Archive of Our Own

Home, sweet crumbling ruin, and it might not even be keeping the weather out. Everything reached an age where dying seemed fair enough, and the house was close to that.

It was an appropriate setting for vampires to end up killing him, but maybe he’d make it out alive. Not killing them all by going off the road was his first miracle of the day, and Colin Bridgerton didn’t think of himself as a miracle worker. He was trying not to let on how slippery the road had been in the final few kilometres before the big old house filled the sky in front of them. It was nice to see something a little familiar in the squall of flakes. They were too far into the new plan to change it, but not to regret the risk.

“Footman! Bring our things,” Eloise shouted at him.

It was typical that her brand of feminist thought would take a break so she could stick him with the heavy lifting. Colin had already shoveled the front door out so the big, antique slab of siege-proof wood could be tipped back and tied. He had made sure Eloise and their guest Penelope got inside the house and out of the weather. And he was going to call the hotel complaint line to explain why a trip in February needed to include a solid booking of two rooms, because the lost reservation had nearly called off the whole thing. They were lucky to have multiple properties, but most teenagers trying to attend a fan convention didn’t have the budget for a country manse.

The next time he did something kind, it was not going to be because of his sister’s crush on an actor. Colin was just glad Penelope was smarter, and did not like the roguish older vampire brother. She preferred the younger vampire guy who was sensitive and maybe a little too slow to act on his feelings. He wasn’t so aggressive, but he was good at caring about other people. Vampires didn’t have to be bitey to be hot. Sometimes being a good guy was enough. Anyway, he only watched it with them. Pen had to catch him up on details because El would only shush him if he had questions. She had a bluntness that made a guy who took whatever he wanted seemed attractive to her philosophy, but his sister’s feelings often baffled Colin.

He looked way up to the ceiling of a house that was built when horses were the only engines. There was a couple that looked after it, but they checked it once a week during the winter. They kept it from getting moldy. But it didn’t have the most welcoming atmosphere. It was cold in both temperature and ambiance. The snow falling outside wasn’t going to stop until the morning, and he wondered if they were getting out of there without someone coming to get them in a four wheel drive vehicle. Anthony had given the directions to the housekeeper’s home, and the keys were given like a mixed blessing. She had handed over a box of basic groceries so they could eat, and warned them they were a long way from neighbours. But there was heat, firewood, and it was a functional home.

He was starting to regret putting it to a vote in the hotel lobby, because even then he was a bit nervous about driving more. But Eloise and Pen voted that they did not care about extra driving, which was big of them when he was the one behind the wheel. He was glad they didn’t seem to notice how stressful it was for him, but it also meant he might have to disappoint them. Country roads didn’t have any lights, and the snow made the way ahead invisible. He might have to tell them they weren’t going to get to the convention. He might be calling Penelope’s mother to apologize for getting her stranded.

Colin got the suitcases into the house, and he left them by the door. They were also covered in snow, and they could sit and thaw there before he figured out bedrooms. He wasn’t exactly in charge, but he was the driver and the oldest person. Pen and Eloise got to travel because he offered to be there with them. And if was sometimes in the living room when they watched their dumb American vampire show, he was a grown man and could appreciate beautiful people on television. Sometimes there were exciting fight scenes. He wouldn’t mind an autograph or a hat.

He wasn’t sorry to be on the trip, but he was worried about how far out of the way they were staying. The family estate had two old homes. Aubrey Hall was closer to London and on better roads. It was easier to get to and generally nicer. The gardens were cultivated and the staff lived in all year round. Their second house was older. It was hard living there in cold weather, and they mostly just kept it warm enough the pipes didn’t freeze. It was called Willowlea. It had a lot of crumbling page history, and right now it was their shelter from a literal storm.

“There’s a sword room! It’s a room full of swords,” Penelope said down the hallway.

Colin heard his sister actually drop what she was doing, the thump of something hitting the floor, then a rustling that he figured might be their winter coats brushing as they held hands to race immediately to the danger. He sighed. He was not the most predictable human, but Pen and El together were a distillation of random acts. He knew they were good people and would look after one another. And he knew he had to look after them. He was older. Eloise was his little sister, and Pen was his Pen.

So he left the luggage where it was, and tried to stomp off the worst of his tracked in snow in the entryway. He followed the drips and boot prints from the ladies, who were still speaking but more distantly. They were muffled by the walls of a room. He started looking side to side, checking doors. Most would be locked. That was just how the house was left when it wasn’t lived in. Closed and locked rooms could be presumed to be untouched.

Colin wasn’t sure how much control one could reasonably have. He’d been feeling a little pushed out of his own mode of being. He was the middle brother in a large household. He could be found laughing and joking. He was good to cover up a bit of mischief or to take the blame for his smallest siblings. Just that week he had told Mother a vase broke because he had picked up Hyacinth to give her a spin and her foot had knocked a shelf. The baby of the family had been running around, but he could make it into an endearing moment that would get minimal correction. He should hug his sister. He was praised for playing with his younger siblings long past when an older brother usually made excuses to be out of the house.

By the end of high school he was teased for liking the company of his sisters. He could have argued it was not a preference based on nothing. Eloise was smart and she had ironclad opinions. Daphne was brilliant, and her ambition had put her into uni at the same time as Colin even though she was a year younger. Francesca was musical and she could see people so clearly. Hyacinth was happy and could make anything a positive.

And with his sisters came Penelope, who was invaluable as a nonrelative. She was smart and funny, but she also saw things a little outside of the family view. When he was told he was in the wrong, Colin checked with her and she often found a way to express that he had stumbled into a disparity. What was expected from him inside his family was going to be painfully specific. Volunteering to do something once often led to a presumption he would handle it every other time. She told him he wasn’t wrong to feel upset when he was asked to be too yielding, but he might have to explain why he couldn’t be.

Doormat Colin died in her counsel, and he found ways to go to his mother and his eldest brother to say ‘no.’ They weren’t always happy, but they understood. And they loved him anyway, which was not how he had believed it would go until Pen told him they would. But even she could not keep Eloise safe from all her ideas.

“Hello!? Where are you? El! Pen! I don’t remember a room of swords, and they’ll be rusty! I don’t think you should touch them!”

He found a door ajar and knew he should not have let El keep the keys. He cursed softly and stepped into the quiet room. That was not the room of swords. It was a standard study, with a cold fireplace and unnaturally polished desk. There were no adjoining rooms, but there was a closet that opened from a latch hidden on the wainscoting. It wasn’t a secret room. Since it was in a boring room, the kids never got around to playing with the ‘secret passageway.’ It didn’t go anywhere, and it certainly wasn’t big enough for a pack of Bridgerton children to pile in. But it might be a good place to stash a bunch of sharp antique weapons without having to buy a safe. At least it wasn’t a whole room of swords.

Pen and El were standing in the doorway. He couldn’t tell if they had all their fingers but no one was clutching a mutilation and panicking. As usual, he was the only one panicking.

“It’s not a sword room,” Colin told them, aspiring to an attitude of extreme chill and disinterest. Maybe if he was not trying to stop them or even bothering to look, they would leave it alone. “There used to be swords on the walls, but Mother and Ant decided that wasn’t wise. It’s just storage.”

There was nothing more boring to him than neatly organized crap shoved away like not even the person keeping it wanted it anymore. His nonchalance might win him some peace as they tried to keep warm in their very old accommodations.

“They must have a lot of history,” Penelope said, gracious as usual.

“I mean, we’re not knighted, we’re gentry,” Eloise replied, her tone scathing.

“If you wanted to be Viscount you should have been born first,” he teased. “I think we fall somewhere in the middle of history. We’re not all rosy, nor are we completely useless. And we can’t do a thing to change it, except to stow the sharp artifacts before someone gets skewered.”

Penelope was leaning on the side of the doorway, but Eloise was standing in the closet. Anthony must have bought glass cases for the walls before he realized the potential for indoor basketball or archery. Taking the swords and daggers off the walls wasn’t safer if they were behind glass begging to have a classic Bridgerton snafu.

Colin cleared his throat. “So we’re not going to play with this shit, right? Because we’re all too old to explain how we look with our eyes and not our hands.”

Eloise crossed her arms. “Pen found it!”

“I like history,” their friend said uneasily. “My house has boring antiques like chairs people aren’t allowed to sit on. Mama says they are an investment. Even if I have a fancy old house with fancy old furniture, I’m going to be mad if I can’t use it as furniture. Mrs. Varley hates all that. She signed us up for an Ikea catalogue.”

He laughed. “I am still afraid of your mother from that time I dared to put a present in the drawer beside your bed. I thought it was to be used for your convenience, and I did not want it to roll away. I was not in the habit of keeping envelopes suitable for gifting marbles. I thought I was solving a problem without bothering her.”

“Mama is mostly over it,” Pen said lightly. “Though she came across a fine bookcase and made sure to tell me it was going to Philippa when she dies. I reminded her Philippa does not read for pleasure. She said it could be used to show off family photos and keepsakes. Then she put all of our family photos in a storage unit because she was getting tired of running across my father’s face in them.”

Portia Featherington was at turns amusing and horrifying to him. He did not like to be eyed the way he was when he wanted to join the sleepovers as a little boy. He was not up to anything. He wanted to eat candy and popcorn with his friends and they all had the same favourite movies in their youth.

“That is unfair, but for the best since you would not be allowed to demand your bookcase hold your books. Of course I don’t like to blame you, but why would you think your needs superseded those of a fine old piece of woodworking?”

Penelope stepped away from the closet and tugged Eloise with her. She tipped her head in feigned resigned guilt. “I am thoughtless of the furniture. Once I did not use a coaster, and this house is a helpless victim to my younger self. However, I have learned to put my things on the floor so I do not offend the tables. I don’t want to be a pest, but I am cold. Can we set up somewhere small so the room can heat up?”

Colin nodded. “Ant had a suggestion. We’ll need the kitchen and a bathroom, but the bedrooms are all upstairs and we could stay a week without getting the hallways warm at all. He told me to pick a room down here, light a fire and close it up so it will be comfortable to sleep. This room works, minus the tiny closet of death from tetanus.”

Eloise snuffed her frustration at them. She shut the closet with a stern look at both of them. “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s like camping in a positive tone that implies it will be fun?”

The brief attempt to have her join a girl’s scouting troop ended badly, with a middle of the night rescue from a campground. Penelope had not liked it, but she had not demanded to be returned home once the sleeping arrangements were done in alphabetical order by first name. Eloise did not want to be in a tent with an Emma and Elle. She detested palindromic names and the unfathomable cruelty of being away from Pen. As a natural consequence of removing Eloise from the scene, Penelope was also called from her tent and offered an escape. Colin had been there to keep Anthony company on the drive, and had caused a stir climbing into the girls’ tent to take her sleeping bag and roll it for her. He didn’t look like Pen’s brother at all, and his height made him seem much older, so the whispers of ‘is that her boyfriend?’ had probably made the rest of the camping trip much less exciting after the Bridgerton group left. They were a minor scout troop love affair, and it made him laugh to think of those poor little girls forever denied any closure.

“It’s not like camping. We’ll manage. We might have had to go right back home, and the weather would have canceled this whole trip,” Penelope said gently. “I am glad we are here. This is an adventure. We can pull blankets and a few mattresses down. The drive would have been impossible. At least we might still get there from here.”

Colin made a face. “I can’t promise. I’ll get up tomorrow and check road advisories. And we have to keep ourselves alive to get bitten by vampires, so we have to cook. At the risk of sending someone to work in the kitchen, I was volunteered to get the luggage. Are we all okay sleeping in here?”

“I can cook,” Penelope said. “Or I mostly can. If the kitchen has a weird old thing to cook on, someone is going to have to help me.”

Eloise looked up. “I’m hauling mattresses, but I’m not being gentle. So if you hear something falling down the stairs it’s my corpse or our beds.”

He winced. “Can you try to make it just the beds? And also not throw them? Use the stairs like ramps down - but not for you. You should walk like normal. Please don’t get me in trouble so you can meet hot vampires,” Colin said. “And then we can all help cook.”

“If I die on the stairs I’m going to write ‘Colin killed me’ in my own blood.”

“You’re the best sister! Make sure you spell my name correctly. G-R-E-G.”

He walked with Pen back to the entryway, where the snow had pooled under the suitcase wheels and they were ready to be driven to their place further inside the house. She picked up the box of food.

“If Eloise dies on the stairs I will testify you are innocent,” Pen told him. “But part of that is so Greg is not framed for it. He’s too young. You could name Benedict and I’d let the police investigate. Or Anthony, but he’d confess because he likes to think he’s to blame for everything in your family. I don’t know why he feels better being wrong all the time. It seems tiring.”

“His wrinkles are coming in nicely,” Colin joked. “I’m still hoping we all survive at least until we’re meeting the actor who plays Stefan and he bites us romantically.”

She blushed, and he congratulated himself on pinpointing her tastes. She liked a kind, pleasant guy who wanted everyone to be okay. Colin could support that, even the vampires lived in the most unlucky town in the US. He wasn’t sure that was accurate - barring the vampires. They were big enough to have huge seasonal festivals but small enough that all of the town mourned the mayor. He also didn’t understand how the monsters went unnoticed.

“That’s not why I like him,” she said smartly. “I think he has taken an unfortunate situation and found a way to keep his principles. It’s easy to be good when nothing is going on, and very hard when cheating a bit could get you what you want. It’s refreshing to see stories where doing the fast, violent, aggressive thing is usually the bit that causes bigger trouble. It’s true, too. Winning badly means you have to cover up how you won.”

The praise echoed part of Colin’s own impressions, but it irritated him. Stefan wasn’t that great. And some of his plans were quite violent. He was still a vampire.

“He’s caring and thoughtful until he loses his shit over his girlfriend being in danger,” he said. “He’s not using philosophy or the legal system to fix things. He’s not turning to prayer.”

His sarcasm was a little tart for the topic of conversation, but she blinked and answered. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t look at him or get a little giddy over how he is with Elena. He loves her so much, and that’s amazing.”

He was at the spot to turn down the hall, so Colin took a break and let the suitcases stand for a moment. He put his hands out to take the box. “It shouldn’t be that amazing. If he loves her he should be willing to do anything he can for her. That’s not usually vampires and werewolves, but it can be a lot. Her stuff is his stuff, and that has to be something he can manage.”

There was a thump upstairs, and he shook his head. Eloise was not a retiring person.

“Remember this time so you can be my alibi later,” he said.

“Sure! It’s 3:12 and we both heard a noise and you went upstairs to check on El. Then I didn’t see you for several minutes, and when I did you were covered in blood!”

He poked her with the box corner. “Traitor! I only agreed to ride along because it was with you. I’m very selfless but I need some sanity for exams. El by herself can be a lot of personality.”

The bed wrestling was continuous, as if his sister was kicking the mattress down the hall. Colin turned to the kitchen. He’d go check on her if the noise suddenly stopped.

“El can be energetic, which is not unknown to other Bridgertons I have met,” Pen said carefully. “She wasn’t as excited about this convention as I was. It’s exactly the sort of thing I wouldn’t get permission for if there weren’t some pushy and excitable people on my side and offering transportation.”

“We are both problem and solution. We are the yin and yang of annoying and inspiring. Eloise didn’t like people much before she met you,” he told her. “We keep you around because we like you, but El is better with you. She listens to you. She holds back and tries harder to understand. And when she is horrible we suggest she should visit you. You have saved the family a lot of therapy!”

They got to the kitchen and put the food away for a few minutes, because the noise from upstairs had stopped. Penelope squinted at the ceiling.

“I was joking but I’m worried. Should we go find her?”

El was dragging two twin mattresses up on their sides, her body at an extreme angle. She glared at them as they jumped at seeing her when they were expecting to have to search. Colin had thought she was going to use the front stairs that were closer to the study they were squatting in. The lapses between thumps were her fumbling to keep hold of the mattresses in her awkward position.

“A little help?!”

Colin took one mattress and they carried the other one, his teeth gritting on the noise of a mattress shushing harshly on stone floors. He wondered how much mopping would be necessary to get the upstairs suitable for human habitation. They might be the cause of the old house falling down. He wasn’t sure if that would be a problem even, because the cost of having it standing was a lot more than the value of it as shelter. It was just too far outside London to be the family home, even if it was more charming. His memory of the third floor and attic - a fascination he had in younger days to see spooky parts of any house - was of a dim space that smelled funky.

“Penelope is sleeping between us,” his sister said. “Or my instincts will take over and I’ll strangle you.”

Pen did not look thrilled to be the no-man’s land between Bridgertons. She had clearly had the misfortune of trying to sleep next to Eloise the flopping fish. Bunk beds had looked like fun when they were younger. Once attempted, they were not fun.

“I’m honoured to sleep next to Pen,” Colin said. “Maybe we’ll spoon.”

She blushed. “You two are always signing me up for things that I don’t know about. You’re both kickers,” she said, pointing between them. “Both of you. Not peaceful at all. And you growl a bit. I swear, it’s a hell of a way to learn about you Bridgertons sleeping with you!”

He snickered and she cringed. “Not sleeping WITH you, near you! Or in the case of Anthony, finding him snoring like he was an industrial rock tumbler in the parlour.”

Colin looked around Pen, who looked embarrassed. “Do you hear this? She sleeps with you, she sleeps with me, she’s been trying her luck with Ant!? Penelope Featherington, you can use the rest of us, but do not seduce our mother!”

Eloise rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t want the likes of us. She has taste. Or she got Ben first, which is to be expected. I’m pretty sure the Queen has had a go with Benedict. Penelope, it’s perfectly okay that you fell into Ben’s slut vortex. It’s taken down many a good person. I thank my luck he’s my brother, and the only thing he talks me into is suspect art shows.”

Penelope shrugged. “He’s very dashing though. I like his slutty little scarves when he’s feeling particularly artsy. And he looks like he’s very relaxed when he sleeps. He lounges,” she said. “It’s graceful.”

He squinted. “I’m not graceful? I lounge! I’m very chill!”

Pen shook her head and patted him. “You’re like the aftermath of a werewolf transformation. There’s hair I’m not used to seeing and you’re way too warm. You make growly noises. It’s not even snoring. And if you’re cold, which makes no sense, you pull me in and I’m trapped until you wake up.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Trapped? You mean protected from the danger of the pitiless, heartless night?! Yeah, I’m snuggly. I’m frostbite prevention. I saved your toes. You owe your toes to your parents and me! So when you paint those little toenails, thank me for having all of them. Let’s call your mother right now so you can thank her for ten toes, and then you can thank me, because I am equally responsible for them!”

Eloise’s sneer was evocative and she pulled Pen away. “I’m going to let it sink in what you just implied,” she said. “And while you come to terms with that I’m going to take her with me because you just did something terrible to Penelope’s mental pictures.”

He paused, and thought back. He was always on watch when Pen, who was admittedly a bookworm, had to be outdoors for long spans of time. She would get cold, and her quiet inability to bitch effectively meant he had to pile sweaters on her and snuggle in the tent. So yes, he was in charge of saving those toes!

“You implied you banged my mother,” she said. “Equally responsible for my ten toes . . . like one of my parents.”

Ew. Once heard, Colin relived his own boast. “Not when you were born! Later, especially on camping trips. I saved you from hypothermia.”

Pen stared at him. “It was June. In Italy.”

He let his mouth go hard and flat. “I’m a damn hero, Featherington. The things I do for you and your fragile body, and you’re singing the praises of Benedict’s scarves.”

His tone was very dark by the end of the sentence, and she rolled her eyes. “You’ll live. And I’m not calling you a hero. Do heroes need someone to walk up and say ‘my hero?’ I don’t think the good ones do. If you are a hero, don’t you want to be a good one?”

Colin sighed. “I mostly want to be sure you haven’t been screwing Benedict now, because you seem to have a level of knowledge that upsets me.”

Pen grinned. “The closest I’ve gotten to screwing your brother is seeing the tattoo on his hip,” she said. “But that was right after it healed up, so he was offering to show anyone. And he had to open his pants but they stayed on, and he did some shielding of areas with his hand. I remained fully clothed, though he gave me the tattoo artist’s name for my inevitable tramp stamp. His suggestion was ‘Pretty Penny’ in gothic letters, but I might just get angel wings. My mother is pretty traditional.”

He was not reassured by the details. Ben needed to keep his clothing on around her. And he shouldn’t be giving ideas for what tattoos a man might see when he was bent over her naked body.

“Tell me you didn’t get a tattoo on the advice of my slut brother,” he said. “You don’t need a tattoo! You aren’t the type of woman to have a tramp stamp.”

Eloise grumbled. “You know that’s fairly reductive. There are a million ways to live and most of them are not gendered. They also don’t preclude other choices that might have a different aesthetic. People don’t actually come in types. Penelope can get inked all over and she’d still be a good, worthy person.”

Penelope brushed between them. “I’m going upstairs to get bedding,” she said. “For your information, I’m too boring to get any tattoos. Benedict is just nice enough to pretend otherwise.”

He gaped behind her, and his sister stomped away to help. They were talking about him, and he had failed some kind of open-mindedness exam. But it wasn’t a problem to like tattoos and have them, except Pen was a natural beauty. She didn’t need to be artificially enhanced. And she wasn’t ‘pretty.’ She was lovely and glowing. Anyone who needed to read that on her wouldn’t see her even with the shallow label.

He moved the mattresses back from the fireplace and lit it, setting the screen in front of it. They would make it as warm as possible. The kitchen would heat up while he was cooking, but it had more drafts and a cold tile floor. He would turn on a space heater in a bathroom, but it was likely they were all skipping showers. The house was just too much cold emptiness.

They would be fine for a day or two. Colin would go around smashing chairs to burn if they were snowed in longer, but there was snow clearing for their lane once a week. He didn’t think they’d be in trouble. He was less at ease about their unplanned camp out. They were no longer children, and cuddling with Penelope had a different connotation. Nothing would happen with Eloise in the room, but he was not unaware of her on a level of abstract desire.

Colin shook off that strange thought. He was there as a friend, and he was also in charge of their safety. He wasn’t going to get back in the car until he knew he could find the road. They needed a hot meal, sleep and a new day to figure out if they were trying to keep their appointment with inexplicably modern vampire brothers.

He got the oven preheating, mostly because he needed to get out of his wet coat before he could cook anything. Colin picked through their groceries and tried not to be irritated about a lack of selection. Ms. Cora was generous considering she didn’t know they were coming. They had realized if they were going to reach the house they would have to keep going instead of stopping for a meal, though there were snacks in the car.

It made him feel like his mother to be worrying over how long it had been since El and Pen had full stomachs, but he worried the weather would cut their electricity. If they had eaten and washed up, it wouldn’t be a tragedy. They would tell ghost stories and wrap up warm until they fell asleep. There were a few upsides to an old house with lots of fireplaces.

“-seven times and wonder why anyone is bored? Oh, it’s pretty warm in here, good! Do we have a kettle,” Eloise asked.

She started water boiling, and he noticed Penelope was checking every drawer for spoons. She looked cold, and Colin smiled at her.

“Hey, Pen, you like burgers, right? Ms. Cora wasn’t exactly thrilled or prepared to feed teenagers. I think we’re getting her nephew’s food from when he visits her. I have frozen hamburgers, fries and onion rings, but we’re going to have to use the oven. I’m not willing to deep fry in a pot this far from civilization. There’s also bread, peanut butter and jam. We have cans of soup.”

“I like all of that.”

Unsurprisingly, Pen was easy to deal with and her friend El - who he supposed was a relative of his some way or another - had demands.

“I would like a lobster,” Eloise shouted.

He was not going to throw things at his sister in this strange kitchen. He didn’t know where to find a first aid kit, and they were on a deadline.

“They do seem like great pets,” Colin said. “They can live basically forever. I’m not sure how affectionate they are. I’d probably have a dog.”

“Typical, dog person,” his sister accused.

“El, he can’t help it,” Pen said, smiling at him apologetically. “She’s a cat person, but without the cats because of her asthma. So she’s not on board. I like animals. A dog and a cat would be perfect.”

Colin smiled back. “The cat can teach the dog not to be so clingy, and the dog can make the cat more affectionate.”

“Right, they teach each other better traits and everyone gets to a good average comfort level. It’s a good idea, provided fur isn’t a phobia for you. Worse you get is a bit of a language mixup with a cat-sounding dog.”

There was a cupboard with tea, coffee and a pack of hot chocolate. Eloise sighed. They didn’t have her chai, in a house she hadn’t visited for years. It was an oversight she would move on from, but not without whining.

“I think we should boil water to have hot drinks and make some food now,” he said. “I’m not convinced we’ll still have power if we wait. A lot of this food needs to cook through and we can reheat it over a fire. I think we’ll do fries and onion rings in the oven, burgers in a pan and heat up soup. We have granola bars and stuff for sandwiches, but I’d like to do a big meal now. I could eat a horse.”

Pen smiled, and she took down a tea box. “I found rooibos with ginger. No milk in the groceries, so we’re drinking it black,” she said. “Will I make you one?”

Eloise frowned at Penelope. “You can’t make three?”

“You don’t like rooibos, and you’re looking through the other boxes. Colin is cooking for us.”

“I’ll have anything that’s not licorice,” he said. “And maybe you can open soup cans and get them on the burner, El?”

Penelope pulled out some dried spices and mixed up something mild that would make the canned soup a little nicer. She pulled down plates and rinsed them, since the dishes didn’t get used very often. She put a cup of tea next to his station at the stove, and he hip bumped her.

“Thank you. We do have some dessert things, but those just need to be peeled out of wrappers. Something about me says junk food - or Ms. Cora just grabbed the brightest coloured food.”

“I’m sure it will be good. Do you really think we’ll lose power overnight?” Her little shiver made him feel bad. Maybe they wouldn’t have any trouble, and he shouldn’t worry.

“I’m not sure. If it goes out I don’t like the idea of people up and down stairs in the dark like that,” Colin told her. “There’s a half bath down here, but all the showers and tubs are upstairs. It’s really dark in those hallways and the sun is going to set basically now.”

There was a strange light to the evening, and he wondered if trying to keep the car dug out would make a difference. He had clothes to change into, but he didn’t want to get too cold if they were down to candles and the fireplace. And Colin wasn’t going to let anyone else outside to be freezing with him.

He put his spatula down and pulled Pen in under his arm. “We’re fine, I promise. Ant will be up all night watching the road reports so he can call the plow guy for us. We might even get Simon out here to check on us, or Benedict. But I don’t know that we’ll get help from Ben. We might just have to feed him, too, while he sketches the way we’re snowed in.”

“He would call it the beauty of pristine isolation,” Eloise said caustically. “Oh, Ms. Cora gave us chocolate chips!”

Colin caught Penelope’s look of terror. Too much sugar while snowed in with Eloise and a shared sleeping space was going to be hellish. She grabbed it. “I’ll make us mug cakes,” she said. “Hot dessert, right?”

He looked out the kitchen windows, meant to bring light into what used to be a workplace for several servants who would have cooked like caterers but with no automatic gadgets. Colin knew whisking by hand was a thing, but if he had to do it to make whipped cream or mashed potatoes he would just sprain his wrist and call himself out of the battle. There would be lumps, and he would not apologize for them.

“I want some cinnamon and nutmeg in mine, please,” he said.

“Ew, no respect! Don’t listen to him,” Eloise said, waving her hand in front of her nose like the notion was smelly. “Do not ruin mine or yours. Chocolate is enough.”

“It’s just sad there’s no cilantro here,” Colin said. “It’s great on a burger.”

Pen wasn’t disgusted, but her face was doubtful. His sister looked like he’d suggested he would barbecue her instead.

“You are wrong,” she said. “Not about things you say, just as a person.”

“El! Not something you say! He’s a good person with . . . unique facets?”

He stood back from the stove and puffed his chest. “Penelope Featherington thinks I’m a diamond. If I keep her alive in this magnificent shack she might marry me one day so we can have heirs to also not know what to do with the place.”

Pen shook her head. “I’m going to be working. You’ll have to have the babies,” she said. “Also, you’d better manage your money well because I’m going into a creative field and won’t be able to afford them. And I don’t know how to get anyone pregnant, let alone a man. Honestly, your plan has flaws.”

He put his spatula down dramatically. “I’m not going to repeat that for our beautiful children, Pen. I’m going to tell them you were so happy you cried. I’m going to remember this only with joy, and admitted confusion about the method of childbearing. I remember hearing something in primary school about toilet seats. I believe the rumour was that there were girls’ rooms and boys’ rooms because using the girl’s room loo would get boys pregnant.”

She shrugged. “Okay. You create whatever scenario makes you happy while you are not burning our food. Your ring is going to be a lollipop as well, and if you eat it I’m not getting something nicer.”

“Well, that’s the very best news for Anthony to be anxious about while we are snowed in far away from his ‘adult supervision.’ You should tell him right away so he can celebrate with a cardiac episode,” Eloise said happily. “I’d manage with fewer brothers. And my phone is ringing. Hello Mother. No, we’re okay-”

She walked out of the kitchen to get away from Colin’s enthusiastic flipping of the fries halfway through their cooking. Penelope opened cupboards and flashed a jar of cinnamon at Colin.

“No nutmeg, but I like some added flavour,” Pen said quietly.

“You should put chili powder in El’s,” he suggested.

Her glance was warm but she disagreed. “We are too far from a hospital to get her going. Don’t forget she’s been cooped up in the car all day with me telling her not to bug you. That’s a lot of good behaviour from a Bridgerton on a long drive.”

He poked at the burgers sizzling. “I only threatened to stop the car to let you out and then drive over a cliff once,” Colin told her righteously. “I’m a very patient soul.”

He did ruin it by flipping a burger too fast and flicking his hand with hot grease.

“Are you okay?”

“It didn’t hurt,” he said quickly, shaking the fingers around until the burning went away.

She shook her head. “I watched ‘The Shining’ and I still came here of my own free will,” Penelope said. “Is there even a hedge maze?”

He winked. “I’m going to have to chase you through the scary woods with bare trees. Sorry about that.”

“Eloise is going to come after us with one of those swords. We’re more likely to be on the other side of the killing spree.”

Colin sighed. “I guess it’s inevitable after letting her wander around alone upstairs. She’s probably spoken to several ghosts by now. The seed is planted and we will just have to be fast. And now you can shield me with your body and save my life!”

Pen studied her mug cake batter in the mugs, and tapped a little more cinnamon on one. “I can cover the lower five feet of your body, but that foot above me is fair game and Eloise is almost as tall as you are. I think depending on my actions to defend you could be disastrous. I would try, and fall - literally - short.”

He put his hand to his heart. “The puns would be enough, Pen.”

Eloise came back with a scowl. “Mother thinks we might have to stay the week, and she’s heard about deliveries of groceries by unmanned drones. If you hear a very small helicopter, she’s found a way to order us food and it might get dropped down the chimney like Santa the way she talks about it. I tried to tell her the phone signal is horrible, but she’s going to call tomorrow. And I told her we want ingredients for cocktails, so now we have a family meeting scheduled to talk about ‘celebrating responsibly.’”

Pen’s eyebrows went up. “Ooh, tough break for the Bridgerton youth contingent,” she said smugly.

“With Penelope, because Mother loves her like one of her own children, and she’s involved in the concern. She fears we have been a corruption to her.”

Pouting, their newly adopted sister sighed. “El, did you really have to poke at your mother’s worries?”

Eloise nodded. “It’s who I am, and she was being very melodramatic. I thought being melodramatic back would make her calm down,” she said. “And now I am very hungry. All I ate today was popcorn.”

Colin sighed loudly. “There was normal food at breakfast, and we did stop on the road here. For that matter, I would not have stopped you from putting together a sandwich in the car from the groceries we picked up,” he said.

“Penelope does not like to smell food as she is driving a long way. I was being considerate.”

“I travel much better now than when I was younger,” their maligned friend said.

He nodded. “This food is done, and we’re in for the night. Let’s pull chairs up to the counter in here where it’s warm. Anthony will hatch scorpions from his nose if we eat burgers on the antique desk in the study. Pen, can I get the paper towels, please?”

The uncooked mug cakes were set into the fridge, with a spoon marking Eloise’s boring one. They toasted the hamburger buns and stacked them with condiments - fresh tomato and lettuce were the unfortunate casualties of Ms. Cora’s quick sacking of her pantry to feed yet more Bridgertons.

The fries and onion rings were almost nicer than the hamburgers, and ketchup or vinegar answered for a lot of sins in frozen food. Colin was the first one finished, and he pulled the two mug cakes without spoons out.

“Hey, are those both the same with cinnamon?”

“Yes. You can do 60 seconds for the initial bake and throw some chocolate chips on top for another 30 seconds.”

They ate heartily, the anxious driving placated by rich food and the warmth of full stomachs. Penelope and Eloise did the dishes and Colin put the old fashioned enamel kettle on the stove. He boiled as much water as it would hold. The kettle would stay warm for hours, just in case the power went out.

“I’m not going to boil enough water to fill a bathtub,” he said. “I showered this morning and I’m good to wait to wash up. And I don’t think anyone is particularly stinky. Anyone desperately need a shower tonight? There’s hot water but it’s going to be dark if the lights go on you.”

The two women shook their heads. “Upstairs is really cold. We’ll have to turn on a space heater right in the bathroom for a long time before anyone can shower comfortably. And if we do that we can’t go to sleep with it running,” Eloise said. “I think we use the half bath down here and figure it out in the morning.”

Everyone was deemed inoffensive to share a floor bed, and he walked through the house checking for any obvious hazards. The house was checked regularly, but the staff would stay away on winter days when the roads were dodgy. Penelope met him back at the front door, where he was checking to make sure it was locked despite their isolation.

“If you’re checking things, can I help?”

Colin shrugged. “Pen, this is just placating Anthony’s neuroses. I don’t even have to do this and the house is cold. The heat is on, but we could live here the whole month and not have comfortable temperatures. We have to heat the empty space above our heads, and watch it up there. I guess we could put you in a harness and hoist you up there, but I don’t think you like being hoisted.”

She shook her head. “Most of all I object to the use of my own petard. I was saving that petard for future hoisting. It was my wedding petard and if you use it I won’t have a dowry,” she said. “We’re fine here. We won’t freeze. There is a lot of firewood as a backup and the furnace is running. We have the makings of peanut butter sandwiches and a startling number of cookies. Ms. Cora wants you to have heart problems, I think.”

His anxiety over driving in increasingly deep snow further from major roads had made Colin seem desperate. It was possible Ms. Cora had felt bad for him, or for his companions. He wasn’t above being comforted by dessert.

“I think she just looks at me and assumes I eat a lot,” he said easily. “I can’t blame her for noticing reality. If we ran out of cookies, cannibalism would follow.”

“Your mother will pack a crate of groceries and arrange to be dangled from a RAF helicopter to be dropped off here to keep you fed,” Penelope said. “Come on, it’s freezing. El is preparing her suggestions for what we do for the evening. Once she watches the opening titles, you know we won’t get a vote.”

It would have seemed obvious their options were limited. There was no tv room in this house. There might be a few cartoons for the children, but Bridgertons were possessive. They didn’t leave personal things here, and toys were dragged in an extra suitcase. They had last visited years ago.

“No internet,” he said. “I guess we could try to get normal television channels, but I don’t even really remember how the antenna works. You keep moving it basically the whole time you’re watching, and at the end it always falls out of the spot you found that worked?”

“I think it’s mostly wishful thinking that does much. The signal strength is better or worse and it fluctuates. And the storm is disruptive. I thought we were going to watch the episodes of our show downloaded to the laptop, but apparently El has other downloads. Some of them are docudramas about how famous women with great talents were ruined by unhappy marriages,” Penelope said, letting a little humour leak out.

Eloise was so adamant about the potential of single women that she risked being dismissive of married women or those who wanted families. Colin sighed.

“I am not watching a poet weep at a kitchen table. The drive was terrible. I need to relax. I realize a body of work from a person without a home and children can easily grow much larger and it’s unfair. I load the dishwasher. I’m not looking to break a woman and saddle her with children so her brain deteriorates and she gives up her dreams!”

There was a flick of red hair dangling across her forehead, and Penelope blew at it. “It’s not my current mood, either. Walk faster. Maybe she’ll settle for a period drama with lots of ballroom dancing and scandalous hand holding, as long as it has a large side plot about terrible working conditions for Welsh miners.”

And Penelope took his hand and held it up, bowing her head and grinning like she might use it for something indecorous.

“My sister is a morbid soul,” he said. “Do you honestly enjoy her company? You can tell me the truth. It’s because our house had better biscuits, right? And the lack of supervision when you’re trying to lust over vampire brothers? You’ve been using us all along!?”

Having decided she was a faithless woman using him for his permissive mother and well-stocked pantry, Colin pulled his hand away, aghast.

Pen smirked. “I just wanted your biscuits. And the homework help from Anthony was amazing,” she said. “He does basically all my math for me, then he erases it and makes me do it over. It’s really not teaching me to work harder.”

Ant would simultaneously wrench his back excusing any youthful frailties and propel the unfortunate subject of his help into success. And he would do math homework for fun, then empty the answer spots to make sure it wasn’t an unearned grade. Colin wasn’t kidding about his oldest brother’s likely plan to set a very early alarm to check the snowfall overnight, or the potential of a rescue by military helicopter.

“He thinks watching him have fun is the same as having fun,” he said. “At least he doesn’t sing the math to you, which is what made me terrible with sums and later catatonic when faced with exponents.”

“I reclaimed my basic math abilities by showing him I could pace my sonnets,” Pen said. “Maybe Hyacinth will be a physics prodigy yet. Or Ben will start with very geometric art?”

“The Viscount loves a sweeping right angle. Okay, so how are we arguing this? Do we skew it to a vote, or attempt to play on your homesickness? Because if she thinks you’re afraid we’ll get exactly what we want out of her!”

“That is a shabby way to talk about my friend.”

“But completely fair when talking about a pushy sister,” Colin said frankly. “Do you think you have some fake tears ready to go? I feel like watching ‘The Thing.’ Frozen solitude interrupted by strange death scenes are fun.”

She kept walking past the closed study door, and he snagged her back to tip her the right way.

“Why do the doors not look like doors here?”

“Probably something to do with hiding the women and children from invaders,” he said. “One presumes even Vikings wouldn’t stop at every panel of the wall in three floors of hallways trying to shoulder in a door. Also, there’s a doorknob.”

Pen sighed. “You’re a doorknob!”

Colin pulled her red hair. “I may be, but I am a descendent of this fine house and you’re probably cut from murderous Celts that would have been trying to break down doors to get at my womenfolk. I’d have had to fight you with your blue face paint and strange ways with the fairies.”

She pulled away and her hair flicked. “May your potatoes be wee and misshapen, Mr. Bridgerton.”

He rubbed at his heart. “Pen! Not my potatoes!”

Eloise had found every pillow in the house, to the point even Colin might have been able to make a bed of them even without the mattresses. The smell of the fireplace was prickling his nose, but the study was warm enough they’d get some sleep even if the power dropped. Since they were camping on the floor, rules about crumbs in bed were suspended per sleepover rules. There were bottles of water and snacks piled on the desk, though Eloise had put a tray between the antique wood and any condensation. The living ghost of Anthony’s fears for the furniture was imbued in every youngster of the current set, including their borrowed Featherington.

“Ugh, do not speak of your potatoes to her,” Eloise said in disgust.

“I actually just meant the vegetable, and his garden of spuds will be cursed,” Pen said. “So how are we passing the evening? I feel like building a nest, wrapping up and watching a movie. Something silly and a little scary. Maybe that one about the alien shape-shifting to infect different Arctic researchers? The Thing is a classic. It’s snowy, which is relatable for us. It’s clever. It has some science and we love STEM. And it has a flamethrower for our simpletons of the group.”

She looked at him with exaggerated pity, and he slumped into the insult to draw fire to his brain power instead of his stealthy suggestion of the movie. Eloise shrugged.

“I’m going to look at the swords,” she said. “Maybe wave a few around. Might sharpen one if I feel like it. I like a collection of sharp things. It’s satisfying.”

Colin’s back was trying to spasm from dread. “We’re a long way from medical help and I don’t know that we’d even have some old finger plasters, El. You could look at them. That’s satisfying. Maybe you could take pictures and find an elective in uni that lets you use your sword photos as an assignment?”

Penelope’s faked pity was now real. “It’s not the same, is it?”

Eloise nodded. “It’s not the same at all. As someone who fenced to keep up with Ben and Ant, you must see weapons are not just interesting for their use. They are symbols of power.”

He rolled his eyes. “They are rusty and neglected. They will give you flesh-eating bacteria and you will lose an arm. And I think you are overestimating the entertainment of it. It’s not that interesting. The arm gets tired.”

His sister twinkled with goading. She walked to the closet and pulled it open. “If I get bored, I’ll do something else. Do you want a sword, Penelope?”

She was a reasonable person, but her mother did not believe in sporty violence. Fencing class was substituted on Colin’s schedule with his mother’s permission. Penelope was stuck in home economics in a deeply sexist turn, and Eloise was pressured to take the same because of her asthma acting up that year.

“I might look at them - carefully,” she said, giving him a cute little face of regret.

Colin sighed. “I tried. When we’re all in the hospital, I want you to remember I spoke to both of you about my concerns,” he told them.

He had no urge to explore near-death experiences after his day of driving. He was really grateful to get them safely through the door and know they had shelter. His eyes were sore from straining through blowing snow and grey winter light. He might have just fallen asleep to the movie even if he liked it. His sister Daphne, who aspired to have kids by the time she was twenty-five, liked to test out gentle parenting on her siblings. If he did not make a big deal of playing with the swords, their desire to horrify him would wear off and they could do something normal for once.

“Do not swing them around in that little space,” he said. Swords are weighted to go where they are angled.”

“Yes, thank you! It’s like having a stunt coordinator for using the toaster,” El said. “Once he took out the booklet and read how to set the clock on the oven. No one asked.”

Penelope looked at him much more warmly. “Colin is only trying to help.”

“You do not say that when it is one of your sisters helping you.”

“My sisters tried to drown me in the bath when I was a baby, I think. They are never just trying to help. They still reminisce about my yellow wardrobe,” Pen grumbled. “I do not miss it, and anyone with eyes should have known I needed rescuing from my mother’s colour scheme.”

He had liked her in yellow, a spitfire of a shortass literary critic trapped in the body of a girl. And Colin didn’t pester her about it. She got to dress the way she wanted, if only to find her way back to bright colours. Colin piled pillows and plonked himself on the floor bed, stretching out his back.

He expected about ten minutes of clattering around and then a recognition that swords weren’t all that exciting outside of the dramatic scenes that included them. Some of them would have gemstones for decoration or a different colour of metal finish. They would have leather wrapped around handles. They would have straps to attach to a belt or around a chest. And they were just big versions of the butter knives in the kitchen they had recently washed.

“That’s too big, no one could lift it,” Eloise said snidely. “Sword as penis extension.”

He was minding his business, but he felt her looking at him. Colin looked up from his phone screen and frowned. “I don’t carry a sword for any reason!”

Residents of England could have swords if they were artifacts, but sharp modern swords were regulated and largely illegal. He wondered if they should be donating some of this sword room to a museum to have an arguable purpose. No one in the family was much of a killer.

“Don’t pick on him. It’s just too big. No one is strong enough to swing that,” Penelope said.

He didn’t know why her conclusion irritated him worse than El’s accusation of needing enhancement for his masculinity. It was a statement to keep peace, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

“It can be lifted by a man,” he said.

And bless both of them and their stubborn Bridgerton genes, but his half of a dare was met by El’s dismissive mumble.

“Yeah?”

He climbed up and waved them out of the doorway of the closet. “Which one?”

It was a broadsword, and it was ridiculous. It would stand to his chest. He couldn’t swing in the room. But he could lift it up. Colin used two hands and brought it smoothly from the rack, making sure it didn’t veer toward anyone or his own limbs. And when he had it pointed down along his front, Eloise shrugged.

“I mean, you lifted it, but a baby elephant is one-hundred-fifty pounds. I can lift it but I can’t walk anywhere or do anything with it,” she said.

And well she shouldn’t be stealing an elephant baby and using it to fight people, but he did understand the jibe. Holding something just off the floor was not wielding it.

“Okay, fine.”

Colin moved to the middle of the room, very carefully. He was aware of his own traits toward daring when in the company of people who felt safe. He wanted to impress people, and this was a clear advantage for him. He had a lot of upper body strength that didn’t get much useful role other than carrying books or groceries for his mother.

He gave a warning look to stay far back, and he held the sword up and pointed out from him at chest height. The pull of his shoulders was worrying, and he grunted but held it steady. He even gave it a little swish back and forth to fight a very small opponent.

“It looks good on you,” Pen said supportively.

He smiled. “Thank you.”

Eloise pouted. “He’d fall over if he had a shield and armor, too. It’s all beside the point.”

Colin was getting annoyed again. “I obviously didn’t train the way I’d need to, but I can lift it. If I knew how, I could fight with it. I’m sorry you weren’t right, but it was a dumb thing to bring up. I’m not good with weapons, but they’re made to be lifted.”

He was concentrating on pointing the sword at the floor, and he stepped forward with the weight of it pulling him. His foot hit the round edge of a sofa pillow, and he tripped toward the desk. He caught himself, but shoved the tray of food and knocked a lamp over. And while he was desperately trying to make sure he didn’t literally fall on a sword, Pen darted in to save the lamp. She shoved it back, and the tray pushed with a clatter. A bunch of loose objects on the desk flipped at Colin as the bottles of water and snacks pelted his side. He flinched and stumbled, also worried that Pen’s distance from the sword was not far enough. He could not swing it at her.

The highly polished desk finish slipped the lamp like a speed skater, and she was slapping her hands down to try to stop all the things from flying at him. Penelope leaned across the corner of the desk and her legs popped up. Eloise dodged her legs kicking, and he held his breath. He threw the sword toward the mattresses made up on the floor. There were glass decorative things, and his friend looked like she might face plant into them.

Colin caught her, and they rolled against the edge of the desk. Pen held on to him and he felt his elbow go down hard on the desk. She cried out and he froze as Pen’s hand went under his sweater, something cold with it. His flesh crawled for a bare second before he was sliced open.

This was what came of playing in the closet of sharp things! She had tried to help but with a knife in her hand, and now he had a gut wound. Those were supposed to be very long-suffering, so at least the ambulance might have a chance of getting to him.

“Oh my God! Colin!”

Eloise was eying them, but she didn’t understand. Pen had his blood on her hand and Colin had clasped it to his ribs. He was waiting for pain to start. His sister thought they were overreacting.

“I think I’m stabbed a little,” he said wonderingly. “I didn’t think it would be you.”

His sister lost patience and walked over to tip them upright and pull Penelope’s arm from his shirt. Several metal things fell to the floor, including a letter opener and a pair of scissors. They had been playing with swords, and he thought Pen had managed to get him with office supplies.

“It’s not even that bad,” El told him, but then she saw Penelope’s hand was bloody. “Oh bollocks! Colin!”

“It wasn’t on purpose.” He pressed his sweater to his middle, blinking as pain started to build up. Maybe it was just his brain anticipating how much this was going to suck, but he couldn't look. Looking would mean calling someone and getting help.

“I’m so sorry,” Pen told him, touching his face with her clean hand.

“I know. I’m sure it’s not that bad. Hey, I’m going to sit down now. Maybe you can bring some towels and rubbing alcohol?”

As if commanded by stupidity, the wind outside howled as the door to the study was flung open and Eloise ran for supplies. Pen kicked the stuff from around his feet so he didn’t cut himself up walking on them, then she realized she had moved them under the desk where his feet would be once he sat. She sighed and made him balance his arse on the desk while she ducked underneath it and pulled all the objects out to pile on a shelf in a mess.

“Okay, sit now,” she said. “Keep pressure on it. We should look, I think. To check for - stuff.”

Colin didn’t know what stuff he wanted to see. Bone felt like a possibility, but at least he was still clear-headed. He felt very warm but panic made him panic, too.

“I don’t want to look at it. It doesn’t hurt much now. I think we leave it alone.”

“No, Colin,” Pen whined. “We have to look. If it’s deep . . . We have to see it. You wanted rubbing alcohol to clean it.”

He no longer wanted to be patched up. He felt like ignoring it would be what made his new gut wound very happy. They could be a team; gut wound and Colin. He would become a stand-up comedian and make it talk like a ventriloquist dummy. He could wiggle the edges of his sliced up belly and bring joy.

“I think it’s not that bad,” he said, shaking his head.

“I think I jabbed you with a letter opener, and if you die I’ll have to have a baby with one of your brothers to make this up to your mother!”

Well that was an unfair compensation for Colin’s suffering! His mother would be thrilled to have Penelope knocked up with a Bridgerton when she was a bit older, but not if it was a guilty duty. And it might be nice to live to meet this fine namesake she proposed. He was technically the closest of the male Bridgertons to her affections, so he might argue that she needed to offer him the opportunity before anyone else. He supposed any ideal about his rights would be defunct if he bled out.

“Please don’t sleep with any of my brothers,” he grunted. “Mother will just have to lump it. You can visit my grave with her, or something.”

Penelope looked at her bloody hand and her mouth wobbled. If she cried this was going to be terrible. He wouldn’t be able to show any fear or pain then, because she took it really hard to be responsible for any less than optimal experience. She presented gifts of baked goods by apologizing if they weren’t delicious.

“I don’t want to have sex with your brothers!”

“Hell, this is escalating emotionally more than it deserves,” El said, coming back with an armload of linens and boxes. “Pen, wipe your hand, here. Colin, you need to take the sweater off.”

He let go of Penelope, since they had been embracing. There was blood sticking his t-shirt down. He didn’t want to know how much he was leaking.

“No, it’s embarrassing. I don’t ask you when you bleed.”

He went back to applying pressure and Eloise rolled her eyes. “This is an injury. We are not at home, so you need to cooperate with me,” she said. “Do you need me to call Mother to boss you?”

He didn’t want anyone calling home to tell them he was bleeding, ever. It was just not the good kind of excitement. He’d rather have won a blender at campus bingo games, or had a sandwich named after him in a cafe.

“I’m taking it off, but just the sweater, and I’ll do it myself. You don’t touch it.”

The stretch to get the sweater over his head was painful, and Colin felt more blood squirt as he moved. He winced and he could hear Penelope was crying.

“I’m okay, Pen. It’s a scratch. You know we’re a dramatic family. Blame Anthony’s repression for it. Hey, can you open my suitcase and take out a new t-shirt and sweater for me?”

The suitcases were in the room with them, but at least she would have something to keep her busy. He didn’t want to show his chest like this. Eloise had a bottle of rubbing alcohol stinging his nose and a threatening gauze pad open on the wrapper.

“Lift up the shirt. Someone needs to look.”

“It’s not that bad! It’s very dramatic, but it’s not stopping me from moving at all. It’s just . . . wet.”

“That is blood, dummy. You’re not supposed to let it fall out,” she said. “I’ll soak the gauze for you, and you need to wipe it really gently so we can see it. If it’s deep, we need to call someone.”

Mother and Ant were going to make Benedict snowshoe to the house with some wacky country remedy that would involve getting Colin drunk and stitching him up like Frankenstein’s monster.

“I will look,” Colin said stiffly. “Just me.”

He cringed as the gauze was handed over and El turned her back with her arms crossed. He lifted the shirt and patted over a lot of his skin before he actually found the wound. And he chuckled. “Heh, it’s just a scratch. It’s right where I bend, so that’s going to be terrible, but it’s not that bad. You can look.”

El seemed almost disappointed, but she nodded. “It’s really not much. It was probably the letter opener and not the scissors. It’s bleeding like mad. You need to keep pressure. A hospital wouldn’t even stitch this,” she said. “Lucky.”

His fortune would be revisited in the morning after he slept on the floor and potentially bled all over Penelope overnight. It wasn’t like he could help it, but it felt like a personal failing he couldn’t control his blood better. This was giving a really good idea of the trouble of periods.

“It’s not deep? Are you just saying that?”

El turned to her friend so kindly compared to her first aid temperament. “I am all for minimizing Colin’s suffering, but in this case it’s truly almost nothing. I think it got all mangled from his jamming his clothes into it and that pulled it to bleed more. If we can get it clean and bandaged, it will be fine. You don’t ever have to screw any of my brothers. And I don’t want to know the context of how it came up, ever!”

Pen was holding one of his t-shirts and moved it to her arm like a baby. “I was going to have to make up for killing Colin by giving her a grandchild,” she said, sniffling. “But it was going to be a very hard thing to put to my mother, so this is much better.”

He was so flattered that replacing him couldn’t be that easy. Of course they could have a baby in the future, but that was an odd thing to suggest and he wasn’t going to say the bizarre things that crossed his mind when adrenaline was involved. His mother didn’t even want a new version of him. She liked the original. His son would not necessarily be like him.

“Gross,” El said, giving Pen a hug. “Even if no one had to be pregnant to give us a new Colin, I think we might do without him. There are seven other siblings. Just because someone is a mother doesn’t mean she’s above being kind of greedy.”

“This is so touching. It’s like being at my own funeral. I’m getting such emotional clarity,” he grumbled. “Am I going to sleep just for you to stab me a few more times? El too, like a gentle senator of Rome? I will live, but only briefly. It’s the lull.”

Penelope went back to digging in his clothes. “It’s not the lull. It’s getting you cleaned up so you can rest. And you should eat something since all your nutrients from dinner tried to escape with your blood. I thought we’d nicked your liver. I was prepared to catch your intestines and put them in a pillow case tied to your belt!”

He was hurting his wound pressing on it, but the pain wasn’t getting worse. He was a little stressed, but that was mostly physical symptoms of heightened emotions. And it was better Pen could stay in high school and finish her studies instead of producing the closest thing to a Colin clone she could. That wasn’t the way to get more redheads in the family.

The next half hour was a mostly silent rearranging of their camping spot. Colin patched up his wound and changed shirts in the bathroom. He felt like he wasn’t going to be up to driving the next day, but he had nearly died from a stab wound by not playing with a sword. The trip had to be judged differently from traditional successes.

The heavy sword had been put away and the closet shut. He was given the biggest pile of pillows and the choice of movies. Pen gave him a pain tablet, and he let her play room service waiter with the snacks so he didn’t have to get up.

His phone chimed a notification and he read the text. “Ant wants to know how we are. Do I lie until tomorrow? It only works if you both back me up,” he said.

Penelope - sweet and gentle Pen from across the street who had called teenage Ant ‘sir’ a few times - wiggled closer and shared his pillow mountain. “Just say we’re watching a movie and going to sleep right after. It’s not a lie. It’s a truncation of reality, which is a kindness for the human mind. Anyone trying to know everything would go insane,” she said.

He tapped out a message and Eloise sighed. “You two are starting to plot together a little too well. You don’t truncate reality for me, do you?”

“No, we’re trying to drive you insane,” Colin told her easily. “I look for opportunities.”

El pulled her blankets higher. “I blame you two for our bad luck. There’s a cloud of misfortune that feels very Colin-shaped, blown by a Penelope warm breeze. I don’t like it. It’s fishy.”

He tensed, aware of the possibility their teenage neighbour might balk about being suspected of illicit actions with him. It was nice to cuddle with her and he didn’t want self-consciousness to take that away. Pen wasn’t cuddly with many people. A thrown-off remark could take away all her comfort around him.

“I wouldn’t have planned to blow him on a trip with you, El,” she said slyly. “I’d figure out something that you hated and ask Colin to drive me. This is just teen movie basic knowledge. When trying to date your best friend’s brother, you can’t tell your best friend until after. Ask forgiveness because you won’t get permission. I know you don’t like most rom-coms, but there are some secret dating rules that need to be learned from somewhere.”

Both Bridgertons seemed speechless, and she let them stew.

“I was joking. I nearly killed Colin trying to stop him from knocking over a lamp,” Penelope told them. “He should keep his clothes on around me. My mother is not ready for me to reproduce.”

He had trouble watching the movie, even when the alien shape-shifter exploded people. It wasn’t as strange as hearing her comprehensive plan to get him alone to make a move. Colin wasn’t sure if his blood loss was making him woozy even after all the sugar, but he had to write off any warm fuzzies until he was further from his impalement.