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forasecondtherewedwon · 4 months

Note

3 & 38 💕

Thank you, friend 💕 This prompt took my face in its hands and whispered, "Drunken late-night bus ride."

3) SHIP: Cressida x Eloise

38) SCANDAL: public drunkenness!

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Happy Times We Had (And Yet the Times Were Sad)

Pairing: Cressida x Eloise Rating: M Word Count: 1729

Summary: Drunk on champagne and shining like two falling stars, Eloise and Cressida take the bus.

They rushed onto the bus, out of breath, and Eloise hoped it was the right bus. The lit-up number over the windscreen had seemed right as they’d dashed down the sidewalk, but it was only a blur in her memory as she snapped open her clutch and poked around for their fare.

The driver pitched the bus forward, which Eloise supposed was as much a mark of trust as a completely arseholish thing to do; he was assuming she could pay. The bus swung away from the curb to avoid a parked car and Cressida wrapped her arms around Eloise’s waist from behind, the pair of them swaying together. As soon as Eloise got their fares sorted, she took Cressida by the hand and led her, wobbling, down the aisle, collapsing into a pair of seats across from the rear door. She fumbled out an error-riddled text to Benedict, saying they were on their way home.

The pair of them glittered in their evening finery—dresses with little straps that crisscrossed their backs and sparkling eyeshadow fallout under their eyes. Their insobriety made the effect all the prettier. Eloise grinned lazily as she stared at Cressida, whose head rested back against the window, headlights and neon lights and stoplights sliding past outside, her perpetually too-tight blonde hair tugged loose to drape, like a third drunk, over her shoulder.

“D’you think he’ll be angry at me?” Cressida asked.

Eloise twisted until the pointy toes of their high heels knocked together. The large sequins on Cressida’s skirt would leave impressions in Eloise’s bare knees as she pressed against her.

“Who?”

Cressida sulked.

“My father.”

“Oh yes. Well,” Eloise reflected, patting her friend’s hand, “you did call him a pompous, uptight bastard. And you gave him the ol’ ‘fuck you’ gesture when we were on our way out.”

Cressida slumped a little in her seat, tilting her head.

“But d’you think he’ll be mad?”

“I think…” Eloise said slowly, because the thought was still forming and because she was drunk. “I think, if your father sat down with himself—”

“Mhmm.”

“—and really got to—got to know himself—”

“Mhmm.”

“—that maybe he would maybe see tha’ he is a pompous, uptight bastard,” Eloise concluded.

Cressida’s head swung loosely from side to side.

“That is never going to happen.”

“No, it doesn’ seem likely,” Eloise agreed. “Maybe if you hadn’ said it in front of all of ‘respectable society.’” Her air quotes were expansive.

“‘Respectable society’ can kiss my ‘Daisy by Marc Jacobs’-scented arse,” Cressida declared, yanking her shoes off and dropping them onto the floor of the bus.

Eloise laughed richly, leaning her head on Cressida’s shoulder. After a minute, she sighed. She could feel Cressida breathing. Turning her face just a little, Eloise inhaled. She could smell Cressida’s perfume, mixed with champagne sweetness and, gradually, the lingering scent of smoke that clung to Eloise, courtesy of the cigarette she’d smoked in the restaurant bathroom before they’d made their escape.

“You smell really nice,” Eloise observed.

“Thanks.”

The word sounded wet, so Eloise raised her head, and saw that Cressida was silently weeping. Eloise’s mouth fell open in panic. She was not good at this: emotion. She had never been a natural at comforting others, never the right-shaped shoulder to cry on. Her younger siblings had always gone to their mother for solace—failing that, to Daphne or Benedict (to be fair, so had Eloise). In this moment, with Cressida’s fat tears washing her bottom row of eyelashes of mascara, leaving them pale and clustered and vulnerable to the world, Eloise had never wanted to help so badly.

She touched Cressida’s cheek and gently shushed her, but it was obvious that Cressida was a deadly combination of too overwhelmed and too intoxicated to stop crying that easily.

“I’ve totally fucked my life,” Cressida sobbed.

And Eloise said, “No. No. No,” in various sympathetic tones, meaning each repetition with her whole heart.

“They’ll send me away!”

“They can’t. You’re not some child in boarding school, you’re at uni.”

But Cressida was shaking her head, adamant.

“They’ll send me away. They’ll make me live in Denmark. I got too good at Danish. I never should’ve declared a minor, but my father said a language would be good for—good for my business degree,” she wailed.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Eloise thought fast. “I’m going to hide you in my closet.” This thought had indeed come to her fast, but was perhaps not sound.

Cressida sniffed.

“In your closet?”

“Uh huh. I’ll protect you.”

Although her face was streaked with tears that glimmered pink and gold, Cressida smiled. She pulled Eloise’s hand onto her lap and held it.

“You sound about four years old,” she said.

Eloise smiled back and reached out to trace the shape of Cressida’s chin with her fingers.

“I dunno about that, but I think I’d melt if you called me ‘baby.’”

The bus rolled jarringly over a pothole, nearly flinging Eloise from her seat. She gripped the nearest pole and swiveled her head to look out the window. Well done, she thought to herself. Right bus after all.

“C’mon,” she said. “Le’s get off at the next one.”

She told Cressida not to forget her shoes, and they hobbled off with all the grace with which they’d made their ascent. The bus puffed hot air and pulled away. Cressida squinted at the buildings they faced from the sidewalk. Her heels dangled from her hand, her fingers hooked through the straps.

“Is this right?”

Eloise grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to look across the street.

“Oh. I know where we are,” Cressida announced. “You are protecting me.”

But Eloise felt a bit embarrassed about that, and the other thing she’d said, now that they were out in the warm evening air and the bus wasn’t lurching them along. They darted across the road. It wasn’t until they were on the other side, not a ten-minute walk from both of their houses, that she looked Cressida in the eye—and this was because Cressida grabbed her hand to stop her.

“This would all be awful without you,” she said.

Just for Eloise, there were streetlights like angels’ eyes that made Cressida’s hair glow and her dress shimmer and her eyes shine above the muck of her cried-off mascara, and the way she watched her was divinely tender and fearful, both.

Eloise kissed Cressida on the cheek; she wasn’t so tall without her shoes on, with her hair down. Eloise breathed her in, then stepped back.

Cressida wore an alarmed, animal expression, like something not used to human touch. But then she dropped her shoes—Eloise heard the clatter—and sunk her fingers into Eloise’s tangled hair. Eloise was breathing fast, but Cressida just leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. Eloise’s eyes crossed as she watched Cressida’s close.

“Don’ go,” Cressida murmured.

“I-I’m not.”

Eloise was ashamed of the stammer, thinking she was making too much of this. She was always making too much of things, but this was worse than usual because it would hurt more. She’d thought, someplace between the restaurant and here, that it was time. She had misunderstood; Cressida was only drunk and morose, lonely and needy. Maybe she did see how Eloise needed her (it was different) and she was playing on that. She used to be that sort of mean girl. Eloise didn’t want to think her friend capable of such a personal cruelty though. She just doesn’t understand, Eloise told herself, staring at Cressida’s blurry, too-close face. She won’t feel me wrapped around her finger until I start cutting off her circulation.

“Don’ go,” she was still mumbling, shaking her head, their foreheads rubbing.

Somehow, Eloise’s heart felt heavier in pieces than it had a moment ago, whole. But she wouldn’t go. She couldn’t. Cressida meant too much to her. They were each other’s life raft in all this society bullshit and parental expectation. Anyway, she wasn’t about to leave her friend standing drunk and barefoot on the sidewalk.

Gentle, Eloise reached up to pull Cressida’s hands from her hair. Without warning, Cressida thrust her face forward and kissed Eloise on the mouth. Eloise blinked.

Now it would hurt, and this hurt would scar—when she had to maternally tuck Cressida’s hair behind her ears and say, That’s enough now, Cress. But before she could speak, Cressida said, “Baby.”

“What?” Eloise’s voice sounded choked.

And Cressida’s fingertips trailed up and down the sides of Eloise’s neck, and she traced the pendant that hung against her throat, and she pressed their faces together, and she said, “Baby,” and she kissed Eloise again.

Eloise kissed her back, sloppy and yearning, cataclysmic and sweet. Cressida wasn’t someone she could kiss and laugh about it the next day. She couldn’t enjoy these benefits and keep being just-friends. She couldn’t hook up with Cressida, have a fling with Cressida, eat Cressida out on a pristine bench in a private park after dark because her dad was the worst and she was somehow even prettier with swirls of cried-off makeup making her cheeks look like candy-coloured Italian marble. Eloise couldn’t do this and recover, but she did it. How could she not? She did it and she led Cressida through the gate of the private park with their fingers linked, and Eloise laid her back on the pristine bench and crouched to give her head while Cressida named all the constellations she could see, getting all of them wrong. Eloise did it, gambling that it wouldn’t seem ugly when they were sober. She did it, remembering the pressure of Cressida’s arms around her waist while she paid for the bus. How, how, how could she not?

And then Cressida curled into Eloise’s side and said, “You’re the only one who matters.”

And Eloise combed her fingers through that long blonde hair and said, “That isn’t true.”

And it could’ve ended there, but Cressida went to Eloise’s home because her house wasn’t one, and slept in a guest room, and, half-awake, lifted the sheet for Eloise when she turned up later on, a way to beckon her in because she was dithering in the doorway. They slept deeply.

Eloise, who had appointed herself protector, woke up to feel Cressida wrapped around her from behind.

#my writing #the Big Feelings fic #Bridgerton #Cressida x Eloise #Creloise #Bridgerton fic #Cressida Cowper #Eloise Bridgerton #Creloise fic

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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 months

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ship 3 location 19 👀💖🫶🏻

Thanks very much for the prompt, Anon!! Hoping you find this one 👀 worthy...

3) SHIP: Cressida x Eloise

19) LOCATION: a carriage interior

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Two to Give Chase

Pairing: Eloise x Cressida Rating: E Word Count: 3201

Summary: Colin had chased Penelope, and Eloise had chased Colin, and Cressida, rather miraculously, had chased her. Or; Eloise and Cressida get their own carriage scene.

All was in motion tonight, and Eloise, who had only wanted to sit and unfurl her ideas to Cressida, was caught out. Colin had gone to Penelope, and Cressida had gone to Debling, and who to Eloise? No one.

It was not the evening she had thought she was having, ensconced with her friend. She had briefly imagined their tête-à-tête a stimulating salon… until Cressida had abandoned her the moment Debling stood alone on the dance floor. Eloise had scoffed to be left so in the lurch. She had stared, in puzzled awe, at the dancing pairs. Penelope and her brother had appeared to be arguing, while Cressida had looked rather smug in whatever she was imparting to Debling. Both pairs had annoyed Eloise, and it was more complicated than because she had not been a part of them, a part of the easy swish and turn of society she had always felt so out of step with.

Eloise had not solved the mystery of her feelings by the time the music stopped and the set broke up, and so it was impulsively that, when she saw Penelope disappear from the room after speaking to Debling and saw Colin follow after, she shoved her chair back and gave chase.

She was in time to catch up with neither the retreating roll of Penelope’s carriage nor her brother’s feet as he ran—absurd!—after it. She was left, in fact, panting and clutching her side, squinting after them with consternation. She was left alone in the night.

…Until she felt a gloved hand on her arm and turned to see Cressida skidding to a stop at her side. Eloise did not know how much she had seen, what she knew or even guessed, and she had no chance to ask. Cressida was flagging down assistance, was ordering the Cowper carriage be brought. Eloise, repossessed of her breath yet befuddled, only understood that the cause of this rush was her. Colin had chased Penelope, and Eloise had chased Colin, and Cressida, rather miraculously, had chased her.

After Cressida had all but bodily yanked Eloise into the carriage and ordered “Bridgerton House!”, they sat face to face. Eloise did not know quite what to say, except: “What are you doing?”

“I am assisting you! I admit, the destination was a guess—”

“But…” Words failed Eloise for a moment. “Surely this is your opportunity.”

Cressida blinked.

“To do what?”

“To speak with Debling. To dance with him.” Eloise made a gesture that attempted to communicate all the rituals of courtship, all the things it was so much more difficult to do when the man whose attention you sought was so often divided between young ladies—namely, between Cressida and Penelope, who had just fled.

“Oh.” Cressida appeared thoughtful, as though she had truly not considered this. Then, her countenance cleared. “I suppose I did not want to stay with him. I suppose I wanted to… go with you.”

“I do not even know why I am here!” Eloise’s voice rose in exasperation—at herself? At Cressida for throwing away this long looked-for chance to have Debling to herself? Whatever was any of them doing this evening?

“Well, I…” Cressida began tentatively, sitting very straight with her hands folded on her lap. “I rather hope you are trying to waylay Mr. Bridgerton, though I cannot imagine why. Should your break from Penelope Featherington keep your brother from her as well?”

Eloise stared at the woman across from her. She had misjudged her more than once, and was now especially touched by Cressida’s unexpected generosity; it was clear she felt an empathy with Penelope after all. However much she did not want Penelope competing with her for Debling, she apparently did not mean for Penelope to have no husband. For that was the reason behind all of this, Eloise knew—if she stopped to contemplate it beyond rash decisions and gravel in her shoes: Colin must love Penelope. He would not have run behind her carriage if circumstances were otherwise.

“If you side with Penelope, why are you hoping I am trying to prevent my brother from seeing her?” Eloise asked.

Cressida directed her gaze down to her lap, smoothing her dress.

“Because… if you are not…” Her smile, when she raised her chin once more, was fragile. “If you are instead chasing after Penelope, I have made... a very silly blunder. And I ought to have remained with Lord Debling.”

Eloise had never felt it: this. She held Cressida in her gaze—all her terror, all her practicality, all her pink—and she saw what so many of her mother’s stories had not been enough to say. It seemed so simple, so suddenly simple, that she could have laughed. She did not; she did not ever want Cressida to think she was being laughed at, and Eloise felt too overwhelmed to make sense of her laughter to another person. She doubted she could have made sense of it to herself. She felt like a doll that had fallen from a height, wooden limbs all disjointed, so low to the moving sky. It was disorienting, and it filled her with a mad feeling of immortal joy.

“Debling is a most sensible choice,” Eloise murmured. Her lips felt numb, but that was alright, because she was more interested in Cressida’s, which were flinching into a sad smile as she glanced away.

“That he is,” Cressida agreed with forced confidence.

“He would be a good husband to a woman who wanted her freedom, who wanted to be out from under her parents. A woman who had not had a warm home growing up could undertake the making of one, all to her own taste, if she had such a husband as Debling, who was not uncaring but left her much on her own.”

“She could.”

“Does not the woman I describe remind you of yourself?” Eloise wondered gently, making Cressida look at her. “Unless I am mistaken.”

“She does.”

Again, Cressida went along with what Eloise had said, still wearing that unhappy smile. She did not see—Eloise did not know how to make her—that Eloise attempted the same empathy Cressida had lately shown Penelope; she felt for the other woman, and knew what might make her happy. Or if not happy, easy, which might even be better, if love was out of the question. But whether or not love was out of the question was what Eloise really hoped to determine.

“The two of you together,” Eloise ventured, longing to be contradicted, “would be quite a practical match.”

“Practical,” Cressida repeated.

The ensuing silence stretched long enough for Eloise to begin to think of Penelope and Colin, and wonder what had transpired, what might have been transpiring even then, whether they had proceeded to Bridgerton House as Cressida had supposed or aimed for a different destination. Eloise felt she would need to meddle there; if they intended to marry, she could not keep Penelope’s secret quiet. She would not have it on her conscience, no matter if Penelope had reconciled herself to having it on her own. Colin was Eloise’s brother and deserved the truth. What could be love that was not begun honestly?

Eloise’s thoughts were scattering into abstraction when Cressida spoke again, concentrating her focus.

“Of course,” she said, “the practicality of the thing is what makes it all the more inconvenient…” She swallowed and the eyes she locked on Eloise’s were full of nervousness. “…as I fear your influence has made me an idealist.”

Heart beating with a hopefulness that was almost painful, Eloise pled from her eyes.

“You’re brave,” she said.

“More likely a very great fool,” Cressida admitted.

Eloise pulled Cressida’s trembling hands into her own, stroking the satiny fingers of her gloves.

“You will not marry him?” Eloise fairly breathed the question, afraid to hear herself ask it, afraid of what she wanted the answer to be.

Cressida leaned in and swore, “I will not marry him. How could I go away from you?”

With a strangled sound which might have been ecstasy or agony but was certainly a relief to expel from her chest, Eloise took advantage of the jostling of the carriage to fling herself forward, lips pressing Cressida’s. Cressida gave a little cry against her mouth, and then her head was tilting to kiss her more assuredly, her hands squeezing Eloise’s.

Eloise could hardly believe it. Fortunately, there was no more time for doubt than there was for belief, and as Cressida was kissing her back, Eloise seized the opportunity wholeheartedly. The carriage ride would only be so long. At the end of it would be Bridgerton House, and Colin, and Penelope, and perhaps a proposal. If Eloise had to stand witness to a happiness constructed partially over the uneven ground of deception, then she would witness it with her own honest happiness, even if it must be concealed. One of them was crying desperate, grateful, ecstatic tears; as Eloise cupped Cressida’s cheeks in her palms, the tears soaked her gloves.

As though Cressida too had remembered they did not have long, she kissed Eloise more roughly, eliciting a groan even Eloise had not expected.

“I—” she muttered, eyes still half shut but with some vague sense that she must apologize for the impropriety of the sound. “I did not—”

Cressida would not hear the apology. Her arm slipped around Eloise’s waist as she said insistently, “Come here.”

Eloise all but threw herself onto the opposite seat, and in seconds, Cressida had her crowded into the corner, apparently doing all she could to cause Eloise to repeat the noise. With a sloppy swirl of her tongue into Eloise’s mouth, it was accomplished.

The more they kissed, the more they touched—Cressida’s hand gripping Eloise’s side now, higher than her waist—the more Eloise wanted Cressida’s kisses and touches. She was experiencing an urgent sensation. For all her mother’s stories of love and marriage and children, this was something Eloise knew she had never described. Eloise had believed in passion, of course, but she had assumed it was all of the mind—that desire sprung of a connection between two people on the field of intellect and emotions. That understanding was the pinnacle of what one could hope to discover in another person.

Well.

Eloise had been unutterably wrong.

She had also read books, but any book in their home that made any allusion to physicality did so in a glossing, indistinct way. What she felt at the juncture of her thighs, at that very moment, was nothing if not distinct!

Eloise quickly became as desperate to touch Cressida as she was to be touched herself. And not through these blasted gloves! Pulling out of the kiss, Eloise bit the finger of one offending article between her teeth, but the damned things were so snug! She would scream if she were not able to feel all the textures of Cressida beneath her bare fingertips!

“Let me,” Cressida muttered.

With a frustrated gasp, Eloise extended her arm. To her tremendous surprise, Cressida bowed over her arm and used her own teeth to take hold of the fabric and draw it down Eloise’s skin. Oh, it rubbed deliciously as it went, making all the fine hairs on her arm stand on end. Cressida whisked away one glove and then the other. Eloise watched and saw the barest hint of an impulsively made decision in Cressida’s expression before she licked between Eloise’s fingers. Eloise moaned.

And then they were upon one another, Cressida wrenching the dress from Eloise’s shoulders. The straps of Eloise’s stays digging into her upper arms, and she did not care! Her movements were slightly restricted, and what of it! There had been days—many days, most days—when a restrictive garment would have provoked her into endless complaints. Groaning! Whining! Refusals to be dragged from the house! Now, it hardly mattered, because her mouth could still kiss Cressida’s, her thudding chest could still press Cressida’s, her legs could twine with Cressida’s still as they reclined across the seat.

Cressida’s leg rubbed between Eloise’s quite by accident, and Eloise heard another sound of her own creation that was totally unfamiliar to her own ears. Cressida became as a statue. They panted against one another. And then, slowly, Cressida rubbed her leg against Eloise once more. Eloise’s head fell back as she cried out.

They carried on in a flurry, and likely would have carried on longer—longer than the journey would take, longer than the whole of human history had yet spanned, surely—had Eloise not been gripped by the need to show Cressida the same sort of pleasure. She had to. The thought possessed her as she grasped Cressida’s hips and handled her roughly, moving her aside so she, Eloise, could sink to the carriage floor. Cressida sat up, looking much dishevelled.

“What are you doing?”

“I have no idea,” Eloise confessed, the words seeming to crackle as they left her mouth, which was no longer for speaking, only for kissing, for kissing only Cressida.

Kneeling, she took the hem of Cressida’s dress in her hands and began gathering it up towards her knees. She could not explain. All Eloise understood was that the feeling was there for her, and so it must be there for Cressida, and perhaps, if she could see, she could comprehend: how to coax the sensation from her body, how to prolong it, how to prove Cressida had chosen rightly by picking her over Lord Debling.

Her head dropped onto Cressida’s bare knee and she sighed her thanks to God.

“I do.”

Dazed, Eloise looked up at Cressida with a frown.

“Hmm?”

“I know what you must do,” Cressida clarified. Her cheeks were the soft-edged pink of the inside of a cherry, though as she continued to stare at Eloise, they darkened towards a shade more like the ripe skin of that fruit.

“How on earth do you know?” Eloise demanded. She could not fault Cressida for smiling as though she would laugh at her; Eloise’s voice had come out rather indignant. But this meant some young ladies were actually learning about—

“Just because I do not read books on the subject of the great auk does not mean I do not read.”

Cressida’s smile was now very sly, and she held her chin up haughtily as she slid her dress higher than Eloise had yet dared. Eloise’s face grew hot at the sight of Cressida’s naked thighs. Was this the sight men traveled halfway across Europe to enjoy? Was this what men snickered about in their clubs, away from delicate, feminine ears? If it was, Eloise was immediately certain they were unworthy of it. They could not possibly have been appreciating such a view as much as she was, crouched before Cressida Cowper in the moving carriage.

“Could you possibly lend me some of your books?” Eloise murmured.

“Of course. For now, I shall tell you all you need to know.”

This exchange seemed more than generous, an abundantly fair trade for swiftly imparted information on a flightless bird. The knowledge would serve both parties; they would both be the better for it—Eloise was convinced of this, even after Cressida’s hurried account of the mechanics of the maneuver gave way to an explanation without words. With dizzying suddenness, Eloise’s face was nestled between Cressida’s warm thighs and Cressida was tugging her gloves off—left on in their haste—to plunge her fingers into Eloise’s styled hair, likely rendering it irreparable.

Knowing they drew ever nearer to Bridgerton House, Eloise did not hesitate. Lick, Cressida had said, so Eloise did. She did it without being sure, which was a little terrifying, but eventually, she found she had done something correctly; she knew by the way one of Cressida’s hands gripped her head and by the slam she pulled back enough to see had been Cressida’s other hand striking the ceiling of the carriage. Eloise made a noise of satisfaction and continued, only to have her audible satisfaction overtaken by Cressida’s.

She said all sorts of things Eloise had never heard her say, filling Eloise with delight as well as absolute, unadorned lust. Eloise clutched Cressida’s thighs and licked harder, blending saliva with the fascinating wetness that accompanied Cressida’s passion. She lapped at the flushed, budlike apex until Cressida began a mindless roll of her hips, a steady moan. Eloise was a curious woman, and had been a curious child before that; she knew what her own body looked like, but she had not known, had never guessed at, all its miraculous capabilities. She felt the good fortune of Cressida and her books—she felt it from the scalp against which Cressida’s fingernails scratched to the feet she sat on in this position on the floor of the carriage.

Cressida rocked against Eloise’s eager mouth until she panted, “El, El, Eloise,” went silent, and came to a shuddering stop. When she pulled her fingers from Eloise’s hair, Eloise’s head tingled all over like departing fairy magic. She sat back. Cressida’s other hand plummeted from the ceiling. They rearranged her skirt so that it fell down her legs. Eloise tugged her stays and gown back into place around her shoulders. Their gazes pulled at each other, heavy as the sway of the sea. That was what Eloise felt, rolling along, anchored to Cressida. She wondered whether this was what marriage was like; she could not imagine a more profound feeling of connection.

Cressida extended both hands to her and Eloise took them gladly, letting herself be pulled up. She sat next to Cressida, who carefully rested her head on Eloise’s shoulder, mindful of her extravagantly-style hair. Eloise reached up and stroked her soft cheek. She longed for more caresses, more time. She wanted to know what else Cressida knew—wanted to know it with her body.

“I do not know what to say,” Eloise confessed at a whisper.

“Say nothing.” Cressida tucked an arm around Eloise’s waist. “It has all been said.”

Perhaps she was right, Eloise considered. For two people who talked almost ceaselessly when they were together, there was nothing it seemed pressing to say. The obvious thing, Eloise supposed, was to propose. That would save Cressida from ruin. But Eloise was not a man, and could not propose, and had not ruined Cressida by any definition she knew. The weight and warmth of Cressida against her did not communicate ruin. Nothing they had done felt dishonourable to Eloise, and so no dire need for a solution succeeded it. When they arrived at the house, they would have travelled there to here without incident, as far as anyone knew. Someone might observe their stripped gloves, their mussed hair, and see nothing but a pair of tired girls come back from a ball. It was sad, but it was not all sad. It would not be seen, but that did not mean it was not real.

Cressida turned her head and kissed Eloise’s shoulder. Eloise’s heart swelled and shrank and swelled again. They held each other until the carriage slowed.

#my writing #creloise #Bridgerton #Eloise Bridgerton #Cressida Cowper #Eloise x Cressida #Bridgerton fic #Creloise fic

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