A Bountiful Season (Bridgerton Season 3 Rewrite)

Summer at Aubrey Hall

So the first chapter isn't technically part of s3, but we needed an explanation to how Cressida and Eloise met that wasn't just "she was nice to me". I'm also making Eloise a bit more aware, because S3 sucked out all the feminism and intersectionality she learned in S2 with Theo. I have many thoughts on Penelope and Eloise's friendship, and I place a lot more blame on Penelope here than most Polin fans are wont to do. But, come on, Pen isn't an innocent damsel. Eloise will see her own faults in due time. I'm including footnotes bc I'm a fucking nerd who did a good bit of research, so those are in the end notes. They're not strictly necessary information, just stuff I think is neat/thematically important/historically relevant. I'm also trying to maintain UK English spellings as best as I can, although every iteration of spellcheck hates me for it so I've likely missed some bits and left some words Americanized.

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August 1814

Aubrey Hall

It was not until the family went back to Aubrey Hall for the off-season that Eloise realised how dreadfully lonely she was. How lonely all women of the ton were, really.

The Featherington's off-season chateau was not anywhere near Aubrey Hall, so even if Eloise had wanted to spend time with Penelope, she was not able to. Not that this particular isolation bothered her, Eloise was still very much on the outs with Pen; still bitter over her supposed friend's choice to maintain her inflammatory gossip rag and drag Eloise's name through the mud (and subsequently threatening the security and happiness of her younger sisters, who would forever be tainted by the black mark that was Eloise's association with liberals). All for what 'protecting Eloise'? Please, she knew better than that, there were a dozen other ways to assuage the Queen's ire and take the suspicion off her back. First and foremost, would have been for Penelope to stop insulting and provoking the Queen when she learned the most powerful woman on earth had it out for her head. Penelope was saving nothing more than her own pride, which did not wish to suffer the shame that would come with an admittance of her identity, or worse, allowing Eloise to successfully fake it. With Penelope not an option for even a letter's worth of conversation, Eloise found herself looking towards the other women she felt comfortable enough to consider friends. The list was embarrassingly short, and to Eloise's great consternation, none of them were actually available.

Kate was on her honeymoon after a (successful, this time) wedding, and Daphne was far away in the Duke's own ancestral home performing her Duchessly duties, whatever those were, and tending to her children. Even if the two had been closer by, neither would have had the time for Eloise. Women were wives first, mothers second, and daughters third, friendship was somewhere very far down on a socially aware woman's list of priorities. It was something that Eloise had bitterly come to terms with after Daphne's marriage, which kept her away so often that it was lucky if Eloise could see her more than thrice in a year.

Though she had not put much thought to it before, Eloise stopped and tried to remember how many friendships Daphne had been able to cultivate, and how many of those she still maintained as a Duchess. A cold bolt of dread shot down Eloise's spine as she realised that, outside of sisterly love, the answer was zero. Daphne had not a single friend to her name. Family and in-laws didn't count; they were all obligated to like each other. Daphne was not on necessarily bad terms with most of the ton's young women, but she was never close with any of them. Especially not after she had garnered the undivided attention of not one but two of the most highly coveted bachelors of the season. Kate, Eloise figured, was much in the same boat as Daphne, with no close friendships outside of the family.

In fact, no women from the ton were close with each other in the same capacity that Eloise and Penelope had been. The men were allowed their friendships, but the women were, as always, kept lonely and dependent. Eloise and Pen had been a fluke, a rare instance of mothers indulging their strange daughters, and allowing the cultivation of a camaraderie that was not based in politic.