Unanswered Questions

I won't deny I've got in my mind now all the things I would do

So I'll try to talk refined for fear that you find out how I'm imaginin' you

I won't deny I've got in my mind now all the things we could do

So I'll try to talk refined for fear that you find out how I'm imaginin' you

-Talk by Hozier

- evermore by Taylor Swift

By now, Theo should have been used to waking up near Eloise.

He didn’t think it was possible. Her head was resting against her elbows and she was curled up in her seat. He could hear her softly snoring and wondered whether he should draw on her face or wake her up. Her finger was placed in the middle of the book.

 She had fallen asleep while reading. The idea of her getting swept away in the prose he once loved, sinking and melting into the pages and falling asleep in the middle was so absurdly tender. He could almost imagine her eyes widening and narrowing, rereading passages and thumbing backwards to see what she missed.

He glanced at the clock and was surprised to find out it was 2 AM. His heart ached as he realized it was his sister’s birthday, and he wasn’t in her room at midnight. He wondered if she would like the party, and what she would think of the Bridgertons. There was probably only one person his witty sister would like and he could easily guess who.

He looked at Eloise. The Secret History was sliding off her lap and he lunged for it. He grabbed a nearby pencil and slid it in between, placing it on the page she had stopped. As the pencil rolled into the crease of the spine, he saw a small note scribbled on under a sentence.

Eloise had underlined one of his favourite quotes

“It is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”

He saw the note next to it and felt almost every bone in his body dissolve and crumble like a demolished empire.

“Sharpe would like this.”

He did. He looked at her face which was slightly pinched, as if she was worried about something while sleeping. How could someone he was sure he was made to dislike understand him?

Theo couldn’t shake Eloise’s own annotations in Rebecca out of his head. He hated to admit it, but he found himself at times, reading her annotations more than the text: everything from her sarcastic quips to her analysis of the characters. Seeing their fears and flaws articulated on the margins of the book made him wonder how someone could render the painful contradictions of living comprehensible.

The word drifted into his mind like a breeze lifting a page, or a snowflake melting into a sweater, muffled and soft : intimate

A cold fist clenched his chest and he immediately knew he needed to get out of there.

He shook Eloise awake.

“Bridgerton”, he placed his hand on her elbow and gently rubbed circles against her sleeve with his thumb, “Bridgerton, come on you need your beauty sleep before tomorrow.”

This time Eloise woke up immediately, jumping up before looking at him.

“God”, she ran a hand down her face, “I need to sleep in my own room.”

She glanced at Theo’s hand, which was still rested on her elbow and he wrenched it away, embarrassment blooming in him as she scrambled to her feet. Her knee hit the table and she nearly stumbled. He caught her shoulder and steadied her.

“Sleep it off”, he said, holding back laughter, “you didn’t drink enough to have a hangover.”

She muttered something like “raw eggs and garlic” which sounded more like a torture device than anything else. She pressed against him as they neared the doorway, close enough for him to worry about her hearing his heart race.

“Well”, her mouth twitched, “Good night, Sharpe”

“Night, Bridgerton”

He watched her leave, until she was nothing but a silhouette shrinking and fading into the darkness at the end of the hallway. He slowly blinked, and through the weight of his drooping eyelids and the creeping exhaustion, his memory kept travelling back to the feel of her fingertips against his bruise. He imagined for a horrible second, what it would be like to tell her about Victor's hand around his throat, the grating words snarled against his ear before he was slammed against the pavement. He imagined the widening of her eyes if he were to explain the pain exploding on the back of his head.

However, he couldn't imagine telling her what prompted the brawl in the first place, or that it was Theo who threw the first punch.

He grabbed Rebecca and walked to his guest room. If he had to attend this party, he needed his sleep, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving the book behind.

He stayed awake, reading the novel. He rubbed his eyes, aware that he was going to regret staying up. He rested his head against the headboard and exhaled.

The terrible truth was, until he arrived at Bridgerton House, those letters were the only thing he looked forward to every day. 

Theo imagined for a moment, if he could write a letter right now.

Dear Bridgerton,

You told me that you think I love to deliberately argue. The truth is, it’s just with you.

I can’t imagine our interactions being any other way as painful as it is to admit.

Perhaps that’s a terrible preference, and maybe it’s because it’s always been this way. Opinions on Great Gatsby, Emma, and whether 1984 would have benefitted from a different ending (I still believe Winston should have endured the rats. Love should have triumphed).

Of course, it is enjoyable when I get to express my thoughts and find even more reasons to defend them under your scrutiny. Sometimes…I even see your perspective. You will never know this, Bridgerton, but I went back to re-read Emma after your defence.

But there’s another reason I can’t imagine a semester go by without a disagreement. The truth is Bridgerton, I’d rather have you shout at me than not hear your voice at all.

It is strange to put this into a letter. I wonder if historians will read this some day, and wonder how ego and hate (for there’s no other term for it) could have this much strength.

It’s miserable, that history has its eyes on us and they are leaking blood. So much of hate: Humanity is the greatest tragedy ever written, and we were the authors.

 May this never find you.

 When he finally dozed off, sleep didn’t wind in and out of his fingers like a slippery ribbon. It was as swift as a shadow, enveloping him as he sank into the sheets.

That night, he didn’t dream of bloody knuckles and skin scraping against pavements. For the first time in days, he didn’t dream at all.

When he woke up the next morning, his arm was stretched out next to him, and his fingers were around the novel. He pushed the novel under the blanket when the maid knocked, jolting up when she entered.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Rosie”, he said, “I’ll make my bed and get dressed.”

She smiled at him, “You really are a lovely boy. Please, call me Rosie. Would you like your breakfast up here after you shower?”

He shook his head, “When should I get ready?”

“Mister Benedict will give you some clothes after you eat. We only have to go sometime around 4 PM.”

When he went downstairs after showering, the excitement was palpable in the air. Violet, Mary and Anthony were sitting around the table, steaming mugs of tea in between them. 

“I think they should pair up age wise”, Violet said, “Anthony with Daphne, Benedict with Eloise, Colin with Fran—”

Grandmother Mary waved her hand, “No, Eloise will be on Victor’s arm. Anthony can be on yours and Benedict can be with Daphne.”

“I think we should enter as a family”, Anthony said, rubbing the stubble that had sported across his jaw, “Eloise can dance with Victor if she wishes.”

The steam from the mugs had fogged up Grandmother Mary’s spectacles but Theo didn’t need to see her eyes to know what she must be thinking. He hurried over to the couches, where Benedict was sitting with Francesca and Michaela.

“Theo”, Michaela exclaimed warmly, “how did you sleep?”

“Fine”, he answered, “you?”

“Good, good”, she exchanged a smile with him, his fellow persona non grata, “This party seems to be a bigger deal than I thought.”

Theo sat next to her, and felt a flood of relief that someone else thought so too, “This seems to be a ball.”

“It kind of is”, Benedict said, shaking his head “There is more fuss over how we enter and interact with each other actual fun.”

“Mum says they are good for networking”, Francesca said, shrugging, “that we use it as an opportunity to make connections.” This was the first time Theo heard her speak. She didn’t seem as exasperated as Benedict did. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, love”, Michaela said, “but do you actually need connections?”

Francesca’s cheeks reddened slightly, and she busied herself with the sleeve of her dress. Michaela exchanged a look with Theo.  

Benedict hurriedly sipped from his cup of tea, “How is Eloise?”

“You didn’t check in on her?”, Theo asked, frowning.

Benedict shook his head, “No, grandma called us all for a meeting last night. We didn’t know Eloise wasn’t involved until—” he had stopped in the middle in the middle of his sentence, his eyes on something ahead.

Theo turned. His tongue dissolved in his mouth like a sugar cube in his tea. He dimly registered Michaela and Francesca gasping.

Every bit of his focus was on Eloise slowly walking towards them.

Her long silk gown was as blue as the sky, rippling in the light like waves of water as it cascaded to the floor. The fabric shimmered under the light as she walked. There were no straps on her shoulders, leaving them bare. Her neckline was below her shoulders, with a gentle dip in the middle. She shifted slightly under the chandelier. The light traveling across her collarbones made them look as sharp as her earrings, which swung like blurry reflections of stars on a river.

“How do I look?”, she asked, her voice slightly shaky. Her face seemed strained with the effort to remain blank.

If this was the first time Theo saw her, he would have thought he imagined her.

“El…”, Benedict’s eyes were wide. Violet and Anthony were smiling harder than ever. Theo couldn’t hear anything over his own heart hammering. Even Grandmother Mary had stopped talking, staring at Eloise. He could only see the back of her head, but every line of her body seemed drawn and tight like an arrow nocked on a bow.

Michaela was the first to break the silence with a shriek so loud that Grandmother Mary (and probably every bird in the vicinity) jumped.

“You look like a dream!”

“So pretty, Eloise!”, Francesca said, leaping up and running up to her sister. She grabbed Eloise’s hands and twirled her, looking at her under every angle. Eloise let out a weak protest that went ignored as Benedict bounded up to her. Theo noticed Daphne standing a few feet behind Eloise with a small grin on her face.

“You look stunning, dear”, Violet said warmly as Anthony nodded in agreement with a wink. Eloise looked away sharply, her lips a thin line.

 Anthony looked at Grandmother Mary and arched an eyebrow, as if daring her to disagree, “What do you think Grandma?”

Theo knew he should have wrenched his eyes away, excused himself. Eloise gave him a weak smile, and suddenly his eyes seemed to have glued themselves to her, watching her toss a lock of hair behind her shoulder. He wasn’t imagining it. She was glowing like a starlit jewel. It was so characteristic of Eloise Bridgerton, Theo almost wondered if the dress knew who she was before she wore it.

“Hmm”, Grandmother Mary said, “I can’t say much about the slit, since that seems to be the style. But Daphne did a decent job.”

Eloise had gone still as if completely numb. Anthony leaned back in his chair and mouthed , “You do look stunning.”

In that dress, she seemed to be from some other pocket of time, like someone woven by the mist rolling down the mountains, or a moonlit lake.

Ethereal, elegant and…. Theo couldn’t think of any anything that would complete the alliteration except her name.

 He could feel every point of his body aflame. He couldn’t tell if it was a burning ember of embarrassment or something mixed into the tea. He could name a hundred things: the characters in the books he read, every literary device in the poems Eloise hated but he loved, every author whose obnoxious writing style reminded him of her. But he couldn’t name what he was feeling, or why he was counting everything he didn’t like about her at that moment and coming up short.

Her ego, her stubbornness, her….her, her, her.

The edges of his mind had softened, but the memories were sharp as ever, like broken glass being stitched to form a mosaic of unfamiliar territories that were drawing him in.

He thought of the fireplace crackling behind their conversation the previous night, the annotations in the novel, her standing in his guest room,

I get so caught up in my own reality, because nobody paid attention to mine.

Was it awful, that a person he spent so much time disliking struck a chord of understanding, an ache that he couldn’t describe?

Grandmother Mary got up and was circling Eloise slowly like a vulture, scanning her from her elegant hair bun to her shiny white slippers.

“Well…this isn’t the one I picked out.”

It was only when Theo looked at Eloise’s face, he noticed she had been watching him the entire time, not even focusing on her grandmother. Eloise’s eyes were hooded but as sharp as ever, not moving from him. Theo nodded at her, a smile travelling across his face like a rippling trail left by a paper boat tearing through water. She wasn’t a figment of his imagination. Not even he could imagine the way her shoulders relaxed and how she lifted her chin, like she was challenging him to look away.

Theo slid his hands in his pockets. His fingers seemed to relax, as if swept with a phantom memory of his hands running down Eloise’s sleeve when she woke him from his nightmare. It’s like his own body could recall how the silk seemed to glide against his skin, coaxing him to breathe normally again.

Her grandmother made a low sound in the back of her throat, “Well, I suppose it will do.”

She then turned her gaze to the oldest Bridgerton siblings, “I need you two to especially look your best. You wouldn’t believe the calls I have been getting over the past week, from parents asking me if you two are looking for wives.”

The look of horror on Benedict and Anthony would have kept the saddest man on earth laughing for a week.

“No ifs. No buts. I will not be embarrassed by my two oldest sons—”

“grandsons”, Violet muttered.

Grandmother Mary continued as if she hadn’t heard her, “still gallivanting around like they’re single.”

“We aren’t gallivanting”, Anthony said staunchly, exchanging a quick glance with Theo. The family didn’t know any more about him and Professor Sharma than they did about Benedict and Granville. He looked like he had been asked to waltz with Victor Crane.

Grandmother Mary pursed her lips so tightly, they became a thin line, “Do you know humiliating is when I am asked if I’ll live long enough to see a great grandbaby from the Viscount—”

“Nobody uses that word anymore.”, Benedict burst out, ignoring the look of warning Violet shot him, “and it’s not the 1600s. Why would anyone care who we are marrying and whether you’d see one of us pop out a baby any time soon?”

“Celine’s daughter would be quite lovely for you, Benedict.”, Grandmother’s eyes were gleaming, “Sophie seemed eager to get to know you the moment I told her I’d love to see you with a wife.”

“A-a wife?”, Benedict said, dumbfounded.

Even Theo’s insides squirmed unpleasantly, and not merely out of sympathy. He couldn’t imagine Benedict, who compared thoughts of Henry to “those moments when you’re suddenly aware of your own heartbeat” with anybody else.

 When Benedict locked eyes with Theo for a moment, he could tell Benedict was thinking the same thing, and Theo was the only one in the room who knew.

“I think only a wife could smoothen out your…”, Grandmother Mary paused, savouring the pleasure of insulting him, “attitude. Edmund would want this too.”

“Grandma—come on—I’m sure Sophie is lovely, but I am here to escort Eloise.”, Benedict said desperately, “and these mothers, they hunt in packs these days, and—"

“I must see if Celine’s family is coming.”, Grandmother Mary said, walking towards the table, ignoring Benedict, who looked like he had been asked to snog Newton the dog. She looked at Eloise again, “Please be on your best behaviour, at least so Victor will like you for something other than what you’re wearing.”

Grandmother Mary’s words crashed against Theo like frothy crests of a murderous wave. Who cares about what Victor would like? If the stories he heard were true, this won’t be the first time he would like a woman’s dress. Theo knew the damage Victor’s hands would do, enough to be sure that Eloise would rip them off with her teeth if she had a chance. However, she didn’t even have a choice.

She wasn’t his challenge. Silencing the strange churn in the pits of his body that had nothing to do with hunger was.

He couldn’t didn’t look away.