I do not think holiday season fares will drop in the next month or so. In fact there's some evidence that the cheaper fare buckets are selling out faster, earlier this year, therefore fares will do nothing but rise, especially to limited-service destinations like BTV.

MHT is about 2.75 hours south of BTV and generally a much cheaper destination because it is a Southwest city; it also has a lot of mainline service whereas BTV has little or none (JetBlue excepted). That might be an option for you.