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Penelope sits at her window in tears all day, and isn’t this just like old times? She was so stupid for thinking that she could change her position in society simply by buying new gowns and having her hair dressed more becomingly.
She can’t even be properly upset, because regardless of who first informed the ton of her scheme with Colin Bridgerton, she herself published it for wider consumption. Because, if she’s honest, she cares more about maintaining her independence and her career, if it's not presumptuous to call it that, than she does her social standing and even her friendship with Colin.
(It was never going to be more than a friendship. It certainly isn’t going to be now.)
But it stings to know that everyone is laughing at her, everyone is talking her over as though they own her story — they do own her story: she sold it to them. Penelope’s no stranger to being disregarded and unloved, but being deliberately made a mockery of is different.
Well, now she knows what her other victims must have felt. Eloise is probably proclaiming that fact just now to Cressida Cowper. It takes very little effort for her to imagine how triumphant they must be — Eloise righteously so, having had her point about Penelope’s wrongdoing made perfectly for her and by Penelope’s own hand; Cressida simply enjoying someone else's troubles the way the rest of the ton is, with perhaps an extra meanspiritedness for the fact that she has replaced Penelope as Eloise’s best friend.
It feels nice, in a vicious sort of way, to imagine them all hating her. She has taken a dagger of truth and plunged it into her side, publishing the kind of words that she thinks to herself at night when she can't sleep. “Marital prospects slim at best.” She’d written a little aside contrasting the slimness of her hopes to the unslimness of her body, twisting the knife, but then worried that it would make Lady Whistledown seem uncouth or boorish, and crossed it out. Her readers will think it anyway, on their own, just because she’d used the word “slim,” she knows, but they’ll attribute it to their own darker feelings and keep on liking Lady Whistledown.
Lady Whistledown is far more popular than Penelope will ever be able to be, with or without Colin's help. Her own family doesn’t like her at all, and she’s even managed to drive away the one person she used to be able to count on in this superficial, marriage-focused world. (Though Eloise seems to be becoming more superficial and more marriage-focused herself these days. Penelope has dreaded that happening, because Eloise’s outsider status has been by her choice rather than a simple fact of life, the way it is for Penelope. She’s always suspected, or rather feared, that one day, Eloise would see how much more like the other girls of their acquaintance she is — pretty, slender, able to be truly stunning with just a little primping — and move on to that next stage of her life, making a match for herself and becoming an elegant society matron.)
It hurts. It hurts and hurts to think about this, the savage self-loathing twisting in her chest and making it hard to breathe, but she can’t stop the assault. Stupid, stupid girl. You thought anyone could ever like you? You thought you could even find someone to tolerate you enough for marriage? How dare you!
Lady Featherington’s sympathy cut cruelly as well; first, because this is what it's taken to bring it out after years and years of neglect, and second, because even her mother is surprised at how stupid she is. Even her mother can’t imagine her having any prospects at all.
She’s pulled from her dismal reverie late in the evening by the entrance of a maid, who announces a visitor. It’s a very surprising hour for a call, and Penelope can’t imagine who would bother to come to see her, but she stands and readies herself for whoever it may be.
It’s … Eloise.
Penelope stares at her for a moment in disbelief. Eloise is the last person she expected to come after her; granted, that nobody would bother was her first assumption, but then if there’s anyone at all she thought might feel the need to see her in her hour of despair, it’s Colin. Colin doesn’t know that she’s done this to herself, after all, and he might feel some guilt at having perhaps paid her too many attentions and caused the rumor of their plans. Eloise, on the other hand, is well aware that Penelope wrote that article about herself, bringing her family into the sphere of gossip once again.
Maybe she’s come to gloat.
But she doesn’t look like she’s gloating. Her brow is furrowed, her lower lip is trembling, and she’s clenching and relaxing her fists in the way that she does when she’s nervous.
“Pen,” she says, and rushes forward even before the maid is out of the room, but she stops several feet from Penelope. “I’m so —”
“It’s fine,” says Penelope, her voice steadier than she thought it would be. She drops her eyes, though, not quite able to meet Eloise’s. From her tone, she thinks Eloise might be close to tears.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one who put it on paper and shoved it under the ton’s eyes.” She doesn’t know what else to do, so she begins to pace. “It’s my job to report what everyone is talking about, and I already know what you think about that, so —”
The last thing she expects is for Eloise to stride forward and seize both of her hands. “Penelope, I’m the one who let the cat out of the bag. I was talking about it with Cressida — I was being indiscreet — and people overheard me and passed it along, and so I made you have to write about it.” A fat tear drops on her knuckles and spatters.
Penelope is utterly bewildered. Lost for words. She looks into Eloise’s wide, brimming eyes as though they might make any of this make sense. She opens her mouth to say something but, lacking the words, she closes it again after a moment. Eloise doesn’t gossip. Eloise doesn’t care about society. Eloise doesn’t —
Well. Eloise didn’t. Nowadays, Eloise is an entirely different person.
“I brought it on myself,” Penelope says mechanically, rejecting the apology and the chance to blame someone else for her problems when it is so, so easy to blame herself. “A sad, stupid girl who believed she might possibly have a chance of love.”
“Pen!” Eloise drops their hands and clutches Penelope’s shoulders, leaning close. “You are none of those things! You shouldn’t speak so about yourself.”
“Why are you even here?” Penelope asks bluntly, and when Eloise draws back a little, she wrenches herself out of Eloise’s grip and goes to stand at the window, looking out at the street below. It’s empty, rather like herself.
Eloise is quiet behind her, and she’s a little glad to have perhaps struck home. There are soft sounds, as of someone walking back and forth in evening slippers, and then they start to come toward where she’s standing, although she still refuses to turn and look.
“I want to apologize,” Eloise says, and her voice is steadier. Her hand comes back to Penelope’s arm, but this time her grip is gentler, kinder. “Can I sit down?”
“You may do as you like,” Penelope mutters, and Eloise settles herself on the cushion where Penelope’s spent her entire day. Eloise, however, is looking up at Penelope’s face rather than down at the door to the Bridgerton house.
“I don't know where to begin.” Her voice sounds so tired that Penelope has to glance down at her, and she notes how drawn Eloise's face is, how pale. That's because of what she did, she reminds herself. "I suppose I should start by explaining exactly what happened. Well. I was talking to Cressida —" She pauses at Penelope's loud exhalation, then plunges on. "I was being unkind to you, and I told her what you and my brother were up to. Miss Livingston was nearby and I did not notice, and she went on to tell everyone else. It is — inexcusable.”
It is, in a way. Two years ago the two of them would have roundly excoriated ladies who told their friends' secrets to others, judging them by a standard they thought they would never fail to meet. It’s also simply a confirmation of what she has always suspected: that Eloise isn’t with Cressida simply for want of another friend, but specifically to hurt Penelope, because she can dissect Penelope’s faults and follies best with Cressida.
That’s fine. It doesn’t signify. Penelope caused it, she deserves it.
“Very well,” she says when the silence stretches out too long and seems to be affecting Eloise. “I forgive you. Think no more about it.”
Eloise doesn’t seem to believe her. “Really?”
“It is as much my fault as yours. More, even, for going through with the scheme in the first place.”
When Eloise sighs, something in Penelope’s chest throbs. And when Eloise wraps a slim hand around her wrist, tugging her down toward the window seat, Penelope gives way.
“Please talk to me. Please, Pen. I’m sorry — not just about telling your secret, about everything. I’ve hated this fight, every minute of it.” Eloise is still clasping her wrist, but she's added her other hand so that she can cover Penelope's hand as well, and Penelope realizes that she wants Eloise to go on holding her hand all night. Nobody ever touches her kindly anymore, just the occasional light handshake upon an introduction before she is dismissed.
Still, she can't stop pushing Eloise away. “So you no longer think it was wrong of me to publish that story about yourself and Mr. Sharp,” she says, challenging Eloise to get angry, to call her an idiot. And Eloise does pause and look away.
“No,” she admits eventually. “Well — I cannot say. I wish you’d told me that you were Lady Whistledown, Pen, and talked to me about everything. I might have agreed to it, if I’d known what was happening, but I cannot say that the right thing to do was to hurt me to save me without my knowledge. At the same time, I understand why you did it. I cannot pretend I might not have done the same thing. My opinion of my own judgement has dropped quite a bit lately.”
Penelope truly did not believe Eloise would say anything nearly so conciliatory, and she has no idea what to do with it. Her eyes start to fill with tears, though, and it's mortifying, but she also has no idea what to do with that.
“I think,” she manages to confess, wiping at her tears with the hand Eloise isn't claiming, “there was a part of me that was jealous of you. I can’t pretend my motives were entirely honorable.”
“I don't think —”
Penelope shakes her head and looks out the window, up at the stars. “No man has ever thought remotely of courting me. My own mother thinks it’s ludicrous for me to hope for marriage. People do not even see me, Eloise. Even if I were the most ladylike debutante, it would change nothing.”
She expects Eloise to scoff, to fail to understand — but perhaps the ease with which she’s become accepted by the other young ladies of the ton has made it clear what a difference there is between not wanting to get married and not being able to get married; between refusing to play the game and not even being allowed onto the pitch.
“I’m nearly on the shelf, and I have never been kissed. And I am fairly certain I never will be,” she says, and she has never said anything so soul-baring out loud in her life. She goes on recklessly. “I could die tomorrow without it ever happening.” The moonlight glints off of Eloise’s dark hair and her pearls, and Penelope isn’t sure why she’s concentrating on these details, or why her heart is thudding so loudly in her chest.
Eloise says nothing in response, which is awful. Why did Penelope say so much? It must make her seem even more desperate — but she is so dreadfully desperate. To be wanted for her body at the very least, even if she can’t be loved, though both options seem equally impossible. Why is she always —
Her line of thought is entirely thrown off by Eloise’s hand going to her jaw, softly pressing her chin up, and then Eloise leaning in with her lips just slightly parted. When Eloise’s lips meet hers, Penelope freezes, holding her breath, and Eloise retreats slightly. But she must see something in Penelope's face when she searches it because she returns, bending close in the dark, and this time Penelope does not freeze.
She doesn’t know how she knows what to do, and perhaps she is, in fact, doing it very incorrectly, but she kisses back. And her hand, the one that isn't clutching Eloise’s, drifts up to Eloise's neck and comes to rest there as though it can help anchor her so that they may never sail apart again.
There is a sound elsewhere in the house — a knocking at a door, or someone dropping something to an uncarpeted floor — and they do part, breathing heavily. Eloise's lips are darkened from their kiss, and so are her cheeks. When Penelope’s thumb brushes up her jawline, Eloise leans into it without taking her eyes off Penelope.
A number of pieces are falling into place in Penelope’s mind, slotting neatly into each other to complete a picture that had always confused her. From the comprehension dawning on Eloise’s face, she thinks the same may be happening to her. This all seems so easy, in comparison to the tiresome difficulties inherent to attempting to attract or converse with men. Then, she’s forcing herself to perform steps that feel so false and unnatural — now, she is able to act on instinct.
“I should go,” says Eloise, a smile playing about her lips, and she slowly gets to her feet, brushing out the wrinkles in her skirt. Penelope is still a little stunned, seated at the window and looking up at her silently; she bends down and indulgently kisses Penelope one more time, now with so much more confidence. “Now you won’t die without having been kissed, anyway.”
Penelope certainly can’t die now. There are so many more interesting things to do and think about.