This Author would be remiss if it was not mentioned that the most talked-about moment at last night’s birthday ball at Bridgerton
House was not the rousing toast to Lady Bridgerton (age not to be revealed) but rather Lady Danbury’s impertinent offer of one thousand pounds to whomever unmasks…
Me.
Do your worst, ladies and gentlemen of the ton. You haven’t a prayer of solving this mystery.
LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 12 APRIL 1824
Precisely three minutes were required for news of Lady Danbury’s
outrageous dare to spread throughout the ballroom. Penelope knew this to be true because she happened to be facing a large (and, according to Kate
Bridgerton, extremely precise) grandfather clock when Lady Danbury made her announcement. At the words, “One thousand pounds to the person who unmasks Lady Whistledown,” the clock read forty-four minutes past ten.
The long hand had advanced no farther than forty-seven when Nigel
Berbrooke stumbled into the rapidly growing circle of people surrounding Lady Danbury and proclaimed her latest scheme “scrumbly good fun!”
And if Nigel had heard about it, that meant everyone had, because Penelope’s brother-in-law was not known for his intelligence, his attention
span, or his listening ability.
Nor, Penelope thought wryly, for his vocabulary. Scrumbly, indeed. “And who do you think Lady Whistledown is?” Lady Danbury asked
Nigel.
“No earthly idea,” he admitted. “Ain’t me, that’s all I know!” “I think we all know that,” Lady D replied.
“Who do you think it is?” Penelope asked Colin.
He offered her a one-shouldered shrug. “I’ve been out of town too often to speculate.”
“Don’t be silly,” Penelope said. “Your cumulative time in London certainly adds up to enough parties and routs to form a few theories.”
But he just shook his head. “I really couldn’t say.”
Penelope stared at him for a moment longer than was necessary, or, in all honesty, socially acceptable. There was something odd in Colin’s eyes. Something fleeting and elusive. The ton often thought him nothing more than a devil-may-care charmer, but he was far more intelligent than he let on, and she’d have bet her life that he had a few suspicions.
But for some reason, he wasn’t willing to share them with her.
“Who do you think it is?” Colin asked, avoiding her question with one of his own. “You’ve been out in society just about as long as Lady Whistledown. Surely you must have thought about it.”
Penelope looked about the ballroom, her eyes resting on this person and that, before finally returning to the small crowd around her. “I think it could very well be Lady Danbury,” she replied. “Wouldn’t that be a clever joke on everyone?”
Colin looked over at the elderly lady, who was having a grand old time talking up her latest scheme. She was thumping her cane on the ground, chattering animatedly, and smiling like a cat with cream, fish, and an entire roast turkey. “It makes sense,” he said thoughtfully, “in a rather perverse sort of way.”
Penelope felt the corners of her mouth twist. “She’s nothing if not perverse.”
She watched Colin watching Lady D for another few seconds, then quietly said, “But you don’t think it’s her.”
Colin slowly turned his head to face her, raising one brow in silent question.
“I can tell by the expression on your face,” Penelope explained.
He grinned, that loose easy grin he so often used in public. “And here I thought I was inscrutable.”
“Afraid not,” she replied. “Not to me, anyway.”
Colin sighed. “I fear it will never be my destiny to be a dark, brooding hero.”
“You may well find yourself some one’s hero,” Penelope allowed. “There’s time for you yet. But dark and brooding?” She smiled. “Not very likely.”
“Too bad for me,” he said jauntily, giving her another one of his well- known smiles—this one the lopsided, boyish one. “The dark, brooding
types get all the women.”
Penelope coughed discreetly, a bit surprised he’d be speaking of such
things with her, not to mention the fact that Colin Bridgerton had never had trouble attracting women. He was grinning at her, awaiting a response, and she was trying to decide whether the correct reaction was polite maidenly
outrage or a laugh and an I’m-such-a-good-sport sort of chuckle, when Eloise quite literally skidded to a halt in front of them.
“Did you hear the news?” Eloise asked breathlessly.
“Were you running?” Penelope returned. Truly a remarkable feat in such a crowded ballroom.
“Lady Danbury has offered one thousand pounds to whomever unmasks Lady Whistledown!”
“We know,” Colin said in that vaguely superior tone exclusive to older brothers.
Eloise let out a disappointed sigh. “You do?”
Colin motioned to Lady Danbury, who was still a scant few yards away. “We were right here when it happened.”
Eloise looked annoyed in the extreme, and Penelope knew exactly what she was thinking (and would most probably relate to her the following afternoon). It was one thing to miss an important moment. It was another entirely to discover that one’s brother had seen the entire thing.
“Well, people are already talking about it,” Eloise said. “Gushing, really. I haven’t been witness to such excitement in years.”
Colin turned to Penelope and murmured, “This is why I so often choose to leave the country.”
Penelope tried not to smile.
“I know you’re talking about me and I don’t care,” Eloise continued, barely pausing to take a breath. “I tell you, the ton has gone mad. Everyone
—and I mean everyone—is speculating on her identity, although the shrewdest ones won’t say a word. Don’t want others to win on their hunch, don’t you know.”
“I think,” Colin announced, “that I am not so in need of a thousand pounds that I care to worry about this.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Penelope said thoughtfully.
He turned to her in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you’re going to join in this ridiculous game.”
She cocked her head to the side, lifting her chin in what she hoped was an enigmatic—or if not enigmatic, at the very least slightly mysterious— manner. “I am not so well heeled that I can ignore the offer of one thousand pounds,” she said.
“Perhaps if we work together…” Eloise suggested. “God save me,” was Colin’s reply.
Eloise ignored him, saying to Penelope, “We could split the money.”
Penelope opened her mouth to reply, but Lady Danbury’s cane suddenly came into view, waving wildly through the air. Colin had to take a quick step to the side just to avoid getting his ear clipped off.
“Miss Featherington!” Lady D boomed. “You haven’t told me who you
suspect.”
“No, Penelope,” Colin said, a rather smirky smile on his face, “you haven’t.”
Penelope’s first instinct was to mumble something under her breath and hope that Lady Danbury’s age had left her hard enough of hearing that she would assume that any lack of understanding was the fault of her own ears and not Penelope’s lips. But even without glancing to her side, she could feel Colin’s presence, sense his quirky, cocky grin egging her on, and she found herself standing a little straighter, with her chin perched just a little higher than usual.
He made her more confident, more daring. He made her more…herself.
Or at least the herself she wished she could be.
“Actually,” Penelope said, looking Lady Danbury almost in the eye, “I think it’s you.”
A collective gasp echoed around them.
And for the first time in her life, Penelope Featherington found herself at the very center of attention.
Lady Danbury stared at her, her pale blue eyes shrewd and assessing.
And then the most amazing thing happened. Her lips began to twitch at the corners. Then they widened until Penelope realized she was not just smiling, but positively grinning.
“I like you, Penelope Featherington,” Lady Danbury said, tapping her right on the toe with her cane. “I wager half the ballroom is of the same notion, but no one else has the mettle to tell me so.”
“I really don’t, either,” Penelope admitted, grunting slightly as Colin elbowed her in the ribs.
“Obviously,” Lady Danbury said with a strange light in her eyes, “you do.”
Penelope didn’t know what to say to this. She looked at Colin, who was smiling at her encouragingly, then she looked back to Lady Danbury, who looked almost…maternal.
Which had to be the strangest thing of all. Penelope rather doubted that Lady Danbury had given maternal looks to her own children.
“Isn’t it nice,” the older lady said, leaning in so that only Penelope could hear her words, “to discover that we’re not exactly what we thought we were?”
And then she walked away, leaving Penelope wondering if maybe she wasn’t quite what she’d thought she was.
Maybe—just maybe—she was something a little bit more.
The next day was a Monday, which meant that Penelope took tea with the Bridgerton ladies at Number Five. She didn’t know when, precisely, she’d fallen into that habit, but it had been so for close to a decade, and if she didn’t show up on a Monday afternoon, she rather thought Lady Bridgerton would send someone over to fetch her.
Penelope rather enjoyed the Bridgerton custom of tea and biscuits in the afternoon. It wasn’t a widespread ritual; indeed, Penelope knew of no one
else who made a daily habit of it. But Lady Bridgerton insisted that she simply could not last from luncheon to supper, especially not when they were observing town hours and eating so late at night. And thus, every
afternoon at four, she and any number of her children (and often a friend or two) met in the informal upstairs drawing room for a snack.
There was drizzle in the air, even though it was a fairly warm day, so
Penelope took her black parasol with her for the short walk over to Number Five. It was a route she’d followed hundreds of times before, a few houses down to the corner of Mount and Davies Street, then along the edge of Berkeley Square to Bruton Street. But she was in an odd mood that day, a
little bit lighthearted and maybe even a little bit childish, so she decided to cut across the northern corner of the Berkeley Square green for no other reason than she liked the squishy sound her boots made on the wet grass.
It was Lady Danbury’s fault. It had to be. She’d been positively giddy since their encounter the night before.
“Not. What. I. Thought. I. Was,” she sang to herself as she walked, adding a word every time the soles of her boots sank into the ground. “Something more. Something more.”
She reached a particularly wet patch and moved like a skater on the grass, singing (softly, of course; she hadn’t changed so much from the night before that she actually wanted someone to hear her singing in public), “Something moooore,” as she slid forward.
Which was, of course (since it was fairly well established—in her own mind, at least—that she had the worst timing in the history of civilization), right when she heard a male voice call out her name.
She skidded to a halt and gave fervent thanks that she caught her
balance at the very last moment instead of landing on her bottom on the wet and messy grass.
It was, of course, him.
“Colin!” she said in a slightly embarrassed voice, holding still as she waited for him to reach her side. “What a surprise.”
He looked like he was trying not to smile. “Were you dancing?” “Dancing?” she echoed.
“It looked like you were dancing.”
“Oh. No.” She swallowed guiltily, because even though she wasn’t technically lying, it felt as if she were. “Of course not.”
His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. “Pity, then. I would have felt compelled to partner you, and I’ve never danced in Berkeley Square.”
If he’d said the same to her just two days earlier, she would have laughed at his joke and let him be the witty and charming one. But she must have heard Lady Danbury’s voice at the back of her head again, because she suddenly decided she didn’t want to be the same old Penelope Featherington.
She decided to join in the fun.
She smiled a smile she didn’t think she’d even known how to smile. It was wicked and she was mysterious, and she knew it wasn’t all in her head because Colin’s eyes widened markedly as she murmured, “That’s a shame. It’s rather enjoyable.”
“Penelope Featherington,” he drawled, “I thought you said you weren’t dancing.”
She shrugged. “I lied.”
“If that’s the case,” he said, “then surely this must be my dance.”
Penelope’s insides suddenly felt very queer. This was why she shouldn’t let whispers from Lady Danbury go to her head. She might manage daring and charm for a fleeting moment, but she had no idea how to follow through.
Unlike Colin, obviously, who was grinning devilishly as he held his arms out in perfect waltz position.
“Colin,” she gasped, “we’re in Berkeley Square!”
“I know. I just finished telling you I’ve never danced here, don’t you recall?”
“But—”
Colin crossed his arms. “Tsk. Tsk. You can’t issue a dare like that and then try to weasel out of it. Besides, dancing in Berkeley Square seems like the sort of thing a person ought to do at least once in his life, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Anyone might see,” she whispered urgently.
He shrugged, trying to hide the fact that he was rather entertained by her reaction. “I don’t care. Do you?”
Her cheeks grew pink, then red, and it seemed to take her a great deal of effort to form the words, “People will think you are courting me.”
He watched her closely, not understanding why she was disturbed. Who cared if people thought they were courting? The rumor would soon be proven false, and they’d have a good laugh at society’s expense. It was on
the tip of his tongue to say, Hang society, but he held silent. There was something lurking deep in the brown depths of her eyes, some emotion he couldn’t even begin to identify.
An emotion he suspected he’d never even felt.
And he realized that the last thing he wanted to do was hurt Penelope Featherington. She was his sister’s best friend, and moreover, she was, plain and simple, a very nice girl.
He frowned. He supposed he shouldn’t be calling her a girl anymore. At eight-and-twenty she was no more a girl than he was still a boy at three- and-thirty.
Finally, with great care and what he hoped was a good dose of sensitivity, he asked, “Is there a reason why we should worry if people think we are courting?”
She closed her eyes, and for a moment Colin actually thought she might be in pain. When she opened them, her gaze was almost bittersweet. “It would be very funny, actually,” she said. “At first.”
He said nothing, just waited for her to continue.
“But eventually it would become apparent that we are not actually courting, and it would…” She stopped, swallowed, and Colin realized that she was not as composed on the inside as she hoped to appear.
“It would be assumed,” she continued, “that you were the one to break things off, because—well, it just would be.”
He didn’t argue with her. He knew that her words were true.
She let out a sad-sounding exhale. “I don’t want to subject myself to that. Even Lady Whistledown would probably write about it. How could she not? It would be far too juicy a piece of gossip for her to resist.”
“I’m sorry, Penelope,” Colin said. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but it still seemed like the right thing to say.
She acknowledged him with a tiny nod. “I know I shouldn’t care what other people say, but I do.”
He found himself turning slightly away as he considered her words. Or maybe he was considering the tone of her voice. Or maybe both.
He’d always thought of himself as somewhat above society. Not really outside of it, precisely, since he certainly moved within it and usually enjoyed himself quite a bit. But he’d always assumed that his happiness did not depend upon the opinions of others.
But maybe he wasn’t thinking about this the right way. It was easy to assume that you didn’t care about the opinions of others when those
opinions were consistently favorable. Would he be so quick to dismiss the rest of society if they treated him the way they treated Penelope?
She’d never been ostracized, never been made the subject of scandal.
She just hadn’t been…popular.
Oh, people were polite, and the Bridgertons had all befriended her, but most of Colin’s memories of Penelope involved her standing at the perimeter of a ballroom, trying to look anywhere but at the dancing couples, clearly pretending that she really didn’t want to dance. That was usually when he went over and asked her himself. She always looked grateful for
the request, but also a little bit embarrassed, because they both knew he was doing it at least a little bit because he felt sorry for her.
Colin tried to put himself in her shoes. It wasn’t easy. He’d always been popular; his friends had looked up to him at school and the women had flocked to his side when he’d entered society. And as much as he could say he didn’t care what people thought, when it came right down to it…
He rather liked being liked.
Suddenly he didn’t know what to say. Which was strange, because he always knew what to say. In fact, he was somewhat famous for always knowing what to say. It was, he reflected, probably one of the reasons he was so well liked.
But he sensed that Penelope’s feelings depended on his next words, and at some point in the last ten minutes, her feelings had become very important to him.
“You’re right,” he finally said, deciding that it was always a good idea to tell someone she was correct. “It was very insensitive of me. Perhaps we should start anew?”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
He waved his hand about, as if the motion could explain everything. “Make a fresh start.”
She looked quite adorably confused, which confused him, since he’d never thought Penelope the least bit adorable.
“But we’ve known each other for twelve years,” she said.
“Has it really been that long?” He searched his brain, but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall the event of their first meeting. “Never mind that. I meant just for this afternoon, you ninny.”
She smiled, clearly in spite of herself, and he knew that calling her a ninny had been the exact right thing to do, although in all truth he had no idea why.
“Here we go,” he said slowly, drawing his words out with a long flourish of his arm. “You are walking across Berkeley Square, and you spy me in the distance. I call out your name, and you reply by saying…”
Penelope caught her lower lip between her teeth, trying, for some unknown reason, to contain her smile. What magical star had Colin been born under, that he always knew what to say? He was the pied piper, leaving nothing but happy hearts and smiling faces in his wake. Penelope would have bet money—far more than the thousand pounds Lady Danbury had offered up—that she was not the only woman in London desperately in love with the third Bridgerton.
He dipped his head to the side and then righted it in a prompting sort of motion.
“I would reply…” Penelope said slowly. “I would reply…”
Colin waited two seconds, then said, “Really, any words will do.”
Penelope had planned to fix a bright grin on her face, but she discovered that the smile on her lips was quite genuine. “Colin!” she said, trying to sound as if she’d just been surprised by his arrival. “What are you doing
about?”
“Excellent reply,” he said.
She shook her finger at him. “You’re breaking out of character.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Apologies.” He paused, blinked twice, then said, “Here we are. How about this: Much the same as you, I imagine. Heading to Number Five for tea.”
Penelope found herself falling into the rhythm of the conversation. “You sound as if you’re just going for a visit. Don’t you live there?”
He grimaced. “Hopefully just for the next week. A fortnight at most. I’m trying to find a new place to live. I had to give up the lease on my old set of rooms when I left for Cyprus, and I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet. I had a bit of business down on Piccadilly and thought I’d walk back.”
“In the rain?”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t raining when I left earlier this morning. And even now it’s just drizzle.”
Just drizzle, Penelope thought. Drizzle that clung to his obscenely long eyelashes, framing eyes of such perfect green that more than one young lady had been moved to write (extremely bad) poetry about them. Even Penelope, levelheaded as she liked to think herself, had spent many a night in bed, staring at the ceiling and seeing nothing but those eyes.
Just drizzle, indeed. “Penelope?”
She snapped to attention. “Right. Yes. I’m going to your mother’s for tea as well. I do so every Monday. And often on other days, too,” she admitted. “When there’s, er, nothing interesting occurring at my house.”
“No need to sound so guilty about it. My mother’s a lovely woman. If she wants you over for tea, you should go.”
Penelope had a bad habit of trying to hear between the lines of people’s conversations, and she had a suspicion that Colin was really saying that he didn’t blame her if she wanted to escape her own mother from time to time.
Which somehow, unaccountably, made her feel a little sad.
He rocked on his heels for a moment, then said, “Well, I shouldn’t keep you out here in the rain.”
She smiled, since they’d been standing outside for at least fifteen minutes. Still, if he wanted to continue with the ruse, she would do so as well. “I’m the one with the parasol,” she pointed out.
His lips curved slightly. “So you are. But still, I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman if I didn’t steer you toward a more hospitable environment.
Speaking of which…” He frowned, looking around. “Speaking of what?”
“Of being a gentleman. I believe we’re supposed to see to the welfare of ladies.”
“And?”
He crossed his arms. “Shouldn’t you have a maid with you?”
“I live just around the corner,” she said, a little bit deflated that he didn’t remember that. She and her sister were best friends with two of his sisters, after all. He’d even walked her home once or twice. “On Mount Street,” she added, when his frown did not dissipate.
He squinted slightly, looking in the direction of Mount Street, although she had no idea what he hoped to accomplish by doing so.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Colin. It’s just near the corner of Davies Street.
It can’t be more than a five-minute walk to your mother’s. Four, if I’m feeling exceptionally sprightly.”
“I was just looking to see if there were any darkened or recessed spots.” He turned back to face her. “Where a criminal might lurk.”
“In Mayfair?”
“In Mayfair,” he said grimly. “I really think you ought to have a maid accompany you when you journey to and fro. I should hate for something to happen to you.”
She was oddly touched by his concern, even though she knew he would have extended equal thoughtfulness to just about every female of his acquaintance. That was simply the sort of man he was.
“I can assure you that I observe all of the usual proprieties when I am traveling longer distances,” she said. “But truly, this is so close. Just a few blocks, really. Even my mother doesn’t mind.”
Colin’s jaw suddenly looked quite stiff.
“Not to mention,” Penelope added, “that I am eight-and-twenty.” “What has that to do with anything? I am three-and-thirty, if you care to
know.”
She knew that, of course, since she knew almost everything about him. “Colin,” she said, a slightly annoyed whine creeping into her voice.
“Penelope,” he replied, in exactly the same tone.
She let out a long exhale before saying, “I am quite firmly on the shelf,
Colin. I needn’t worry about all of the rules that plagued me when I was seventeen.”
“I hardly think—”
One of Penelope’s hands planted itself on her hip. “Ask your sister if you don’t believe me.”
He suddenly looked more serious than she had ever seen him. “I make it a point not to ask my sister on matters that relate to common sense.”
“Colin!” Penelope exclaimed. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“I didn’t say I don’t love her. I didn’t even say I don’t like her. I adore Eloise, as you well know. However—”
“Anything that begins with however has got to be bad,” Penelope muttered.
“Eloise,” he said with uncharacteristic high-handedness, “should be married by now.”
Now, that was really too much, especially in that tone of voice. “Some might say,” Penelope returned with a self-righteous little tilt of her chin, “that you should be married by now, too.”
“Oh, pl—”
“You are, as you so proudly informed me, three-and-thirty.”
His expression was slightly amused, but with that pale tinge of irritation which told her he would not remain amused for long. “Penelope, don’t even
—”
“Ancient!” she chirped.
He swore under his breath, which surprised her, since she didn’t think she’d ever heard him do so in the presence of a lady. She probably should have taken it as a warning, but she was too riled up. She supposed the old saying was true—courage spawned more courage.
Or maybe it was more that recklessness emboldened more recklessness, because she just looked at him archly and said, “Weren’t both of your older brothers married by the age of thirty?”
To her surprise, Colin merely smiled and crossed his arms as he leaned one shoulder against the tree they were standing beneath. “My brothers and I are very different men.”
It was, Penelope realized, a very telling statement, because so many
members of the ton, including the fabled Lady Whistledown, made so much of the fact that the Bridgerton brothers looked so alike. Some had even gone so far as to call them interchangeable. Penelope hadn’t thought any of them were bothered by this—in fact, she’d assumed they’d all felt flattered by the comparison, since they seemed to like each other so well. But maybe she
was wrong.
Or maybe she’d never looked closely enough.
Which was rather strange, because she felt as if she’d spent half her life watching Colin Bridgerton.
One thing she did know, however, and should have remembered, was that if Colin had any sort of a temper, he had never chosen to let her see it. Surely she’d flattered herself when she thought that her little quip about his brothers marrying before they turned thirty might set him off.
No, his method of attack was a lazy smile, a well-timed joke. If Colin ever lost his temper…
Penelope shook her head slightly, unable even to fathom it. Colin would never lose his temper. At least not in front of her. He’d have to be really, truly—no, profoundly—upset to lose his temper. And that kind of fury could only be sparked by someone you really, truly, profoundly cared about.
Colin liked her well enough—maybe even better than he liked most people—but he didn’t care. Not that way.
“Perhaps we should just agree to disagree,” she finally said.
“On what?”
“Er…” She couldn’t remember. “Er, on what a spinster may or may not do?”
He seemed amused by her hesitation. “That would probably require that I defer to my younger sister’s judgment in some capacity, which would be, as I’m sure you can imagine, very difficult for me.”
“But you don’t mind deferring to my judgment?”
His smile was lazy and wicked. “Not if you promise not to tell another living soul.”
He didn’t mean it, of course. And she knew he knew she knew he didn’t mean it. But that was his way. Humor and a smile could smooth any path.
And blast him, it worked, because she heard herself sighing and felt herself smiling, and before she knew it she was saying, “Enough! Let us be on our way to your mother’s.”
Colin grinned. “Do you think she’ll have biscuits?”
Penelope rolled her eyes. “I know she’ll have biscuits.”
“Good,” he said, taking off at a lope and half dragging her with him. “I do love my family, but I really just go for the food.”
