August's sun refused to behave like a proper English one.
It wasn't the heat so much as the obligation: to smile, to stroll, to allow oneself to be admired. The heat only made it harder to pretend that Eloise did not mind any of it.
Eloise shaded her eyes with a gloved hand, squinting at the unrelenting blue expanse above. She could think of at least three female essayists who had once railed against the tyranny of English summer— now she truly understood them.
Cressida waltzed beside her along the Brighton promenade, parasol aloft like a smug little cloud.
It had been nearly a month since Bath, and neither of them had spoken of their kiss.
Nor of the conversation that followed. They'd both pulled back almost in tandem, as though scorched by what they'd nearly let happen.
And yet, every moment between them felt charged now. Like something half-written but paused mid-sentence.
Cressida had named it first: Eloise wasn't over Penelope. Cressida had been right of course. Just as Eloise still heard the lingering ache in Cressida's voice when she spoke of the duchess who'd left her behind for France and a title.
In the weeks that followed, the two young ladies had become companions instead of confessions. Careful, at first. Polite. Yet, something tentative and genuine had begun to grow in the quiet: a kind of ease, bred from borrowed hours and shared silences. Not romance (Eloise would never dare name it that) but something... adjacent?
A familiarity, then. They'd filled the summer days with strolls, concerts, gallery visits, idle conversations about books and scandal. And somehow the sting of that first kiss, and the awkwardness after, had softened.
Cressida, it turned out, was wickedly funny, terrifyingly clever, and far lonelier than she let on. There was a depth to her: dry, unsentimental, observant. She made Eloise feel less like she was being seen and more like she was being studied. It thrilled her.
And to her own increasing dismay, she had not only come to enjoy Cressida's company; she had come to rely on it.
Violet Bridgerton, who had spent the spring months watching her daughter drift through rooms like a ghost draped in muslin, had said nothing when Eloise announced she would, yet again, be promenading with Miss Cowper and the other young ladies. She'd merely nodded, perhaps too quickly, and returned to her needlepoint with uncharacteristic vigor.
It was only when Eloise reached the door that she heard her mother exhale. A small sound. A reprieve.
Now, on the Brighton promenade, parasol in hand, Cressida walked beside Eloise as though the spring had never happened. Here, in Brighton's salted sunlight, Eloise was finally smiling again.
"I do hope you are enjoying your return to society," Cressida said. She gestured elegantly toward a group of officers loitering nearby like a table display. "All the sights. The sounds... the eligible bachelors breathing down your neck?"
Eloise snorted. "Let them breathe. I prefer not to engage with anything that lacks gills or basic conversation."
"Then you must be overjoyed. I believe that one just attempted to quote Byron."
"If I hear 'She walks in beauty' one more time, I shall throw myself into the Channel."
"Not without your parasol, I trust," Cressida bantered, twirling hers. "You'd go in looking scandalously modern."
They laughed. It was an easy, unexpected sound that startled Eloise with its lack of effort. She glanced at Cressida, whose bonnet dipped, curls brushing her cheek, as she giggled. It was infuriating, how attractive someone could be while merely walking.
"It's strange," Eloise said, after a pause. "How I find myself enjoying this. Brighton. Promenading. And… you."
"The coast suits you," Cressida said lightly, though her tone hinted she wasn't talking about the weather. She smiled. "You seem quite taken with the sea air."
"Or perhaps I've simply developed a liking for mermaids," Eloise grumbled.
Cressida's expression softened. "Truthfully, I am glad of it. You were—" She hesitated. "You were so unhappy in Bath."
"Was I?" Eloise probed, though her fingers curled around her reticule.
"Yes. You looked as if your soul had been sewn into a tapestry and hung in your mother's drawing room."
Eloise barked a laugh, abrupt and inelegant. "I believe Hyacinth said something similar, though hers involved coffins and embroidery."
"She's a very perceptive child."
"She is terrifying," Eloise corrected. "I plan to keep her as an ally for the rest of my natural life."
They continued, the sound of the surf curling underfoot.
Eloise could feel it then. That quiet pull towards something she couldn't name. Or rather, something she dared not name yet. The weight of their kiss still sat in the back of her mind, undisturbed and gleaming. Not forgotten. Simply, unspoken.
Cressida turned to her with that familiar hesitation she always wore when asking something of Eloise— shoulders composed, voice light, but eyes braced for refusal.
"Would you accompany me to the art gallery this afternoon? They've brought in a collection of landscapes. All very noble cliffs and sheep contemplating mortality."
"I thought you only liked portraits of yourself," Eloise couldn't help but jab.
"Naturally," Cressida shot back, glibly. "But occasionally I enjoy the lesser arts."
Eloise bit back a smile. "Then I'd be honored."
"Excellent. And perhaps afterward… we could sketch something ourselves?" Cressida proffered.
Eloise mused. "I suppose I should attempt to draw a portrait of you," she replied, accepting. "Entirely without sheep, of course."
Cressida looked over at her then. Something unreadable flickered behind her lashes. "Perhaps I'll do the same."
Her tone was even, but there was an intimacy in the way she said it— like a promise buried beneath a joke. Eloise's breath caught. It wasn't the idea of being drawn that unsettled her; it was the idea that Cressida might be looking. That she already had been.
"Make sure you capture my best side," Eloise said, meaning to sound flippant, but it came out quiet instead.
Cressida tilted her head. "I was under the impression you had several."
Eloise laughed, a little too fast. "Flattery will get you nowhere."
Cressida smiled slowly. "That's rather the idea."
They had been sketching for twenty minutes, which was approximately nineteen minutes longer than Eloise could take herself seriously holding a charcoal stick. Her "landscape" resembled something between a mountain and a melted éclair.
Cressida, meanwhile, was delicately etching the curve of a willow tree with the air of someone posing for a portrait even as she drew.
Eloise blew a strand of hair out of her face. "I am beginning to suspect you arranged this lesson solely to feel superior."
"Oh, but I am," Cressida replied without looking up. "It would have been dishonest not to showcase it."
Eloise leaned back, squinting at Cressida's profile. Her bonnet sat discarded on the side table, and without it, her golden curls tumbled freely down her back, gathered low with a ribbon. The usual precision was gone. She looked, unexpectedly, undone. Unarmored. And beautiful in a way Eloise hadn't quite prepared for.
In the weeks since Bath, nearly three fortnights now, Eloise had watched those curls daily: at teas, promenades, dinners, and at one memorably unchaperoned picnic where the sun had caught the curve of Cressida's smile and the stain of fruit on her lips.
"You have a very… particular way of holding your pencil," Eloise said now, eyeing the gloved fingers poised with aristocratic grace.
"Do I?" Cressida asked, entirely too innocent. She clearly enjoyed being watched.
"It's like witnessing a scandal in progress," Eloise said. "Slow. Expensive. Beautifully composed."
Cressida turned to her, eyes bright with mischief. "You're staring."
"You're sketching," Eloise countered, lifting her chin. "Or at least pretending to."
"Perhaps you're the subject," Cressida said lightly.
Eloise flushed. "I'd rather not be immortalized looking like a governess in the throes of a nervous collapse."
"Oh, I'd only capture your best side."
"Miss Cowper," Eloise interrupted, breath catching as she leaned forward, "are you flirting with me during an art lesson?"
"I'm trying to," Cressida replied, mock-wounded. "But your tragic sheep painting is a terrible distraction."
"It is not a sheep," Eloise said with dignity. "It is a very noble cliff."
"Ah. So that is its nose?"
Eloise lobbed a piece of eraser at her. It bounced harmlessly off Cressida's sleeve, where she caught it with far too much grace. The reflexes of a girl who'd grown up dodging both suitors and scrutiny.
They smiled at each other, and for a moment, time bent and softened, a watercolor wash behind a portrait. The kind of pause that came not at the start of something, but long after the beginning, when a thing has bloomed slowly, stubbornly.
Cressida glanced back down, then slid her sketchpad across the small table between them. "You said I wasn't sketching. Have a look."
Eloise hesitated, then turned the pad toward her. A rough, elegant line drawing met her eyes: her own silhouette, caught mid-laugh. The shape of her mouth, her wild hair, the angle of her nose— rendered in quick, confident strokes. She looked like a girl in motion. Not tamed. Not proper. But alive.
"Oh," she breathed.
Cressida stilled anxiously, all confidence now gone quiet. "Is... is it dreadful?"
"It's—" Eloise swallowed. "No one's ever… drawn me before."
The salon's air thickened. Eloise heard nothing beyond the tick of the clock and her own traitorous heartbeat. Something inside her jolted— too intimate, too fast— and she stood abruptly, retreating to the window where sea gulls called over the promenade below.
The coastal breeze hit her face, sharp with salt, but it did nothing to cool the flush spreading down her neck. That damned feeling — the one she'd been doing her best to ignore — had returned in full force.
Behind her, the soft shuffle of paper as Cressida set her things aside.
"You always do that," she said, voice soft but certain.
"What?" Eloise muttered, not turning — and in doing so, answered herself.
Cressida's bell-clear laugh rang out behind her, far too knowing. "That. When someone tries to see you — get close — you retreat."
"I don't retreat," Eloise retorted, voice brittle. "I walk away. With dignity."
Cressida stepped up beside her. Their shoulders brushed.
"Call it what you like, then," Cressida sighed.
Eloise didn't answer. She blinked. Then, she stared out at the hazy, unreachable horizon and tried to ignore the clamor in her chest. The sea stretched so wide and so impossibly far. Unlike people, at least, the sea didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was.
"I don't understand this," Eloise said at last, quiet. "Being with you. Laughing. It makes everything feel louder. Not in a bad way. Just—" She stopped, frustrated. "Just much."
Cressida's smile tilted. "Imagine what might happen if we stopped pretending we were only doing it as friends."
Eloise glanced over. "That would be terribly improper."
"We are terribly improper," Cressida said, smiling.
Eloise's mouth felt too dry, her gloves too warm.
She looked away first.
"It's just..." Eloise trailed off. "I've never had a friend like you before. You know. With parasols. And suspiciously good posture. And who knows precisely when I'm bluffing."
Cressida made a soft, pleased noise. Then she said, "You have Penelope."
"I had Penelope," Eloise corrected her, the word heavier than she expected. She shook herself, as if the thought could be dislodged. "Besides, you're different."
"In what way?"
"Penelope is... well, she's like a book you've read so many times you stop really noticing what it says. You are…" Eloise paused, floundering. "You're like one I keep meaning to finish but find myself rereading the same line over and over. Badly. But with great intent."
"What a glowing review. I'm overwhelmed," Cressida said dryly. But she did smile.
"I'm sure someone has admired you," Eloise continued, grinning. "Properly. A suitor, perhaps?"
"Once," Cressida said airily. "His affections ended the moment I corrected his French declensions."
Eloise's grin grew. "You're not entirely awful, you know."
"High praise from the woman who once called me a... What was it? Oh yes, a tight-laced tyrant with too many ruffles."
"You were," Eloise said. "You still are. You've just become insufferably charming in the meantime."
They both smiled. It was so easy now. So warm. The distance between them had grown so small it was practically begging to be trespassed.
Cressida tilted her head. "I did mean what I said, you know. About not using each other as escape."
"I know," Eloise said, quickly. "And I've been trying not to. I am trying."
She looked at Cressida then. At the way her cheeks had flushed from the sun, at the small crease between her brows that she always smoothed out too quickly.
Eloise thought about how many little things she'd come to know: that Cressida hated seed cake, preferred peppermint to lavender, and had a nervous habit of folding and unfolding her gloves when she was about to say something brave.
"I just..." Eloise's voice faltered. "It's getting harder. Not to feel things. Not to want to—"
"Don't," Cressida said softly.
Eloise nodded. She felt fourteen again, full of a longing too large for her own chest.
"But," Cressida added, her voice dipping low, "If I were over her— truly over her, I would be willing to try."
A gust of wind lifted a strand of Cressida's hair across her cheek. Without thinking, Eloise reached up to tuck it back— gloved fingers brushing skin. The touch lingered a second too long.
Eloise swallowed around her heart.
"I think I'd kiss you again, if I weren't so dreadfully respectful of your boundaries," Eloise whispered.
"I think I'd let you," Cressida whispered back.
The space between them pulsed, but neither moved. Instead, Cressida stepped back, the tiniest shift, just enough to break the spell.
They stood there, breathless in the soft roar of sea and sun.
Cressida smoothed her skirts, recovering her usual poise. "Well. This has been delightfully improper."
"And oddly sincere," Eloise said. "I suppose we're friends now. Real ones."
"Imagine that. Miss Bridgerton and Miss Cowper. Friends." Cressida paused. "What would the Ton say?"
"They'd say we're plotting something."
"Aren't we?"
Eloise smiled. "Absolutely."
They walked back slowly toward the gallery, neither speaking. Near the entrance, Cressida turned to her.
"I'm off to dinner," she said. "Mama insists on oysters and dull conversation. Will you survive the evening without me?"
"Doubtful," Eloise replied, trying not to sound as adoring as she felt.
Cressida hesitated. "I'll... see you tomorrow?"
"You'll see me," Eloise said, meaning it more than she meant most things.
Cressida gave her a look: soft, amused, knowing. Then, she stepped away.
Eloise watched her go, heart thudding in that unmistakably Bridgerton way: theatrical, inconvenient, and completely helpless.