Chapter Text
Apparently, the way to get out of all social events was to simply be totally despondent for a full day. Penelope wishes she’d known that trick earlier in the season, though she’s not sure she could have faked something like this, the strange half-daze she’s been wandering around in for a few days, not really here but not really gone either.
Her mother seems genuinely concerned. And at the very least she gets to stay in her room most of the time.
He knows.
She told him.
She can’t quite remember the words or exactly the way she said them. She’s trying to. It would certainly help her decide exactly how mortified she should be for the rest of her life.
Well, most of the time she doesn’t feel that mortified, actually. She oscillates between feeling light and feeling empty. Either way, there’s this weight off her chest.
He knows. She told him. Life goes on.
It’s only the few times that she’s in public that it feels like something horrifying. Even just walking along the street it feels like everyone knows. Maybe he told someone. Maybe someone overheard her. Maybe somebody saw and asked him, just like that night, and he’d grimace with the same embarrassment and have to announce to the world again that despite any love declarations he was not courting Penelope Featherington.
That’s what she can’t bear. The pity, the derision, the gossip. Poor little Penelope, falling in love with a man like Colin Bridgerton, thinking that there was ever a chance that a man like him would love her. And then telling him about it, confessing her childish crush to him. What was she expecting? What was she thinking? Who did she think she was?
She almost wanted to send out a column in her own name just to clarify the story herself. That she expects nothing, that love is an emotion beyond obvious reason, that she didn’t tell him for any other reason than it would make things simpler than having to continue to hide it. She’s not an idiot. There’s no reason to pity her. Despite nursing a mostly broken heart, she feels alright.
But she doesn’t. Because she hasn’t been writing.
The words are just stuck. She used the last of her good ones in that conversation, she thinks, gave them to Colin like everything else.
—
Eloise visits for the first time all season on a rainy Tuesday, four days after her conversation with Colin.
If anyone else in the house notices that it’s been a while since her last visit, it isn’t mentioned. She comes up and into her room like nothing’s changed.
“Are you dying?” she asks abruptly from the doorway.
Penelope sits up from where she’d been laying on her back in her made bed. “Not since I last checked.”
Eloise nods, satisfied, and steps further into the room.
They both pretend that she’s not taking it in, a completely different state from how she left it ransacked the last night she was here. Penelope tries not to think about the painstaking hours it took that night to clean up in between sobbing sessions.
“Is it contagious then?” she asks. “Not that I mind, I’d rather like an excuse to miss the next week of social activities.”
Penelope shakes her head again.
Eloise closes the door behind her and comes to sit on the edge of the bed next to her. It’s a motion that should be familiar, but Penelope can see the deliberation with which she makes every move, the stiff way she goes through the motions like she’s not sure she would be able to.
“I’m not actually sick,” Penelope offers. “Just in a strange mood. I think my mother’s worried I might scare off any of Prudence’s potential suitors.”
Eloise hums consideringly. “Does your mood have anything to do with my brother’s?”
Penelope’s stomach drops out. There’s that feeling again, that gut-wrenching fear at the thought of anyone else knowing what she said, that frustration of everything being warped by other people's perceptions that makes her eyes sting. A moment of quiet concession that should be hers taken by everyone else and picked apart.
It was her love. Her love confession. And she gave it to him and him alone. She wishes she trusted him a little more with it. She knows he’d never be cruel but she also knows that he wouldn’t expect how easily cruelty comes from others.
Eloise’s hand drops to hers on the sheet. “He hasn’t said anything,” she assures her. “Despite a thorough interrogation I assure you.” Eloise raises her eyebrows pointedly, and Penelope knows it’s a fair warning that her interrogation is coming soon. “But he’s been asking after you.”
And that’s a different sort of warning, one she files away for later, that the conversation she desperately doesn’t want to have is coming eventually.
“Why do I doubt you’re here as a favor to him?”
She scoffs. “Of course not,” she says. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”
Penelope grins tentatively. “Well, then I’m glad that you don’t actually want me dead.”
Eloise rolls her eyes. “Obviously I’m here to finish you off myself.”
And Penelope laughs for the first time in a while.
Eloise smiles indulgently and it’s still raining outside but it feels like light starts flooding the room.
“I am here with a purpose though,” Eloise admits after a moment, looking unsure of herself in a way that surprises Penelope.
Her hands are unsteady as she pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it over.
Penelope opens it carefully and skims through the page, a bullet point list of names and actions. She glances over at Eloise with a question on her lips.
“I probably didn’t catch everything,” she says, fidgeting in place. “What with my mother foisting me upon any suitor in arms reach, but I was able to fish out the bigger news items.”
“Eloise?” Penelope starts but finds herself speechless. She glances down at the page in her hand again to make sure it’s really there. Notes, for Whistledown.
“It was strange,” Eloise says, her brow furrowed. “Paying that close attention to everyone. I never really noticed how much can happen in one night before.”
There are many things Penelope would like to ask. Questions she can’t put to words because of how big and overwhelming they are.
“I don’t know what to say,” she admits, swallowing hard. “Eloise…”
“Oh please,” Eloise says shakily. “It’s only sensible. People have noticed that Whistledown has been quiet for a week, and it happens to be the same week that you fall ill. I do doubt there’s anyone in the ton half as astute as you or I but still we wouldn’t want to take any chances.”
She does her best to make it sound very logical and smart, but Penelope can see through her hand waving and nonchalant routine. That Eloise knows perfectly well the gravity of this, that for some reason she has decided to pick up a needle and thread and stitch them back together.
“Thank you,” Penelope says. For the note and for everything else, for this moment and years of other moments that have made her feel this loved.
Eloise presses her lips together. “I thought about what you said a lot,” she says. “About being listened to as Whistledown.” She glances down at her hands. “You know, I think a lot of people hear me, but I don’t think they listen. Most days I feel like everyone is simply waiting for me to grow out of… this. But this is the person that I am, and the things that I believe. Nobody really hears that. Benedict sometimes, Daphne on a very rare occasion. But you. You always have. And that matters to me. I… I’ve missed that.”
Penelope nods firmly. “I always want to listen to you,” she says. “For as long as you’re willing to talk to me anyway.”
Eloise exhales shakily and meets her eyes. “As long as you talk to me,” she agrees. “Honestly, with no more lies or secrets or any of that.”
“Of course,” she says, grinning. “I’m rather out of secrets anyway.”
“Well, I should hope so,” Eloise says, just as Penelope grimaces, hissing sharply through her teeth.
“Oh, um, there may actually be one more, though it’s not much of a secret anymore, I guess,” she confesses. Eloise’s eyes narrow. “I’m in love with your brother.”
Eloise’s nose wrinkles. “Which brother?” she asks consideringly.
“Which—?” Penelope echoes in disbelief. “Colin.”
“Colin?” Eloise’s eyebrows shoot up. “Colin?”
“Yes,” she says flatly. “Would you prefer it to be a different one?”
“No,” Eloise says with a grimace. “No, certainly not.” She tips her head to the side consideringly. “If it has to be any of them, it may as well be him. But you do know he’s disgusting, don’t you?”
“Eloise,” Penelope sighs.
“He is,” she says insistently. “You know, in the mornings sometimes, he eats with his mouth open. It’s the most unappetizing thing you’ll ever see in your life.”
Penelope snorts, pressing a hand to her mouth to cover her smile. “Well, it’s a very good thing nothing will come from it then.”
Eloise rolls her eyes. “Please, as though Colin could do better than you.”
—
She drafts her next Whistledown column with Eloise in the room.
It’s strange. Something that was once so hers, only hers, the most private part of herself, now isn’t.
Eloise recounts the ball from the night before in as much detail as she can recall, and Penelope works it into an outline. It’s not quite the same as if she’d been there, where the words and ideas would come first and then the rest of the picture. But it’s fun, with all of Eloise’s little suggestions, her own flair and opinions on the drama.
When she finishes a page, she hands it over for Eloise to read and gets a good idea for the flow of the prose, for which parts stand out and which drag on too long.
She’s still not feeling particularly inspired, the words take their time to come and sit on the page just slightly wrong. It takes longer to write while holding a conversation, more stops and starts that distract her and make her lose her place. But if Eloise wasn’t there, she wouldn’t have written any at all.
—
Her luck runs out a week after her conversation with Colin. She’s been in better spirits since Eloise’s visit. (Eloise’s first visit, anyway. She’s been over twice more since.) And there’s a visiting duke that has the ton in a state. Her mother is insistent they present a united front at the next ball he will be in attendance.
Which happens to be one held by the Bridgertons.
She accepts her fate.
It’s been a year of difficult conversations, of mending and falling apart again, but despite each moment that felt like her world was ending, it never did.
Almost nine months ago now she survived the worst night of her life. She doubts this one will be much worse than that.
Being ignored most of the time, she feels keenly when attention is on her, and from the moment she steps into the ballroom, ever trailing quietly behind her mother and Prudence, she feels a pinprick of a pair of eyes on her. She ignores it, follows her family, and joins the outskirts of the crowd that’s already formed around the duke.
Though no matter how hard she tries to focus on who’s there, on what’s being said, on how she’ll write this up later tonight, she can’t keep her eyes from drifting and searching for him, where she knows that he’s looking at her.
She pinches her palm and tries to shake it off.
Her mother is already distracted, playing the game with all the other mothers. So Penelope takes a small step back and scans the room slowly.
She finds Eloise first, next to her mother and some lord in a suit. Penelope grins and Eloise rolls her eyes contemptuously. Penelope gestures vaguely towards a far corner, shielded by some house plants, perfect for a potential escape. But Eloise shakes her head and tips her head to the side.
And there’s Colin, all the way across the room, staring at her.
She takes a deep breath and waves tightly at him. It’s the only thing she can think to do, to pretend like everything is normal. Because then maybe everything could go back to normal, or as close to normal as they can get with him knowing.
It doesn’t work. His eyes widen and he starts weaving through the crowd towards her.
Well, she hadn’t really expected it to work to begin with.
She takes another couple steps away from the crowd as Colin’s path curves right towards her. She remembers to breathe. She tries to ignore whether or not anyone is looking at them. She stands tall and doesn’t let herself feel like falling apart.
“Penelope,” Colin says, when he stops in front of her. His voice is like gravel and his hair is an unkempt mess. He stammers absently for a few moments, his mouth moving but no words actually forming. “I… please?”
She doesn’t know what he’s asking, but she nods anyway because he looks like he’s seconds from unraveling like a loose thread and she aches for him. “Um, maybe we should step outside,” she offers quietly, for his sake, so he can avoid being seen like this.
“I…” he starts, and nods. He reaches but doesn’t touch her, just guides her away from the crowd and towards the doors. Outside, he keeps walking until they’re far enough away from the out spill of the party that she can’t hear the sounds of music or talking at all. It’s just him and her and the moonlight, his hand running shakily over his mouth, her fingers picking absently at a frayed thread in her glove.
It’s a beautiful summer night. The air is still warm and there’s a sharp cool breeze. She looks up at him and melts a little, the way she always has and the way she thinks she always will.
There’s peace in that, just like there’s peace in knowing that her love for him is as much hers as it is his. It’s something beautiful, and no matter how he feels, she can decide how she feels about it.
“Pen,” he says, cracking slightly over her name and stalling out.
“Colin,” she says, as reassuringly as she can.
His eyes are huge, his face bathed in moonlight as he stares at her. “How do you know?”
“Know what?” she asks.
“You,” he breathes. “You said you loved me. Love me? How did you know ?”
She blinks. Of the questions she was expecting how wasn’t in the mix.
“I don’t know,” she admits and then keeps talking, the words coming as effortlessly as they do when she's writing to him. “It feels a lot like the way people describe it, like a fire or butterflies, in my chest, in my stomach.” His eyes don’t move from hers, rapt, hanging on her every word. “And… it’s also more. When I’m around you, it’s easy. I feel more myself. And I feel like you see me, and not many people do that. I…” She trails off, suddenly feeling the heat of his gaze, the way his breathing comes in fast and quick. She swallows. “Does it really matter?”
Colin blinks hard. “Does it…?“ He nods. “Of course it… of course, it matters. I—”
He takes a step back, his hand shuffling roughly through his hair, pulling it up at even more chaotic angles.
“For months now, I’ve done nothing but think of you,” he says. “Writing to you, talking to you, just standing next to you, I… And I thought maybe it was guilt, for those things that I never should have said, that I still don’t know why I would possibly say— except I was…” He shakes his head. “And then. Then last week you said… love, and I-I… Pen, I can barely slept, I haven’t been able to eat, you… Years, you said, and I—”
“Colin,” she interrupts, because his chest is heaving and he looks like at any moment he’ll hyperventilate or fall over. She reaches out and places a hand on his arm, in a way that’s hopefully comforting. His eyes immediately dart to the point of contact, and gratefully he quiets, pulling in a series of slow breaths. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I’m not,” he agrees slowly. He takes another slow breath. He shifts his arm up to take her hand. “I’m sorry.” His tongue darts out to lick his lips and she bites her own. “I’ve always wanted to be the man that my family needs me to be. But… they don’t need me, not the way they need Anthony or even Benedict. Hell, even Daphne… well, anyway. Nobody has really needed anything from me. But last season, when I was able to help your family, when I was able to protect you, I felt… I felt like I finally was that person I needed to be, for a moment, who you needed me to be. And it felt like I finally knew, like I finally understood everything.” His eyes close for a second, his brow furrowing. “But I don’t know anything, in reality. I’ve been a complete fool, I’ve made more of a mess than I’d care to admit. And I’ve… I’ve hurt you. Every time I’ve tried to fix things, I’ve made them worse because I don’t know half as much as I think I do. And I’m sorry.”
There’s something gentle in listening to him, despite his distress, despite the way she hurts for him. She feels suddenly like she’s seeing the full picture. And it's comforting, cleansing, healing over many of her hurts.
She squeezes his hand. “I think you give yourself less credit than you deserve,” she says. “And I do forgive you. It’s al—”
“No,” he says. “I’m not asking for your forgiveness— or well, no, I am. Begging for it actually, but… I needed to speak with you because I’m still a fool and I need to know… am I in love with you?”
She blinks. “What?”
“Am I, Pen?” he asks with wide eyes. “I’ve been trying so hard to figure it out, I’ve asked everyone, how they possibly know, when it’s love. But I can’t… I can’t trust myself, not after how much I’ve ruined things when I thought I was sure of something before.”
“I-I can’t answer that question, Colin,” she splutters, still spinning in shock and awe that it’s even being asked.
“Please,” he says, lacing his fingers through hers. “You-you know me best, better than anyone. I… I feel more myself when I’m with you.”
She shakes her head. “That doesn’t mean—” she starts. “You don’t…”
She stops and stares up at him, the gentle shadows on his face, the moon shining on him like a spotlight. For a moment, she feels all the power of what he’s offering in her chest.
Her answer. She could say yes. Yes, he is in love with her, just like she’s always wanted him to be, just like she’s always dreamed of in fantasies and fairy tales. Or no. No, he isn’t and never will, just like she’s always feared, just like she had to face that night last season.
“I would never dream of courting Penelope Featherington,” he said. The same night he said, “You are special to me.”
But it’s not her choice. It’s never been her choice.
And that’s okay. Because she knows that either way she can survive it. She’ll be okay.
“I can’t answer that,” she says, calmly, smiling slightly. “Because I don’t know. What I know is that you care for me. You are a good friend. And what you said last season, you shouldn’t have said like that, but I’ve made my peace with that heartbreak. I don’t need you to love me back.” Something crosses over his face, something profound and revelatory. “So it’s up to you. You know how you feel.”
His eyes scan her face intently, and then slowly his face cracks open into that smile of his, wide and bright, breathtaking as all the stars in the expanse of the sky.
“You’re incredible,” he breathes. And he steps towards her. And she doesn’t hope or doubt, just waits. “And I have been a first-rate fool, but, God help me, Penelope, if you’d still have me…”
Her heart pounds in her ears and she feels years and years of emotion trip and tangle in her chest. “Are you sure?” she asks, because she needs to hear it.
“I love you,” he says and sounds so certain about it. “I have to love you, that has to be what this is because… You are the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. I’ve longed to spend every possible minute of this year by your side. I… hear your words constantly, they keep me up at night. Whoever I am, whatever purpose I find, I fear it won’t mean as much if I can’t share it with you.”
She feels her cheeks burn and wonders if he can see it in the dark, if he can hear the way her heart races and soars. She barely has time to contemplate the idea of forming a response, but he’s not done. He tugs her hand up from the space between them and presses his lips hard to the back of her hand. She can feel the heat of his mouth even though the fabric of her glove.
“I need you,” he mutters against it. “I want you. And I’ve never felt this way before, like, if I didn’t care as much as I do about your honor, I would—”
“Oh,” she says, and she realizes two things. That this is actually happening, that he means every word. And coincidentally, that she doesn’t care about her honor at all.
So she steps forward on shaky legs and presses up onto her toes and kisses him.
He’s stunned for a moment, as she finds her balance and slips her hand up to the back of his neck. But then it settles, and his hands are on her, pressing into the small of her back, tangling gently into her hair.
His mouth is so hot against hers, eager and frantic, as he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her. As she kisses him.
It’s everything and nothing she imagined. It’s no fairy tale. It’s like she’s made of kindling, like the tiniest spark of flame has been set alight inside her and is burning her up so quickly, that her entire body is on fire, that the entire world is consumed by the heat that exists between them.
Her fingers catch in the collar of his shirt, stretch up to brush through his hair. She wants to yank her stupid gloves off and feel the warmth of his skin against hers.
“Pen,” he mouths against her. His hand fists in the fabric of her dress and crushes her closer to him. She almost loses her balance, but he holds onto her, steadies her, and doesn’t let go. His lips slip away from hers for a second as he gasps for breath. “God, darling.”
“Shh,” she hisses, chasing his mouth with hers, barely kissing him before he’s laughing into it.
It’s a wonderful sound. And it’s contagious, pulling her down into his joy like a riptide. He presses his forehead against hers, his hair tickling her skin, his hands stroking gently along her sides.
She closes her eyes and catches her breath through her own spurts of laughter.
Colin presses featherlight kisses to her face, her nose and her cheek, and the place beneath her eyes where her freckles have been coming in. Her skin burns in his wake.
“Say it again,” she whispers, digging her fingers into his hair.
“I love you,” he says and she kisses him again, feeling every inch of her body as she lights up.
—
Colin is insistent on using the rest of the season to court her as properly and thoroughly and publicly as possible.
“So that I draw the attention of other suitors, right?” she teases, widening her eyes in a play of innocence. It makes his eye twitch.
“Don’t you even joke,” he says, and steps closer to her than is strictly proprietary or necessary for the dance they’re in.
It’s their second of the evening, a waltz. She’s never danced a waltz before, but even as she counts steps carefully, it’s easy as anything because it’s with him.
The hard part is being this close without thinking about the other night, and not shivering when he leans in to whisper in her ear.
“I’m going to marry you,” he says and sounds practically giddy about it.
It’s not the first time he’s said it in the past two weeks, but she never gets tired of hearing it.
“That does seem like a more mutually beneficial arrangement,” she says.
“Pen,” he groans, but she can see him lose his valiant battle against a grin.
The dance finishes and he makes a show of kissing the back of her hand. She blushes and he winks, pressing a small slip of paper into her palm before he lets go.
It’s another part of the routine. On top of the dances and calling on her daily, he sends letters at all hours of the day and passes these little notes in public with directions to whatever hidden corner he’ll be waiting for her in.
“Don’t take too long,” he says as they move off the floor. “I’ll miss you.”
“You’ll live,” she offers.
“Doubtful.”
Across the room, Eloise is attempting to discreetly flag her down. She spares Colin one last smile before parting and feels her chest burn with how his eyes bear into her even as she walks away.
There’s a bit more attention on her these days. She knows, especially after last season, that there’s a lot of disbelief about the two of them, about how serious it might be. But no one has said anything, and Colin doesn’t falter in his dedication to proving to her and everyone how serious he is about them.
“Finally,” Eloise sighs when she reaches her. She loops their arms together and guides them towards the wall where they’ll be mostly out of sight. “You missed a lot. Cressida has been trying to get the duke to dance with her all evening, and it’s not working. Plus, I’m almost certain Lord Fife has had too much to drink, he looks moments from being tipped over by a strong breeze.”
Penelope scans the room and takes on the state of the crowd. Eloise has become less and less reluctant about being her informant, and there’s a new certain comfort between them ever since they agreed to honesty at all times, with the small caveat of Penelope not speaking a single word about any intimacies with Colin ever. Otherwise, she thinks their courtship has only put her even more in Eloise’s good graces since it has thoroughly distracted her mother from other matchmaking attempts.
She watches the room and drafts in her head and listens to Eloise fill her in on the rest of the gossip from the night with her usual sharp wit, and feels so content it’s almost overwhelming.
“Hey,” Eloise says, tilting her head consideringly. “Does my brother know about Whistledown?”
Penelope snorts. “No, of course not,” she says, before slowly realizing that maybe she shouldn’t be smiling.
“Shouldn’t you—?”
“I have to tell him,” she finishes and lets her head thump back against the wall hard.
Eloise pats her arm consolingly. “Well, it’s a good thing you have a way with words.”
And despite the fact that it isn't that funny, despite the fact that she is very much not looking forward to that conversation, despite it all, she leans back against the wall and laughs.