Work Text:
Miss Bridgerton and Miss Featherington were two very good friends who lived together in a cottage on Viscount Bridgerton’s estate. As far as nearly anyone else was aware.
Visitors found their parlor largely bare of furniture, apart from the elegant little writing desk placed in one window (Miss Featherington’s), the more solid oak desk in the other window (Miss Bridgerton’s), and two armchairs on either side of the fire, each with its candle-stand topped with each woman’s reading material. They were, after all, only there for part of the year – they traveled to London with the viscount and his wife for the Season – and they didn’t receive many visitors. In fact, the lack of seats for callers was a strategy to keep them out.
Penelope was writing at her own desk when she heard Eloise enter through the front door and make her usual bustle, which gave her time to slide her writing paper with a half-begun poem under a letter to her sister Priscilla. Her lover was dressed in her favored “country clothes” – a coat, petticoat, and hidden breeches of grey-green wool, rather like a riding habit – as well as a suspicious expression.
“There is a cat in here, I know there is a cat in here!” she said. “Pen, I am not imagining it!”
“We do not have a cat,” said Penelope, entirely truthfully.
“I know we do not have a cat!” Eloise was at her most adorably dramatic. “Yet it always seems as though a cat has been in our house. I am coming to believe that it is the ghost of a cat whose spiritual presence can be felt, and I do not even believe in ghosts!” She stopped and struck a pose, in Penelope’s opinion. “Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps Anthony should lock me away for your safety.”
Penelope sighed. “If you are to the point of suggesting that any of your brothers have authority over you, I suppose I must be kind and relieve you of your worries.” She turned herself awkwardly in her chair, bringing her legs out from under the table and revealing the small tabby curled up in her lap. Eloise looked comically surprised and clearly ready to demand the cat be taken out, so Penelope adopted her most appealing expression with a hint of pout. “She belongs to Henry and Susannah, but she likes to come and sit with me during the day.”
“And knock things off of shelves?” Eloise asked with a dangerous edge, clearly remembering the incident from the week before.
“Yes, well … occasionally. But look!” She put her hands into the fluffy little pile and held up the tabby’s front end. “She has such a sweet little face!”