Anthony had received the alert on his phone and immediately found himself dashing down the stairs to the apartment his sisters shared. Only one name was relevant to him, and he would not believe that Daphne had disappeared until he saw so with his own eyes.
He knocked on the door, and then impatiently knocked two more times without giving Eloise (or Daphne) a proper chance to answer. He was pacing the hall when the door opened.
Eloise.
"Is it true then, sister?"
Eloise took one look at Anthony, eyes wide, and nodded. "Yes, she was gone when I woke up. And not only - out for breakfast or anything, but gone gone. And I - well, you didn't have to knock so many times. I'm here, aren't I?"
Anthony regarded Eloise with an odd expression, trying to work out why she seemed annoyed before realizing she was simply as much at a loss as he was. "Right, Eloise. You are still here."
He tilted his head toward the inside of the apartment, to see if she would invite him in. And then once inside, he turned to his sister and gave her a hug. "I imagine this is difficult."
Eloise accepted the hug for a moment before stepping away. "Well, yes, of course it's difficult. I was quite used to having her around, especially since she'd gone and married Hastings and left just before I arrived here. But she - well, she simply returned back home, right? Isn't that the general consensus that people believe happens when you leave here? It isn't like - well, she isn't going back to a horrible situation. At least, not horrible for her." She moved over to the stove and picked up the kettle to fill it. "Tea?"
"That is the consensus, yes," Anthony agreed, now pacing back and forth in the apartment. He paused to watch his sister as she set about making tea. "Yes, thank you," he replied absentmindedly. "You are correct, the situation she returns to is to her favor, fortunately. Though I wonder if she shall remember this odd world."
From what he had seen and heard of people returning, some did while others did not. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.
Eloise set the kettle on the stove and turned the heat on. "Oh - I can't imagine -" but she stopped mid sentence and looked at her brother with a curious expression. "I was about to say that I couldn't imagine not being able to remember here but truly, I'd hate to be back home and remember here. To know all that I know now, to be able to live how I've lived this past month, and have to go back to that?" A look of horror passed across Eloise's face. "For Daphne's sake, I hope she doesn't remember, and instead she remains as happy with Hastings as she was when I last saw her outside of Bridgerton House."
While Eloise may have looked horrified, Anthony could only respond in amusement. "Is the life she is returning to so terrible? She is in love, Eloise. While the technology and culture may be vastly different, love can cover many faults."
Eloise actually snorted at that. "Oh, and what do you know about love, brother?"
Anthony's expression clouded slightly. "More than you would think," he retorted before softening. There was no way his sister could have known, even if his mother had found out, somehow. "Enough to know that the pursuit of which is futile, and that Daphne was quite fortunate to fall in love with someone deemed a worthy match."
Eloise continued on. "I'm not opposed to the idea of love. I know Mama and Papa were in love but then Mama lost him. Wouldn't it be better to never have to experience that sort of pain? I know love exists, obviously. But - there's more to life than love. I know that now, especially, here. I don't have to get married here, or do needlework, or play the pianoforte."
"Spoken like someone who has never been in love," Anthony replied, returning to amusement. "The love our parents had is not something to be avoided, but it is improbable. Or rather, it can be found but society will not allow it to exist. Such as when a viscount falls in love with an opera singer."
He let that revelation sit and turned his head to look out the window of this high rise building that overlooked a city so vast he could never have imagined such a place before, even without the magic that permeated its streets.
Eloise's eyes widened again. She opened her mouth to say something, maybe even say something about Benedict and Madame Delacroix, but instead she closed her mouth again. "Isn't it nice then that we're outside of society here then? You can be with your opera singer or whomever you wish here, and I can attend school and wear trousers."
The kettle whistled and she lifted it from the stove and poured it over their tea. "There are a lot of people here who are in love. Don't you think that it's perhaps the way we've been raised and the constraints of society and life in the ton that is the problem, and not love or life itself?"
Anthony was silent for a while, stirring his tea as he considered his sister. "There is much about this world that is desirable with the highest consideration given to the freedom both you and I may experience here. Yet Daphne's disappearance has served as a reminder that it is also fickle, and that we could be sent back at any time. It is hard for me to know which I prefer."
She turned to him and held out a mug of steaming tea for him to take. "I'm very sad that Daphne is gone. She's my favorite sister, after all, and I thought - well, I thought it would be good for her to be here instead of there." Eloise recalled so many arguments the two of them had, both there and here, about duty and a woman's path in life, and all that sort of thing. "I, for one, prefer here to there, though I wish everyone could be here with me." In particular she missed Benedict, and Penelope, and of course their mother.
"Besides," she said, sipping the tea and letting it sting her tongue, "we're both there and here anyway, aren't we?"
"That's the thought," Anthony agreed, raising his mug to take a sip, regarding Eloise carefully. "I suppose I always figured that you would eventually embrace the life before you at home. Then when I arrived here, and there you were in trousers, looking..."
He thought over his word choice for a moment, leaving a chance for her to interrupt.
She leaned her head to the side as though to say, are you going to finish that sentence or did you think better of it?
"Happier," Anthony decided, "than I'd seen you in a long time."
"Mmn," she said, lifting her chin. "At home, I may have eventually had no choice but to marry, though I anticipate that I'd put it off for as long as possible, I promise you that. Here, though -" Eloise shrugged. "Maybe I'll marry, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be a lifelong student. I don't know. There are so many more options here for me. Surely you can understand how that could make me happier."
"I can," he agreed. "And I wish to be supportive. Even if I favored our societal constraints, they would hardly have a place here."
He frowned. "I was hoping to have more time with Daphne, to further repair our relationship. One marriage season certainly can cause friction." Though that thought brought an amused smile to his face, at the idea of how much worse it may have been with Eloise.
"Yes, I was hoping for more time with her too but - it looks like that isn't in the cards for us. If I have any say in it, I'm not leaving here, so you're stuck with me, brother."
"And you, sister, are stuck with me whether you like it or not." He offered Eloise an apologetic smile. "I'm grateful you are here, and that I'll get a chance to know you as you are free to be who you really wish to be."
"You're not my favorite brother, but you're my only brother who's here, so I suppose you'll have to do."
"Harsh, Eloise," Anthony replied, but he was more amused than anything else. "I wish Benedict was here too. But since it's down to just you and me, why don't we go get something to eat? Your newly employed and only present brother can cover it."
"You've found employment?" Eloise blurted out, shock across her face. "You? What are you going to even be doing?"
"However unlikely as it may be, I'll be working at the Department of Outlander Affairs, helping other new arrivals adjust. Particularly when it comes to those so far out of time such as ourselves, even though you did not get that particular benefit." He still hated that Daphne and Eloise had arrived in such a horrific manner.
"I suppose that's part of building our own futures here, is it not?"
Eloise straightened a little bit and nodded. "Well, consider me impressed, brother. I thought of the three of us, I'd be the one seeking employment before either you or Daphne. That's a good position for you, I'd wager. As long as you practice putting people at ease instead of glowering at them."
"I don't glower… do I? Unless someone deserves it."
She shrugged innocently. "Oh, I don't know. It seems to be your default facial expression much of the time."
"Well, on that complimentary note, would you like to go eat? Or even better, why don't I order food?" He'd become rather adept at it over the past few weeks.
Besides, staying inside and brooding over Daphne's disappearance felt far more comfortable than going out in public just then.
"Yes," she said decisively. "I can eat. Have you had pizza cones yet? I went with my new friend Enola, and we got them from out of a truck - a large vehicle that I sort of thought was only used for transportation, but it seems people use them as kitchens as well. We could get them!"
"Pizza cones it is then," Anthony replied, typing the dubious sounding name into the search bar until results showed up. They sounded suspect, but he was willing to humor his sister this once.