Colin Bridgerton was famous for many things.
He was famous for his good looks, which was no surprise; all the Bridgerton men were famous for their good looks.
He was famous for his slightly crooked smile, which could melt a woman’s heart across a crowded ballroom and had even once caused a young lady to faint dead away, or at least to swoon delicately, then hit her head on a table, which did produce the aforementioned dead faint.
He was famous for his mellow charm, his ability to set anyone at ease with a smooth grin and an amusing comment.
What he was not famous for, and in fact what many people would have sworn he did not even possess, was a temper.
And, in fact, due to his remarkable (and heretofore untapped) self- control, no one was going to get a glimpse of it that night, either, although his soon-to-be wife might wake up the next day with a serious bruise on her arm.
“Colin,” she gasped, looking down at where he was gripping her.
But he couldn’t let go. He knew he was hurting her, he knew it wasn’t a terribly nice thing that he was hurting her, but he was so damned furious at
that moment, and it was either squeeze her arm for all he was worth or lose his temper in front of five hundred of their nearest and dearest acquaintances.
All in all, he thought he was making the right choice.
He was going to kill her. As soon as he figured out some way to remove her from this godforsaken ballroom, he was absolutely going to kill her.
They had agreed that Lady Whistledown was a thing of the past, that they were going to let matters lie. This was not supposed to happen. She was inviting disaster. Ruin.
“This is fabulous!” Eloise exclaimed, snatching a newssheet from the air. “Absolutely, positively smashing. I’ll bet she came out of retirement to celebrate your engagement.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Colin drawled.
Penelope said nothing, but she looked very, very pale. “Oh, my heavens!”
Colin turned to his sister, whose mouth was hanging open as she read the column.
“Grab one of those for me, Bridgerton!” Lady Danbury ordered, swatting him in the leg with her cane. “Can’t believe she’s publishing on a Saturday. Must be a good one.”
Colin leaned down and picked up two pieces of paper from the floor, handing one to Lady Danbury and looking down at the one in his hand, even though he was fairly certain he knew exactly what it would say.
He was right.
There is nothing I despise more than a gentleman who thinks it amusing to give a lady a condescending pat on the hand as he murmurs, “It is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.” And
indeed, because I feel one should always support one’s words with one’s actions, I endeavor to keep my opinions and decisions steadfast and true.
Which is why, Gentle Reader, when I wrote my column of 19 April, I truly intended it to be my last. However, events entirely beyond my control (or indeed my approval) force me to put my pen to paper one last time.
Ladies and Gentleman, This Author is NOT Lady Cressida Twombley. She is nothing more than a scheming imposter, and it
would break my heart to see my years of hard work attributed to one such as her.
LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 24 APRIL 1824
“This is the best thing I have ever seen,” Eloise said in a gleeful whisper. “Maybe I am a bad person at heart, because I have never before felt such happiness at another person’s downfall.”
“Balderdash!” Lady Danbury said. “I know I am not a bad person, and I find this delightful.”
Colin said nothing. He didn’t trust his voice. He didn’t trust himself.
“Where is Cressida?” Eloise asked, craning her neck. “Does anyone see her? I’ll bet she’s already fled. She must be mortified. I would be mortified if I were her.”
“You would never be her,” Lady Danbury said. “You’re much too decent a person.”
Penelope said nothing.
“Still,” Eloise continued jovially, “one almost feels sorry for her.” “But only almost,” Lady D said.
“Oh, for certain. Barely almost, truth be told.”
Colin just stood there, grinding his teeth into powder.
“And I get to keep my thousand pounds!” cackled Lady Danbury.
“Penelope!” Eloise exclaimed, jostling her with her elbow. “You haven’t said a word. Isn’t this marvelous?”
Penelope nodded and said, “I can’t believe it.” Colin’s grip on her arm tightened.
“Your brother’s coming,” she whispered.
He looked to his right. Anthony was striding toward him, Violet and Kate hot on his heels.
“Well, this rather upstages us,” Anthony said as he drew up alongside Colin. He nodded at the ladies present. “Eloise, Penelope, Lady Danbury.”
“I don’t think anyone is going to listen to Anthony’s toast now,” Violet said, glancing about the room. The buzz of activity was relentless. Errant newssheets still floated in the air, and all about them, people were slipping on the ones that had already landed on the floor. The hum of the whispers
was constant and almost grating, and Colin felt like the top of his skull was going to blow off.
He had to get away. Now. Or at least as soon as possible.
His head was screaming and he felt too hot in his own skin. It was almost like passion, except this wasn’t passion, it was fury, and it was outrage, and it was this awful, black feeling that he’d been betrayed by the one person who should have stood by him without question.
It was strange. He knew that Penelope was the one with the secret, the one with the most to lose. This was about her, not him; he knew that, intellectually, at least. But somehow that had ceased to matter. They were a team now, and she had acted without him.
She had no right to put herself in such a precarious position without consulting him first. He was her husband, or would be, and it was his God- given duty to protect her whether she desired it or not.
“Colin?” his mother was saying. “Are you well? You look a bit odd.” “Make the toast,” he said, turning to Anthony. “Penelope isn’t feeling
well, and I need to take her home.”
“You’re not feeling well?” Eloise asked Penelope. “What’s wrong? You didn’t say anything.”
To Penelope’s credit, she managed a rather credible, “A bit of a headache, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, yes, Anthony,” Violet said, “do go ahead and make the toast now so that Colin and Penelope may have their dance. She really can’t leave until you do.”
Anthony nodded his agreement, then motioned for Colin and Penelope to follow him to the front of the ballroom. A trumpeter let out a loud squawk on his horn, signaling the partygoers to be quiet. They all obeyed, probably because they assumed the ensuing announcement would be about Lady Whistledown.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Anthony said loudly, accepting a flute of champagne from a footman. “I know that you are all intrigued by Lady
Whistledown’s recent intrusion into our party, but I must entreat you all to remember our purpose for gathering here tonight.”
It should have been a perfect moment, Colin thought dispassionately. It was to have been Penelope’s night of triumph, her night to shine, to show
the world how beautiful and lovely and smart she really was.
It was his night to make his intentions well and truly public, to make
sure that everyone knew that he had chosen her, and just as importantly, that she had chosen him.
And all he wanted to do was take her by the shoulders and shake her until he ran out of strength. She was jeopardizing everything. She was putting her very future at risk.
“As the head of the Bridgerton family,” Anthony continued, “it gives me great joy whenever one of my siblings chooses a bride. Or groom,” he added with a smile, nodding toward Daphne and Simon.
Colin looked down at Penelope. She was standing very straight and very still in her dress of ice-blue satin. She wasn’t smiling, which must have looked odd to the hundreds of people staring at her. But maybe they would just think she was nervous. There were hundreds of people staring at her, after all. Anyone would be nervous.
Although if one was standing right next to her, as Colin was, one could see the panic in her eyes, the rapid rise and fall of her chest as her breathing grew faster and more erratic.
She was scared.
Good. She should be scared. Scared of what could happen to her if her secret came out. Scared of what would happen to her once they had a
chance to talk.
“Therefore,” Anthony concluded, “it gives me great pleasure to lift my glass in a toast to my brother Colin, and his soon-to-be bride, Penelope Featherington. To Colin and Penelope!”
Colin looked down at his hand and realized that someone had placed a glass of champagne in it. He lifted his glass, started to raise it to his lips, then thought the better of it and touched it to Penelope’s mouth instead. The crowd cheered wildly, and he watched as she took a sip, and then another and another, forced to keep drinking until he removed the glass, which he did not do until she was finished.
Then he realized that his childish display of power had left him without a drink, which he badly needed, so he plucked Penelope’s glass from her hand and downed it in a single gulp.
The crowd cheered even harder.
He leaned down and whispered in her ear, “We’re going to dance now. We’re going to dance until the rest of the party joins us and we’re no longer the center of attention. And then you and I will slip outside. And then we will talk.”
Her chin moved in a barely perceptible nod.
He took her hand and led her onto the dance floor, placing his other hand at her waist as the orchestra began the first strains of a waltz.
“Colin,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
He affixed a smile on his face. This was supposed to be his first official dance with his intended, after all. “Not now,” he ordered.
“But—”
“In ten minutes, I will have a great deal to say to you, but for right now, we are simply going to dance.”
“I just wanted to say—”
His hand tightened around hers in a gesture of unmistakable warning. She pursed her lips and looked at his face for the briefest of moments, then looked away.
“I should be smiling,” she whispered, still not looking at him. “Then smile.”
“You should be smiling.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I should.” But he didn’t.
Penelope felt like frowning. She felt like crying, in all honesty, but
somehow she managed to nudge her lips up at the corners. The entire world was watching her—her entire world, at least—and she knew they were examining her every move, cataloguing each expression that crossed her face.
Years she’d spent, feeling like she was invisible and hating it. And now she’d have given anything for a few brief moments of anonymity again.
No, not anything. She wouldn’t have given up Colin. If having him meant that she would spend the rest of her life under close scrutiny from the ton, it would be worth it. And if having to endure his anger and disdain at a time like this was to be a part of marriage as well, then that would be worth it, too.
She’d known that he would be furious with her for publishing one last column. Her hands had been shaking as she’d rewritten the words, and she’d been terrified the entire time she’d been at St. Bride’s Church (as well as the ride to and from), sure that he was going to jump out at her at any moment, calling off the wedding because he couldn’t bear to be married to Lady Whistledown.
But she’d done it anyway.
She knew he thought she was making a mistake, but she simply could not allow Cressida Twombley to take the credit for her life’s work. But was it so much to ask that Colin at least make the attempt to see it all from her point of view? It would have been hard enough allowing anyone to pretend to be Lady Whistledown, but Cressida was unbearable. Penelope had worked too hard and endured too much at Cressida’s hands.
Plus, she knew that Colin would never jilt her once their engagement
became public. That was part of the reason she’d specifically instructed her publisher to have the papers delivered on Monday to the Mottram ball.
Well, that and the fact that it seemed terribly wrong to do it at her own engagement ball, especially when Colin was so opposed to the idea.
Damn Mr. Lacey! He’d surely done this to maximize circulation and exposure. He knew enough about society from reading Whistledown to know that a Bridgerton engagement ball would be the most coveted invitation of the season. Why this should matter, she didn’t know, since increasing interest in Whistledown would not lead to more money in his
pocket; Whistledown was well and truly through, and neither Penelope nor Mr. Lacey would receive another pound from its publication.
Unless…
Penelope frowned and sighed. Mr. Lacey must be hoping that she would change her mind.
Colin’s hand tightened at her waist, and she looked back up. His eyes
were on hers, startlingly green even in the candlelight. Or maybe it was just that she knew they were so green. She probably would have thought them emerald in the dark.
He nodded toward the other dancers on the floor, which was now crowded with revelers. “Time to make our escape,” he said.
She returned his nod with one of her own. They had already told his family that she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home, so no one would think overmuch of their departure. And if it wasn’t quite de rigeur for them to be alone in his carriage, well, sometimes rules were stretched for affianced couples, especially on such romantic evenings.
A bubble of ridiculous, panicky laughter escaped her lips. The night was turning out to be the least romantic of her life.
Colin looked at her sharply, one arrogant brow raised in question. “It’s nothing,” Penelope said.
He squeezed her hand, although not terribly affectionately. “I want to know,” he said.
She shrugged fatalistically. She couldn’t imagine what she could do or say to make the night any worse than it already was. “I was just thinking about how this evening was supposed to be romantic.”
“It could have been,” he said cruelly.
His hand slipped from its position at her waist, but he held on to her other hand, grasping her fingers lightly to weave her through the crowd until they stepped through the French doors out onto the terrace.
“Not here,” Penelope whispered, glancing anxiously back toward the ballroom.
He didn’t even dignify her comment with a reply, instead pulling her farther into the inky night, drifting around a corner until they were quite alone.
But they didn’t stop there. With a quick glance to make sure that no one was about, Colin pushed open a small, unobtrusive side door.
“What’s this?” Penelope asked.
His answer was a little shove at the small of her back, until she was fully inside the dark hallway.
“Up,” he said, motioning to the steps.
Penelope didn’t know whether to be scared or thrilled, but she climbed the stairs anyway, ever aware of Colin’s hot presence, right at her back.
After they’d climbed several flights, Colin stepped ahead of her and pushed open a door, peeking out into the hall. It was empty, so he stepped out, pulling her along with him, dashing quietly through the hall (which Penelope now recognized as the family’s private chambers) until they reached a room she had never before entered.
Colin’s room. She’d always known where it was. Through all her years of coming here to visit with Eloise, she’d never once done more than trail her fingers along the heavy wood of the door. It had been years since he’d
lived here at Number Five on a permanent basis, but his mother had insisted upon maintaining his room for him. One never knew when he might need it, she’d said, and she’d been proven right earlier that season when Colin had returned from Cyprus without a house under lease.
He pushed open the door and pulled her inside after him. But the room was dark, and she was stumbling, and when she stopped moving it was
because his body was right there in front of hers.
He touched her arms to steady her, but then he didn’t let go, just held her there in the dark. It wasn’t an embrace, not really, but the length of her body was touching the length of his. She couldn’t see anything, but she could feel him, and she could smell him, and she could hear his breathing, swirling through the night air, gently caressing her cheek.
It was agony. It was ecstasy.
His hands slid slowly down her bare arms, torturing her every nerve, and then, abruptly, he stepped away.
Followed by—silence.
Penelope wasn’t sure what she had expected. He would yell at her, he would berate her, he would order her to explain herself.
But he was doing none of those things. He was just standing there in the dark, forcing the issue, forcing her to say something.
“Could you…could you light a candle?” she finally asked. “You don’t like the dark?” he drawled.
“Not now. Not like this.”
“I see,” he murmured. “So you’re saying you might like it like this?”
His fingers were suddenly on her skin, trailing along the edge of her bodice.
And then they were gone.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Don’t touch you?” His voice grew mocking, and Penelope was glad that she couldn’t see his face. “But you’re mine, aren’t you?”
“Not yet,” she warned him.
“Oh, but you are. You saw to that. It was rather clever timing, actually, waiting until our engagement ball to make your final announcement. You knew I didn’t want you to publish that last column. I forbade it! We agreed
—”
“We never agreed!”
He ignored her outburst. “You waited until—”
“We never agreed,” Penelope cried out again, needing to make it clear that she had not broken her word. Whatever else she had done, she had not lied to him. Well, aside from keeping Whistledown a secret for nearly a dozen years, but he certainly hadn’t been alone in that deception. “And
yes,” she admitted, because it didn’t seem right to start lying now, “I knew you wouldn’t jilt me. But I hoped—”
Her voice broke, and she was unable to finish.
“You hoped what?” Colin asked after an interminable silence.
“I hoped that you would forgive me,” she whispered. “Or at least that you would understand. I always thought you were the sort of man who…”
“What sort of man?” he asked, this time after the barest hint of a pause. “It’s my fault, really,” she said, sounding tired and sad. “I’ve put you on
a pedestal. You’ve been so nice all these years. I suppose I thought you were incapable of anything else.”
“What the hell have I done that hasn’t been nice?” he demanded. “I’ve protected you, I’ve offered for you, I’ve—”
“You haven’t tried to see this from my point of view,” she interrupted. “Because you’re acting like an idiot!” he nearly roared.
There was silence after that, the kind of silence that grates at ears, gnaws at souls.
“I can’t imagine what else there is to say,” Penelope finally said.
Colin looked away. He didn’t know why he did so; it wasn’t as if he could see her in the dark, anyway. But there was something about the tone of her voice that made him uneasy. She sounded vulnerable, tired. Wishful and heart-broken. She made him want to understand her, or at least to try, even though he knew she had made a terrible mistake. Every little catch in her voice put a damper on his fury. He was still angry, but somehow he’d lost the will to display it.
“You are going to be found out, you know,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “You have humiliated Cressida; she will be beyond furious, and she’s not going to rest until she unearths the real Lady Whistledown.”
Penelope moved away; he could hear her skirts rustling. “Cressida isn’t bright enough to figure me out, and besides, I’m not going to write any
more columns, so there will be no opportunity for me to slip up and reveal something.” There was a beat of silence, and then she added, “You have my promise on that.”
“It’s too late,” he said.
“It’s not too late,” she protested. “No one knows! No one knows but you, and you’re so ashamed of me, I can’t bear it.”
“Oh, for the love of God, Penelope,” he snapped, “I’m not ashamed of you.”
“Would you please light a candle?” she wailed.
Colin crossed the room and fumbled in a drawer for a candle and the
means with which to light it. “I’m not ashamed of you,” he reiterated, “but I do think you’re acting foolishly.”
“You may be correct,” she said, “but I have to do what I think is right.” “You’re not thinking,” he said dismissively, turning and looking at her
face as he sparked a flame. “Forget, if you will—although I cannot—what will happen to your reputation if people find out who you really are. Forget that people will cut you, that they will talk about you behind your back.”
“Those people aren’t worth worrying about,” she said, her back ramrod straight.
“Perhaps not,” he agreed, crossing his arms and staring at her. Hard. “But it will hurt. You will not like it, Penelope. And I won’t like it.”
She swallowed convulsively. Good. Maybe he was getting through to
her.
“But forget all of that,” he continued. “You have spent the last decade
insulting people. Offending them.”
“I have said lots of very nice things as well,” she protested, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“Of course you have, but those aren’t the people you are going to have to worry about. I’m talking about the angry ones, the insulted ones.” He
strode forward and grabbed her by her upper arms. “Penelope,” he said urgently, “there will be people who want to hurt you.”
His words had been meant for her, but they turned around and pierced his own heart.
He tried to picture a life without Penelope. It was impossible.
Just weeks ago she’d been…He stopped, thought. What had she been?
A friend? An acquaintance? Someone he saw and never really noticed?
And now she was his fiancée, soon to be his bride. And maybe…maybe she was something more than that. Something deeper. Something even
more precious.
“What I want to know,” he asked, deliberately forcing the conversation back on topic so his mind wouldn’t wander down such dangerous roads, “is why you’re not jumping on the perfect alibi if the point is to remain
anonymous.”
“Because remaining anonymous isn’t the point!” she fairly yelled.
“You want to be found out?” he asked, gaping at her in the candlelight.
“No, of course not,” she replied. “But this is my work. This is my life’s work. This is all I have to show for my life, and if I can’t take the credit for it, I’ll be damned if someone else will.”
Colin opened his mouth to offer a retort, but to his surprise, he had nothing to say. Life’s work. Penelope had a life’s work.
He did not.
She might not be able to put her name on her work, but when she was
alone in her room, she could look at her back issues, and point to them, and say to herself, This is it. This is what my life has been about.
“Colin?” she whispered, clearly startled by his silence.
She was amazing. He didn’t know how he hadn’t realized it before, when he’d already known that she was smart and lovely and witty and resourceful. But all those adjectives, and a whole host more he hadn’t yet thought of, did not add up to the true measure of her.
She was amazing.
And he was…Dear God above, he was jealous of her.
“I’ll go,” she said softly, turning and walking toward the door.
For a moment he didn’t react. His mind was still frozen, reeling with revelations. But when he saw her hand on the doorknob, he knew he could not let her go. Not this night, not ever.
“No,” he said hoarsely, closing the distance between them in three long strides. “No,” he said again, “I want you to stay.”
She looked up at him, her eyes two pools of confusion. “But you said
—”
He cupped her face tenderly with his hands. “Forget what I said.” And that was when he realized that Daphne had been right. His love
hadn’t been a thunderbolt from the sky. It had started with a smile, a word, a teasing glance. Every second he had spent in her presence it had grown, until he’d reached this moment, and he suddenly knew.
He loved her.
He was still furious with her for publishing that last column, and he was bloody ashamed of himself that he was actually jealous of her for having found a life’s work and purpose, but even with all that, he loved her.
And if he let her walk out the door right now, he would never forgive himself.
Maybe this, then, was the definition of love. When you wanted someone, needed her, adored her still, even when you were utterly furious and quite ready to tie her to the bed just to keep her from going out and making more trouble.
This was the night. This was the moment. He was brimming with emotion, and he had to tell her. He had to show her.
“Stay,” he whispered, and he pulled her to him, roughly, hungrily, without apology or explanation.
“Stay,” he said again, leading her to his bed.
And when she didn’t say anything, he said it for a third time. “Stay.”
She nodded.
He took her into his arms.
This was Penelope, and this was love.
