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Junior Reporter Eloise Bridgerton of Aubrey, Massachusetts hadn’t been covering anything all that interesting since she’d joined The Boston Globe a year and a half earlier. As a result, it came as a huge surprise when they sent her to Washington to cover the trial of the Watergate burglars. 

She’d been on the first flight down there from Boston once they’d said, a stack of new notebooks and pens in her bag and a spring in her step. Finally, she’d be covering something important and meaningful. At 26, she was confident in herself and in her talent as a reporter, and she was glad she was finally getting an opportunity to show it off. 

She arrived in Washington, settled into a hotel room organised for her by the paper, and got ready to attend the first day of the trial. 

Hours after her first report on the first day of the trial had been published, she’d had a call from the Washington Post asking her to come and help their Watergate reporting team. The Boston Globe gladly let her go, and that weekend she moved into an apartment near the Post’s headquarters, and got to work. 

She diligently covered the goings on of the Watergate Scandal for the Post, contributing vital insight as the whole country tried to work out what on earth their President had done. By the time the Senate Watergate Committee began it’s hearings, Eloise was the one the Post was sending out to cover it in person, the one they trusted to take the right notes, notice the right things as various people of great national importance testified to potential wrongdoing. 

By the time the existence of tapes was revealed in the hearings, Eloise was officially an employee of the Washington Post on their Watergate team. She was proud to be there, despite the fact she was covering a damning incident in the history of the country. Whenever she telephoned back home, everyone was anxious to know what was going on, who was saying what. For once, Eloise felt needed by her huge family. She was happy being a career woman, writing her way into the history books in any way she could. 

She’d been strolling through the Post’s offices, the day after the Grand Jury had concluded that President Nixon had been involved in the Watergate cover-up, on her way to her boss’ office when she’d walked straight into somebody. Once she picked herself up off the floor, she looked up at the figure, ready to verbally assault him. When she did look up, though, she found herself distracted by the man’s face. It was rather a nice face, Eloise thought, and all ideas of verbal assault had gone out of the window. 

“I do apologise, Miss…?”

“Bridgerton, Eloise Bridgerton” She replied, holding out a hand for him to shake, “do you normally go around walking into people, Mr?”

“Phillip Crane, environmental correspondent, and no, not usually. I am very sorry” he said, looking down at the young woman. As he looked down, he looked at her grey eyes, and found that they were the most beautiful eyes he thought he’d ever seen. 

Eloise smiled politely, trying to hide her shock at how handsome he was, and carried on down the corridor to her boss’ office, mind full of thoughts of Phillip Crane. 

She didn’t see him for the next while, hardly having time to eat and shower let alone go on an adventure to find Phillip’s desk, as Nixon released partial transcripts of some of the Watergate tape recordings. As she wrote article after article, report after report on the transcripts, analysing each breath and each word to within an inch of its life, interviewing anybody she could get her hands on, her thoughts still drifted to him. How had one small interaction made such a big impact on her? They’d spent maybe thirty seconds in each other’s company, yet he had filled hours and hours of Eloise’s thoughts. 

There was a lull in proceedings for a month or so, as the case got ready for the next stages of trial and reports. There were still things to do, of course, but Eloise found she actually had time to do things for herself as well as reporting. 

In one of her moments of freedom, she found herself walking the corridors of the Post’s offices, trying to find Phillip’s desk. As she wandered around and found the right department, she found herself hoping he wasn’t there. She had no idea what she’d say if he was. 

She thanked all her lucky stars that he wasn’t. She found a scrap of paper on his desk, which was littered with books about botany, and wrote a little note. 

Are there certain types of flowers that signify political incompetence? E. B. 

As she left it, she noticed a photo pinned to the wall of his cubicle. It showed him with two children - presumably, his - perched on his knee, all in black. She quickly tucked the note under the corner of a book and made her way back to her desk, with more questions than she’d anticipated. Had he been there, she supposed he would have explained it. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d been there, she thought as she sat down, carrying on typing up an interview she had done the day before. 

When she arrived at the office the next morning, she found a note waiting for her on her desk. 

No, though geraniums mean stupidity. Here’s a pressed one. P.C. 

Eloise opened the little envelope that was attached to the note, and found a pressed red flower in it. She carefully took it out and had a look at it, before she put it back in for safe keeping, putting it in the top drawer of her desk. He’d left her a pressed flower, and a little note. Now, she had to leave him another note, or speak to him directly. 

As she sat at her desk, trying to work but utterly distracted by the little flower now sitting in her drawer, she tried to work out when she’d ever felt like this. Distracted, her head full of thoughts of one person, but then she realised it had never happened before. She had never felt like this. She couldn’t decide if it was thrilling or frightening, but she didn’t have time for that. She needed to work out what to do next.

But then all hell broke loose. 

President Nixon announced his intention to resign the next day.

And then he resigned.

And then there were more trials.

And then President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon of all federal crimes. 

In all of this, Eloise had hardly had any time to herself. She’d managed to leave a note for Phillip every now and then, their correspondence a small little joy in her otherwise very stressful life. 

By the time 1974 was turning into 1975, Eloise wondered if she’d ever had such a busy year, but then she realised that she obviously hadn’t. Never had she done anything as important or fulfilling as covering Watergate with the Post. 

Christmas back at the family home in Massachusetts had not been the nice, calm break Eloise had hoped it would be. Two of her siblings had been married that year, and she now had eleven nieces and nephews. She loved them all dearly, but if she had to hear her brother Colin say “my wife” one more time, she was going to throw him into Nantucket Sound. 

Two days after christmas, her brother Benedict caught her at the bottom of the garden, smoking. 

“Got one for me?” He said as he approached, looking around to make sure his wife Sophie didn’t catch him. He loved Sophie completely and utterly, but he knew if she caught him smoking he would become Bridgerton Pie in seconds. 

“Has christmas always been this stressful?” Eloise asked as he sat down on the bench beside her. 

“Probably, we’ve just grown up and flown the nest and come back and realised it’s insane” Benedict replied, taking a long drag from the cigarette in his hand. 

Eloise put her head in her hands and sighed heavily. 

“You are not to tell anybody this, Ben, not a soul,” she started. Benedict’s hand stopped as it was halfway to his mouth with the cigarette. He nodded. 

“There’s this guy at the Post, he’s in environmental and we’ve been exchanging notes and he knows about flowers and he’s so kind. I can’t stop thinking about him” Eloise said, looking at her brother nervously. Benedict had always been her favourite brother, he had been the one to encourage her to go into journalism in the first place. 

“Go and see him, El. I mean this in the best possible way but you won’t be missed here. There’s so many people, Mom will hardly have noticed” Benedict said. 

Eloise nodded slowly, and started up towards the house. 

“You’re welcome!” Benedict called after her. 

Before she knew it, she was in a taxi to the airport ready to fly back to Washington. She didn’t know how she was going to find Phillip’s house, but that was a problem to work out once she got there. 

The plane landed, and she found a phone box. She flicked through the phone book inside it until she found Crane, P. 

He was the only Crane in the book for Washington, so she knew it was him. She put a couple of quarters in the machine and dialled the number. 

“Hello?”

“Phillip? It’s Eloise” she said nervously. She had absolutely no idea how he’d respond to her calling him at home out of the blue. 

“Eloise, it’s good to hear from you. How’s Massachusetts?”

Eloise was a little bit flustered by his remembering where she was from, “I don’t know, I’m not there”

“You’re not?”

“Come pick me up from Dulles?”

“I’ll be a half hour” Phillip replied. He hung up the phone and grabbed his car keys and told the kids to behave themselves for an hour or so whilst he went out. 

Eloise paced in the arrivals hall of the airport as she waited for Phillip. She had not expected him to drop everything to pick her up. She hoped they found something to talk about. She hoped he told her about his children, as she imagined she was going to meet them. She was still thinking about this when she saw him pull up outside. She grabbed her suitcase and walked out, and found him leaning against the car. She put her suitcase by the trunk and walked up to him. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. 

She nodded, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with all the passion he could muster. 

He pulled away, and simply walked around her and put the car in the trunk. Eloise climbed into the passenger seat, and soon they were on the highway back to Phillip’s house, not a word said between them. 

“My kids are at home” Phillip said, breaking the silence after five minutes or so. 

“I look forward to meeting them” Eloise replied, hoping to get a little more information.

“They’re twins, Oliver and Amanda, their mom died last year” 

“Oh I’m sorry,” Eloise replied, “how are they coping?”

“They’re just fine, Marina was never a particularly well woman, so they didn’t see much of her anyway,” Phillip explained, “we were never well suited. She was engaged to my brother, but he died. She was so devastated and was talking of doing something stupid that I offered to marry her in his place. She accepted and we were married for nine years. Eventually, she did the something stupid” 

Eloise sat there in silence, taking in all the information. From what she could tell, Phillip had never loved Marina. For some reason, that news had come with a massive wave of relief. Phillip wouldn’t be grieving for her, not in the way she had expected. 

As they pulled up on his driveway, the kids’ faces pressed against the front window, Eloise knew she had found where she was meant to be. 

It did not come as a surprise to her when she found herself in a courthouse on New Years Eve, becoming Mrs Eloise Crane. In fact, she found that she was the happiest woman in America.