So the first chapter isn't technically part of s3, but we needed an explanation to how Cressida and Eloise met that wasn't just "she was nice to me". I'm also making Eloise a bit more self aware, because S3 sucked out all the feminism and intersectionality she learned in S2 with Theo. I have many thoughts on Penelope and Eloise's friendship, and I place a lot more blame on Penelope here than most Polin fans are wont to do. But, come on, Pen isn't an innocent damsel. Eloise will see her own faults in due time. I'm including footnotes bc I'm a fucking nerd who did a good bit of research, so those are in the end. They're not strictly necessary information, just stuff I think is neat/thematically important/historically relevant. I'm also trying to maintain UK English spellings as best as I can, although every iteration of spellcheck hates me for it so I've likely missed some bits and left some words Americanized.

August 1814

Aubrey Hall

It was not until the family went back to Aubrey Hall for the off-season that Eloise realised how dreadfully lonely she was. How lonely all women of the ton were, really.

The Featherington's off-season chateau was not anywhere near Aubrey Hall, so even if Eloise had wanted to spend time with Penelope, she was not able to. Not that this particular isolation bothered her, Eloise was still very much on the outs with Pen; still bitter over her supposed friend's choice to maintain her inflammatory gossip rag and drag Eloise's name through the mud (and subsequently threatening the security and happiness of her younger sisters, who would forever be tainted by the black mark that was Eloise's association with liberals). All for what 'protecting Eloise'? Please, she knew better than that, there were a dozen other ways to assuage the Queen's ire and take the suspicion off her back. First and foremost, would have been for Penelope to stop insulting and provoking the Queen when she learned the most powerful woman on earth had it out for her head. Penelope was saving nothing more than her own pride, which did not wish to suffer the shame that would come with an admittance of her identity, or worse, allowing Eloise to successfully fake it. With Penelope not an option for even a letter's worth of conversation, Eloise found herself looking towards the other women she felt comfortable enough to consider friends. The list was embarrassingly short, and to Eloise's great consternation, none of them were actually available.

Kate was on her honeymoon after a (successful, this time) wedding, and Daphne was far away in the Duke's own ancestral home performing her Duchessly duties, whatever those were, and tending to her children. Even if the two had been closer by, neither would have had the time for Eloise. Women were wives first, mothers second, and daughters third, friendship was somewhere very far down on a socially aware woman's list of priorities. It was something that Eloise had bitterly come to terms with after Daphne's marriage, which kept her away so often that it was lucky if Eloise could see her more than thrice in a year.

Though she had not put much thought to it before, Eloise stopped and tried to remember how many friendships Daphne had been able to cultivate, and how many of those she still maintained as a Duchess. A cold bolt of dread shot down Eloise's spine as she realised that, outside of sisterly love, the answer was zero. Daphne had not a single friend to her name. Family and in-laws didn't count; they were all obligated to like each other. Daphne was not on necessarily bad terms with most of the ton's young women, but she was never close with any of them. Especially not after she had garnered the undivided attention of not one but two of the most highly coveted bachelors of the season. Kate, Eloise figured, was much in the same boat as Daphne, with no close friendships outside of the family.

In fact, no women from the ton were close with each other in the same capacity that Eloise and Penelope had been. The men were allowed their friendships, but the women were, as always, kept lonely and dependent. Eloise and Pen had been a fluke, a rare instance of mothers indulging their strange daughters, and allowing the cultivation of a camaraderie that was not based in politic.

Eloise lounged in one of the many library armchairs as she mulled over her thoughts on the matter. She had taken up a rather undignified position, one that would have certainly compelled her mama to give an impromptu lecture on the importance of maintaining a lady-like demeanor, even in the privacy of one's own home. As it were, Violet Bridgerton was not in the library, and Eloise was free to drape herself over the armchair howsoever she pleased.

It was not an especially comfortable position; Eloise had contorted herself rather spectacularly so that her legs rested on and hung over one arm of the chair, while her side pressed flush up against the other. Only her hip sat on the actual seat of the plush chair. Dangling loosely in her left hand, was a half-read copy of the new novel Mansfield Park1, a novel which had lost Eloise's interest rather rapidly after it turned out to be yet another love story that followed the steps of the London marriage mart in a way that was far too familiar for Eloise to consider exciting. Truthfully, Eloise had not much cared for the anonymous author's other novels, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but only a woman author would publish anonymously, and Eloise had wanted to read something by a fellow intellectual woman. She had been sorely disappointed, but then again, she ought to have known better than to read another romance novel; a genre which she found immensely difficult to enjoy, mostly for the faults of the supposedly dashing male leads who were, more often than not, just plain insufferable.

It was the type of book that Daphne and Penelope would have devoured voraciously, though, which is what had caused Eloise's musings on the nature of womanly friendship in the first place.

She huffed and closed the book roughly and spent a short moment relishing in how the dull thud echoed through the library. Eloise could not find valid reason to mail the book to Daphne, not when her sister surely had a copy of her very own (courtesy of Simon Basset and his doting determination to fulfill Daphne's every whim and fancy), but Francesca or Hyacinth were likely to enjoy the read. Eloise dutifully ignored the thought that Penelope would surely love everything that Mansfield Park had to offer, and that thanks to her family's dwindling funds Penelope probably did not yet have a copy of her own. Eloise positively squashed down the thought that the book would make a wonderful reconciliation gift; it was not Eloise's job to reconcile, Penelope had been the one to do wrong, she had been the one to damn near ruin the life and reputation of not only Eloise, but her sisters by proxy, if anyone were to reach out first, it would have to be Penelope.

Eloise resolved to give the book to Hyacinth. Francesca was far fonder of musical books than those written in prose. Besides, mama Bridgerton, still acting as Viscountess until Kate and Anthony's return from honeymoon, had decided Hyacinth was too young to read romances. Their mother claimed it was because the modern romances published 'these days' were too mature for a young lady of barely 122. Though, it was rather that Violet worried that the many romance novels read by Daphne had influenced the eldest daughter toward the improper actions that led to her rushed wedding. Eloise resented any imposed restrictions on what could and could not be read and had decided to gift the book to Hyacinth out of pure spite.

All the faffing about with romance novels did not, however, cure the fact that Eloise was lonely. Daphne and Kate were still gone with their husbands, Penelope was still a very tender wound upon Eloise's trusting heart, Francesca only had interest for music, and Hyacinth was far too high energy. Eloise had never been one for the rowdy games of tag and roughhousing that Hyacinth and Gregory were partial to. That left her with just the brothers, two of which were nowhere near Aubrey Hall; Anthony on his honeymoon and Colin on his second tour of Europe. There was still Benedict, the sibling with whom Eloise had always felt the closest as a fellow black sheep of proper London aristocracy. Benedict, however, had been positively mopey since he left the art academy, and there was only so much wallowing in self-pity the two could do together before they no longer found it cathartic.

So, in lieu of anything better to do, Eloise made for the bookshop in town. Town was much further away from Aubrey Hall than it was back in London, and not wanting to stress her mother so soon after her scandal, Eloise dutifully took not only a coach into town, but her lady's maid as accompaniment. Because all respectable women had no freedom and must be supervised like children, she thought bitterly. And to the bookstore, with her veritable entourage, she went.

It was not quite the expansive book shop that Eloise frequented back in London, and it certainly was no library of Aubrey Hall, but it was well stocked and kept up to date thanks largely to the patronage of the many ton members who resided in their estates in the area during the off season.

The storefront was old and weathered, not deliberately like the artificial ruins3 that were all the architectural rage, but in the real way. The bricks were sun bleached and wind beaten and the mortar between them had been partially eroded away, as had many of the bricks, which were now rounded instead of sharp rectangles. Ivy climbed the building in great reaching tendrils, and Eloise could not remember a time when the wall had been without the plant. Two large bay windows sat on either side of the wooden door, all of which were coated in chipping white paint that revealed the gray-brown of wood that had been left exposed to the elements for too long. In the windows sat artful arrangements of the newest and most popular books; essays, novels, numerous French titles that Eloise couldn't be bothered to translate. Byron's The Corsair4 held a rather prominent feature as it had since its publishing in February. She and Benedict had spent a rather pleasant afternoon mercilessly mocking the work and its angst-ridden hero. Penelope had thought the story, and the leading man, were frightfully romantic, because of course she did.

Eloise strode brusquely into the shop and pointedly ignored the window displays. She was here to get a book to keep her mind off Penelope and the empty chasm that their disastrous friendship had left in her heart; Byronic tales would only do to stir up more memories. She hadn't thought as far ahead as to plan out what kind of book she intended to read, and so settled on perusing the whole of the shop until something caught her interest. By default, Eloise found herself wandering towards the section she knew to house political essays. On the shelf, she spotted the works of Mary Wollstonecraft5, and Eloise felt her heart lurch at the sight.

Wollstonecraft, naturally, reminded her of the rights of women, and the horrible unfairness with which society treated her in comparison to her brothers. It also reminded her of Theo. It reminded her of pleasant spring evenings hunched over a workbench, fervently but companionably debating with a man who saw her as an equal and considered her thoughts worthwhile. She thought of the nights she spent in Bloomsbury, out far later than her curfew, packed tightly into various meeting halls to listen to like-minded men and women speak their thoughts. She thought of Theo's warmth at her side as they stood, by the ton's reckoning, too close to be decent, and meticulously examined Lady Whistledown's – no, Penelope's – pamphlets. She thought of curly brown hair and strong arms hidden by half-rolled sleeves, of rich brown eyes that held the mischievous twinkle of someone who loved a good debate, of the smell of ink and paper, of eyebrows that furrowed just so whenever he was concerned or losing their battle of wits. She thought of Theo and the firm set of his lips, the tense, almost-frown, that melted away into a charming smile whenever he saw her. She thought of the look in his eyes as he had started to lean down to her, the aborted movement of his hand that meant to cradle her face, the way that in the brief moment where they were not from two very different social classes, his lips had parted ever so slightly before she spurned him. The essay section reminded her wholly and entirely of Theo. And burned forever into her memory, first and foremost before all the other lovely memories she had of him, was the hurt in his eyes as she called their situation absurd, and the way he had immediately thrown up his walls and closed off his expression so well that she could not read him at all.

Eloise realised she had been staring blankly at the essay section for longer than was acceptable. She furiously blinked in an effort to chase away the tears that had threatened to well up once again and turned staunchly to the fiction section. It was ridiculous to think she and Theo could have ever had a chance at being, well, anything, but that had not stopped her from hoping and it could not stop her from caring even after the fact. She had no idea what it even was that she yearned for so dearly, other than to be with him for just one more day. Eloise had not ever felt such a way about Penelope, and deep down she knew she felt somehow differently about him, but it had to be friendship, nonetheless. It could not be anything else. Or so she told herself.

Eloise looked at the fiction shelves with determined gusto, examining every title and reading every synopsis so as to keep herself occupied. Many of the titles were ones she had already read. Many others she recognised as denizens of Aubrey Hall's library shelves. Very little caught her eye, a testament to both the shop's lacking variety and Eloise's lacking enthusiasm in general.

The only book she had thus far managed to take any interest in was a small German paperback, untranslated, and titled: Undine6. It was, as far as Eloise's mediocre German led her to understand, a folk-myth of sorts. The German folk stories always had a somewhat gruesome bearing that allowed her to muddle through the more moralistic sections, and she felt, at the moment, that perhaps something a bit childish and moralistic was what she needed. The German, at least, would keep her occupied enough with translation that her mind would be saved from melting into mush in the late August heat.

Eloise looked up to find her lady's maid and make clear her intentions to purchase the book and return home, but instead found a rather surprising member of the ton. Cressida Cowper in all her feather-fanning and extravagant gowned glory stood barely two metres from Eloise. In the off season, it seemed, Cressida's fashion erred more on the simple side. With no eligible suitors to peacock for, of course she would leave behind her exceptionally puffy sleeves and excessive appliqué decals. Frankly, given the woman's open distaste for anything that was even remotely 'unladylike', Eloise was surprised that Cressida even knew how to read at a complex enough level for prose-filled novels.

As quickly as the uncharitable thought popped into her head, Eloise cringed and banished it. On any other day, she would have not thought twice about bad-mouthing the vindictive blonde. On a particularly good, or bad, day, she might have even voiced such a thought to Cressida, if only spite the woman who seemed to have it out for those Eloise considered sisters. The day, however, had not been a usual day, nor had it brought on a mood the conducted Eloise towards conflict. Having spent most of the morning ruminating on the isolation and chronic loneliness of being a woman in high society, Eloise found herself feeling uncharacteristically charitable to her fellow women of the ton. It was not the fault of the ladies of the ton, she concluded, that society had so effectively beat the individuality and capability for complex thought out of them. Perhaps it was by pure luck that Eloise had escaped the brainwashing that was the years-long preparation for the marriage mart, and perhaps, had the ton ladies been given the chance, they could have turned out to be intelligent and noteworthy women in their own right.

Instead, Eloise opted to keep her mouth shut (something her brothers liked to claim she was incapable of) and observed her fellow woman. Cressida's dress was pink, as they often were, but was at least a pleasing pale hue, as opposed to some of the more blindingly garish shades she wore during the season. Cressida herself held an old thick book and gazed upon it with no small amount of trepidation. The book was The Castle of Otranto7 which shocked Eloise some, as she had read it herself and found she'd rather liked it.

The novel had been hidden away in one of her mother's old drawers (it had been published some time before Violet's youth) and hadn't seen the light of day until Eloise found and took it at the tender age of thirteen. She and Daphne, 17 at the time, had read it together, both terribly excited to have found something from their mother's younger years. The book itself had given Daphne quite the fright; it posed as a true translation (though it was entirely fiction) from Italy and detailed a rather messy story of ghosts and lovers amongst the nobility. The book had been, admittedly, rather bloody and Daphne had immediately squealed to their mother after they had finished it; the two received quite the stern talking to, both about snooping and about reading books that were entirely inappropriate for young ladies. Whenever Violet would get especially strict about what Eloise could and couldn't read, she would bring up that her mother must've read The Castle of Ortranto when she was young and was thusly a massive hypocrite.

Before she had really thought about what she was saying and to whom she spoke, Eloise turned to Cressida, "It is a rather good book, you know."

Cressida's head snapped up at an astonishing speed and looked at Eloise with some great surprise. She even turned to look behind her, seemingly unable to believe that it was she who Eloise spoke to.

Unable to unspeak her words, and unwilling to admit se hadn't thought the conversation through, Eloise ploughed onward as if conversing with Cressida was entirely normal, "It is a bit ghastly, though. The plot, that is."

There was a pause as Cressida continued to say nothing, her eyes flitted from the cover of the book to Eloise's face and back.

"Frightened poor Daph near to bits when we first read it, though I fared just fine. Perks of having an unladylike constitution, I suppose."

This, finally, cajoled Cressida into speech as she smirked and turned up her nose slightly, "Yes, well, I'm sure I can handle it. I'm no soft spirited Bridgerton."

Eloise raised an eyebrow but didn't argue; her sisters did err on the delicate side and were all easily frightened by stories of ghosts and bloody battles.

Cressida sniffed derisively as she flipped a fashionably loose lock of hair over her shoulder, "Well then, rabble-rouser, what are you reading? Some essay on how women ought to make all the political decisions while men sit and embroider?"

For once, Cressida's icy tone didn't bother Eloise. She was still feeling empathetic towards the ladies of the ton and thought she could detect a shred of genuine interest in Cressida's voice. Mostly she was desperate to talk to someone who wasn't her mother or Hyacinth. "Some German folktale, actually. I could do to brush up on my languages, and the German tales are always suitably bloody." She paused to shoot a pointed look at the novel in Cressida's hands, "As all good works of fiction should be."

For a brief second, a flash of sadness passed through Cressida's eyes, "Well, my German is absolutely superb," right, she had almost had the prince of Prussia to herself before Daphne, "far better than yours, I am sure."

Eloise didn't quite know how to respond to such a statement. It was probably true, if Cressida had truly planned on becoming the princess of Prussia, she must have reached some level of fluency. Eloise shrugged, noncommittally.

"What I mean," Cressida sounded somewhat flustered, like her words weren't coming out how she wanted them to, a feeling Eloise was well and familiar with, "is that, if you'd like, I could help you with the translation." She fiddled idly with the cover of her book, "I'm not above charity, you know."

Eloise scoffed, and then took a long look at Cressida's face. Did Cressida have any friends? Eloise couldn't imagine anyone who might want to spend time with the blonde. She was an only child, Eloise knew, Cressida didn't even have the grace of many raucous siblings to talk to. It occurred to her that this might be a very Cressida way of offering friendship, just as she had at the beginning of Eloise's season. She cocked her head to the side, "I'm not exactly in fashion at the moment, you know."

Cressida hmmpfed and waved her hand dismissively, "You think too highly of yourself, Bridgerton. No one will remember all that come next season." Then, more quietly and with ill-concealed bitterness, "Whistledown will find some other girl to target."

Eloise could hardly believe the conversation. There she was, in a bookshop, with Cressida Cowper, sworn enemy and belligerent to Eloise's only friends, and she was offering friendship. No, not offering, asking. There, in the back corner of the bookstore, Cressida looked more than a little bit lost, and so very alone. Even if her own lady's maid was only around the next corner.

Eloise had paused to think for too long, and Cressida's vulnerable expression morphed back into one of disdain. Although now, Eloise could see right through it and into the loneliness, "Oh never mind, you clearly—"

"I'd like that, actually." Eloise interrupted, "You are quite right, my German is just shy of dreadful. We can make it mutually beneficial, see, I think you underestimate just how harrowing that book can be, you'd best have someone to talk to who has already read it. So you don't get too in your own head over it." Eloise felt herself smile as Cressida relaxed.

"And," she rifled through the shelves before she found The Old English Baron8and waved it in Cressida's direction, "You really ought to read this one straight away after you've finished the first. It's a later companion piece, or so I've been told. I've never gotten the chance to read it myself. We could read it together?"

Cressida smiled, not her false flirtatious simpering, but a true genuine smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes and stretched her rosy cheeks. "I think we very well could, Eloise. If my constitution isn't too delicate for it."

At least for the summer, Eloise had a friend. Maybe her family didn't quite approve of Cressida, but after the business with Bloomsbury, no one could object to her seeking out another respectable lady of the ton. Besides, there was something to be said for shared loneliness, and Eloise felt the kindred of solitude with Cressida.

Footnotes

1. Mansfield Park is Jane Austin's third work, published in May of 1814. All of her works were anonymous until her death in 1817. Her novels critique the English gentry; the plots explore women's dependence on marriage and social standing but were publicly received as romance novels. I don't think Eloise would notice the more subtle condemnations of the English patriarchy at this point in her life.
2. Canon ages are somewhat unclear in the show. I have elected to use the book for ages. Here they are as of 1815. Violet: Born 1766, age 49. Anthony: Born 1784, age 31. Benedict: Born 1786 age 29. Colin: Born 1791, age 24. Daphne: Born 1792, age 23. Eloise: Born 1796, age 19. Francesca: Born 1797, age 18. Gregory: Born 1801, age 14. Hyacinth: Born 1803, age 12. Penelope: Born 1796, age 19. Cressida has no substantial book canon, I assume she was 18 when she debuted, so she's 20 here.
3. Romantic ruins were an architectural fad in late 1700's and early 1800's Europe. This is due to the romantic art movement which emphasized the insignificance of man compared to nature and an appreciation for the sublime (a concept of insurmountable greatness associated with nature), and the neoclassical movement which was a revival of greco-roman romanticization. It was very trendy to have a ruin on your property, but real ruins are hard to find so the wealthy just built their own. Romantic ruins did not go out of style until the very late 1800's.
4. The Corsair is a tale by Lord Byron written in long verse. Initially published in Feb 1814, it was wildly popular and sold like hotcakes. Byronic heroes are usually moody, cynical, at least a bit depressed, and very emotionally driven. The Corsair tells the tale of a privateer who was shunned by society and shuns society in turn (except for women whom he loves greatly). It seems like the type of story to annoy Eloise, and Benedict canonically thinks Byron is a bad poet.
5. Mary Wollstonecraft was an early feminist and anti-monarchist in the mid to late 1700's. Her husband published her biography after her death in 1797, which while well-intentioned, destroyed her reputation as it documented her many love affairs and suicide attempts. Her writings would not be respected at all by most of the gentry at the time. Eloise has canonically read Vindications of the Rights of Woman (1792) and likely also Vindications of the Rights of Men (1790). Mary W. is also the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly nee. Goodwin.
6. Undine is a German novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, published in 1811. In the story a water spirit (called an undine) falls in love with a German knight. In the fashion of many fairy tales, it ends with murder and moral cautioning. It was exceedingly popular in the 1800's, not among children, but adults. It partially inspired The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.
7. The Castle of Otranto is the first ever Gothic novel, and is a pioneer of Gothic horror. It was published in 1764 by Horace Walpole. The plot is as described in the fic. Public reception of the novel was originally very good, but the book was soon scorned when Walpole revealed it was pure fiction, and not actually a translation of a medieval Italian manuscript as it claimed. After this reveal, it was treated with the same level of dismissal and disdain as is usually reserved for romance novels.
8. The Old English Baron was an adaptation of The Castle of Otranto written in 1777 by Clara Reeve. Notably, it adapts the plot and characters to a late 1700's England. There are many plot changes, but the book was openly and publicly based on Walpole's work. Although, Reeve took great pride in the fact that she had taken made it more realistic, considering it an improvement on the more fantastical leanings of Walpole.

Side note for my thoughts on Pen and El's fallout. I err on the side that Pen was in the wrong for most of it. One, she's printing a gossip rag that she objectively knows is capable of ruining the lives of the people around her. Kind of shitty, but she's young and I see it as a case of shunned girl turning into a mean girl of her own right. (pen is the og cyberbully) But I find her provoking the queen really weird. Pen isn't an anti-monarchist so idk why she repeatedly needles the queen when she knows she hates Lady W. It's cocky to believe she would never be found, especially because she was almost caught and the only thing that saved her was El's sleuthing and loyalty to Lady W. Idk I think there were better ways for Pen to protect El, namely give in to the queen and stop needlessly poking the bear (ribbing on the queen isn't why people read Lady W). I don't think Pen is evil tho, just very much a lady of the ton. She's no different from Cressida imo. This chapter is also from Eloise's POV, and she's not Pen's biggest fan atm.