Chapter Text
Endearing Waltz! – to thy more melting tune
Bow Irish Jig, and ancient Rigadoon.
Scotch reels, avaunt! and Country-dance forego
Your future claims to each fantastic toe!
Waltz – Waltz alone – both legs and arms demands,
Liberal of feet, and lavish of her hands;
Hands which may freely range in public sight
Where ne’er before – but – pray “put out the light.”
Methinks the glare of yonder chandelier
Shines much too far – or I am much too near;
And true, though strange – Waltz whispers this remark,
“My slippery steps are safest in the dark!”
But here the Muse with due decorum halts,
And lends her longest petticoat to “Waltz.”
- Lord Byron, 1813
For the first time ever, it was Daphne who was most excited to see Penelope at Aubrey Hall for her yearly summer visit.
“Penelope!” Daphne grabbed her hands as soon as Penelope had stepped foot inside the front door, pulling her gently over to the side. “I overheard your mother telling my mother that she plans for you to debut in a year alongside your sisters – we shall be debuting together!”
“What wonderful news!” Penelope feigned as much excitement as she could muster, but the idea of entering society at the same time as a gorgeous Bridgerton sister, let alone the most perfect of the lot, was beyond intimidating.
“You simply must spend some time with the older siblings out on the grounds later. There will be several of us; we have invited Eloise as well, although you know she has no patience or interest in society. We shall be,” Daphne lowered her voice and whispered softly, “learning something new.”
Penelope cocked her head to the side. “Something … new?”
“Oh, nothing untoward!” Daphne said quickly. “Although it might be a bit scandalous. I will explain more later.”
“I cannot believe you are dancing for amusement,” Eloise huffed, sitting in the grass with her legs outstretched as she fanned herself with one hand. “And on such a hot day.”
“It shall be fun!” Daphne said, smiling at Penelope. “And you enjoy dancing, don’t you, Penelope?”
Penelope did indeed enjoy dancing – at least, she had enjoyed it during the lessons she had taken with Colin. Dancing lessons were now quite rare in the Featherington house; it was one of the first activities cut when Portia decided they needed a leaner household budget as they neared their debut (“Why pay for more lessons when we have milked the teat of talent completely dry?” she had said with a sigh obviously directed at Penelope).
“Oh, good – Benedict! Colin!” Daphne waved to her brothers as they descended the steps of Aubrey Hall’s back entrance and headed towards the girls on the lawn. Penelope felt her breath catch a bit at seeing Colin for the first time in several months; his studies at Eton had taken him away from his family for long months at a time. He had grown taller since the last time Penelope had seen him, having almost outgrown Benedict in only a few months’ time. Despite Colin now sporting the arms and chest of a man, however, Penelope was pleased to see his cheeks were still the round, cherub-like shape she remembered.
As the young men neared them, Colin caught Penelope’s gaze and returned her smile, beaming brightly as he cut directly in front of his sisters to greet her, much to her delight.
“My favorite dancing partner,” Colin said cheerily. “It is so good to see you, Pen.”
Penelope’s heart, which had coincidentally been dormant for as many months as Colin had been away at school, fluttered to attention.
“It is so good to see you too, Colin,” Pen returned, her head a flurry as she immediately second-guessed herself – good? Should I have said wonderful? Would that have been too much?
“Now then,” Daphne cleared her throat, “I learned a very interesting new dance last week while visiting Delilah Weston at her home. Miss Weston had a cousin who visited the continent for a period of time, traveling between France, Austria, and Germany. While she was there, she was able to attend many balls, and she became acquainted with certain customs–”
“God, Daph, get on with it,” Benedict cut in, rolling his eyes.
“If you will allow me to continue,” Daphne narrowed her eyes at her brother, “what I was saying was that Miss Weston’s cousin taught her the waltz; and she, in turn, taught it to me.”
Eloise sat forward a bit, her curiosity piqued.
“The waltz?” Eloise looked up, contemplative. “‘I’d never felt so light of foot … I was no longer human.’”
Her siblings stared at her, but Penelope giggled.
“Goethe, yes?” Penelope said as Eloise eagerly nodded; as Colin turned back to look at her, a bit astounded, Penelope explained further: “The Sorrows of Young Werther. Werther speaks of dancing the waltz with his lover in the story; it was the first place I heard of this dance.”
“Well, I think it is very unfair that we have not been taught the waltz,” Daphne said as she placed her hands on her hips, lifting her chin defiantly. “Miss Weston says that everyone she talks to believes it will be the most popular dance of next season. Surely by the time Penelope and I debut, it will be on our dance cards.”
“I do not have the patience to learn a dance in the hot sun,” Benedict bemoaned. “Surely you can teach each other without needing Colin or me.”
“Nonsense,” Daphne said, reaching over and grabbing Benedict’s to pull him closer to her as she ignored his continued deep sighs. “Young ladies will be expecting both of you to know this as well. I am doing you a favor.”
“You surely are not,” Benedict said with another groan. “What indication have I given that I am interested in dancing with said young ladies?”
“If you think for a minute that mother is not already scheming about what debutantes could be your potential wife, then you are completely oblivious,” Daphne said, moving Benedict’s arm to her back and placing her right hand in his left hand, which she pulled up high. “Come Colin – join in. Take Penelope and make this frame.”
Penelope felt the surface of her skin quiver as she turned back to face Colin, who was holding his hand out.
“Shall we?” he smiled.
To Penelope’s clandestine enjoyment, he wrapped an arm around a spot on her back, just across her shoulder blades, as he took her other hand in his. Their difference in size was almost laughable; her fingers felt like a child’s hands in his. However, this hold was certainly different from the more distant embraces of the quadrilles and country dances.
“It is a bit more intimate of a frame, is it not?” Daphne said to Penelope, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Oh, God,” Eloise moaned from her seat in the grass. “Do not describe any physical touch with our brothers as ‘intimate,’ please; especially in Penelope’s earshot.”
“Oh, hush,” Daphne frowned. “Penelope is like a sister to us.”
“A very dear acquaintance,” Colin offered; Penelope was surprisingly relieved to hear him rechristen her as something besides a sibling.
“Indeed! What a wonderful way to put it,” Daphne said triumphantly. “Now, students – you shall count in a 3. Let us learn the steps first, and then we will work on adding the speed.”
The steps of the waltz were quite simple and repetitive; even a dancer with only mediocre ability, as Penelope believed herself to be, could be led easily by a capable partner like Colin Bridgerton. As Daphne’s regimented counting gradually picked up in tempo, Penelope felt herself getting out of breath.
“I need a moment,” she finally exhaled, unwillingly parting from her dancing frame to place a hand on her hip and another at her chest, inhaling upward as her corset made expanding her lungs nearly impossible.
“Out of breath, Penelope?” Benedict glanced over as he whirled Daphne a quarter-turn to face her, his eyes twinkling with their usual roguery. “Is it Daphne’s counting, or my brother’s dashing good looks?”
“It is because we have not stopped moving – I, unlike you, know how to dance without stepping on my partner’s dress,” Colin fired back before Penelope could yield to the flash of embarrassment she felt at Benedict’s unknowingly veracious observation. Providence aided Penelope’s pride as well, as at that exact moment, as if on cue, Benedict stepped on the edge of Daphne’s dress, nearly sending her face-first into the grass.
“Have you always been this clumsy, Benedict? Perhaps we should switch partners so poor Rose does not have to spend all evening mending this hem,” Daphne said, eyeing Colin.
“And have you screaming counts in my ear? Torturous,” Colin said, wrapping his arm back around Penelope’s waist and pulling her – was it her imagination? – perhaps an inch closer. “In any case, Penelope and I have a history as dance partners.”
He looked down at her, blue eyes matching the bright summer sky.
“Think you have a few more rounds of this in you? I would rather avoid Daphne chastising my skills,” he whispered to her. Penelope realized she had never really reveled in the change of his voice; when he whispered, it reminded her of the rich hum of deep harmonies singing the Doxology in church. Divine, she thought, in all senses of the word.
“I have regained my composure,” she said with a soft smile.
“Let us practice, then,” he said, taking her hand and leading her into the first step. “I am just glad you have not complained at how rusty my dancing skills must be. Not much dancing going on at Eton, I’m afraid.”
“I cannot imagine you have access to any partners.”
“None. I am surprised I can even remember how to speak given how long it has been since I have talked to a delightful young woman.”
Penelope looked down at her feet quickly to try to avoid showing her partner the blush creeping up on her cheeks.
“Are you able to write to your family often?” Penelope asked, still looking down as she willed her heart to flutter in the same direction.
“I try to,” Colin said, whisking her around another turn. “They do not return my letters often. Eloise complains I ramble; that by the time she manages to finish a letter, she has lost all motivation to pen a response.”
“I see,” Penelope said quietly. “I find long letters quite diverting.”
“Diverting?” Colin’s tone was bemused enough to rouse Penelope’s eyes from her feet.
“Much like a novel, I suppose. I used to write to a cousin of mine when we were younger, and she was more voracious with the quill,” Penelope explained. “When I received one of her longer letters, it piqued my imagination. Her words helped me picture myself in her house, taking a place at her dinner table, meeting her friends … it might sound silly, but it was as if I was with her, experiencing a bold new adventure that was infinitely more exhilarating than my own life.”
Colin glanced over Penelope’s shoulder, eyes and lips narrowed in thought.
“If I wrote to you,” he said suddenly, spitting out the words quickly as though he were trying to put them into the air before he could regret it, “would you write back?”
Penelope looked over to Daphne and Benedict, who were bickering incessantly about another torn string at her hem. Glancing at Eloise, Penelope noticed her dearest friend seemed to have, unsurprisingly for her, drifted off to sleep in the hot summer sun.
Penelope cleared her throat: “Do you not think it is …?”
She let the implication hang in the air as their pace of dancing slowed and Colin’s fingers lightened their grip on her waist.
“I think,” he said finally, still leading her in their steps, “that you are one of my oldest and dearest friends.”
Penelope nervously bit her bottom lip.
“Now that you have danced it, do you think the waltz is as scandalous as it was rumored to be?” Colin said, taking Penelope through a quarter of a rotation once more as their tempo picked up a bit again.
“Scandalous is perhaps the wrong word,” Penelope said thoughtfully; she was realizing, pleasantly, how much she enjoyed the waltz. “There is a closeness that some might find contumacious. But really, it is just dancing. If anything, it feels quite freeing.”
“And attitudes change, do they not? What is scandalous today might be the first dance on the dance card next season.”
“Quite true.”
To Penelope’s surprise and elation, Colin lifted an arm and led her underneath it, using his fingers to twirl her in a circle as if he were whisking sweet batter in a bowl. She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her lips; she noticed that as soon as she laughed, the corners of his mouth ticked upward in a grin.
“Perhaps a few letters between good friends would not be objectionable, especially in an evolving society,” Colin said, snaking an arm around Penelope’s waist again to lead her back into the simple waltz step. “Particularly if one possesses the imagination to be able to weave rambles into adventures ...”
Penelope’s heart flapped with great exuberance, although her head tugged her back to earth. Whether Colin sensed this dichotomy or not, she could not say, but he quickly offered the solution:
“If it is more agreeable to you, and if it would lead to fewer questions for you from Lady Featherington, I could include a letter to you with my letter to Eloise. You would just have to be sure Eloise does not ignore it when she sees my name on the post.”
“I struggle to see the harm in that,” Penelope said; and for some reason, she wanted to laugh again – joyfully, loudly.
Before she could, however, Daphne interrupted:
“The heat!” she sighed deeply, shaking the ends of her skirt out. “Poor Rose; she has her work cut out for her tonight. Shall we take a break and find some lemonade to refresh ourselves?”
“Please!” Eloise said dramatically, rousing from her nap and sitting up. “I have nearly died from boredom. Come, Penelope; you must be craving good conversation after being stuck with Colin for so long.”
Penelope smiled, looking back up at Colin as they separated their frame.
She immediately missed the feeling of his hand on her back; her hand in his.
“Thank you for the dance,” she said brightly.
“Thank you,” he returned her look with a comforting nod. “You will have to save a spot for me on your card once the waltz shows up on it. I would be quite amused to see the look on Lady Featherington’s face when she realizes you know such a scandalous new dance.”
Penelope smirked. “The spot will be yours, Mr. Bridgerton.”
“I will try to inspire some new adventures,” Colin said, miming himself scribbling with a pen. “Especially if you can keep me updated with the latest gossip from home. You have always been so keenly observant of the people we know.”
“I will wait for your letter.”
“First night I am back,” Colin said.
And she believed him. Her immediate awareness of trust in his word sent a wave of tranquility over every pore on Penelope’s body.
Her heart didn’t flutter this time; instead, it settled, nesting deep in her chest with a warmth that felt like home.
The waltz was her favorite dance, she decided.