Author's Note: Set during Season 1, this was partially inspired by reading (and being incredibly frustrated by) The Luxe series. I've incorporated a few of my favourite characters from those books, but you don't need to have read them.
Eleanor Waldorf was unobservant. It was a defence mechanism – her life had become far too complicated in recent years, since she'd been abandoned to face humiliation alone. Harold, the little weasel, had escaped to France and nicely avoided becoming a pariah from New York's upper crust. Of course he'd helpfully stuck around long enough to drag the centuries old Waldorf name through the mud and destroy the reputation of those who still bore it. She should have known he was a no-hoper when she married him, and now the passage of twenty years meant she couldn't even reclaim her Astor heritage and leave his disgrace behind her like she wanted to. Then there was her child to think about, poor Blair carried no Astor in her name, only the tainted paternal line.
Eleanor therefore had to be determined. You weren't bred from twelve generations of New York elite without beauty, brains and sly brawn. She took what she had – her fashion house – and made sure it was equipped to save the remaining Waldorfs. Eleanor Waldorf Designs would stand on its own, claim the name back as a brand until this scandal was forgotten, and people thought success when they heard the name Waldorf. She was absolutely resolute, and in this quest the growing business consumed her creative and emotional attentions to the point where she forgot the other remaining Waldorf whose fate depended on her success.
If the business fell apart then Eleanor's life fell apart. When she had a few minutes to think about something else she would ensure there was a demand on her attention, like a soiree that required meticulous planning. The crux of her plan was to stay away from the happy home she'd once shared with her best friend, the one who had also played her husband. Dorota was promoted from nanny as she'd shown herself a competent housekeeper and Blair was no longer a child. The Polish maid now ran the opulent apartment on Park quite competently.
Eleanor was glad she could at least afford the luxury of staying away. She wondered how her grandmother had coped, freshly married off from the Jones family in the midst of the Great Depression.
Sinking back into the seat of her town car, she thought about that woman she was descended from. Eight decades ago Diana, the youngest daughter of Louisa Jones had impulsively wed the least suitable of all her beaux. Eleanor smiled, remembering the early pictures of the dashing but penniless Henry, her grandfather. At that stage in the century his father's excesses had left him with little of worth beyond the family name. The New York legend still stood that the Jones-Astor pair had been merely tolerated by society at the outset of their marriage. Diana was pitied for choosing a fiancé so below her expectations, Henry for falling so far he was almost middle class. But together they'd recovered the fortune and more, so that each of their three living children was bequeathed more wealth than the Astor family had seen since their arrival in the colony.
Eleanor wanted to emulate her. Somehow that woman had kept her dignity, head held high and run her first household with practically nothing. Then she'd helped her husband build an empire. Forty years later Eleanor could still picture them in later life when she'd known them, at the desk in Mamére's study, both in their reading glasses and poring over the big account keeping books. Mamére always sat in Grandpapa's lap when they did that. Eleanor didn't know how she'd had the drive to accomplish it all.
It was all Eleanor could do to keep her gaze averted from the ruin of her life.
But there was ruin, and there was ruin. She could avoid seeing many things, but it was extremely difficult to avert her gaze from Chuck Bass's limousine pulling up to the kerb. Again. The third day in a row to be exact. She'd seen him leaving her building, still in his slightly mussed school uniform, every night this week.
And the shame of her failed marriage was sneaking up into her vision from where she pretended not to see it.
Eleanor watched him, Bass the younger, embarrassment personified, saunter out of her building. Most of Manhattan and beyond knew of his out of control lifestyle. Nate Archibald in contrast was descended from Vanderbilts and though still young, had the decorum and good manners of that respectable family. Nate was polite and entertained Blair, he looked wonderful in a tux.
And as she watched Chuck pull out his phone to send a text message, she realised that Nate had not been over since the fateful night of the Captain's arrest. She briefly closed her eyes, knowing her reaction to that event had probably played a part in his current absence, but alas it couldn't be helped. The public embarrassment the Archibald family had caused Eleanor Waldorf Designs still resonated. But she acknowledged that Blair's future was important too, and once she got over the brief hurt of the hit her company by association had taken, she felt a little ashamed that she hadn't continued to push for that respectable relationship between her daughter and Nate.
Chuck sent the message, then turned to look towards their apartment windows, grinning devilishly. Eleanor had tried to ascribe Blair's uncharacteristically chirpy mood since Thanksgiving with her return to therapy. But even Eleanor couldn't see him do that, couldn't see Chuck Bass coming over after school everyday then disappearing just before she returned home from the atelier, as a coincidence.
Eleanor Waldorf was unobservant – not stupid.
Unlike her seventeen-year-old daughter who clearly had no idea what she was doing.
"A moment," she halted her driver as he moved to get out of her town car. "Circle the block a few times, there's a phone call I need to make before I go upstairs."
The driver didn't ask questions. He was like coachmen and ladies maids in generations passed, always present but part of the background – silent and obedient. The car pulled out into the slow peak hour traffic again and she gazed out the window. The first lap around their block, she simply mused. The driver did not question her instructions and she could hear the clicking of the indicator as they passed the front door yet again and kept going. The second lap, she pulled her phone from her handbag and scrolled through the contacts. Among them was a business tycoon she'd called a friend for quite a number of years now.
Mamére would have had kittens to know her Eleanor had befriended first-generation money. Diana had chosen her husband for love, which was very clear in their later years when mutual happiness still abounded on the sprawling family estate. But Diana choosing for love still chose an Astor. She smiled as she fondly remembered a childhood scolding from the matriarch on associating with middle-class upstarts and golddiggers. And the way her grandfather had snuck up behind his lecturing wife with a finger pressed to his lips.
He'd captured the reigning Mrs. Astor and made her squeal and laugh like a teenager as he lifted her into the air, squeezing her slim waist tightly. At the time six-year-old Eleanor hadn't really understood the mock-scolding her grandmother then received in turn from a very affectionate grandpapa. But when she'd grown she'd discovered the truth and found it all slightly romantic in her teenage years. The fact that the Astors were all but broke when Grandpapa reached his majority, and only through his slaving hard work and coaxing of new money backing had he remade a fortune in wartime that restored them to their rightful place among the social elite.
Grandpapa would have gladly associated with the Basses. And despite her lecture to young Eleanor, in reality Mamére had done everything to make her grandpapa happy.
A voice greeted her on the phone and she pulled herself away from that happy childhood memory.
"Bart, darling, it's Eleanor Waldorf," she greeted, a fond smile of remembrance touching her face.