Chapter Text
Featherington House, 1816
In the weeks since the newest Lord Featherington made his bold entrance into the world, screaming and kicking his parents out of their newlywed escape and into Featherington House, life had been a blur for Colin. Against medical advice (Colin heeded no instructions above those of his wife), the little family descended upon Featherington House scarcely a day after his son’s birth. Her words rang in his head, “I am quite well, Colin. Working women are up and about mere hours after birthing, babies strapped to their backs. Stop treating me as if I were some fragile hothouse bloom!” She was right, of course she was right, Penelope was always right. But he couldn’t be faulted for being generally out of sorts; he had (also against medical advice and at Penelope’s insistence) attended his son’s birth, and his awe for his wife had at least trebled. But at the same time, his understanding of the ordeal she had gone through was, if not first-hand, near enough, and it seemed ludicrous that one day, one day after all of that screaming and sweating and rending of flesh, she could well-nigh hop out of bed, be thrust into a day dress, carted the blocks to Featherington House cradling her new babe, climb the stairs with only a hint of difficulty (Colin’s offer to carry her was only glared at), rid herself of the day dress (Colin’s assistance for this was also rebuffed, to his dismay), and tuck her capable little body into their new bed to resume her confinement as if she’d simply ventured to peer out the window rather than moving house halfway across Mayfair.
Penelope had told him, leading up to the birth, that this is what she would do if she produced the heir. But it had been a hazy, distant possibility in their murmured conversations, wrapped up together under the sheets with his hand on her belly, or an offhand mention when returning to him after a visit with her mother that if Penelope took up residence, the offensive draperies would have to be changed. And surely, Colin thought, after all the hours of pain and pushing and, and – viscera , the decision would be reconsidered for a more sensible timetable. Surely everyone would understand the extenuating circumstances of why the new Lord Featherington could not immediately take up residence at Featherington House.
But no, because his lady wife was not just any twenty-year-old society lady, but in fact was the most famous gossip columnist in London the Lady Whistledown, she knew that the way things looked was often the most important thing. And she would brook no tongue wagging that her son was infirm, or hidden away, or lacked legitimacy of parentage or rank. An eight-month baby to young newlyweds was one thing; a missing Lord quite another. The new Lord Featherington had to be installed, visible, unquestioned by either family. The title had been precarious for far too long, the queen’s man sniffing around, Penelope’s sisters both producing daughters, Penelope’s womb being possibly the final hope to resecure the family’s title. And, clever woman, she had delivered: both their son and the future of the barony.
In the haste of their move into an already occupied home, quite a few things had been hastily tucked into closets, stacked in unused rooms, or thrown into large chests. And since then, they had been preoccupied with the newest arrival. Penelope’s confinement, after the upheaval, had been a month of cuddling, soothing, stealing minutes of sleep at all hours of the day, dirty linens and clean, moments to eat a bite or two, and adoring their new son. The time had been dotted with visits from family, for which Colin would deign to toss on shirt and a hastily buttoned waistcoat, and Penelope would dutifully pin her hair back simply and don a bed jacket. Otherwise, Colin was often bare chested, in solidarity with his nursing wife, who rarely wore more than a loose nightgown. It wasn’t the done thing for fathers to, ostensibly, confine themselves along with their wives, but Colin couldn’t think of anywhere he was more needed than serving little Lord Featherington, and, in the rare hours when both his wife and progeny were resting peacefully, shuffling to the desk he’d had installed in the chamber to rustle through the ledgers and notes and try to make sense of his son’s tangled accounts.
Close to the end of her confinement, Penelope had shifted, somewhat. The fierce, immediate, protective shroud of her fresh motherhood was lifting to reveal a practical, confident, doting attitude that allowed Colin to finally hire two nurses – “Just,” Penelope had explained to him repeatedly, “while we rest, so that we can love him better when he is with us.” Colin recognized that unlike himself, Penelope had grown up unsure in her family’s love, largely ignored and often pushed aside or over-scrutinized, and knew how important it was for her that their son be sure in their constant, unfailing love for him. Colin felt the time with his son keenly as well, knowing that one had to pour everything into the moments you had, because sometimes fathers only have, say, ten years with their sons before they must depart. And a lifetime of love had to be imparted in whatever time there was, regardless.
Acquiescing to the nurses taking the babe had created an issue, however, when Penelope sometimes awoke, called for him to be brought to her, and was told he was asleep in the nursery. Sensibly, she of course allowed him to stay sleeping. But Colin noted her fidgeting and snappish replies to him and knew: she needed something to do . Penelope was many things, but idle was never one of them, and now she was claiming that even reading was driving her mad with restlessness and boredom. And while she now freely roamed the family rooms of the house, she still wasn’t ready to re-enter society or ever be more than a cry away from her child, so she was trapped. Colin realized, as he had for a long time, that his Penelope was also his Lady Whistledown, but also could tell that when Penelope was not allowed to Penelope , to smile and love and care and joke, then Penelope had to Lady Whistledown , and scrutinize and scribble and elucidate and barb.
Which is how he found himself settled on the floor of a closet in his stocking feet, rummaging through cases and small chests filled with paper of all sorts, little velvet bags with pots of ink, bundles of letters. Whoever had been responsible for moving the contents of their desks had, seemingly, in their rush to comply with the order to move households, thrown everything together higgledy-piggledy, making finding Penelope’s favored ink, quills, and paper difficult – and her most recent notes impossible.
Colin came across a bundle tied with twine that he set aside to put in a place of care: his wife’s letters to him before they were married, before they knew they’d marry, when they were just unlikely friends. When she would write to him about the most mundane happenings, ask him eager questions about his life or his travels, and fill him with the feeling he could now name as home .
Lifting out a sheaf of papers folded together that looked promising – wasn’t the violet ink a recent choice of hers? – he set them aside. And peering back into the box, found a little stack of cards, tied neatly with a satin ribbon. Certainly something of Penelope’s that wasn’t his business. He picked it up, to get it out of the way, and recognized what it was: dance cards. They were all roughly the same size, with slight variations. He could see the topmost was from Lady Danbury’s ball in 1813: the very first ball Penelope had attended. Was this all of her dance cards from her tenure as a debutante?
Colin found himself consumed with curiosity, to look at his wife from this vantage point. He had not kept careful track of her career in the ballrooms until her third season; in 1813 or 1814, he would usually find her at some point or two in the evening to ask for a dance, or chat with a lemonade for a few moments. But who else had spun her around the floor, held her hand, looked into her smiling crystalline eyes, and (bafflingly, if fortuitously for himself) decided not to court her? In for a penny, he mused, and pulled on the tail of the bow, letting the ribbon fall away onto the floor.
He opened the first card, then the next, and the next, and a horrifying realization dawned on him. They were blank. More than a dozen balls each season, and not one of the asses had signed a name on a single bloody dance card! Not even, he lamented, himself. He’d thought . . . it had seemed awkward to stand on ceremony and go through the ritual of using the little pencil that hung from her wrist to fill out a form. They were more familiar than all that, old friends, beyond ballroom bureaucracy. But now, he knew his wife. He knew how long she had held a candle for him, and how, likely, she had wished for the consideration of him writing his name down: the teasing, breathless moment of his fingers navigating her wrist while standing a little too close together, mingling their body heat, to complete the gesture.
And what a shame for the rest of the gentleman fools. Penelope was an excellent dancer; she rarely missed a step, could carry on an engaging conversation, and, at her height, was a treat to twirl under one’s arm. No one had asked her to dance, save himself, and even he had barely asked – I am to escort Miss Featherington to the floor; let us dance, Pen; we are dancing; take to the floor with me; join me– He couldn’t think of a single time he’d bowed to her and actually asked, Miss Featherington, may I have this dance? The rules had simply never applied, in his mind. But now he knew she’d spent most of her time at these balls watching other young ladies be properly asked and never being asked herself. He knew what it felt like to be lonely; to have everyone living their lives around you while you stand still and they seem not to notice.
And, he mused, would treating her more like a woman whom he was considering made him, well, consider her, sooner?
As always when his thoughts wandered down this path, the hot shame and the cold panic set in, leaving him with a roiling storm in his gut that only one person could soothe. He rose, and like a homing pigeon, the magnet in his head pointed, as ever, toward her.
He didn’t think to try to explain it anymore. It always had been, that he could turn his head to exactly her position in any room, or sense the shift in the air when she entered, or walk through the house directly to the spot she occupied. Before they were betrothed, he didn’t think about it much; chalked it up to their shared sensibilities, the fact that she nearly always wore bright yellow and was difficult to miss despite her size. And now that she was his other half, it was devilishly handy, and he was not one to look deeply into a horse’s gob.
He found her tucked into the corner of the settee in their antechamber, open book ignored on the arm of the furniture, gazing sightlessly at the wall opposite. Lately she’d needed time for quiet reflection more often; the upheaval of house, and body, and marriage, and motherhood had come on rather quickly. And while Penelope was fiercely sharp and driven when need be, she was only human, and did take time to sort things out in her mind when there was an appropriate lull.
Colin entered quietly, still in his stocking feet. She sensed him, he knew, and was moving her book to the side table and arranging her skirts so that, when, in the next moment, he flopped himself down horizontally on the sofa, feet hanging off the edge, settling his head gently in her lap, they would both be comfortable.
“Hello, Darling,” he murmured up at her with a half grin.
“Hello, Biscuit,” she returned, her thumb resting at the corner of his smile as she cupped his cheek. It had been Mister Bridgerton as a jest when she performed some small task for him, then simply Bridgerton , as if she were a schoolmaster addressing a troublesome pupil when he vexed her, and then Biscuiton when he conspicuously overindulged at tea-time. And now just Biscuit , her mouth forming the epithet as if he were something wanted and pretty and sweet, basking in the warmth of her affection.
“Am I interrupting?”
“No,” she sighed, as if releasing a hundred thoughts to float away to later , and brought her fingers to his temple, slowly stroking them through his hair.
The tempest within him was abating to the fat pattering of a steady, soaking rain as he rested his cheek, feeling the softness of her thighs through the rustly skirts, his thumb absently stroking along the arm that was cradling his head. Home .
The discovery of the dance cards had transported part of him back to a time when he circled her blindly, desperate for solace that he did not know how to seek, but sometimes, felt glimmers of: in her starry-eyed smile at him, or when his fingers brushed her sleeve. And now, it seemed almost too good to be true, that it was allowed, encouraged, even, to indulge in each other like this, whensoever they wished.
“Did you miss me?” Penelope asked in a teasing tone. He hadn’t been absent from her side for even an hour. She couldn’t know that his heart had plummeted back and forth through four years in the intervening time.
He hummed in agreement, finding it difficult to form a coherent word as her fingernails grazed his scalp, sending tingling sensations down his spine. He reached for her other hand, to tether him to the present.
“How is the little Lord?” He finally managed, fortified by her fingers threaded through his own resting between them.
“He was resting here just about as you are, and I managed to settle him in the cradle not five minutes hence.”
Colin lifted his head slightly to glance over at the cradle, then lifted his chin slightly and she took the cue to lean down and peck him on the lips. “Well done, Darling. What a brilliant mother you are.”
He was genuinely impressed. Their son did not slumber deeply, and was notorious for awakening with a deafening roar if he sensed he were not in the exact circumstance in which he had drifted off. Colin had spent hours scarcely breathing while the little fellow slept curled up on his chest, watching Penelope (the baby’s usual victim of these hostage scenarios), made an exaggerated show of how she was able to move freely around the room, pouring herself drinks, faffing about with a blanket, and performing a series of interesting stretches that left Colin unsure if she were challenging him to laugh or tempting him to something else entirely.
“I was looking for your writing things,” he confessed, “hoping to arrange your desk as a surprise. But I found something, and surprised myself a little instead.” He held up the little stack that had still been enclosed in his left hand. “Forgive me, I know these belong to you. I very much wanted to know.”
“No matter. There are no secrets between us,” Penelope reassured him as she took the cards from him, the faintest smile in her eyes. “There is not much to discover in any case.”
“They are your dance cards, the ones you wore?” He had a little damp spark of hope that these were extras, purloined as souvenirs, and that somewhere she possessed the genuine ones that smelled faintly of her perfume and sweat and were at least dotted with a few tolerable gentlemen’s names, who had kept her company–preferably polite, proprietous company–when he had failed to.
“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, and he missed both her hands on him as he watched her shuffle through the mementos. And he was baffled by her serene, nearly happy face. They had made him sad, and angry, and regretful, thinking of her lonely and feeling unwanted and invisible, and faced with the same items, she just seemed content.
He brought his fingers to her waist as his body rotated from his back to his side to curl into her, his head still resting on her lap. “I apologize, Pen. Looking at them, it struck me, how many balls, how many dances there were, and how it must have felt for you. I am so damn sorry I was chasing illusions and ghosts instead of keeping you company.”
“Oh, dearest,” she sighs, putting the cards down to grasp his hand again, to stroke his shoulder. “It hardly matters now. There were times I was melancholy over it, but that’s in the past. I’m not that lonely girl anymore. I have more than I ever dreamed of with you, and our son.” She paused thoughtfully, looking toward the cradle at the thought of the baby.
Colin wasn’t satisfied. “You must have hoped–” he wasn’t sure how to finish the thought, but she knew what he meant to say.
“Somewhere, I hoped. But I never expected. I had been prepared for things to unfold as they had. Your basis of comparison, your sisters, they are part of a very fortunate few who are sought after by many. Most of us made do with less attention, fewer opportunities. I knew my place in the order of things.” She ignored Colin’s protesting grumble. “I knew what was coming. That is how Lady Whistledown came to be, after all, from the knowledge that I was not ready, could not aspire to be one of the jewels of the season. And that kept me quite busy. I’d hardly have time to gather gossip if I were dancing every set.”
And her tone was so lax, so – bemused, and Colin could not stand it.
He sprung up on his knees next to her and threw his arms uselessly at his sides. “It is so unfair!” He felt the anguish he thought she should have felt.
And she had the audacity to giggle. “Colin, it was years ago! Did I end some nights crying into my pillow? I am sure I did. But I lived it already, and grieved it, and now I am here, with you, happier than I have any right to be. I refuse to be miserable in paradise.”
“But no one asked you to dance, Pen! No one!” He felt ridiculous, kneeling on the side of her skirt, whining at his wife. But Colin was frustrated. He needed her to understand how sorry he was – or maybe he needed to understand, fully, her pain, so that he could feel it and shoulder it now, a sliver of accountability for what he should have prevented back then.
She lifted her gaze to look up at him with a soft, glowing smile. “You did. You danced with me. Sometimes twice in the same evening. If anyone paid us any mind, you would have risked scandal.”
Penelope raised her hands to grip the sides of his waist gently, and he lowered so she could embrace him. He mirrored her, tucking his face into the crook of her neck. “I never signed your card,” he lamented quietly. “What a cad.”
And he felt her giggle again, and pulled away slightly to look at her. She shrugged. “Well, I was never otherwise engaged. There was no need.”
His thumb found her chin and the barest hint of her lower lip–to quiet her giggle? To test it and be sure it was genuine? To reassure himself that his beautiful wife was real? “That is precisely the point, Darling. I will never understand how blind and stupid they all were, to look over you. I cannot believe I was among them, and I lament it daily. You deserve – Well, you just deserve.”
In turn, her thumb found the bare hollow of his throat as the pads of her fingers brushed along his clavicle beneath the open neck of his shirt. “And you give. You gave. Always.” She smirked. “Even when you were blind and stupid.”
They settled back into the seat. Penelope lifted the cards from the side table before snuggling into his side. He idly ran the fingers of the arm around her over her waist, turning over the thoughts in his mind. “Why keep them, then? If they are just reminders of a lonely time?”
She held the cards up to him to take, and his arm circled around her so he could hold them in both hands.
“Look more closely,” she prodded, and he examined them.
On almost all of the cards, there were small pencil marks to the left of the dance names. Little incomplete circles, or –
“I made C’s,” Penelope said, looking at him with a hint of shyness that catapulted him back in time again.
“Colin,” he said quietly.
“Colin,” she nodded. “Those are the times we danced. I kept them to remember the best moments of those nights – some of the best moments of my young life. You forget, I loved you always. And those were the times where I could pretend you felt something, too. They’re special to me. I wanted to keep them, as proof. In case – in case that’s all I ever had of you.”
He didn’t realize tears were streaming down his face until she wiped one away. “It wasn’t–” he choked on emotion, and cleared his throat. “It wasn’t pretend, my love. I’ve always felt something for you.”
Her hand, still wet with his tears, moved to cover–protect–her own heart. “You don’t have to, please don’t say things that aren’t true. I am content with our story as it is. With honesty.”
Colin shook his head, puts his hand over hers, over her heart. “No, this is honest, Pen. Ask Anthony, or Benedict. I told them the morning we were engaged. You have always held a part of my heart; I just didn’t understand what that tugging sensation was.” He looked through the cards, noting all the tiny C’s, evidence that there had been brief moments of them long before now. “Thank you for holding on to it so tightly for so long. Thank you for giving me time.”
She heard the words through his chest, and he felt her face move against him, and he was fairly certain she wept as well. But when she raised her head to meet his eye mischievously, she said, “It is a shame. You and I could have enjoyed ourselves so much more at these balls. You know what a talent I have for slipping away unnoticed.”
“Which perfectly compliments my talent for finding you.”
“Hardly a challenge to spot an overripe citrus fruit in the night,” she lifted her chin with an air of superiority, and Colin could not help but catch her insouciant lips with his.
“Madam,” he addressed her with mock gravity, “I warn you that you are speaking about my wife.”
“A thousand pardons, Mister Bridgerton,” she lowered her chin, only to peer up at him flirtatiously through her lashes.
“And she looked fetching, every time, and especially so in yellow.”
Penelope tilted her head questioningly and Colin just shrugged happily. “Let a man enjoy his memories of a beautiful woman in unforgettable dresses.” But he was distracted, looking through the cards twice, thrice, and one is definitely missing. An important one.
He looked up at her, and she was already smiling her clever smile. But she waited for him to ask anyway.
“Your dance card from the Queen’s ball, in 1815. It’s not here.” The card from the night that his rival had planned to propose to her. The card from the night that Colin had ruined the proposal and made one of his own. The card from the night that they had finally, earnestly, bared their feelings to each other. The only card that another man had signed.
“I must have lost it,” she said, but a slightly higher pitch and a pink flush revealed her lie. “We were quite busy that evening,” she added, blushing pinker, avoiding his eye so she did not break into laughter.
But he wanted to hear her laughter.
He threw the cards up into the air and they rained down on the couple as he tickled her ribs and she giggled, falling back, squirming on the settee underneath him as he caged her, tapping along her sides and under her arms with his fingertips. “Maybe I–” she gets out in gasps between peals of laughter, “dropped it in–” she squeals, and claps a hand over her mouth, afraid to wake the baby, “the carriage,” she finishes through her fingers.
She anticipated the guffaw about to leave his mouth, and swiftly moved to press her other hand against his lips to muffle him. And then they both giggled at themselves, her hands over both their mouths, covered in dance cards, as he (carefully) collapsed over her, and kissed the palm of her hand before gently removing it from his face.
“I think I am love for you,” Colin said. “I do not merely love you.”
“All I can remember is loving you,” Penelope agreed. A wail reverberated loudly throughout the room and she went boneless beneath him with a sigh. “And the product of it.”
“Let me,” he offered, still keenly feeling the pangs of guilt from his failure to recognize her for so long, even as he knew she was right (she was always right), and he must live with her in the paradise of the present.
“It is the least you could do,” Penelope quipped wryly, with a smile. She could practically read his mind , his clever wife.
Colin pressed up on his arms over her, lowered playfully to peck the tip of her nose, then pushed himself off the couch to retrieve the new Lord Featherington. He pressed his lips to his son’s forehead gently. “You as well, my little Lord. You are created from our love and I am composed entirely of love for you both.”
After changing the baby and handing him apologetically over to Penelope to nurse, Colin sat rubbing her legs in his lap and appreciating her as she fed their son. Her youthful bare face and an errant springy curl at her temple brought to mind a little girl in a yellow dress, cheeky enough to write him at Eton. Her poised demeanor and the curve of her lip called forth the thoughtful debutante who was delightful company and strong under pressure. Her serious eyes and the pale flesh of her shoulder evoked the woman who had both revealed and embodied the desires of his own heart.
He marveled that all of those Penelopes were here now, in his perfect wife, who held their child while he held her. He was teeth-achingly grateful he had opened his eyes in time. Colin could scarcely believe his extraordinary fortune.