Battlefields to Ball-gowns (A Bridgerton Fanfiction)

Chapter 13

Goosebumps covered Eloise's skin hidden only by the thick black leather Illyrian armor that was made for a woman much taller and fuller than her. 

Her porcelain skin flushed red as Prince Ares' strong hands gingerly adjusted her hold on the sword. 

"Your muscles are pathetic," Ares said after she failed to hold up his sword on her own.

Eloise flushed in annoyance, "I will have you know, I am far more suited for this than the majority of women in England."

"That I have no doubt. But it does not change the fact that physically you are frail. Your hands are soft as silk and you flinched at the weight of a beginner's sword." He continued, masterfully avoiding any emotional fluctuation in his voice. 

"Are you not meant to be teaching me and yet all you have done so far is criticize me," Eloise growled, her grip on the sword growing firmer.

"I am simply seeing what I am working with... You are not particularly strong, so in a fight, you must rely on momentum, tricks, strategy, speed, and above all dumb luck." Ares' deep voice hummed through the air like the growl of a lion. 

Eloise scoffed still much too flustered by the man's proximity to her, "Tricks? Dumb luck? What honor is there in a fight like that? Is that what you teach your females, to be deceitful?"

His dark eyes slowly turned up to meet hers, his hands still firmly holding her arms up.

"There is honor in survival, Eloise. Women have been overpowering men with their cunning since the dawn of time. If one can not win with their strength of body, they must prevail with their strength of mind." One callused finger poked her directly in the forehead, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough so that even after he pulled his hand away she still felt his touch. 

"So you are going to show me to be cunning?" Eloise asked. 

"No. I am going to show you how to hold a sword. You are the one who decides whether or not to use your brain as a weapon or a place to whisper your final prayers."

From her grasp, he took the sword with ease walking slightly into the treeline before returning with two sticks, approximately the same size.

He tossed one of the sticks at her, and frantically she stepped out of the way, watching as the stick fell to the ground. 

"You were meant to fucking catch it, Bridgerton," Ares growls, glaring at the startled girl. 

"You threw a stick at me!"

"It's a fucking stick." 

"Why did you throw a stick at me!"

"For you to catch."

She looked at him stunned beyond belief. He was the most effortlessly attractive asshole she had ever met. 

"Pick it up, Eloise." 

She did as she was told, grabbing the stick from the ground. "Now get back into the first position." 

Once again she did as she was told, finding it much easier to hold the stick. Her arms weren't shaking and she didn't feel like toppling over. 

"Second."

Just as she moved into the second position, holding the stick above her head in a mock block, Ares moved quickly as summer lightning. 

THWAP!

A painful numbness shot through her hands as the two sticks made contact. She dropped the stick immediately, shaking her hands as if to shake out the painful vibrations that had shot through her arms. 

"What was that for, you brute?!?" Eloise hissed, examining the redness of her fingers and palms. 

"That was more pathetic than I presumed it would be," Ares said once again in his stoic hum. "Pick it up, do it again."

"No! that hurt!" Eloise gasped. 

"Pick it up, Eloise." 

"No!"

"Eloise..." There was a change in his tone, a harshness he had never used before. The voice he had used for years when addressing his soldiers. A terrifying low growl, like the distant drum of rolling thunder. "Pick. It. Up." 

Slowly she did as she was told, taking the stick into her hands. 

"You are not weak, Eloise Bridgerton. Stop pretending you are, it is an injustice to what you have been and what you can be. Now. Do. it. Again." 

She obeyed, getting back into the first position.

Daphne sobbed in the arms of Artemis. She had gone straight to the Black Chataue after the duke had humiliated her by ending their arrangement.

Heartbroken and exhausted, her shoulders shook with the weight of her tears.

The prince had also taken a liking to Daphne, something Artemis had to endure long rants about from Aphrodite. 

While Prince Friedrick was clearly infatuated with Aphrodite, she was just newly seventeen, not yet old enough to marry, and therefore not a viable option for the prince who was enduring pressure from all sides to marry this season. 

Artemis had to marry an English nobleman so she was not a candidate and as the diamond of the season, Daphne was the clear next choice. 

Aphrodite had been fuming since the art gallery where she notice the Prince interacting with the Bridgerton girl. 

But all anger was forgotten as Aphrodite cuddled close to her sister and the tear-stained diamond.

"H-How could he! I-I thought us, friends, at the very least!" Daphne ranted. 

"First heartbreak is always the harshest," Aphrodite cooed as she stroked Daphne's hair. 

That seemed to snap Daphne out of it as she pulled back, wiping her face clear of tears, though her voice still shook with emotion, "There is no heartbreak to speak of. I-It was a lie. A falsehood. A ruse we both concocted, nothing more. I-I am just crying from embarrassment. I was foolish and naive and embarrassed that he had to remind me of our arrangement in such a spectacle."

"You may lie to yourself if that helps Daphne. But you can not lie to me... Your heart will always know what your mind wants to forget." With those words Artemis drew her friend back into her arms allowing them all to settle in a somber quiet.