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To say that Cressida Cowper has never had a friend before is somehow an understatement. She has been molded for male consumption since her youth, has been honed into the perfect weapon, a sharp, glittering thing, and every piece of her armor for social events—the gowns, the gaze, the glamor—repels women as it attracts men.
That is, it ought to attract men. And yet, again and again, Cressida fails. She cannot look at a man as if the answers to her life’s great questions lie in his eyes. She’s tried. She’s practiced. She cannot.
Every season sees Cressida spending more time on the wall, watching the dancers with an expression calculated to be the right amount of wistful but never jealous. She stands under the lights at the angle best positioned to draw attention to the gleam of her hair and her jewels and her gown, and she speaks to the young women who will make the best contrast to her, and she watches and she tries to learn.
Women adjusting their gloves and looking up at their dance partners with a smile that seems to run through their whole bodies; women sweeping around the ballroom, shivering almost imperceptibly when their hands meet their partners’; women clustering together on the edges of the room, giggling when the right man approaches them. Cressida’s attention gets caught on these smiles like a necklace on fine netting. The other young ladies tilt their heads, expose the long elegant lines of their necks, flutter fans to draw attention to their chests—all tricks Cressida learned early and learned well—and Cressida can’t look away.
When Eloise Bridgerton first debuts, Cressida seeks her out as clumsily as a man. The rejection stings more than the clear disinterest of any lord has, the hurt of it sharp and unfamiliar.
Cressida watches her the rest of that season, sees her clear intimacy with the Featherington girl—why Lady Featherington insists on dressing her daughters in colors that don’t agree with them, Cressida will never understand (but she oughtn’t complain, it being a mark against the competition). Of course Cressida cannot envy Penelope Featherington’s attire, but there is something she envies and cannot put a name to.
Eloise and Penelope stand close together on the outskirts of balls, giggling and whispering to each other, and Cressida sets her head just so and waves her fan gently and watches and aches.
Eloise Bridgerton ought to be avoided, and it is easy to avoid anyone in the summer. The Cowper estate is not far from Aubrey Hall, true, but that has never presented an obstacle in the past.
The thing is… Eloise Bridgerton looks miserable.
Eloise Bridgerton looks miserable, and when she and Penelope Featherington are in the same place they are as far apart as physically possible.
Cressida feels unbalanced in the summer, as if she’s gone slightly loose at the seams. For weeks at a time, she goes without new gowns or new acquaintances, and she doesn’t know quite how to act when there is no potential audience to be won over. So she accepts invitations anywhere, even if it brings her near the Bridgertons or the Featheringtons, who have now married two of their three daughters (and didn’t her mother have a lot to say about that , when it happened) and tries to follow the shadowy pull of inclination when she has it.
In August, she and Eloise are both invited as part of the same country party. Her parents stay at the estate.
Eloise’s invitation must have come out of a sense of obligation, for it is clear nobody wants her there. What is worse, Cressida can see that she is trying. For the first time, Eloise Bridgerton is trying to be agreeable, to be polite, and now it is doing her very little good.
Cressida does not think of herself as a particularly merciful person. It is not pity that draws her to Eloise, exactly. Rather, it is a sort of dreadful resonance, the sneaking suspicion that whatever is wrong with her might be wrong with Eloise, too.
Their first evening, Eloise asks politely after Cressida’s parents, and Cressida offers her an answer longer than the single sentence Eloise has gotten out of most people.
The next day, Cressida sees the way Eloise picks at her food at breakfast and steals a spare pastry, tucking it into a voluminous sleeve. In the late morning, just as the conversation is moving from stale to soporific, Cressida asks Eloise if she would care to take a stroll to the river for some fresh air. She knows Eloise is in dire social straits; it still rings as a pleasant surprise in her chest when Eloise says yes, something like hope in her eyes.
And just like that, it’s the beginning of something.
Eloise seems shocked that Cressida listens to her on those long walks in the gardens, by the river. Cressida doesn’t understand why. For one, Eloise is engaging; she has eight thoughts at a time where Cressida has one. And also, Cressida has been trained in listening to people for her entire life. She knows about agricultural methods, about book binding, about estate management, all because of a string of well-heeled lords. At least Eloise is usually talking about something interesting. She talks about the limited role of women, the injustices of the world, how much better things could be, and Cressida does not disagree. It all makes perfect sense to her.
In turn, Cressida tells Eloise how not to enrage people. She offers her tidbits of information about the conversational habits of various dragons known to lurk around ton ballrooms and walks her through various strategies for attracting or deflecting attention. Eloise takes to it quickly, as serious as a general mapping supply routes, and Cressida watches the furrow of concentration in her brow, the contrast of her dark hair against her pale skin and she is… charmed. Confused. Grateful, every day, that Eloise wakes up and decides to keep talking to her even now that society has begun to thaw toward her.
On the last day before Cressida is due to return home to prepare for her family’s return to London for the Season, Eloise knocks on her door after they’ve all retired, just as Cressida is going to ring the bell for her maid. Cressida looks down at her from her doorway for a long moment, observing the flicker of candlelight over the contours of Eloise’s face, and steps back to open the door and let Eloise in.
“I don’t want to go back to London,” Eloise admits into the dark of Cressida’s room, sitting on the edge of Cressida’s bed. “I mean, I do, but I don’t.”
Cressida sits down next to her. “In London, everything is real. We’ve been preparing for war here, but London is the battlefield.”
Eloise slumps. “Exactly.”
Cresside has an unaccountable urge to put an arm around her. Eloise would be warm against the chill of the evening air, she thinks. And Eloise in London, on the battlefield, may be a completely different creature. Perhaps her feud with Penelope Featherington will have dissipated along with the societal distaste for her. But Cressida wants…
Cressida wants to transform the massive sleeves of her newest gown into wings that she can wrap around Eloise Bridgerton. She wants to protect. Not to shield, but to turn herself to the attack. Cressida knows that she is a spiky, too-sharp, cruel thing, liable to cut and to hurt. She is structured and studied and strategic; sometimes she thinks she can feel the steel underneath her skin. And what good is all of that if she cannot pick something of her own? If she cannot turn it to some use?
If she wants to use it to keep Eloise Bridgerton in the long, desperate arc of her life, that ought to be her own business.
Instead of saying any of this, Cressida jumps back up and moves toward her dressing table. “Well, you are certainly welcome here whenever you like. But I simply must unpin my hair or I fear it shall all detach from my scalp.”
Eloise laughs and, to Cressida’s surprise, follows her up, standing behind Cressida, hands at the ready. “Why do you insist on wearing it so done up even in the country?”
Cressida blinks at her through the mirror. “How else would I do it?”
Eloise smiles and looks down, and it’s a new smile. Not an I’ve made an excellent point and you are going to have to shut up now smile or a thank you for being nice to me smile or even an I didn’t know you could be funny smile. This one is soft, almost private. Cressida catches it through the mirror and feels something warm through her chest.
Cressida has no idea what it is that Penelope Featherington did to hurt and infuriate Eloise, but she feels completely certain that it was horrible and worth punishing.
Cressida is a strategist. She surveys the field and develops a plan.
- Marry Lord Debling, who has wealth and reputation to spare.
- Let her husband travel as much as he pleases, to dangerous and far-flung locales.
- Avail herself of her newfound resources to bring a friend to the estate, to ease her loneliness in her husband’s absence
It is, she thinks, a sound plan. She has found, however, that people do not often like hearing themselves or others spoken of in such terms, as parts of schemes and strategies, and so she does not confide it to Eloise directly.
But Eloise Bridgerton is an intelligent young woman, and she has shown no inclination to abandon Cressida now that they have embarked upon the season once again. Surely she understands what Cressida means when she tilts her head and speaks of what a shame it is that Lord Debling travels so much, of how much she would miss the bustle and hum of the city if she were to marry and depart it. When asked, Eloise loans her books, speaks up, however clumsily, in her aid. Surely she can see how the game will be played.
Even to her, Cressida’s plan seems… not half-formed, but missing some crucial element. It feels as though there is a twist, another play, that she cannot see yet. There is nothing else for it, however. She carries on.
Cressida’s father hears of her association with Eloise and forbids it, just like that. The part of her that was raised by him, and her mother, understands it perfectly. Eloise Bridgerton has been seen to flout norms and deride the marriage market that Cressida needs so badly to do well in.
Cressida has always been a reasonably dutiful daughter. But this—this she cannot abide. She turns over the thought of rebellion in her bed at night, trying to put it in its place, to find the way that it makes sense. She can manufacture as many arguments as she likes (to publicly end a friendship could be just as detrimental as continuing it, Eloise has helped her in her pursuit of Lord Debling, the Bridgertons still have social sway and single sons…) but none of them quite define what she means.
The truth is, Cressida means to stay close to Eloise Bridgerton. She won't be persuaded otherwise.
Eloise Bridgerton walks through the door of the parlor during calling hours, and Cressida’s heart sings. Eloise informs Cressida’s mother that she is here to call on Cressida, a shyness to her polite smile, and it feels right.
Cressida read dreadful romance novels in the days before she was out, when long afternoons stretched into longer evenings. She never quite understood the appeal. Marriage was an economic proposition, and the forbidden lovers and the kisses in the moonlight and the secret weddings were good fun in theory, but such things could never be practical.
Now Cressida thinks she might understand. There is a beautiful woman in her parlor, and her parents disapprove, and Cressida finds herself wishing for a deserted field of wildflowers or a moonlit garden or the crumbling ruins of a castle. Forbidden kisses suddenly hold some appeal after all.
It ought to feel terrifying, horrible, scary. But Cressida watches Eloise slip through the door, makes eye contact with the shelf behind her father’s left shoulder, and feels something in her chest unfold its wings and soar.
Cressida is used to being strategic, to being cruel, to being selfish. She has the tools.
She has only been waiting for their true purpose.
Cressida sits next to Eloise Bridgerton and tells her that Cressida’s father will have to bear the continuation of their friendship, and she feels aglow with it, aglow and so perfectly aware of Eloise—the places where their elbows brush, the press of Eloise's sleeve against her arm, the good-natured heat of her. And even as she listens to Eloise, Cressida is scanning the ballroom, turning those tools to good use, ready to fight for what she wants, for what she has and realizes she wants desperately to keep.
Penelope Featherington and Colin Bridgerton disappear. Cressida consoles and flirts with Lord Debling with as light a touch as she can manage, always with an eye to Eloise, who flits around the ballroom and never seems to settle anywhere.
Later, Cressida watches Eloise slip into the hallway that leads to the garden, pausing in the moment before her exit to take in the room, as though looking for something—or trying to avoid detection herself. Cressida hopes that it is herself Eloise is looking for. She wraps up her conversation and follows Eloise out into the dark.
“There you are,” Eloise says when Cressida approaches her moments later.
“It's nearly scandalous,” Cressida hears herself saying, a shivering sort of giggle in her voice. “Being out here like this. If you were a man, I suppose I'd be ruined.”
When she glances down to see how this has landed, Eloise is looking at her steadily, lit only by the flickering light of a nearby torch. She gazes at Cressida as though she is an intellectual test, a puzzle of some kind, and she is very near to figuring it all out. It makes Cressida inhale; it makes her a little unsteady. It is frightening, to be so nearly seen.
“If I were a man,” Eloise says, speaking slowly, continuing the hypothetical. “I suppose I'd have to marry you.”
Cressida wishes she could smile at this; laugh, maybe. She wishes she could cast invitation into her mouth and some sort of beautiful distance into her eyes. Instead she has to close her eyes against a sudden wave of tears. “I wish you would.” She has to gasp for air, tries to grasp for any kind of reasonable addition, fails. “I mean, I wish you could.”
Suddenly Eloise's arms close around her, gentle on the sleeves of Cressida's gown, warm and solid nevertheless. Cressida folds herself down into the embrace and clings.
“Hush,” Eloise says quietly, “hush, don't worry, don't worry.” In between words, she presses delicate little kisses to Cressida's forehead, to the tip of her nose, to her cheeks, which Cressida only then realizes are wet.
Standing there, crouched over so that Eloise's arms can reach around her, so that Eloise's lips can reach her face, tears drying on her cheeks and her chin, a confession so deep even she does not understand it just beyond her lips, Cressida finally feels warm, feels safe, feels almost understood.
Two days later, Cressida's mother is invited to tea by Lady Danbury. Not two minutes after she leaves, a messenger arrives with a note from Eloise, inviting Cressida to call on her immediately. Cressida can sense a plan in motion, even if it is not her own. She takes the note so that the Bridgerton stationery does not incriminate her, fetches her coat, and leaves before she can think better of it.
Eloise greets her at the door, offers her tea and pastry, and whisks her upstairs to an empty parlor. There is something frenetic, almost frantic, to her; she is a whirlwind of energy. The bow in her hair, always adorable, is askew; Cressida itches to retie it. Still, Cressida doesn't comment on it until they are sitting side by side, stirring spoons in teacups.
“I don't know why you're nervous,” she says, trying to be arch. “You’ve managed everything very well. My mother is well occupied, and I am most grateful.”
Eloise turns her blue eyes toward Cressida, and they're dangerous, those eyes. Something in Cressida has always known it. Now, when they are wide and earnest instead of sharp and laughing, Cressida is defenseless against them. “You're right, I did contrive this. But I'm not the only one managing things, am I?”
Cressida blinks. She takes a careful sip of her tea, which is still a touch too hot. “I am doing what I can.”
Eloise plucks at a tassel on the pillow next to her. “Explain it to me, if you would. Lord Debling. Marriage. Me. How do the pieces fit together, for you?”
Cressida looks down, sees Eloise pulling at the strands of the tassel, captures Eloise's hand in her own. She keeps Eloise's hand in hers, watching as much as feeling the way their hands touch, as she explains. The marriage, the freedom it would give her, the way she wants to always invite Eloise into her life.
When she finishes, Eloise’s grip on her hand is firm, and her eyes on Cressida's face are intense, unblinking.
“That's really what you want?” She asks.
Cressida feels herself on a cliff's edge, readying herself for the jump without knowing what's below.
“I just think,” she says, then pauses. Begins again. “I just think that, well, I have been cruel and unkind and selfish. I am all of those things still. And you are often rude and impulsive and perhaps sometimes you think too much. But with you I have tried to be better. And for me,” she gestures at the sitting room, where she is only as a result of Eloise's planning and thoughtfulness, “for me you have stopped and planned and made nice. Those are things I would like to keep. We both of us have a mind for strategy. We could at least try.”
She looks up, and Eloise kisses her. It is not the moonlit garden Cressida daydreamed about, but Eloise's lips are just as soft as she imagined, and the thrill that jolts through her at the touch beyond any expectations. Eloise pauses, makes to move back, but Cressida lets out an inarticulate noise of protest and presses forward. Eloise opens her mouth, and Cressida moves the hand that is not still holding Eloise's to her friend's jaw, back to her hair, to the bow she's been itching to unknot. She licks into Eloise's mouth and feels Eloise's hand on her waist and feels finally free. More than free—she feels full of purpose, finally within reach of a future worth hoping for.
Cressida was built for a target, was molded into something shiny and sharp, meant to aim true. She has failed, again and again, to hit her target. But now she lets herself be hauled onto Eloise Bridgertons's lap and tugs at the ribbon in Eloise's hair and knows she can mold herself. She can make herself into someone who can have this.