📝: i have been wanting to write a tilley pov au to the queen's ball scene for a while now and here you have it! enjoy.
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Tilley wasn't even sure she had wanted to attend the Queen's Ball. Of course it was a great honour to have been invited, the ball being hosted in honour of Lady Danbury an even bigger reason to attend, but she always found society quite tiresome.
While Eric had been alive, they enjoyed going to parties and soirees while choosing to remain above it all. It helped that Eric enjoyed expanding his horizons as much as she did and encouraged her to do the same.
She missed her late husband.
Sometimes.
Theirs had not been a love match, as was quite the norm in the upper echelons of society. No, she'd been in her second year out and her father had arranged her marriage with a titled man with rolling acres in Northern Yorkshire, a man a decade her senior. But they'd gotten along quite well when they were introduced formally and he courted her quite ardently in the weeks leading up to their wedding.
His encouraging and patient nature didn't change after their wedding. Their marriage had been a happy one.
She could have been happily married now, if Benedict Bridgerton had agreed to turn their relationship more serious, as she'd proposed at the end of last season.
His face the day he saw her kissing Paul — his expression came into her mind often and refused to leave.
Something had shattered seeing them together.
And it wasn't about his yet undiscovered attraction to Paul.
No, he'd been hopeful he and Tilley could make it work. And then she'd stopped the idea in its tracks. And then she'd changed her mind.
It was the wrong decision.
Because she was now chasing someone who had already decided that she wasn’t capable of the love and adoration he wanted to give her.
Every moment she now spent under the glittering chandeliers of the ballroom cemented that.
A murmur ebbed and flowed till it reached all corners of the room.
Benedict Bridgerton, who had been missing from society for weeks on end, had formed an attachment with a girl from Penwood House. They'd met in the countryside, apparently.
She didn't know Lady Penwood very well but whatever she knew of her one conversation with her and her eldest daughter Rosamund cemented how rancid a human being she was.
She didn't think this girl was likely related to Lady Penwood, given how sweet-natured Benedict was.
Tilley clutched the coupe in her left hand as she watched Benedict and the — his, she mentally corrected, girl, join the dancers on the ballroom floor for the waltz.
It was as if the world had ceased to exist aside from the two of them.
Of course she knew what it felt like to be adored by Benedict. To be the recipient of his sole attention and love and care.
She'd been callous enough to not know it's worth because she'd been too drunk on her ability to bed whoever she wanted now that she wasn't tied down to a marriage. She'd never known freedom like this before, despite the rather extraordinary tastes she had shared with her husband.
And now, freedom often felt tasteless. As she'd told Benedict that morning.
As she was discovering now.
She didn't know her name but his young lady was dressed in a pale blue dress which hung off her shoulders. It reminded Tilley of the midnight blue dress she'd worn when encountering Benedict for the second time at the Hawkins Ball. When they'd introduced themselves. It'd hung off her frame similarly but this girl, she looked ethereal.
Small, pretty face. Dark hair pulled back from her face. Delicate and a fairy come to life.
As they spun on the floor, Tilley noticed how everyone let go of their arms and let their partners spin them on the spot. Benedict’s young lady clung on and looked at him, mesmerized. Benedict did not look away from her even once.
The dance ended and Benedict tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and slowly walked with her to join the crowd at the side of the ballroom.
Her eyes disappeared into half-moon crescents when she smiled.
She was absolutely beautiful.
Tilley’s heart clenched painfully as she watched Benedict pull out something from his waistcoat and then speak to her about something he couldn't hear. She answered him, smiling. As he took her glove off, Tilley realized it was a ring.
A public betrothal, in front of the queen no less.
For Benedict Bridgerton, known rake and lover of pleasure, determined bachelor, to propose to an eligible young lady in full view of the whole ton was as if the sun has chosen to rise from somewhere other than the East.
Her stomach clenched painfully as she watched them laugh together, wholly and fully, touching their foreheads together, without a care for who might be seeing.
This wasn't obligation or being pushed by his mother to settle down.
This was love.
It was beautiful to see him in love. Her regret knew no bounds knowing it wouldn't ever happen for her. Not with him.
Because she knew him. As much as he was a rake, he was a romantic at heart. His family was romantic. Every one of his siblings who were now married had made a love match. His parents had been a love match. It was unheard of in the ton.
The Bridgertons were a wealthy, well-connected, prolific family. But what what made them stand out was how they all married for love. Their mother the matriarch insisted on it. That they not be bound to duty but instead to experience the beauty of love.
Plenty of gentlemen choose to take mistresses. He wouldn't take one. She knew it.
He'd met his match.
Tilley saw Benedict reluctantly let go of his fiancée as she was surrounded by his sister and sisters-in-law, gushing over her. He was still looking in her direction but he was now alone.
She made her way over to him, placing the emptied glass on a table nearby.
“I must offer my sincerest congratulations to you,” she began.
Benedict startled, for she'd caught him unawares from behind. He turned and saw Tilley standing there in a deep red gown, structured in a way so much of the latest fashion was not. Her neck was laid bare and the sleeves of the dress fell off her shoulders.
He'd have been taken in by her still had this been last season.
This wasn't last season. He'd lived a few lifetimes in this season alone.
He couldn't believe he'd allowed himself to entertain thoughts on compatibility with her when Sophie was out there waiting for him.
Sometimes he wondered if he should have looked for her earlier, saved her from her stepmother earlier. Before she was cast aside from ward of Lord Penwood to maid to Lady Penwood.
No matter. He’d rectified that unfortunate circumstance now.
“Lady Arnold,” he greeted formally.
Tilley winced. “We are back to formality, are we?” She took one step forward, closer to him than was appropriate.
Benedict immediately stepped to the side so as to maintain their previous distance, his smile amiable and welcoming but sharper at the edges.
“I think that is quite suitable, isn't it? And thank you for your congratulations, I am the luckiest man,” he said, smiling genuinely for the first time.
“I am glad to hear it, Benedict,” responded Tilley, her face softened as she took him in. He was just as handsome as before, the newer lines around his expressive eyes deeper than last year.
“I didn't catch the name of your affianced.”
“She's named Sophie Gun. She's a relation of the late Lord Penwood, the daughter of one of his cousins,” he said, scratching the back of his head.
“How did you meet?”
He hesitated. “In the countryside. I went to call on an old family friend while at my Wiltshire cottage and she was visiting one of the daughters of the family.”
“I see.”
“Are you well,” he asked.
Was she well? She had bedded a different man every month for the past year. When that didn’t satisfy, she bedded women. That had been particularly more pleasurable. Yet her life felt empty.
But she had started to host parties and she had Paul by her side, her long time friend. She was meeting newer people. Artists (like Benedict, she was reminded painfully everytime), models, people from other classes of society who frequented her parlour.
It felt hollower than she'd like to admit, but it had it merits. She didn't feel lonely anymore.
“I am well,” she smiled.
He smiled back, genuine in its sentiment. “I am glad to hear it.”
He excused himself and walked up to his fiancée who had been looking around and had seen him speak to her. She did not spare Tilley more than a cursory glance, so sure she was in her affection towards Benedict.
Tilley had let something valuable slip through her hands.
She watched Benedict pick up Sophie’s hand and gently kiss the back of it, wrap an arm around her waist and tug her in with a familiarity that said that they'd taken intimacies with each other that no one else knew about. She leaned into him without care for who might see, both of her arms wrapped around his waist.
For a moment, she entertained the thought of not having invited Paul to that dinner with Benedict. Of her eventually proposing they entertain something serious. Of him agreeing. Of her meeting his family as the woman he was courting.
But she couldn't see any further than that.
She'd been introduced to his eldest brother and his wife last season during his brother’s engagement party and they'd been perfectly polite and welcoming.
But they didn't latch on to her the way she now saw his younger sister Eloise clutch Sophie's hand in hers, both hands fully wrapped around her free one.
It wasn't the age difference between her and Benedict, she realized, it was the openness to the kind of love the Bridgertons were famous for possessing.
They loved each other fiercely and protected and encouraged that love in equal measure.
Tilley had worn her armour for too long. It had set in, hard to take off. She was comfortable with that armour.
Benedict’s family was not. Benedict was not.
She’d always been good at wearing a tougher armour because it had served her well. She’d refused to take it off in the tender moments with him when she should have.
And his family had seen that.
Benedict did not turn around to look at her even once and yet Tilley had been unable to take her eyes off of him from the moment she’d seen him and Sophie enter the ballroom.
He had moved on. To the love of his life.
This is why she couldn't go further in her dream world. Because Sophie felt inevitable.
The way he looked at her now, she knew, had she and Benedict been married, he wouldn't touch her until she did the same — until she chose to open up the marriage — but he would pine for Sophie from the moment he met her.
He would keep her somewhere safe and sound and be with her, even if he couldn't be with her properly.
It wouldn't be such a scandal every society gentleman had a mistress but it would devastate her. For she had great affection for him and wanted that to turn to something long-lasting. And she had adored him too much to see him hurt.
Perhaps, she thought as she turned around and made her way back to the far corner where a few gentlemen were conversing, it was better this way.
anyone find it funny that in the last episode the scenes switched between penelope, colin, eloise and portia being like "oh no blackmail :(" and benedict, tilley and paul being like "SEXY TIME!!!"
