Chapter Text
Baby, come out
I'll meet you in the street
At the place by the old fire station
We'll get something to eat, like we talked about
Baby, come down
It's been a while now
I've got so many things I could tell you
If my stubborn mouth doesn't let me down
And I can't look at you straight-on
You're made from something different than I know
(Neko Case, "City Swan")
One week before her first year at Oxford University officially began, Penelope Featherington developed the first real crush of her young life.
This wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love. She didn’t believe in love at first sight.
Like, though. She fell seriously in like. And who could blame her? Colin Bridgerton was everything she had ever let herself imagine in a potential boyfriend, and then some: tall, dark-haired, and handsome, with brilliant green eyes and an easygoing smile.
This was the sort of meet-cute you would write home about, Penelope thought later, if you were the sort of girl who wrote home about meet-cutes. She was not. She’d learned long ago, and the hard way, that there was little point in sharing her hopes and dreams with her family—especially not when they concerned romance.
There was also no need to write home, because her mother witnessed the entire incident.
There Penelope was, carrying a cardboard box that she hadn’t bothered to tape shut. Folding flaps in on themselves had nearly always proved sufficient in the past, so when she’d been packing this box and her roll of packing tape ran out, she had not bothered to start a new roll.
Which had led to this.
There she was, and there the wind was, blowing so hard that it lifted not only the box’s flaps, but the content within, which just happened to be a collection of loose-leaf papers. Drafts of the stories she’d been working on all summer, mostly, which she’d decided to print for proofreading while she still had access to the good printer at home.
There the wind was, and there her papers were, suddenly a good twenty yards away, and flying right into the face of a tall, dark-haired boy who was carrying an enormous stack of his own boxes. Or man, really. He seemed well older than eighteen, though he also wasn’t old enough to be someone’s father. She could tell that much even through the blind panic that now consumed her.
Penelope, running as fast as her short legs could carry her, felt a wrench of horror as he dropped the boxes on his own toe, tripped over said boxes, and landed solidly in a nearby puddle.
“Oh, no!” Penelope half-gasped, half-panted the exclamation. She was well out of breath by the time she reached the man, who had—she now saw—the most devastatingly adorable eyebrows.
Eyebrows, Penelope, really? She shook her head. Get a grip.
Much to her surprise, he broke out laughing. Suddenly he looked quite youthful—her age, or perhaps only slightly older.
“Well,” he said, wiping mud from his cheek as she arrived by his side. “That wasn’t the entrance I’d hoped to make.”
“I’m so sorry.” The words came out awkwardly; she was still panting hard.
Penelope wasn’t completely unfit. She walked rather a lot, and she enjoyed dancing (alone, in her room, with no one watching), but running? Running did not suit her.
In this moment, as she stood sweaty and pink-cheeked (or possibly bright red—no, scratch that, certainly bright red) in front of the most attractive male person she had ever seen with her own two eyes, she regretted every 5K she’d ever failed to want to train for.
“I—I didn’t mean to—”
The man stood up and dusted himself off as best he could. This was when Penelope realized just how tall he was.
“Of course you didn’t,” he said easily. “Hang on. I’ll give you a hand rounding those up.”
“Penelope!”
Portia Featherington’s shrieking gasp could be heard, Penelope imagined, across the entire city of Oxford.
“Your mother?” he inquired, nodding towards her.
Penelope tried to say something witty. She tried to say yes. She tried to say anything whatsoever. After she realized that words were going to fail her yet again—they had a way of doing that, when they needed to go quickly from her brain to her mouth—she nodded, then scurried to pick up as many sheets of paper as she could before this boy, god forbid, got hold of one himself and tried to read her writing.
As it turned out, he was her next door neighbor’s brother.
He was also enrolled at their college.
In their year.
They weren’t twins.
“Colin took a gap year,” Eloise explained, as they began arranging their belongings in their respective rooms, calling back and forth to each other through the walls and their opened doors. “Then he took another gap year. Then he took a third gap year. Then my mother put her foot down, and said if he wanted his education to be funded through the family trust, he’d better get started with it.”
“What was he doing during his gap years?”
Though she’d been nearly speechless in front of Colin, Penelope was so far finding conversation with Eloise to be almost effortless. Perhaps she was naive to think so, but it felt almost as if they’d been friends for ages, even though they had only just met. The effect must have been carried by Eloise. Perhaps one got that way—unencumbered—when one was the fifth of eight children. There was simply no use in being shy in a household that large, Penelope imagined.
“Traveling,” said Eloise.
Cradling a stack of packing material she needed to toss in the bin, Penelope exited her own room and stuck her head in Eloise’s. “Where did he go?”
“Where didn’t he go?” Eloise took one last book from a cardboard box, shelved it, and then flipped the box upside down and began stomping on it. “Greece, Cyprus, Scotland, India, Thailand, Peru. You name a country, Colin’s been there.”
“It’s easier to flatten the box if you tear the tape off,” Penelope interjected.
“I know that,” said Eloise, rolling her eyes. “But this way is much more fun.”
In any case, Penelope had plenty to do that was not thinking about Colin Bridgerton. The beginnings of her course, for one. Her determination to have one of her stories published in the campus magazine, or somewhere, for another. She was at least determined to show a story to someone. That in itself would be its own victory.
There was also Eloise, who had begun to make Penelope feel as though university had triggered a parallel universe of some sorts, because Eloise was clearly one of the popular girls from school. She was pretty, and she was ferociously intelligent; too smart for her own good, really.
Or rather, Eloise could have been one of those popular girls, had she wanted to be. Instead she had rejected popularity. This much was clear to Penelope from the start. Eloise Bridgerton was cool, and not the aloof kind of cool; she was the better, intensely passionate kind of cool.
Penelope was so clearly not.
And yet, Eloise liked her. Eloise liked her very much.
“I like you, Penelope Featherington,” she’d said, only one day into their relationship, linking elbows with Penelope as they walked off college to snag their first set of drinks at a local pub. “I’m so glad it was you next door to me, and not someone terrible. It’s going to be a good year.”
Colin came around to Eloise’s room rather a lot, for someone who was three years older than his sister. He was also devastatingly handsome, and kind, to boot. He ought not to have had any difficulty making friends. Or finding dates.
“Ah,” Eloise said, “but he knows I’ll have reserves from Mother’s endless care packages.”
He did raid Eloise’s snack bins every time he came over, even though Eloise was constantly swatting at him, insisting she did not share food. Penelope had no such compunctions, or wouldn’t have had, if her mother had not drilled it so thoroughly into her that girls weren’t supposed to be thought of as regular consumers of crisps and the like.
Which was ridiculous. Penelope knew it was ridiculous. But she’d endured far too many pointed looks from her mother, from her sisters, from her school’s mean girls: up to whatever was in her hand, further up to her mouth, then down to her hips. She’d grown very good at rolling her eyes and walking away, but it was still difficult to turn off that quiet refrain that played endlessly inside of her.
“I knew it,” came Colin’s voice, strong and triumphant. “I knew you wouldn’t have eaten all of the last round of chocolates yet.”
“You finished yours so soon? That box only arrived yesterday, Colin.”
“Mother sent you more than she sent me. This is easily quadruple the amount I got.” He appeared in Penelope’s door a moment later, leaning casually against the frame as he held out a box of very expensive bonbons. “Pen, want some? El won’t mind.”
“By all means, share my chocolates with Penelope,” called Eloise. “Just keep your filthy, greedy paws off of them.”
“I’m fine,” said Penelope, quickly. “But thank you.”
Colin placed three bonbons on the desk in front of her anyway, then snagged one for himself and raised his eyebrow at her until she placed one in her mouth.
“Good, right?” he asked, through his mouthful, and grinned when she could only moan and nod.
Within two weeks, Penelope had grown almost used to Colin’s presence.
Almost.
Because, silly though she felt about the whole thing, it was simply impossible to become truly used to the presence of a man whose crooked, casual smile caused her heart to soar from her chest.
Not only was Colin at Oxford, and also in Somerville College, but he was also enrolled on the same English course as Penelope. He therefore appeared in her very first lecture. She’d arrived early, deliberately choosing a seat in the second row and a bit to the side. It was a strategy. From here she could see, but wouldn’t necessarily be in direct view of the professor, should she not feel like speaking up.
Colin entered the hall early as well, but in the few minutes since Penelope had sat down, the hall had begun to fill. He took a seat towards the back, seeming not to notice her at all.
He did not seem to notice her in the second lecture, either.
In the third week’s lecture, he sat down directly beside her, with a cheerful “Hello, Pen.”
“Colin,” she stammered.
“Have you been avoiding me?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the third week of lecture,” he said. “Were you ever going to say hi? Or did you decide that you see enough of me around your room?”
“I thought you hadn’t noticed me here,” she said, feeling a bit sheepish about the whole thing.
“Of course I have.” Colin looked vaguely put out. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“We are?”
“Right.” He placed a large, warm-looking hand on the desktop, palm up. “Give me your phone, then. I’ll put my number in.”
He never did call or text her, but she supposed it meant something that he could.
I have a crush on my friend’s brother, she wrote in her journal.
(It was easier to convince herself that she was being silly when she thought of him as Eloise’s brother than when she thought of him as her classmate. Colleague. Whatever.)
She stared at the words on the page: indelible, unflinching black ink.
She swallowed, hard. Then she nodded to herself and scribbled over the words, so forcefully that they could never possibly be read again. She closed the journal and wedged it back onto her bookshelf, beside her well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice.
University was supposed to be a chance to reinvent herself. That’s what endless books and movies had told Penelope, and that was what she’d wanted to do: reinvent herself.
The problem was that she had never figured out how. She still had not, even after all the hours she’d spent online reading style blogs and makeup tutorials, studying people of every shape, size, gender identity, and fashion sensibility.
She knew she’d hated how she looked and felt in her old school uniform. The bright yellow jumper didn’t suit her skin tone, and clung uncomfortably to her stomach; the shape of the blazer—also, absurdly, lemon yellow—didn’t suit her shoulders or her chest. The skirt was scaled for someone much taller than she was, which made her legs look even shorter than they already were. And she’d worn some version of this uniform five days a week for years on end.
Every morning, for over a decade, she’d looked in the mirror, sighed, and thought overripe citrus fruit.
Intellectually, she knew that the problem was the uniform, not her body. But it had been difficult all those years, seeing it on taller, slimmer girls without comparing herself to them and inevitably coming up short. So there was that.
She might have learned to be easier on herself had her mother not been such an expert tsk -er. Portia Featherington did not have to criticize her daughter in words. A raised eyebrow tended to do the trick just fine.
(To be fair, when her mother did comment, most of what she said was along the lines of “You don’t have to look so miserable about it, Penelope.”)
Really, though, it wasn’t just the unflattering uniform that made Penelope feel ashamed of herself. She wasn’t the shortest girl in school, or the…she didn’t even know what euphemism to use. Curviest? There were plenty of girls who were as unsuited to the garments as she was.
The difference was that none of the other girls seemed to care, or at least, they did not care nearly as much as she did. They were not embarrassed. The other girls managed to rise above the horrible garments. They accessorized how they wanted (to the extent that was allowed), or they wore spectacular shoes. They experimented with their hair and makeup.
Most bewildering of all were the girls who simply went about their lives without seeming to overthink every aspect of their appearances.
Penelope had gone shopping for new clothes. She’d taken armfuls of items into the fitting rooms, tried on dozens if not hundreds of jeans and trousers and skirts and dresses. Fitted tops, flowing tops, jumpers. Nothing looked right. Nothing felt right.
She didn’t know what she wanted. She knew only that she didn’t want it in lemon yellow.
Blues and greens; she’d at least managed to figure that much out. She felt more herself in blues and greens.
It was probably too late to give herself a makeover, anyway. Surely the optimal time to do that was before she’d arrived at Oxford and begun getting to know people. They were nearly halfway through the term, and she still hadn’t made any real friends aside from Eloise.
“We’re going out tonight,” Eloise would announce, at least one day of every weekend. “There’s a party.”
(Somehow, she was always personally invited to every party. Penelope had yet to be personally invited to any party.)
“Must we?”
“We must.”
“I don’t have anything to wear,” Penelope would claim, though this excuse had never once worked on Eloise.
“What’s wrong with what you’re wearing? You look fine.”
Fine, it was always fine. As in this is the best that can be expected from you, even though Penelope was sure Eloise was not consciously thinking as much.
“I’m wearing this,” Eloise would continue, gesturing at whatever she’d landed on for that particular day.
Eloise’s wardrobe could be most accurately described as a fashionable laundry pile, or perhaps art-student-next-door-neighbor-in-a-‘90s-sitcom. Penelope didn’t know how Eloise could do it—how she could be so fashionably unfashionable. Some people had an innate chicness, she supposed, like those girls who made the best of the lemon yellow blazers. Eloise was one of them; Penelope was not.
“El…”
“I’m not going by myself, Penelope. And I’m not going with just my brother.”
Right. Colin always came too; he was also somehow invited to every get-together, no matter how casual. He showed up outside their doors, he walked them to the party, and he nearly always walked them home, too. Sometimes Eloise complained about this— I didn’t come to university to be babysat by my brother— but things were what they were.
Which was to say that Colin usually insisted on stopping for food on the way back to their rooms, and usually got roped into paying for both of them as well, and so Eloise did not really mind.
(“It’s all family money anyhow,” Eloise admitted. “Same accounts as mine. But it’s fun to make him grumble about putting it on his cards.”)
Maybe it was a small, ridiculous friend group to have: her neighbor, her neighbor’s older brother. But, as the three of them laughed over piles of fresh, perfectly oily chips or shawarma wrapped in soft, fluffy pita with delightfully garlicky sauce, she couldn’t help but think that for the first time in her life, she felt truly at peace.
Well.
Except when she found herself wanting to lick said garlic sauce off the corner of Colin’s mouth.
Which happened more often than she was prepared to admit, even to herself.
“I’m not judging either of you ladies,” Colin said, one evening, as they walked back from a 3:00 a.m. pizza.
Although she’d worn comfortable shoes, and hadn’t danced, Penelope’s feet still hurt. She was also wearing her best bra, and the underwire had begun to dig. She wanted nothing more than to rip the damn thing off, but now was clearly not the time to do so.
“I’m not a lady to be judged,” Eloise replied.
Colin rolled his eyes. “I’m not judging,” he repeated. “But shouldn’t at least one of you occasionally be going home with some guy?”
“Bold of you to assume compulsory heterosexuality,” said Eloise, who’d recently declared herself in platonic love with her philosophy lecturer.
“No, you’re right. Some person, then,” he amended. His eyebrows crinkled together into a thinking face. It was rather unfortunately adorable. “Are you heterosexual, El? I just realized I’ve never known you to be interested in anyone, male or female.”
Eloise shrugged, rather grandly. “Male, female, nonbinary, agender; what does it matter? No one yet has been worthy enough to pique my interest.”
There was a small, awkward pause before Colin turned the other way with a polite throat-clearing cough.
“And you, Penelope?”
She nearly tripped on absolutely nothing.
“What’s that?” She felt her cheeks flame. “Am I straight?”
“Have you found someone worthy enough to pique your interest,” he clarified. “Of either gender. Any gender. Or no gender, I suppose.”
That, she reckoned, answered the question of whether or not Colin Bridgerton had ever noticed her at parties. Of course he had not.
Well—sometimes he brought her a drink. Sometimes they would chat for a moment or two. Never for long, because Colin was always getting hailed into different conversations.
But if he’d noticed her, truly noticed her, then he would have known that Penelope inevitably spent her evenings in a chair, or with her back against the wall. Parties were for twiddling her thumbs and waiting for someone, anyone, to give her the time of day. Usually that anyone was Eloise, but Eloise too flitted with the confidence of a natural social butterfly, while Penelope remained firmly in her invisible chrysalis.
Penelope thought about all the romance stories she’d written, squirreled away in secret folders on her laptop or in hidden boxes in her room, the ones she’d never shown to anyone because she was too embarrassed. She wasn’t embarrassed that she wrote romance stories. Rather, she was mortified by the idea that whoever read them would almost certainly be able to tell that Penelope was working from precisely zero personal experience.
“For fuck’s sake, Colin.” That was Eloise now, rolling her eyes in the way that only she could.
Colin threw up his hands. “I’m just asking! No one has to—to come out. No one has to stay in! It makes no difference to me either way.”
“And what about you, dear brother?” Eloise rounded on Colin, walking backwards now, her gait as steady as ever despite however much wine she’d imbibed over the night. “How come you’re never going home with some guy? Or some lady? Or some person of undisclosed gender?”
“I’m going home with two ladies at present,” Colin responded primly. “Am I not?”
“One of whom is your sister.”
“A fact of which I hardly need reminding.” He shrugged. “I suppose I haven't found anyone worthy of piquing my interest, either.”
Penelope, tagging behind silently as ever, felt her heart sink even deeper.
Finally, one Saturday night not long before the end of term, Penelope broke. She’d been feeling a bit under the weather anyhow; whether it was the stress of final projects, her extremely demanding and intimidating tutor, or simply an oncoming period was unclear to her. In any case, she’d successfully begged off going anywhere with the Bridgertons. Instead she had purchased a pint of ice cream from the corner shop, donned her comfiest pajamas, and fired up her favorite comfort binge, a Netflix limited series that was a modern-day, female-driven, high school spin on Cyrano de Bergerac .
Just after two in the morning, she finished the final episode. By then, her spoon had long since scraped the cardboard pint clean. She left the laptop open, credits running, and grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste in the dark.
As soon as she opened her door, Eloise stomped through, reeking lightly of alcohol.
“Shit,” Eloise groaned, after she’d blinked once or twice. “Shit, this isn’t my room. I—oh, you’re still awake.” She flicked the lights on, squinted, and then said, “Are you all right, Pen?”
Only then did Penelope realize she had tears streaming down her face.
“Yes,” she said, reaching for the box of tissues on her desk with the hand that didn’t have a toothbrush in it. “I’m fine. Just been having a good cathartic cry, you know?”
(She glanced quickly into the corridor; Colin, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen.)
Eloise looked very much as though she did not know. “Over what?”
“That.” Penelope gestured at her laptop screen, where the credits were still rolling. “The happy ending.”
“Never mind,” Penelope sighed. “You wouldn’t—”
Eloise cocked her head to one side, then swiped a finger across the touchpad so the name of the show popped up.
“Oh, Penelope,” she groaned. “This tired old narrative?”
“I like this show.”
“I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy it when it first dropped, of course, but it’s so done, and on some level it’s insulting. Genre fiction needs to update all these tropes. Especially the romance genre. The girl has a makeover—”
“Cyrie didn’t have to have a makeover,” Penelope countered. “She did it for herself, not the boy. He noticed her at her worst.”
“And he noticed her more at her best.”
“Yes,” said Penelope somewhat desperately. “But not because she was prettier. Because the makeover gave her the confidence to put herself out there.”
At this, Eloise fell somewhat silent. She cocked her head to the other side this time. “You’re overidentifying with Cyrie.”
It felt rather like an accusation. Abandoning all pretense that she was going to brush her teeth right now, Penelope quickly snapped her laptop shut before Eloise could notice how many tabs of Cyrie fanfic were open in her browser. Then she dropped into her bed.
“So what if I am?”
Eloise plopped into Penelope’s desk chair, placed her elbows on her knees, and leaned over, propping her chin in her hands.
“There’s plenty of time to put yourself out there, Pen, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just…” She sat up straight, flinging out a hand. “Do it. Start now.”
Still on her bed, Penelope curled into a ball. “It’s not that easy for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it isn’t.”
She felt, and she was sure also sounded, helpless. How was she supposed to explain? She would bet good money that Eloise had never suffered from a moment of self-doubt in her life.
Eloise’s eyes narrowed. The wheels were turning. Anyone could have seen them.
“For god’s sake, Penelope,” she groaned. “You don’t need a makeover.”
“I didn’t say that I did.”
“You’re absolutely lovely,” Eloise said firmly. “You’re smart and witty and I won’t hear you say a word against yourself.”
“El—”
“But if it’s a question of self-confidence…” She broke into a wicked grin. “We’ll go shopping tomorrow. I’ll call in the cavalry.”
“Isn't it a bit late for that? Or a bit early?”
Eloise was already texting someone.
“Don’t you worry,” she said, with a dismissing wave of the hand. “The cavalry answers calls at all hours of the day and night.”
For some reason, Penelope expected the cavalry to be a friend Eloise had made that she had never previously mentioned. Or perhaps Eloise’s older sister. She’d never met Daphne, of course, but she’d heard about her. Or perhaps the cavalry might have been Eloise’s sister-in-law, Kate, whom Eloise seemed to prefer over Daphne. Or her brother Benedict’s girlfriend. Or—
“Knock, knock,” said an all-too-familiar male voice the next morning, and Eloise flung her door open. Penelope, whose door had already been open, curled into a slightly smaller ball at the sight of Colin.
“You look awful,” Eloise said. “Are you hung over?”
Colin did not look awful, Penelope thought. He was incapable of looking awful. But he was wearing sunglasses inside, and chewing on the straw of an iced coffee.
“A bit,” he said, wincing as Eloise marched past him and into Penelope’s room. “Remind me why I’m here?”
“Because Mother promised us a decent lunch.”
Penelope almost fell off her bed.
“Your mother?” she said. “The cavalry is your mother?”
“She’s never once picked out an outfit that I personally agreed to wear. Or, at least, not since I learned to dress myself. So don’t tell her I said this, all right? But she really does have excellent taste. And she lives for being consulted on matters such as these. She’ll fix you right up.”
She began shoving them all down the hallway, then down the stairs, then through the front doors of their building.
“Your mother,” Penelope repeated.
“Our mother,” Colin agreed. “Wait, our mother? You’re having our mother do what, exactly? I thought we were just going for lunch.”
“We are not. We’re meeting her at the shops. She’s here to help Penelope reinvent herself,” Eloise said impatiently.
As they walked, Penelope could feel a horrible, horrible blush creep from her chest to her neck to her cheeks. She thought she could feel a stress pimple erupting, too. Or maybe six stress pimples. Or—
“Excellent,” said Colin.
(Penelope died a little more inside. Why was he even here right now? Why couldn’t he simply have met them for lunch, later, when they did get to that point?)
“If she’s focused on you two, she won’t natter on about my hair being too long,” he continued. “Or about this shirt not being properly ironed.”
“You’re twenty-one years old and studying English literature; it’s ridiculous you even have an iron,” said Eloise. “I don’t even have an iron.”
“Your shirt is ironed, Colin,” Penelope noted automatically. She couldn’t see much of it but the collar, as it was layered under an unbuttoned duffel coat and nicely fitted v-necked sweater. But Colin’s shirts were always ironed.
“Of course it’s ironed,” he said. “But it’s not properly ironed.”
Eloise rolled her eyes. “And if Penelope hadn’t yet realized the extent to which we are overly wealthy, upper-crust snobs, she has now.”
“Ah, look,” said Colin. “There’s Mother now. Were we not meeting her at the shops?”
Violet Bridgerton was indeed waiting around the corner, standing next to a light blue Rolls Royce manned by a uniformed driver, a well-worn but very expensive handbag slung over the shoulder of her impeccably tailored dress.
“I thought we were,” muttered Eloise. “I suppose she couldn’t wait.”
The Dowager Viscountess smiled warmly at her children. It was so strange to think of the Bridgertons as being peers of the realm, but admittedly much easier to do when Lady Bridgerton was here. She had a quiet dignity, Penelope thought, that her own nouveau-riche mother (who was not even particularly rich) lacked.
After she’d hugged Colin and Eloise, Lady Bridgerton extended the same courtesy to Penelope.
“It’s lovely to see you again, dear,” she said, as though Penelope was a longtime personal friend, and not someone she’d met for all of twenty minutes approximately three months previously.
“You as well, Lady Bridgerton.”
“Pen, for god’s sake.” Eloise sucker-punched Penelope’s arm. “The title, really?”
“Please call me Violet,” Lady Bridgerton said, albeit with a sharp look at her daughter.
She waved a hand at the car, and it drove off to who knew where.
“We’ll walk to the shops, shall we? It’s not too cold for November?” She paused. “Colin, when did you start drinking iced coffee?”
“It’s not iced coffee, it’s cold brew. And, Portland.”
“Portland?”
“Oregon,” he clarified, shrugging. “The American Pacific Northwest? It’s not the most exotic destination, I know, but the region as a whole has developed a very good food scene—”
“Isn’t that where you tried and failed to find a sasquatch?” Eloise inquired sweetly. “Also, I’ve not eaten a crumb today, so if we could just swing by a coffee shop on the way there, that’d be grand.”
As they waited for their orders (Eloise did insist on the most extraordinarily complicated lattes), Lady Bridgerton—no, Violet—turned to Penelope, placing one hand on each of Penelope’s shoulders to hold her at arm’s length. The eye that traveled up and down Penelope’s figure was…hard to explain, honestly. Assessing. Perhaps even critical. But not unkind.
“Would you unbutton your coat for a moment, dear?”
Penelope, confused, nevertheless obliged.
“Now let me see the side?” She turned herself, sparing Penelope of having to do so. “Yes, I think we’ll begin with…”
Violet glanced up, spotted Colin at the other end of the coffee shop (he was simultaneously pointing at several items in the pastry case), and then leaned to speak into Penelope’s ear.
“Foundation garments,” she stage-whispered.
“What?”
“Brassieres,” she clarified.
Penelope had understood. She just—
“Oh.”
“We’ll need to get you properly fitted. I’d wager my own pinkie that you’ll need to go down at least one band size, and up two or three cup sizes.” She tutted a bit. “Nearly all you young ladies are smaller in the ribcage than you think you are. It’s so important to be well supported, especially when—well.”
She smiled again, still kindly, but Penelope felt her face blazing red once more. At no point in her life had she ever imagined she would be having a public conversation about undergarments, or her own ample bosom, with a dowager viscountess.
Especially not one who was also the mother of her best friend. And the mother of the boy she had a crush on.
Penelope’s cheeks still burned as Eloise and Colin rejoined them, each holding several paper pastry bags. Colin had already bitten into what looked like a flaky-crusted lemon tart.
“Oh,” said Eloise, nodding at Penelope’s still-unbuttoned coat and fading pink cheeks as she handed over one of the paper bags. “I see Mother’s already given you the bra talk, then.”
“Eloise!” snapped Violet.
Colin, to his immense credit, did not spit-take lemon tart across the coffee shop. He had the grace to look at least a little bit embarrassed, but Penelope was certain he did not look anywhere near as embarrassed as she did.
He hung back, holding the door for the three of them, and let his mother and sister out first. Then he touched Penelope’s arm, nodding in a way that she understood meant she should let the others walk a few paces ahead.
“Don’t worry about it, Pen,” he said quietly. “It’s a regular topic of conversation at Number Five. Four sisters, you know? Mother’s insisted on regular fittings for all of them.”
Then he noticed someone across the street, and became distracted.
“Oh, hang on,” he said, jogging ahead of her a bit. “Fife! Are we still on for fencing next week?”
“Right,” Penelope muttered, entirely to herself. “Four sisters.”
(to be continued…)