Chapter Text
Penelope wakes up the morning after the worst night of her life and breathes in.
It’s a bit shocking, that she can still breathe in, that she’s still here despite what feels like a gaping wound in the center of her chest. Somehow, she’s surviving.
Her throat aches and her stomach still feels half hollow, both in emotion and from spending the night sobbing. The skin beneath her eyes feels dry and sore and hot to the touch.
But she breathes in again. She sits up in her bed. And she carries on.
She eats breakfast, she reads in the drawing-room, she listens to her mother bustle around with plans to recover from cousin Jack’s disappearance. She sends out her draft of her final Whistledown of the season.
She feels half in a trance. A part of her still sprawled on her bedroom floor crying until the tears burn. But just as sure, another part is upright, is hardening, is navigating through the storm. She swings wildly from emotion to emotion, hurt to sorrow to anger to bitterness to hurt again. But when her eyes sting again with more tears somehow, she swallows them back. When her jaw grits in untempered fury, she exhales and relaxes.
She makes it through the day. She makes it through the night.
And she realizes that she didn’t know she could do that. She had no clue that she could experience such devastation, could feel her world crumble and crash all around her, could lose Eloise, could hear Colin say in no uncertain terms that he feels nothing for her, and yet console herself, keep herself afloat, continue on through her own strength of will.
The days keep coming and she keeps surviving them. Maybe not perfectly. Maybe not with any joy or grace, but she does.
She devours book after book, and doesn’t think of what she’d say to Eloise about them. She pours words out onto paper each night she’ll share with no one, that she writes for no one. She lays outside despite the oncoming cold of winter and stares at the sky and tries desperately to not feel lonely, to get used to her own company since it’s apparently all she has left.
It’s nice to be just herself. Hasn’t it always been? People’s expectations and opinions of her have always been suffocating. By herself, there are no lies to maintain, no secrets to keep, no idealized, easily-digestible version of herself to put forward.
She still thinks in terms of days, one at a time, trying not to think beyond the one just behind or the one just ahead. Next year’s season approaches slowly but inevitably, and there’s no escaping whatever it’ll entail. But for now, she enjoys the slow trickle of days and the sharp bite of the cold.
-
The last thing she expects, about a month since the end of the season, is a letter from Colin Bridgerton.
Whistledown had of course written about his comments, though she left them pointedly in the annals of the third page, as though somehow that would make them more insignificant. She supposed for everyone else, they rather were.
She hasn’t seen him since that night.
And now a letter. She holds it for some time without opening it, sometimes considering it carefully, sometimes glaring at it. If she was stronger, she thinks she might put it where it belongs in the fireplace and move on.
But she can’t quiet the part of her that’s endlessly curious, that needs to know what it says. If it’s an apology, if it’s a reaffirmation of his complete disinterest in her, if it’s about Eloise, if it’s about Whistledown.
So she heads to her room and opens it, pretending her hand is shaking because of a chill through the window.
Dear Penelope,
It feels strange to be writing this not from some far reaches of the continent, but my room at Aubrey Hall. I have no grand adventures or great vistas to report, merely a recounting of Gregory and Hyacinth’s latest squabbles at the dinner table. Yet I find myself here with ink to paper anyway. It seems I’ve grown accustomed to our correspondences.
Her heart races, even as she just sits there with the letter in hand. For the first time in weeks, she feels stray tears dropping. But it doesn’t come with the same clenching pain in her chest that still comes every time she thinks of Eloise.
There’s only this incredulous resignation.
She keeps reading, can’t help herself. He does transcribe the entire circumstances of Gregory and Hyacinth’s disagreement with a fair share of dramatization and editorializing. And then there’s more, things he’s noticed while out on walks or interesting objects he’s found around the estate. The pattern of his words and the shapes and slants of his writing are familiar and comfortable.
By the time she reaches the end, a sloppy, tired, Best wishes, Colin , she’s smiling. Despite her best intentions, despite all knowledge to the better, she loves him. She’s charmed as ever was. And it is laughable.
She folds the letter back up and tucks it into the book she’s been reading. Her very soul feels achy, but she knows she won’t be able to get rid of the letter, of his words, any more than she’ll be able to stop loving him.
But as always, the world keeps turning. She goes to bed. She wakes up the next morning.
The letter is still there and so are her oh-so-inconvenient feelings.
She makes it only four days before she finds herself penning her response. His words had been floating around in her brain, stuck there as always, and no amount of tugging at barely healed wounds, of echoing in her ears over and over again, “I would never dream of courting Penelope Featherington”, quiets them. Her own words rise up in response without thought, the letter half drafted in her head before she even realizes responding is inevitable.
And so she finds herself writing back as though nothing has changed at all. It’s almost amazing that the actions are just the same as they were last year, for all that she feels like a completely different person from the girl she was a mere month ago.
The letters come and go, the correspondence between them easy as ever. He makes Aubrey Hall sound as exotic as Greece, and she finds herself trailing into tangents of some of her more existential wonderings and then not editing them out, just leaving them in for him to respond to.
Unfortunately, the letters make the days past faster, these larger benchmarks of time between each one giving her something to reach for. Before she knows it, spring is approaching again, and everyone is heading back to London.
It’s a lot like a wheel stuck in the mud, isn’t it? she writes. Always spinning but never going anywhere.
Well, someone should surely get out and push then.
She smiles like a fool when she gets his reply, and knows for certain that surviving this season will be a challenge.
–
It seems a fitting omen that she sees Eloise within minutes of arriving back in London. She steps out of the carriage and finds the Bridgertons overseeing their move-in. Eloise is out on the street next to her mother, book in hand. Her hair is slightly longer and she’s much paler, the way she always is after a long winter indoors.
Penelope’s heart stalls in her chest when their eyes meet across the street.
There was no mental preparation that could make this moment any less excruciating, to see the split second of joy and excitement flicker in her best friend’s eyes, to know it’s reflected in her own expression, that deeper instinct to exchange smiles with each other across any distance. Before their expressions falter, before that warmth in Eloise’s eyes shutter and shut hard. Before Penelope’s face drops. Before they both remember and look away.
She steps the rest of the way out of the carriage on shaky legs and moves promptly to their side of the street.
“Eloise,” she hears Violet Bridgerton say over the clatter of the street. “Why don’t you go over and ask Penelope if she’ll be available for tea tomorrow?”
Penelope searches desperately for something on her side of the street to focus her attention on, anything to require her to be anywhere else.
“Who?” Eloise says.
“Eloise,” her mother says, chidingly.
“I’m afraid I don’t know a Penelope,” she says and Penelope watches out of the corner of her eye as she spins around and marches her way back towards the house.
As soon as Eloise is out of sight though, she feels her shoulders finally drop, then tension that had coursed through her entire body relenting.
She just manages to turn back towards their carriages, when like a sharp breeze, Colin’s voice cuts through the air.
“What’s gotten into her?” He appears from around just around the side of the bushes, holding a large rucksack, Gregory hot on his heels.
Unlike with Eloise, there is no moment of almost peace when she sees him, nothing warm carried over from their months of letter writing where everything seemed alright. She spots him, looking exactly the same as he always does, and she’s right back in the garden that night, his words fresh in the air, her heartbreak immediate and overwhelming.
When he spots her, he smiles without reservation, and her heart gives its pitiful eager thump even as her stomach churns.
So this is her lot in life then. To have her best friend intent on acting like she doesn’t exist. To be in love with a man who isn’t even shy in his disinterest in her.
She ignores her own mother’s calls for her as she heads up the steps of the house and makes a beeline for her bedroom. It’s still dusty, but she collapses onto the bed and stares up at the familiar ceiling.
It’s going to be a long season.
—
Despite her best attempts at faking an illness, Penelope finds herself dragged to the first ball of the season at Lady Danbury’s.
“We are still members of this society,” her mother says insistently. “And Prudence is no longer engaged. Our presence as a family is a necessity.”
She feels nauseous from the moment she steps foot into the crowded room. It’s that suffocation again, being pinned in place by all of the rules and all of the expectations, of taking up too much space and not enough all at once. She takes up her residence in the corners, on the edges, by the walls, and tries to find that sturdiness in her gut that’s gotten her through the past six months.
She listens in on conversations and composes her mental notes for tomorrow’s Whistledown. Because, even as she weaves through the room to keep the furthest distance between her and Eloise at all times, there will be a Whistledown tomorrow. There has to be.
Quite ironically, Lady Whistledown is all she has left.
Despite her best efforts to remain functionally invisible all night, Eloise does eventually spot her. Unlike last week, there’s no moment of hesitation. Her eyes are narrowed and her arms are crossed, the perfect picture of disapproval. Unlike with anyone else in the world, Penelope doesn’t wilt under the derision. This is Eloise. She refuses to relent, glaring back, as if daring her to more clearly state her disapproval.
Maybe she should be worried that Eloise will expose her, but she can’t bring herself to care. Any version of the ton’s reaction to Whistledown her brain can conjure pales in comparison to Eloise’s, the words she said that night, the ones Penelope shot back. Nothing can be any more disastrous than that.
After a moment of silent battle, Penelope turns away before anyone notices, making a quick retreat towards a different, more hidden corner of the room, and almost immediately crashes into Colin.
His elbow hits her chest and for once she’s breathless in front of him for a perfectly acceptable reason. She maintains her balance, his sudden grasp on her arm supporting her, and takes a quick step back for propriety's sake, checking over her shoulder to see if Eloise was still watching.
“Pen!” Colin says, brightly as ever. “Is everything alright?”
“Of course,” she says, swallowing hard and turning to face him. And there goes her heart swooping wildly, there goes her stomach twisting, there goes her face flushing. He just simply is beautiful, with a bright smile spread wide across his face, that spark of humor dancing in his eyes. She’s doomed. “I’m fine.”
“Glad to hear it,” he says. I wouldn’t dream of courting Penelope Featherington , she hears in those once warm notes of his voice.
And she decides that she may be in love with Colin Bridgerton, but she doesn’t have to be happy about it.
“Would you care for a dance?” He extends his hand out to her with a little flourish.
Even though she’s as put together as ever, she feels like she’s just been dragged along the back of a carriage for about a mile. Between Eloise, still somewhere in this room, either watching her or deliberately not, and the memory of that night as fresh as if it was yesterday, she feels the walls closing in.
“Um, no,” she squeaks, taking another step back. Colin blinks, his brows furrowing slightly.
And there’s all that anger and hurt again that she’s been able to live with for this long, that spinning dreadful churn of despair that she’s managed to console in privacy.
Privacy, that’s a great idea. She brushes past Colin before she has to do something horrible like explain herself and makes her way quickly towards the closest door to the gardens.
The fresh air settles some of her nerves. At the very least she feels less trapped, the night and the sparser crowds meaning there are fewer eyes on her for a moment.
“Penelope?” Colin’s voice isn’t loud but it rings through the quiet of the gardens, sending heads turning her way. A bitter laugh bubbles up in her chest. Years of being ignored by almost everyone around her and now for some reason she can’t get five minutes to herself.
She slows but doesn’t stop her pace around the back of the estate, the itchy energy in her desperate to get out.
Colin catches up easily, with his long side strides.
“Pen,” he says again, slowing to match steps with her. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing of note,” she says and it’s as unconvincing as anything. “You might want to go inside, Colin. You wouldn’t want anyone to think you were courting me.”
It stops him short for a moment and she prays that they can leave it at that, that with it out in the air he’ll go back inside and she can avoid him for the rest of the season, and then in the fall they can restart their easy uncomplicated correspondences that don’t require her to confront the absolute pitiable reality of her unrequited fantasies.
Colin doesn’t go inside though. He catches up to her again.
“Penelope, I…” he starts and she keeps her focus on the paths ahead and the moon above and not anyone else around who might see or overhear what’s about to be the most humiliating experience of her life. “I didn’t think you read that, I… you never mentioned it in your letters, I didn’t think you saw—”
“I didn’t read it,” she says. The words feel sharp in her mouth. “I heard you. That night.”
“You—You did?”
“Well, you weren’t exactly quiet with it,” she says. “I’m sure half the ton heard you.”
She hears his thick swallow and watches his hands fidget awkwardly by his sides.
“I… it’s not what it seemed,” he starts, and she doesn’t think she can actually bear listening to him explain what exactly he meant.
She stops walking and forces herself to look up at him. “You don’t need to explain yourself,” she says as evenly as she can. “You have never expressed any intention to court me before. What it seemed, was merely a statement of that fact. Why it was such a loud one still eludes me, but I doubt it lowered my reputation any further so you truly have no reason to trouble yourself with it for a moment longer.”
Without meaning to, she catalogs every single movement of his face, even though she has no means of identification to put them to emotions. His lips press together tightly, his eyes are downturned, and if any of that means he feels guilty or shamed or merely embarrassed, she has no use for it, because whether or not she’s convincing right now in her performance of nonchalance, she’s still irrevocably in love with him and he does not love her.
He mouths half-formed responses for a few seconds, and she realizes she’s never seen him at a loss for words before. Their conversations, on paper and otherwise, have always flowed so steadily, no matter how brief.
She watches him patiently, even though she’s still itching to find somewhere to hide for the rest of the night.
Colin makes a displeased grunt, and reaches forward, taking her hand. She allows herself the small indulgence of his fingers squeezing hers and holds herself back from squeezing back like she had that night.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s earnest as ever.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she says carefully. His eyes burn into hers, wide and pleading, and she can feel that gravitational pull, that fluttering explosion of butterflies that he always causes in her. But she refuses to believe in it, to let it fuel her fantasies any further.
She slips her hand out of his.
“If you’ll excuse me, I…” she starts and then can’t quite think up an excuse that’ll save her dignity. So she steps away with a tight smile and walks back towards the ball. And Colin doesn’t follow her any further.
–
Everyone in the ton seems to agree that Lady Whistledown is particularly ruthless this season, even barely three weeks in.
Penelope can’t help it. Where in the past few years she’s had other things to occupy herself at times during societal functions, this season is very different. She spends most balls and luncheons and outings doing her best to avoid Eloise at all costs and to dodge Colin whenever he attempts to make an approach. She has nothing else to listen for but whispers in corners.
Despite any of her best intentions, when she sits down to write, the words thunder out of her, almost faster than she can keep up with, hot and heavy and damning.
There’s no way to know if Eloise is still reading Whistledown (or if she’s told anyone, or if she plans to tell anyone), but Penelope is writing with an audience of one in mind. Look , each pamphlet demands. Look at all of these horrible things people around us do and try to hide, look at all the terrible secrets they keep. How can you possibly say I’m half as bad, that my secrets measure anywhere close to theirs? How are you going to hate me for merely telling the truth?
Business is booming. Her pages are stacked front to back with mistreated mistresses here and backroom brawls there, and the ton, despite their unease and outward disapproval, can’t get enough of every salacious detail.
She keeps collecting her coin and stashing it carefully away. It’s still not much, but she daydreams as always of taking it all and running, establishing some new quiet life far far away. The fantasy has never been so appealing. She has no ties left to the world around her.
So she keeps writing and keeps collecting.
And when she and her sisters are at the modiste and the Bridgertons arrive for a fitting, she keeps her face straight and calm, doesn’t flinch when Eloise stops short in the doorway, and turns promptly around.
“Eloise,” Mrs. Bridgerton chides, as Franchesca and Hyacinth brush past her and into the shop.
“I’m sorry, mother, I actually feel quite ill all of a sudden,” Eloise says pointedly and walks off towards her carriage.
Penelope rolls her eyes, even though it doesn’t go unnoticed by Mrs. Bridgerton. It still takes minutes for her heart to stop pounding in her ears.
–
It’s at a luncheon that week that Colin approaches her again.
She was focused, trying to appear so consumed by the spread, while she strained to hear a nearby whispered conversation, and didn’t notice him coming until it was too late.
“I’d avoid the creme tarts. I have it on good authority that they’ve been sitting out in the sun too long,” he says. She jolts without meaning to, and Colin’s head quirks to the side in concern. “Are you well, Pen?”
“Fine,” she says, clearing her throat. “And how are you?”
“Wonderful,” he says, turning to face her with a smile that spells danger. It’s the sort of smile that sparks something in her, makes her blood sing in her veins, and almost leaves her stunned that she gets to bear witness to something so beautiful and wild.
Last year she would have been hanging onto his every word, so eager to be pulled along into whatever adventure lay ahead, so grateful to be included.
This year she’s more Lady Whistledown than Penelope Featherington, and she holds no fantasies of love and adventure waiting just around the corner for her.
“Good to hear,” she says and moves to take her leave.
“Wait, Pen,” he says, lurching after her. “I-I was hoping to steal a minute of your time.”
“Of course.”
He seems pleased, and she wonders if this is the moment where she’ll be able to finally readjust to his presence, to look and speak with him and not feel the same heartache. Maybe it can just be enough to have his friendship, to maintain their small pattern of conversations at these events, to be in love with him but be contented with it going nowhere.
“I visited Clyvedon this past week,” he says.
She nods. “And everyone is well?”
“Oh, yes,” he says. “You’d actually be amazed. With how much Augie’s grown in such a short amount of time, well, you’d think he eats as much as me.”
She snorts lightly, and it’s probably unbecoming and unflattering, but Colin beams and something in the air settles. Friends , she thinks and does her best to be pleased by it.
“Well,” he says with a wave of his hand. “While I was there Daphne confided in me with some interesting information. Apparently, before their engagement, she and Simon came to an agreement to pretend that they were courting. So that he would be left alone and she–”
“–would garner more attention,” Penelope finishes. “That’s quite genius.” And certainly explains a lot.
“Yes,” Colin says, nodding eagerly. “I thought the same actually, and I also figured the ploy is remarkably well suited to our current predicament.”
It takes a moment for the thought to register. “Our predicament?” she echoes.
“My comments at the end of last season,” he says, with a solemn frown. “I was… foolish. I hadn’t considered… well, much of anything when I made them. But this, it would seem the perfect way to make my amends and to restore your honor.”
She snorts again, sharper this time. Unlike all her previous moments of heartbreak, this one does feel particularly humorous.
“Pen?” Colin says, as she presses her hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,” she says. “But I’m in no need of your pity, Colin.”
He shakes his head quickly. “It’s not pity,” he protests. “It’s a mutually beneficial opportunity.”
“If you’re truly having such troubles with the attention, I’m sure–”
“It’s not–” He takes a step towards her and drops his voice. “I’ve missed you. These past few weeks, I’ve barely seen you at all, and well, you’ve had ample reason to avoid me, but…” He shakes off the tight troubled look on his face, and grins wryly, like this is a fun little plan they’re concocting like she doesn’t already feel the pull of his words, that child inside of her still begging her to believe that some sort of fairy tale will come out of this. “Pretending to court will allow me plenty of time to spend with you. And you will be able to benefit from increased attention and–”
“Have you considered that I may have grander concerns besides whether I have captured the attentions of men?” she says, her voice somehow, miraculously, even and light.
Maybe too light actually, for how his nose wrinkles.
“You sounded just like Eloise then,” he says.
And now she has to leave. She picks a direction and starts walking and doesn’t stop when he calls after her, because there’s a knot in her throat and she can’t trust herself to do much of anything let alone open her mouth without breaking down.
It’s easy as ever to slip away from the event. She doesn’t need any attention on her at all. She’s perfectly content with the way things are.
–
It’s not the first night she’s spent tossing and turning instead of sleeping, not the first time this season that gravity has pulled tears down her temples despite her best attempt to swallow them down.
It is the first night that instead of, “I would never dream of courting Penelope Featherington,” all she can hear is, “I’ve missed you.”
She starts counting the days until the end of the season.