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Penelope had survived many hells in her life. Growing up in a family who didn’t truly love or understand her, braving the ton’s swift and cruel judgment, losing her father, and then later her best friend. Watching the man she loved propose to another woman, and then living with the guilt of ending that relationship at the cost of both their reputations.
But none of those trials could even be considered hell compared to this.
They’d had a few blissful days together, where Penelope got to enjoy the life she’d always dreamed of, but never believed she could have, before the anvil that was Lady Whistledown came crashing down. At first, Colin had responded with pure disbelief, which gave her enough time to move them to the more private space of his bedroom before the gravity of the truth fully set in for him.
There’d been lots of yelling, and tears, but Penelope chose to weather it with few words to justify her actions, which only served to aggravate Colin further. He’d taken to pacing his room, pulling at his hair as he questioned her, and growing more and more irate at her brief apologies. But how could she defend herself, when she was seeing firsthand how much her actions had hurt the person she cared about most in the world?
“I feel like I don’t know who you are anymore, Pen,” Colin was saying. “I’ve made a fool of myself these past few weeks over a woman I don’t even know! Was any of it real to you, or was it all just a ploy to get a little extra gossip to write about?”
And Penelope couldn’t help it, she laughed. It was a weak, sad little thing — one that could almost be mistaken for a sob if you weren’t paying attention. But Colin was paying attention.
“What about this could possibly be funny to you?”
Penelope looked up from the floor, meeting the affronted gaze of her fiancé head on. Colin’s eyes held a fiery anger that she had rarely seen from him before, and never once had it been directed at her. It was an unpleasant aid in this moment, as it helped keep her from getting lost in him as she so often did.
“I am only laughing at your audacity,” she said, continuing on even as Colin reeled back with offense at her accusation. “To question my feelings for you is laughable, indeed. Especially when I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn’t in love with you.”
She allowed the oppressive silence her statement caused to sit for a moment. There was a pang of regret in her chest that this was the way she was revealing her true, deepest secret to him. In the days following Colin’s proposal, love had been noticeably absent in their many conversations regarding the depth of their relationship. Penelope understood. She knew that Colin had only just come to terms with his feelings for her. He’d been a picture-perfect suitor in that time, and she had no doubts his romantic intentions were genuine, but she didn’t expect him to love her yet.
In some rare moments of peace, when she wasn’t busy with wedding preparations and worrying about the Lady Whistledown business, Penelope dreamt that his affections may someday grow into love. It could take weeks, or months — it didn’t much matter to her. Only when he was comfortable would she share that part of her heart with him. She never wanted him to feel pressured to reciprocate feelings that weren’t there.
But this? This was officially too much. Never in her wildest musings did she ever imagine Colin would doubt her love for him. In fact, there had been plenty of times over their friendship when she suspected he’d seen through her pretense and recognized her innermost desire to be with him. She believed he was just doing the polite thing, the merciful thing, to not mention it aloud.
From the look on Colin’s face, those suspicions were unwarranted. His mouth opened and closed as he tried, and failed, to figure out what to say. The fire in his eyes had been completely replaced by abject astonishment, and Penelope felt a brief flare of satisfaction to have caught him so off guard. Apparently, she had succeeded in keeping the most vulnerable part of herself hidden for this long. Not that it mattered anymore, when her world was all but crumbling around her.
“You mentioned that you were charmed by me when we first met,” she eventually said, softer now that the silence had settled into their new normal. “Well, that moment was it for me. I watched a boy fall off his horse into the mud — a fall that was entirely my fault — and instead of being cross about it, he laughed. He made jokes with me at his own expense. He returned my head covering without me having to ask. And I was done for. No other man has ever come close.”
“Wha– you–” Colin started breathlessly.
“It is why I cannot offer much defense for myself,” Penelope continued. “Because as much as I want to say Whistledown was written with good intentions, I cannot deny I sometimes had selfish motives. Most of those times, I was being selfish about you.” She swallowed harshly, looking up at Colin, whose eyes had gone glassy. “I never dreamed you would want me as your wife, but watching you with Marina nearly killed me, and I could not stand idly by and let you marry her when I knew she was keeping something so monumental from you.”
The irony of that statement sunk like a rock in Penelope’s stomach. She was no better than Marina. If she wasn’t allowed to be with Colin, then Penelope surely deserved the same fate, at least. She steeled herself, taking in Colin’s face one last time before he’d be lost to her. What she said next, there would be no coming back from it. But she’d gone this far. All of her cards were on the table. He deserved to know the full, unfiltered truth.
“It pains me to admit, but part of me was relieved when the engagement was called off, even though I knew I had ruined a chance at happiness for both of you.”
There it was. The most damning part of it all. The part she rarely even acknowledged within herself in the years since she published that infamous edition. Colin’s face betrayed little reaction to her words, but she knew it'd been over long before this final admission. She’d well and truly made her bed.
“So, I cannot blame you if you wish to call off this wedding,” she said. This finally made Colin’s expression change, his eyebrows shooting up and his body shifting to fully face her. “I will happily take responsibility for it. No further dishonor shall befall your family because of me. Just give me the word, and I’ll say…”
Penelope suddenly realized she had not thought far enough ahead to figure out what excuses she could give the public for dissolving their engagement. Perhaps she simply didn’t want to think about the inevitable reality headed her way. But, she supposed there were multiple reasons that wouldn’t be too difficult for the ton to believe. There had already been plenty of speculation that she had strong-armed Colin into the arrangement.
But that was too shameful a suggestion for her to voice aloud in that moment. Instead, she looked back to the floor and said, “I’ll think of something. Just… take your time, and let me know once you’ve made your decision.”
And she turned to leave, without sparing a final glance at Colin. It was cowardly, she knew, but she could feel the tears beginning to build in her eyes, and she wouldn’t be able to handle it if Colin immediately agreed to her proposal. She desperately needed some time to collect herself before she could seal her fate.
Unfortunately for Penelope, her path to escape did not take her very far. She barely got a few steps toward the door before she felt a gentle but firm grip on her forearm, and before she’d fully turned around again, Colin’s lips were on hers.
Penelope sucked in a sharp breath, but did not hesitate to kiss back. One hand gripped his collar, while the other arm flew over his shoulder, moving with him as he wrapped an arm tightly around her waist to pull her closer. His other hand cupped her jaw, a reverent touch that was in stark contrast to the hunger the rest of his movements broadcasted.
Every kiss with Colin still felt new and exciting to Penelope. She marveled at how one simple action could at one point make her feel delicate and secure, while in other moments it could provoke the darkest, deepest desperation she’d ever felt. This kiss made her feel neither of those things. She wasn’t sure what Colin was thinking, or if this was her last chance to have him like this. If it was, then she was going to pour every ounce of love she had for him into it. He would never doubt her feelings for him again.
Colin moaned into her mouth as she threaded her fingers into his hair, scratching at his scalp. He pulled away briefly to pant against her lips, but soon Penelope pulled him back in, not wanting the moment to end just yet. He did not take much coaxing, melting into her as their kiss deepened before settling into something softer.
“No one,” Colin finally mumbled between multiple quick kisses, “is going to be calling off any weddings.”
This was enough to get Penelope to pull back fully, though Colin still kept his arms firm around her.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “But I want to. I am still angry with you, and fearful… but I wish to understand.” Colin’s eyes were so soft on hers, and the urge to cry that had dissipated once he’d kissed her returned in full force. “There is clearly so much I’ve yet to learn about you, and I want to know it all.”
“Why?” Penelope had no choice but to ask. “Colin, I do not deserve… what I did was inexcusable.”
“I have a feeling I might disagree with you there, but I won’t know for certain unless you explain it to me,” he said. His hands moved to grip hers as he led them to take a seat on his bed. “All I know is the Penelope Featherington you’ve let me see these past years. And the woman I know is smart, and strong, and most certainly underappreciated by this society. I suspect you likely had good reasons for what you did.”
“I already told you my motives were not all altruistic,” she said, closing her eyes at the thought of once again exposing her worst traits to him. “I started Whistledown because I was a spiteful, lonely girl who society brushed off immediately upon her entry into it, and I wanted to show everyone that they were no better than me. What does that say?”
“It says that you’re a person. A person with feelings,” Colin answered, the warmth in his voice nearly too much for her to bear.
“Colin, I do not need your platitudes.”
“They’re not–” Colin cut himself off with a grunt of frustration. “Look, virtually everything you’ve written as Whistledown has been the truth, has it not? It seems the least truthful words you’ve published were the ones disparaging yourself.”
She shook her head. “What I wrote about you this season–”
“You were right,” Colin interrupted before she could finish. “I was hiding behind a persona — one that I didn’t much like, but I felt it was necessary to earn my acceptance in society. I was wrong, and you were right to call me out on it.” He paused for a beat, shaking his head with a breathless laugh. “You saw through me right away. You’ve always seen me better than anyone else could.”
Penelope swallowed, staring down at their joined hands. “And Marina?” She could barely bring herself to whisper the question.
Colin freed one of his hands so he could tilt Penelope’s chin up to lock eyes with her. “You did not ruin either of our chances of happiness, because Marina and I would not have been happy together,” he said, so firmly it didn’t leave room for doubt. “Not only because I would have inevitably figured out she’d pursued the marriage under false pretenses, but also because I did not love her.” Colin paused here, giving Penelope an all-too short moment to make sense of such a world-shaking revelation, before he shook it further. “I didn’t even understand what love was back then. How could I, when you were standing right there, and I was too blind to realize?”
Penelope’s mind went blank, the tears she’d fought so hard to repress finally making their way to the surface. They were quickly brushed away by Colin’s thumb as they rolled down her cheek. “You… you…”
“My God, Penelope,” Colin said, a soft, incredulous laugh bursting out of him involuntarily. “Of course I’m in love with you. What did you– I thought I was being obvious! I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with so much so quickly.”
Penelope couldn’t help but giggle along with him. “You know, in most cases a love confession would precede a marriage proposal. Not the other way around.”
Colin’s grin widened until it was blinding, and he leaned forward to give her a quick kiss.
“I want you to listen to me,” he said when he pulled back, his tone serious again. “There is nothing I want more than to marry you. I never want you to doubt that. I still have questions for you, but my love for you is far greater than any ill feelings I have toward Lady Whistledown. Alright?”
Penelope nodded, unable to speak. This was a far greater outcome than she’d ever imagined she would receive from him. She still found it somewhat hard to believe, but Colin’s love was written too plainly on his face for her to seriously question it. Now that she could assign a name to the expression, Penelope realized she’d recognized it from similar looks he’d given her throughout the season, even before their fateful carriage ride.
And at that realization, Penelope could do nothing more than push forward to meet his lips again. Colin sighed, tugging at her hip to pull her into his lap. The kiss quickly deepened, with Penelope’s hands migrating from Colin’s face to wander underneath his collar, relishing in the feeling of him shivering at her touch. But after another minute or so, Colin pulled back with a regretful groan.
“As much as I’d love to continue this,” he said, scattering a quick kiss to her cheek and jaw before looking up at her with a twinkle in his eyes. “We have a lot to talk about.”