Chapter Text
Colin clutched two letters and a small soft parcel as he took the stairs two at a time. He shared his room with two other boys, and if he was lucky, they would be outdoors on this fine day and he would have a few minutes to enjoy a little taste of home, and make sure whatever was in the parcel wasn’t too embarrassing.
No such luck was to be had. He saw the door to the room was open and he could hear and smell his roommates from ten feet away. They’d been engaging in some sort of sport out in the heat, that was certain. Colin thought briefly about attempting to secret the small parcel somewhere on his person, but Hart, lounging on his neatly made bed in his shirtsleeves, caught his eye and grinned, “Bridgerton! We missed you on the field!” and Colin made his way to sitting on his own bedspread, nonchalantly placing the letters beside him.
Guilfoyle had an open letter in his hand that he was thoughtlessly using to fan himself. Hart, ever the pot-stirrer, gestured toward the open letter and turned to Colin. “Gilly’s girl took two dances at a country party with the first son of an Earl. Or at least that is what his sister writes to him.”
Colin opened his mouth to make a sympathetic noise but Guilfoyle snorted. “My sister is not a liar, Hart.”
Hart showed his teeth and Colin winced. Guilfoyle had fallen into the trap. “Then your girl has been swept away by the heir? Are you not going home to Countess-in-waiting Sarah?”
“It was two dances, Hart. I have danced twice at a ball with my sister.” Guilfoyle waved the letter. “And to be perfectly clear, I am not marrying my sister.”
Colin winced again. It was well known Hart’s parents were first cousins. Which, while not entirely unusual, was a sore spot for Hart. He had been tortured unmercifully by some upperclassmen when he was younger, who said vile things about him and his own sisters. Hart sprung up from his bed to square up with Guilfoyle, who smirked at the floor, avoiding Hart’s gaze.
Colin decided to do the kind thing and cut into the conversation to ease the tension. “My sister sent a letter as well. Maybe her news will be more welcome.”
“The beautiful one?” Hart asked.
Colin had no idea how to answer that, so he got to work opening the letter and scanning it for something he could share with the lads. While they did like to tease and make lascivious jokes, like most of the boys at school, they also longed for little tastes of what life might be like back home. “There is masonry work being done on Aubrey Hall, so Eloise has taken to reading in trees on the grounds to escape both the noise of the workmen and the children pestering her. She says Penelope suggested –”
Hart, back to perching on his bed, perked up “Penelope? You’ve mentioned her before.”
Colin shrugged. “She is a friend of my sister, Eloise. Her family keeps a house very near ours in London.”
Guilfoyle tried to return the favor and save Colin from Hart’s likely train of thought. “And what did Miss Penelope suggest?”
Colin had finished mentally scanning the sentence and wasn’t sure he wanted to finish it aloud for his roommates. “Suggested they –” Maybe if he said it quickly and moved on they wouldn’t latch on to the idea? “-- don breeches to make climbing easier after they had both ruined their dresses one day. They’re reading –” he glanced up, hoping to see the lads passively gazing into the distance, topic avoided. Damn. Both of them had sharp gazes trained on him, or at least, on the letter in his hands.
“Did they?” Guilfoyle asked quietly.
Colin, caught off guard, scanned the rest of the letter briefly and said, “I– do not know. She does not say.”
Hart was more to the point. “So how does your sister’s friend who lives very near to you look? I must have a proper image in my mind.”
“I do not –”
“Come now, Gilly’s told us all about Sarah’s golden eyes and mahogany hair and the little mole between her –Ow, Gilly– tiny –Good God, unhand me! – bubbies. It’s only fair.” Hart, shorter but bulkier, extricated himself from Guilfoyle’s half-hearted attempts at injury. While it was understood Guilfoyle needed to put on a show of defending her honor, he had also freely shared those details and more about Sarah. And when they’d managed to have a little to drink, he had disclosed even more about the girl and what he had surmised about what was under her gowns through perilous games of sardines and his wandering hands whilst practicing waltzes.
Colin had a lot of practice sternly rebuking talk about his sisters. There were a lot of little lordlings at Eton who had seen his family at one court event or another. He and his roommates, at 16, were too young for the formal balls, but garden parties, picnics, sporting events, even weddings were frequently dotted with girls and boys who were being primed to enter society. But he had no such familial defense to avoid speaking about Penelope. If he demurred, it looked like he was holding her close for his own purposes; if he expounded, they would make sport of her (and likely still think he held untoward affection). Either way, whatever he said that fixed in the other boys’ minds would surely make it to Penelope’s ears, or those of his family or her family at the same court events. The thought of Penelope with burning ears, eyes trained on the ground, because of his words and rumors about their supposed illicit attachment already had him feeling defensive. He had to take the middle road.
“Pen has red hair,” he started. That was good, he thought. Hair color was neutral ground. Or so he thought.
Gilly groaned, muttering “Redheads,” almost to himself.
Hart’s lip twitched in a smirk. “Pen? How very familiar.”
Colin tried not to squirm. “Penelope has been a close friend of the family for years; it is natural that we have a pet name for her, as I am sure some of your family members do.”
“Have you danced with her?” Guilfoyle asked.
“She takes lessons with our family sometimes, and my mother and brother invite her to the usual things.”
“It seems that you have danced with her a great deal, then.”
Now Colin saw his error, but there was no way out but through. Surely benign, accurate compliments would not be amiss? “She dances well enough.”
“Do you enjoy her?”
Did he? Surely. Penelope was, in truth, an accomplished dancer and a decent conversant, when she was relaxed. They often amused each other in dance lessons and at the children’s balls his mother organized. He smiled vaguely remembering how every time he saw her lately she got a bit shorter, and he had to re-learn placements for his hands and arms so they both could reach.
But that wouldn’t be what Hart meant. Hart meant, had Colin seized an opportunity to let his hands roam, pretend to slip. Had he let his eyes drift from her face to parts south. He felt a small pang of guilt. It was true that from his vantage point now, he could sometimes, while looking down at her face, also see down the front of her bodice to her stays and chemise. But this was only impropriety in theory; he harbored no lustful thoughts toward her, and with three sisters close in age, young ladies’ undergarments were no great mystery to him. But his ears had reddened anyway.
“You have to tell us, Bridgerton. I told you everything about Sarah.”
Colin’s eyes rolled as he huffed. “I have not been pawing at my younger sister’s friend. She has red hair and she is an excellent dancer. That is all I will say on the matter.”
“How very delicate you are!” Hart held both hands flat over his heart in mock sincerity. “I am going to imagine her with a generous pair. Purely for the sake of variation, Gilly, do not be affronted on poor Sarah’s behalf.”
“The girl is but fourteen,” Colin admonished, restraining himself from a more forceful, or physical, rebuke. “She is years away from eligibility.”
“I am fairly sure she still has bosoms, Bridgerton. Whether you appreciate them or not.”
Colin colored again, remembering the glimpses he had inadvertently stolen of her stays.
“I am sure he appreciates them a great deal,” Guilfoyle asserted in a comically stoic voice. “So much so he does not wish to share them with the likes of us.”
It was almost a nice sentiment, thought Colin sardonically. He shucked the paper from the soft parcel, finding inside a small stack of neatly folded handkerchiefs tied with a ribbon. A note fluttered to the floor, and before Colin could retrieve it, Hart had stomped on it and retrieved it for his own perusal. Colin grimaced; whatever it was, Hart was now in an antagonistic mood because Colin had not given him more personal details about Penelope. So even if the note was innocuous, he would try to make something of it.
Hart adopted a high, girlish lilt to read the short note. “Colin, Eloise’s governess set her the task to embroider these handkerchiefs for you. She found the job quite onerous and I was more than happy to assist in her time of need. Eloise will not mind me saying that the stag was my doing as her attempt resembled a portly rodent. I also lent my hand to a few of the ‘C’s as your loving sister tired of the monotony of stitching the same initial repeatedly. I hope the autumn weather finds you well–but truly, I would be slightly vexed if our efforts were for nought and you did not put these to good use. Yours, Pen.”
Colin stalked over to Hart, who lazily smirked as the paper was snatched from his hand. The silence that hung in the room teased his nerves as Colin flopped back on the bed and couldn’t help but scan the page. All three of them knew that really, there was nothing that could be said that was nearly as damning as the writing on that page. Just the fact that an unmarried young lady was writing to an unmarried young man still at school, with no betrothal and likely no permission. That she had embroidered handkerchiefs for him. Let alone the things that could be inferred between the lines that Colin knew had not been meaningfully implied by the innocent sender. The phrases, time of need , and lent my hand , and put these to good use seemed to reverberate rather loudly when considering this through his roommates’ warped minds.
On the face of it, the letter had captured exactly Eloise’s abhorrence of ladies’ pastimes as well as Penelope’s grace and good humor making the best of the situation. Could no one understand that two youths may, irrespective of gender, just enjoy each others’ company and engage in pleasant conversation on occasion? Why must it be significant that Penelope’s stitches were alongside his sister’s handiwork on these scraps of linen? How foolish that words that could have been spoken in complete propriety at a tea table in the presence of his mother become fodder for scandal once committed to parchment! And at exactly what juncture, pray tell, of their shared childhood had it become a liberty to use a pet name for a close family friend?
Colin’s sigh of frustration broke the spell.
Gilly leaned toward Colin’s bedspread and the stack of handkerchiefs on it with a critical expression. “Is her stitchwork any good?” And the three of them laughed: Guilfoyle, whose supposed nearly-intended had never committed a single pen stroke to paper for him, Hart, who had never spared a thought for a young lady’s accomplishments that could be spoken of in polite company, and Colin, who had never considered that his sister’s naive little friend could incite such scandalous thoughts in young gentlemen just by being, well … Pen.