Chapter Text
Late August 2024, Aubrey Hall
“WHAT is going on with you?!”, Eloise Bridgerton asked with a confused, yet slightly amused look on her face as she closed the door to her bedroom.
Penelope Featherington, her best friend of more than a decade, slumped down on a settee by the open window, and buried her face in her hands with a groan.
“Issopafdic,” she mumbled through her fingers.
“I'm sorry, I didn't get that,” Eloise had to fight the urge to laugh. She didn't think she had ever seen her friend in such a state before. It wasn't like calm and quiet, always controlled and cautious Pen to act this unhinged. She had been nervously pacing the room, not being able to sit quietly for more than five minutes, not paying attention to the conversation, giggling as if caught at something improper whenever she had been addressed by someone. She had been frantically fanning herself, gulping glass after glass of water, not being able to hold eye contact with anyone.
“Would you mind repeating that?”
Penelope dropped her hands and looked up to her, eyes filled with exasperation. “I said I am so pathetic!”
“Well, I am going to need more proof before I can second this claim,” Eloise answered with a wink.
Penelope huffed and leaned back against the back of the settee, staring up at the ceiling.
“Oh god, oh god, how did it get to that? When did I become so embarrassingly out of control that I can’t even function in the most normal social circumstances anymore?!”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that drastically,” Eloise said slowly.
“Sure, you’re kind of not acting like yourself today, but you’re not embarrassing, Pen! I was just worried that something was bothering you. You seemed so very not at ease down in the drawing room with my family, so on edge, as if you were desperately trying to hold back a sneeze.”
Penelope let out a snort at that.
“Well, it definitely has to do with bodily functions,” she murmured, more to herself than to Eloise.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re really acting weird today! Please, give me something I can work with!”
Penelope gave her a long, thoughtful look and then, as though she had just admitted defeat to herself, let out a deep breath, all tension leaving her body.
“All right. It’s no use, I can’t do this anymore. I have to get it out...”
She inhaled deeply. “I’m going to tell you something now that I have been keeping to myself for a very long time. Not because I didn’t trust you, but because I was ashamed and scared and… I just really didn’t know how you would react, and I didn’t want to put myself through your possibly bad reaction. But… you were so very open to me when you told me about Philip the other day, I feel like I owe you one. Plus, since I obviously don’t seem to be able to keep it together anymore, I could really use somebody to drag me away when I get too embarrassing.”
“Pen, once again: You’re not embarrassing, but you are rambling quite a bit, so please just get to the point,” Eloise said with furrowed brows, at the same time impatient and amused by her friend’s obvious discomfort.
“OK, here it goes.”
Penelope took a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut.
“I am in love with your brother.”
There was silence for a few seconds, Eloise staring at Penelope in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. I’ve been in love with him for as long as I can remember. Ever since I met you guys, really. And I was so scared to tell you because I thought you’d be so angry with me. And I was embarrassed for even hoping I might one day be good enough for him, but no matter what I did or tried in all those years to fall out of love with him, no matter who else I dated or fucked, nothing ever changed the fact that I’m desperately, hopelessly in love with him,” she finished, looking even smaller than usual, as if all the energy had been sucked out of her.
Eloise kneaded the bridge of her nose. “OK, just give me a minute to process… First of all, I am not angry at you. I get that it’s hard to talk about those things, I get that it’s even harder if the person you want to talk about it with seems kind of biased. And maybe you were right to wait. Maybe I would have reacted poorly back in the day… I mean, even I know that I was a menace as a teenager…”
Pen grinned at her, clearly remembering teenage rebel Eloise, trying to start a fight with anyone who didn’t get out of her way fast enough.
“Second of all, what the hell do you mean, saying you’re not good enough for him?!”
“Well, look at him. He’s tall and handsome, effortlessly funny, gets along easily with anybody… he could have any girl he’d like, then why would he ever care to choose me? Plain old Penelope Featherington, short and chubby, shy and awkward…”
“Whoa whoa whoa, let me stop you right there. How can you talk about my best friend like that? You know just as well as I do that you only think those things about yourself because your mum put those thoughts into your head. So, get them out of there at once or I WILL tell your therapist! You are one of my absolute favourite people on this planet, you are an amazing human being, my whole family thinks so, why else would we have made you an honorary Bridgerton? You're smart and funny and witty and observant and a delight to talk to! So what if you need a little time to get comfortable in bigger social settings? Anyone who's not willing to invest that little time is missing out on so much and simply doesn’t deserve you! You ARE worthy of love! If anything, I think neither of my dumbass brothers is even in the slightest worthy of you!
But, speaking of, which brother are we even talking about?”
Eloise had a valid point, since she had four brothers.
She could rule out her youngest brother Gregory who had been only four years old when Pen and the Bridgertons had met.
Her oldest brother Anthony was also improbable. He was eleven years older than them and, after their father’s untimely death, had already been in charge of the Bridgerton family business when they met. While he viewed Pen just as much as part of their family as anyone else, they had never been particularly close. Besides, he had been married for years and Eloise remembered vividly how happy and moved Pen had looked at Anthony’s and Kate’s wedding, how excited she had been at the births of their two children.
Which left her second and third oldest brothers, Benedict and Colin, who were both very good friends with Pen.
Penelope frowned. “You really can’t tell? I thought I was so obvious!”
“Well, obviously not. I mean, I kind of don’t think you’ve been crushing on Greg since he was a toddler, but other than that, I’m clueless.”
Penelope gave her a shy smile.
“Him,” she murmured, nodding over towards the wall above Eloise’s desk. The corkboard there was filled with snapshots of friends and family: Eloise with her mates from uni at a restaurant table; a young Edmund Bridgerton cradling his three year old daughter on his lap; El at her graduation ceremony with Benedict next to her, gifting her a painting of herself; a slightly blurred shot of all the Bridgerton siblings standing on the lawn at Aubrey Hall, clearly arguing over some Pall Mall rule; El with her three sisters and Penelope, all dressed up for Daphne’s wedding; her mum together with grandpa Ledger, smiling brightly.
The picture Penelope was pointing at, however, was right at the upper left corner of the board. It showed Eloise and Penelope at age 16, standing on the steps of Bridgerton house, ready to go to prom. Although they had practically been glued together all through their teenage years, they couldn’t have looked less alike.
Eloise, tall and lean, had been at the peak of her rebel phase and had been bribed by her mother to wear a dress. She had chosen a plain, black shift dress that matched her hair which was dyed a deep black and had combined it with a “Fuck the system”-pin, her scruffy and ripped Converse All stars and Avril Lavigne style smokey eyes.
Penelope on the other hand, still under her mother’s thumb, had been forced to wear a voluminous, bright yellow, ruffly cupcake of a dress, her red hair curled into tight locks all over her forehead and held in place by a flood of huge, yellow and pink bows.
The only thing their appearances had in common were the big hands resting on their shoulders. They belonged to 19-year-old Colin Bridgerton standing between them, holding them in a happy, brotherly embrace, sporting the huge, charming smile that was so distinctively him. Colin, sweet, kind and caring as always, had offered to be their ride that evening. He had even taken the time to fashion a wrist corsage for each one of them: a black one for Eloise, a light yellow one for Pen. Eloise, of course, had found it incredibly cheesy, lamenting all evening about what a possessive male tradition it was, about outdated gender roles being preserved and the horrible ecological footprint of cut flowers. Pen, however, had stared up at Colin in admiration and thanked him with sparkling eyes… which made much more sense now, Eloise mused.
“Huh… well, there you go,” she responded, smirking at the self-made corsages in the picture. It was clear from the slightly mussed looks of the flowers that Colin was significantly lacking skill as a florist. “You seem to have a liking for the artsy types, don’t you.”
Penelope rolled her eyes at Eloise’s sarcasm. “I don’t know about that. But what I do know is that, for years now, I’ve been really good at keeping my feelings to myself. I’ve been so used to holding up the facade that I managed to keep up a genuine friendship with him, it was kind of my everyday business. But… I don’t know… I don’t know what it is but those last days, since we’ve come to Aubrey Hall, I’ve been so unbelievably…” she trailed off, embarrassed.
“What?”
“Horny,” Penelope groaned, lowering her head on the armrest of the settee. “Like every single time I’m simply in the same room with him, I just wanna lick him any place I can reach”.
“Oi!”, Eloise cried out. “That’s still my brother you’re talking about. Spare me the details of your filthy thoughts, will you?”
“Sorry,” Penelope smiled. “It is just that it has never been as intense as it is now. My bodily reactions to my feelings have never been that fierce before. That’s why I’ve been behaving so weirdly the last few days. Basically, I’ve constantly been trying to keep myself from jumping him in front of your whole family. And I don’t know what’s changed. Maybe it is because I haven’t seen him in a while, maybe my body forgot what it felt like to be near him and let its guard down. Or maybe it’s because I’m ovulating at the moment… But whatever it is, it is killing me. I feel like a bloody horny teenager. It’s pathetic, really…”
“Or maybe you’re horny because you’re horny,” Eloise interjected.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Pen, honestly. When was the last time you had sex? And I mean the last time you had sex with another real person, not just with yourself. I imagine, by the way you’re talking, the last time you had sex with yourself can’t have been very long ago,” she added with a smirk.
Penelope let out a sigh and hid her face in her hands again. After a few seconds she peaked out slowly. “That must have been seven… no, eight months ago. That dude Jake, remember?”
“Oh yes, of course.”
Eloise had almost forgotten that guy Penelope had dated for a few weeks earlier this year. But, to be honest, he had been remarkably forgettable.
“But, from what I remember, that didn’t even count as good sex now, did it? Didn’t you fall asleep during, once?”
Penelope only winced at that.
“When was the last time you had really good, satisfying sex?”
Penelope snorted. “I’ve never been good at higher mathematics.”
Eloise laughed but got serious very quickly.
“Then maybe that’s your answer. You’re especially horny because YOU ARE especially horny! You need to get some dick. You need to get laid! And you need to get laid good. You need someone to get you off real nice. There’s so many guys out there who are way hotter than my brothers!”
“You know what, in a weird way that makes a lot of sense,” Penelope replied slowly.
“Of course it does! Everything I come up with does!”, Eloise yelled out.
“So, what do you say, we’ll only be here for two more days before we get back to London. Can you hold out for that long? And then, when we’re back home, I’ll take you out to the clubs or the pubs or wherever you want to go and we’ll find you someone really hot who’ll thoroughly fuck your brains out and push all those naughty thoughts of yours back to a sufferable level. Someone who will fuck you all through next week, so that, by the time my mum’s next brunch comes around, there will be no coherent thought left in your brain to spend on…” Eloise squeezed her eyes shut, as if in pain “… licking my brother.”
Penelope looked at her lovingly.
“Deal,” she said with a smile.
“Great!”, Eloise exclaimed.
She sat down beside Penelope and took her hand in hers.
“And just so you know, Pen. I love you. You are and always have been my dearest friend. And no matter what may or may not someday happen between you and my brother, nothing will ever change that. Whether you hook up someday, whether you ever start dating or get married or break up or whatever, I will not forsake you. You are just as much my family as my brothers are. My love for you is not dependent on our respective love for other people.”
Penelope blinked at her through watery eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she pulled her into a tight hug. “I love you, too.”
As they broke apart, Penelope smiled.
“Wow, this being honest thing feels really great! Who knew!”
Eloise laughed, pulling Penelope up as she stood and started towards the door.
“Come on, let’s get you into your own room so you can toss yourself off to thoughts of my brother at least twice. I know you want to!”