Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,8

you’d told me.”

Eloise waved off her protest. “He won’t mind. You’re like another sister to him.”

Penelope smiled, but she sighed at the same time.

“Mother asked him—of course—whether he was planning to remain in town for the season,” Eloise continued, “and—of course—he was terribly evasive, but then I decided to interrogate him myself—”

“Terribly smart of you,” Penelope murmured.

Eloise threw the pillow back at her. “And I finally got him to admit to me that yes, he thinks he will stay for at least a few months. But he made me promise not to tell Mother.”

“Now, that’s not”—Penelope cleared her throat—“terribly intelligent of him. If your mother thinks his time here is limited, she will redouble her efforts to see him married. I should think that was what he wanted most to avoid.”

“It does seem his usual aim in life,” Eloise concurred.

“If he lulled her into thinking that there was no rush, perhaps she might not badger him quite so much.”

“An interesting idea,” Eloise said, “but probably more true in theory than in practice. My mother is so determined to see him wed that it matters not if she increases her efforts. Her regular efforts are enough to drive him mad as it is.”

“Can one go doubly mad?” Penelope mused.

Eloise cocked her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I should want to find out.”

They both fell silent for a moment (a rare occurrence, indeed) and then Eloise quite suddenly jumped to her feet and said, “I must go.”

Penelope smiled. People who didn’t know Eloise very well thought she had a habit of changing the subject frequently (and abruptly), but Penelope knew that the truth was something else altogether. When Eloise had her mind set on something, she was completely unable to let it go. Which meant that if Eloise suddenly wanted to leave, it probably had to do with something they’d been talking about earlier in the afternoon, and—

“Colin is expected for tea,” Eloise explained.

Penelope smiled. She loved being right.

“You should come,” Eloise said.

Penelope shook her head. “He’ll want it to be just family.”

“You’re probably right,” Eloise said, nodding slightly. “Very well, then, I must be off. Terribly sorry to cut my visit so short, but I wanted to be sure that you knew Colin was home.”

“Whistledown,” Penelope reminded her.

“Right. Where does that woman get her information?” Eloise said, shaking her head in wonder. “I vow sometimes she knows so much about my family I wonder if I ought to be frightened.”

“She can’t go on forever,” Penelope commented, getting up to see her friend out. “Someone will eventually figure out who she is, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.” Eloise put her hand on the doorknob, twisted, and pulled. “I used to think so. But it’s been ten years. More, actually. If she were going to be caught, I think it would have happened already.”

Penelope followed Eloise down the stairs. “Eventually she’ll make a mistake. She has to. She’s only human.”

Eloise laughed. “And here I thought she was a minor god.”

Penelope found herself grinning.

Eloise stopped and whirled around so suddenly that Penelope crashed right into her, nearly sending both of them tumbling down the last few steps on the staircase. “Do you know what?” Eloise demanded.

“I couldn’t begin to speculate.”

Eloise didn’t even bother to pull a face. “I’d wager that she has made a mistake,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said it yourself. She—or it could be he, I suppose—has been writing the column for over a decade. No one could do that for so long without making a mistake. Do you know what I think?”

Penelope just spread her hands in an impatient gesture.

“I think the problem is that the rest of us are too stupid to notice her mistakes.”

Penelope stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh, Eloise,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I do love you.”

Eloise grinned. “And it’s a good thing you do, spinster that I am. We shall have to set up a household together when we are thirty and truly crones.”

Penelope caught hold of the idea like a lifeboat. “Do you think we could?” she exclaimed. And then, in a hushed voice, after looking furtively up and down the hall, “Mother has begun to speak of her old age with alarming frequency.”

“What’s so alarming about that?”

“I’m in all of her visions, waiting on her hand and foot.”

“Oh, dear.”

“A milder expletive than had crossed my mind.”

“Penelope!” But Eloise was grinning.

“I love my mother,” Penelope said.

“I know you do,” Eloise said, in