise, the two of them falling into a leisurely stroll along one of the paths that winds through hedgerows. “Uh, yes. Lovely.”
They take in the garden for a few moments in quiet ease. The silence is not uncomfortable but Eloise would have them speak. Would listen to Cressida speak her mind at least. It feels the polite thing to do.
“Surely you and Lord Penwood are looking forward to one of your own. Uh, a child I mean. They’re in fashion I hear.” She offers, congratulating herself for asking after Cressida’s own interests.
Cressida gives her a tight, brief smile. “Of course.” Then, after a second’s pause, she says, “Though if I may say, in confidence of course, we are in no great hurry.”
Eloise stumbles. “Watch your step, there’s a—a dip there.”
Cressida looks embarrassed, casts her eyes downward. “It’s just children do seem a rather large responsibility, don’t you think? And we’re only just married, and moved, and hardly settled. I haven’t even touched the large parlor or the library at Kellynch and I imagine hiring a nurse and a governess is quite a time consuming ordeal. And then there’s the matter of confinement when I’ve only just been freed and—”
Eloise places her hand on Cressida’s arm, stalling their steps. Cressida’s pale face was gone the color of the sea pinks Eloise saw growing in Scotland. It had always seemed a foregone conclusion that a married woman must be in want of a child. All her life, it was presented as the natural order of things. She’d seen her siblings, four now, marry and immediately begin the work of producing offspring. Even Kate and Sophie, whom Eloise greatly admired and adored for their many virtues and strengths, appeared to glow in the light of motherhood.
But Eloise still remembers how mother wailed when Hyacinth was born, how the servants scurried and her brothers fretted, all while Daphne tried to keep them all calm. Eloise had thought of Mary, the rector’s wife, who had died with a baby in her belly the spring prior and feared Mama would die too (just like Father, who was healthy and strong and the greatest man Eloise had ever known, dead and gone now). Daphne had slapped her mouth as if she could force the words back in.
“I quite agree.” Eloise says with every ounce of conviction she possesses. “There’s plenty of time for that. Later.” She takes Cressida’s arm in her own, joining them at the elbow. “Tell me, what are your plans for the library at Kellynch.”
-
The invitation comes on an unassuming Wednesday. “The Penwoods are hosting a ball at Kellynch.” Kate says, holding the sheet of pink-tinted paper upward for the table to see. There are flower petals pressed into the paper itself, Eloise notes with a smile. It adds a rustic but lovely touch.
Hyacinth immediately begins to plead with Mama to let her attend, though even in the country there's no way their mother would allow it before Hyacinth's been introduced to society. Kate smiles with the familiar mischief of an elder sister, catching Eloise’s eye with a grin before she says, “And there is a special invitation enclosed here, for Miss Hyacinth Bridgerton, to stay at Kellynch the week after as a particular friend to Lady Penwood.”
Eloise fears her ears will never stop ringing after the shriek Hyacinth emits. “Oh, Mama! Please say I can! A whole week!”
Mama laughs, rattled, “I suppose, if Eloise were to stay with you—”
“The invitation is not for Eloise—”
“Then you will have to decline—”
Hyacinth turns her beseeching eyes Eloise’s way and she can practically hear Anthony smirking while he reads his own morning correspondence. In another life he would be in a mood that it hadn’t occurred to their sister that she might need his consent to go.
Which is how Eloise finds herself not only in attendance at a ball at Kellynch, but with plans to remain the rest of the following week. Hyacinth still pouts miserably when she’s left behind upstairs, even with Kate’s promise to sneak back upstairs with cakes for her.
Kate adjusts the drape of the long length of plum-purple fabric over her shoulder, the golden bangles at her wrists clinking against one another as she moves. “Shall we?” She asks Anthony, who puffs out his chest and happily offers his wife his arm to walk into the hall. Eloise walks in behind them, Mama at her side, wishing, for a brief moment, that she could replicate the grace lift of Kate’s head, the confident way the fabric of her gown falls around her.
Eloise always feels like a fish out of water at these gatherings, even if country balls are less over the top compared to those held in town. Not that she expects anything less than spectacular from the Penwoods, who have put out nothing but nine-hour beeswax candles and every confectionery one could dream of for their guests.
There are a fair number more ladies in attendance than gentlemen, Eloise is quick to notice as she scans the room. No one seems especially upset about the imbalance, though it does mean that the men are in high demand. It makes Eloise laugh every time Anthony must part with Kate to dance with Mama or another one of their esteemed neighbors who want to take a turn on the floor. He always finds his way back to wife before too long, of course, though Eloise is waiting for him to drop his guard before she claims her own turn. It feels like the most appropriate vengeance she can take tonight.
She’s content to listen to the Bank sisters discuss their recent trip to Bath, and makes sure to ask about their favorite plays and concerts.
“Excuse me,” Cressida says brightly, appearing in a swirl of rosy fabrics, “I have come to ask Miss Eloise for a dance.”
“I don’t—”
“Please, it is my first ball—”
“You hosted one in Mayfair—”
“At our country estate! And I will have you dance! Come!” It is possible she’s imbibed too much wine tonight, but Eloise keeps that thought to herself, allows herself to be pulled towards the dancers taking their place. The musicians commence a lively Scottish reel.
“Oh!” Eloise tips her head backward with a laugh, “I actually know this one.” The pair next to them is the Clay sisters, who seem momentarily stunned to be dancing next to the new Lady Penwood. But the music soon soothes any nerves and they each move through the steps of the dance.
Cressida holds Eloise’s hand over the Clays’ hands as the four of them dance in a circle, and Eloise laughs even as her foot catches on the hem of her own dress when she turns. It feels less like dancing in front of an assembly of strangers than it does dancing in the hall of Audrey Hall or playing pretend with Hyacinth and Gregory when they shared a nursery still, Francesca playing her pianoforte for them.
Eloise is laughing even as they assume their final positions, and even Cressida giggles when they bow to one another. For a moment Eloise wants to do something scandalous like she would when she was younger, commit to the role of a gentleman because Hyacinth always wanted to be the lady. She imagines bowing at the waist, grabbing Cressida’s gloved hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it through her fine kid skin gloves. She wonders if Cressida would laugh again, call Eloise a madwoman or something similar, the way she would last season when Eloise went on a ramble about trousers for women.
“You’re far more graceful than you give yourself credit.” Cressida says sincerely, face flush with exertion. The moment passes. Eloise tucks the idea away. Another time perhaps.
Eloise hiccups a breathless sound, trying to control her own mirth, “Well, it helps to have such an accomplished partner.” They’ve moved onto the edge of the dance floor now, as another set of dancers prepare for their turn. Perhaps Benedict is right in choosing the country, perhaps Eloise will be happier if she were to settle away from the strict machinations of town.
Eloise fans her face with an inelegant flick of her gloved hand. “Shall I fetch us lemonade?”
-
It rains the second day Hyacinth and Eloise are at Kellynch, postponing all plans for a picnic on the grounds. “We can enjoy our picnic in the library.” Cressida says at the breakfast table, smiles at Eloise when Hyacinth visibly brightens in her seat. Eloise mouths a silent ‘thank you’ while her sister begins eating her breakfast with greater enthusiasm than before.
Eloise has been careful to watch Hyacinth more closely since John’s passing and that evening when her sister denounced marriage. Eloise can never forget the night Hyacinth was born, or the sight of the black ribbon trim one of maids must have added to her small cap and the dresses that had been worn by her siblings before her. Eloise can’t forget how Mama locked herself away in her room while Anthony made excuses for her absence, the wet nurse who cradled Hyacinth in the nursery while Daphne doted on Gregory. And still in Eloise’s mind the baby girl who came into the world on the heels of their father’s death is a different person from the girl who Eloise has watched peering from the banisters of Audrey Hall, fawning over Daphne and Francesca’s gowns and begging Mother to lower her hems. Another one of Eloise’s beautiful, sparkling sisters, finely crafted for the marriage mart, ready and eager to step into the role society has seen fit to make for them.
“You complain at length about all the ways society has reduced women to little more than wives and mothers yet you do the same to any woman who does not think as you.” Hyacinth had snapped at her after that first dinner at Kilmartin house, before she’d ceased talking to Eloise all together. “I like to dance and I like my needlework and I am excited to enter society and I am not less than you for any of that.”
Growing up has been a trial of learning all the ways she’s been wrong. So she makes sure to vocally approve of Lady Penwood’s decision to hold their picnic inside and when the time comes she allows Hyacinth to step inside first. There are pillows arranged on the floor atop blankets and the food has been laid out, alongside lemonade and biscuits and flowers. It’s a lovely scene and Hyacinth tells Cressida as much before she takes her seat.
It’s not the picnic that captures Eloise’s eye however.
The library at Kellynch is not just admirable in size. It is beautiful. There is a large fireplace framed by white pillars over which is an inset plaster cast of a greek motif, complimented by reliefs that adorn the walls above the numerous bookshelves. There are medallion portraits glided in gold on the high ceilings of previous Lord Penwoods. (Sophie must come one day, Eloise thinks, to see if her father’s likeness is up there as well.)
The dark walls Cressida had mentioned when she visited Our Cottage have been painted. Not pink like Eloise would have assumed but the pale bright blue of an early spring sky.
And there are books. So many books. The library at Audrey Hall has always been well kept, her father’s collection added to by Anthony and Benedict and Mother as well. Eloise has never wanted for something to read. And even she is impressed by the sheer number of volumes lining the walls here.
“What do you think, Miss Bridgerton?” Cressida asks when Eloise can no longer resist the temptation to openly study the titles on the shelves. Hyacinth’s removal to go fetch her needlework provided the perfect opportunity. “Do you approve of my renovations?”
Eloise laughs under her breath. It’s a familiar jest now, Cressida acting as if she is seeking Eloise’s approval. “Very much.” She touches her finger to the leather bound spine of one of the books. It’s soft, smooth, as comforting to her as a childhood poppet. “It suits you, I think.” She means it, looks at Cressida in this room and thinks she looks as much in place here as she did in the candle lit rooms of Mayfair, and infinitely more at home than she ever did at Cowper house.
Cressida’s face shines when she smiles, her ungloved hand reaching out to grab Eloise’s own. “You’ll be proud of me, I believe, when you see some of the books I made sure to bring along with me.”
On one of the shelves next to the fireplace, Cressida points out a small collection of books. Less than a dozen. But Eloise sees Wollstonecraft and Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole and Eliza Parsons. “These are all yours?” Eloise asks, touching one of the tomes.
Cressida nods, “My aunt was instructed to keep me under her watch but she didn’t particularly care to check what I read. Lord Penwood would bring me novels when he’d come to call. Have you read The Italian? Or The Romance of the Forest?”
Eloise has never read a great deal of gothic novels. Her governess said they were full of meaningless spectacle, and Eloise herself eventually got to an age where she swore she’d outgrown ghost stories.
“I haven’t.” Eloise confesses, feeling slightly guilty. “Which is your favorite?”
“Of these?” Cressida asks, then without hesitation she pulls one of the books off the shelf. “Emmeline. I was riveted the entire time.”
“May I?” Eloise asks, bold enough to extend her hand. Cressida places it in her hands with the utmost care.
She looks at the spine. It is only the first volume. She is a fast reader. She believes she can finish it by week’s end.
“It might not be to your taste.” Cressida says, a hint of nervousness in her voice. Her smooth brow creases.
“It is yours though.” Eloise concedes. “And I’d like to know what you like about it.”
-
The season brings them back to town. It is Eloise’s fourth season on the mart and she while she would have rather remained in the country with Benedict and Sophie and little Violet, the first of girl born to any of her siblings and Eloise’s favorite niece, there’s no escaping Mama when she has her mind fixed.
At least Kate and Anthony will be spending the season with them now, and Penelope visits and invites Eloise to her home and they attend the theatre and sit at ice cream parlors. There are balls and card parties and concerts and races and gentlemen who ask Eloise to dance. She accepts as many invitations as she politely declines, then goes home to answer Hyacinth’s questions about what she’s missed.
Simon and Daphne come when Parliamentary duty calls the Duke of Hastings and Eloise is surrounded by babies (though Auggie is not a baby now, almost four years old and somehow a tiny person now rather than an infant who constantly needed to be in someone’s arms). Bernard has begun crawling, and he and Elliot and Edmund babble at each other for hours on end, knocking over blocks and crying when betrayed by some invisible villain or incoming tooth.
“I’m taking tea with Lady Penwood.” Eloise says when she needs a respite, avoids Mama’s too-discerning eyes looking at her.
She has spent a good deal of time at Penwood house this season, sat with Cressida in her parlor or walked in their garden or in the nearby park. Cressida as Lady Penwood has become an escape from the pressure of the mart, a refuge from the very idea of finding a husband.
Some days it feels like the only thing keeping Eloise from going mad.
“What if I never want to marry?” Eloise asks one day, when they are outside, the maids out of earshot. “I don’t detest the idea of it—” She doesn’t. Not any more. She sees the happiness it has brought her siblings. Remembers the love her parents had for one another. She sees the liberty it has brought Cressida, who keeps her house as she likes and talks fondly of her husband who keeps his own rooms and spends his free time at his clubs and thanks her genuinely for each new interesting textile Cressida finds.
Eloise would need to be blind not to see the evidence of all the good marriage can bring to one’s life, but when she tries to imagine it for herself she cannot. Cannot picture a man with whom she would want to live her life.
“Everyone, my mother, expects me to fall in love with the right person and change my mind about everything but I cannot see how I can when I—”
Cressida’s mouth is soft against hers, and her perfume is powdery and floral, the fabric of her gown scratchy against Eloise’s bare arm. Tiny, glittering crystals that could cut into Eloise’s skin if she pressed hard enough.
Eloise freezes. She has never been kissed before. She would have asked Penelope once except for the fact that Penelope chose to kiss her brother and ruined the idea forever. She does not know what to do. Cressida’s hand is warm against her jaw, her thumb and pointer finger frame her chin, and her lips move, warm and damp, and Eloise exhales hard, shaky, tries to mimic the movement. She cannot say if she succeeds.
But something goes loose in Cressida’s frame, she melts against her, crowding Eloise into the nearby tree. Eloise doesn’t know what to do other than hold on, her hands clutching at Cressida’s sides underneath the fabric of her gown, steadied by the reminder of the solid real woman beneath the finery.
She’s short of breath when Cressida pulls away, her face red and her eyes wide, apparently as stunned as Eloise feels.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know what came over me—”
Cressida tries to step back but Eloise’s hands hold stronger, grip tightening to keep Cressida close.
Cressida looks flustered, overwrought, and Eloise doesn’t know what’s happening but she knows she doesn’t want to see that expression on Cressida’s face.
“It’s alright.” She whispers. She’s never been more aware of her own lips. Her own heartbeat. Her skin tingling all over.
“I shouldn’t have—I just forgot myself. I apologize, Eloise—”
“No. You don’t have to.” She shakes her head. Sometimes she dreams she’s woken up and begun her day. Dressed and had breakfast and talked to Mama, only to wake in her bed, disoriented and lost.
Now, she’s coming awake. It is a single moment’s work, but Eloise has always known her own mind, and suddenly the unimaginable future is knocked down and resurrected. It isn’t some unknown husband Eloise sees for herself. It’s Cressida’s face and Cressida’s smile and Cressida’s eyes, looking at Eloise like she does when Eloise says something she finds amusing.
Oh.
“I’m very stupid.” Eloise blurts out, tipping her head back against the tree. Cressida’s face creases, “No, I’m stupid, I shouldn’t have—”
“No, listen to me. I am very, very stupid.” Eloise says emphatically. She’s still holding Cressida in place. Cressida is allowing herself to be held. “This whole time—it’s been you. Right in front of me. I don’t want to marry.” That much remains true, at her core. Eloise has no desire to be a wife. And that is no great matter anyhow, not when Cressida is already someone else’s wife. But that fact looks so very small from where Eloise is standing now, looking up at Cressida from so close, the smell of her perfume in her lungs and her mouth still warm from her kiss. “But I love you.”
Yes. That’s the solution to the equation. This whole long year of being in company with Lady Penwood, of being Cressida’s friend. Her true friend and falling in love all the while.
“Do you mean that?” Cressida asks, awestruck. She’s changed so much since that first season, or perhaps Eloise has only just learned how to see her as she is, so much more than the vapid debutante that Eloise was desperate to avoid. Marriage has given her security and in that security the confidence to be at ease within her own skin. Eloise has been so happy to see it and now she knows that happiness has not been entirely selfless. She wants Cressida to be happy. It brings Eloise so much pleasure that is.
Eloise smiles, eyes filling, an emotion stronger than any she’s ever known before rising up in her chest. “I do.”
Cressida’s hands are upon her face again, though this time she is only holding on, only looking, blue eyes sweeping over Eloise’s features like she is committing them to memory. Eloise will let her look for as long as she likes, as often as she pleases. “I must have written you a dozen letters from my aunt’s home. But I never sent a single one. I didn’t know the words I wanted to say to you. None of them were right. And I know now it’s only because what I was trying to say is,” Her thumb is so gentle against the curve of Eloise’s cheek. “I love you.”
Her second kiss is a little less clumsy than the first. Eloise does not mind. She’s always been a quick learner.