Work Text:
The clock on the mantel had struck half-past midnight, its chime muffled by the thick velvet drapes that softened the world into silence. Outside the windows of the Bloomsbury townhouse, London slept beneath a sky quilted with cloud and moonlight. Inside, the fire in the hearth had dwindled to a bed of coals, casting flickering gold and amber shadows across the floor and up the spines of books lining the study walls. The air smelled of ink, old books, and something floral—lavender, faint but lingering, a whisper of the woman who so often scented his thoughts.
Colin Bridgerton sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves, a faint smudge of ink on the edge of his jaw and a wild glint in his eyes. His fingers moved swiftly, the nib of his quill scratching with barely-contained enthusiasm across the thick paper. The desk was a glorious mess—half-creased maps, bound journals bursting with dog-eared pages, and his manuscript, now nearly complete, sprawled like a lover across the surface.
He looked boyish like this, flushed with creative triumph, hair tousled from raking it back in thought, one brow slightly furrowed in concentration. This was the version of Colin that not even the ton had ever seen: the explorer not just of continents, but of words.
He did not hear the door open. He rarely did, when his thoughts were in the South of France or the warm waters of the Mediterranean, or wherever his ink had most recently taken him.
“Colin?” came the soft murmur from the doorway, a note of sleep still clinging to her voice.
Colin’s head snapped up, a grin blooming at the sight of her. “Pen,” he said, the single syllable shaped with affection and amusement. “Shouldn’t you be abed, wife?”
Penelope stood in the doorway, her nightgown brushed with candlelight, one hand resting against the slight arch of her lower back, the other cradling the curve of her belly. Her copper curls had fallen loose from their braid, and her eyes, still a little hazy from sleep, blinked at him with both reproach and indulgence.
“It is half-past midnight, husband,” she said, lifting a brow. “You promised me you’d not let the writing keep you hostage tonight.”
“I did.” He sat back and stretched, the movement drawing his shirt tight across his chest. “But in my defense, the pages are flowing faster than I can chase them. It’s as though the book has decided it wants to be born before our child.”
Penelope laughed, low and fond. “Well, if it starts kicking, we may have cause to worry.”
She moved into the room slowly, the familiar waddle of six months’ pregnancy carried with surprising elegance. Colin rose halfway, as if to assist her, but she waved him off with a look he knew better than to disobey. She made her way to the desk and leaned over to glance at the sheet he’d just finished, the candlelight gilding her profile.
He watched her, not the page.
“You’ve added the story about the goats,” she said, one corner of her mouth twitching. “That was my suggestion, I believe.”
“As always, the best ones are.” He beamed. “Your mind is sharper than any compass I ever carried.”
“You flatter me, darling.” She tapped the page with a finger. “But I’ll allow it.”
She turned then, pressing her hand into the small of her back with a weary little sigh.
Colin moved his hand to her lower back, joining hers and massaging her gently.
“Come here, love. Sit with me while I finish these last few edits.” He patted his lap with the most rakish of smiles. “I write better when you’re near.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, though her lips curved in return. “Sweet words to get me on your lap, Mr.Bridgerton?”
“What can I say. I am an incorrigible rake for you, Mrs.Bridgerton,” he agreed. “But also deeply inspired. And entirely at your mercy.”
Penelope hesitated, eyeing his lap and then her belly. “You forget there are two of us now. We take up more space than I once did.”
Colin spread his arms wide, as if to welcome the entire population of London. “Then all the more reason to come sit, wife. There’s more than enough room in my lap—and my heart—for both of you.”
With an exaggerated groan that was more for theatrical flair than necessity, Penelope lowered herself onto Colin’s lap, twisting slightly to accommodate the swell of her belly and the narrowness of his chair. He shifted to make space, his right hand instinctively finding her hip, steady and sure, while the other reached back to his work without hesitation.
Pen nestled against him, adjusting until her head rested lightly against his shoulder and her hand, small and soft, came to rest on the edge of the desk. She smelled like sleep and lavender, the warmth of her body settling against his as naturally as breath.
“Comfortable?” he asked, voice low, pitched with affection.
“For now,” she said, then added archly, “Though I warn you, if you take too long, I shall be very mad indeed.”
Colin grinned into her hair. “Terrifying. But noted.”
He dipped the quill and resumed writing, hand gliding in confident strokes across the page. The scratch of ink against paper returned, rhythmic and certain. For a moment, there was nothing but the soft hiss of the fire and the scent of ink and paper, a bubble of peace wrapped around them like a well-loved blanket.
But Penelope’s gaze, half-lidded with sleep a moment before, sharpened suddenly.
She blinked.
Then blinked again.
Her brow creased delicately, and she tilted her head just enough to watch the angle of his movements more carefully. The quill sat easily between his fingers— the fingers of his left hand.
She watched for another moment, eyes narrowing, lips parting slightly.
“Colin?” she said softly, her voice a gentle murmur against his neck. “I did not know you wrote with your left hand.”
The quill froze mid-word. His body, which just moments before had been relaxed and easy beneath hers, turned to stone.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he looked down at the hand in question. As if it belonged to someone else. As if it had betrayed him.
“I—” He cleared his throat. “Yes. I—well. That is—”
Penelope lifted her head, startled to see colour rush to his cheeks. Embarrassment, thick and sudden, bloomed across his features like spilled wine.
“I didn’t think—Pen, I wasn’t paying attention, I—” He let out a low laugh, one that rang hollow around the edges. “I did not mean to—”
“Darling,” she interrupted gently, placing her hand over his chest, feeling the tremor there. “It’s not a crime.”
He looked at her then. Really looked. As if expecting mockery. Or worse—pity.
But Penelope’s gaze held only curiosity. And care. The kind of care that reached inside a person and rearranged the furniture of their soul.
“I simply hadn’t seen you do it before,” she continued softly. “I didn’t know.”
His shoulders eased slightly, but the trepidation still lingered behind his eyes, as though he wasn’t quite sure how to explain why the moment mattered or why her noticing it had touched something long-hidden.
She didn’t press. Not yet.
Instead, she leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, soft as a secret.
She waited. Her hands warm against his chest, her body a quiet weight in his lap. There was no demand in her silence, only space, wide and open, gently carved for truth.
Colin exhaled slowly, his eyes closed.
“It started before Eton,” he said finally, voice low, almost reluctant. “At home, I suppose. Though no one made much fuss about it there. I would reach for things with my left hand, and a nursemaid might gently nudge it away. Nothing cruel, just… correction. A tap here. A spoon placed in the right hand instead of the left. Encouragements to conform.”
Penelope frowned slightly, brows knitting together.
He opened his eyes, but did not meet her gaze.
“But at Eton—” He paused. His jaw worked, as though the words fought him. “At Eton, it was different.”
She said nothing, only rested her hand more firmly atop his heart.
“There, it was not a quirk to be endured,” he went on. “It was a defect to be cured. ” He gave a humourless laugh. “I was thirteen. Dad had recently died, and I was barely out of short coats. And within a week, one of my teachers had tied my left hand to the leg of my chair.”
Penelope gasped softly.
“I remember the roughness of the rope more than the pain,” Colin murmured, almost dreamlike now. “Though pain there was. It cut in, especially when I wriggled. Which I often did. I was a fidgety child, as you know, too curious by half and never quiet for long. I was made to write lines with my right hand until my wrist ached. ‘The left hand is the Devil’s hand,’ they said. Sinistra —from Latin. Sinister. And when the rope was too much, they would rap my knuckles with a wooden cane until they bled, until my hand hurt too much for me to use and had to use the one that felt unnatural.” He laughed again, bitter and sharp-edged. “Imagine being told, at thirteen, that the way God made you meant you were touched by sin.”
Penelope’s breath hitched. She slipped her fingers to his jaw, guiding his face gently toward hers.
“I never told my family,” he said, softer now. “Mother had enough to fret over with the younger ones. Dad was gone. And Anthony—he had enough on his plate being the Viscount and taking care of everybody. It felt… small, then. Petty, even. And I was so desperate to belong. ”
He looked at her now, eyes dark and glassy.
“I forced myself to use my right hand. For everything. For writing, for eating, fencing. I trained it like one might a stubborn hound. And it never came easily. My handwriting with my right was always a disgrace. I found it more difficult to concentrate. But I wanted—” He stopped himself, jaw tightening. “I wanted not to be marked. Not to be the odd one. Not at Eton. And certainly not in a family full of excellence.”
Penelope’s thumb brushed the corner of his mouth, catching a tremor there.
“Oh, my darling,” she whispered. “What a cruelty it was, to teach a boy to be ashamed of his own hand.”
Her heart wept for the boy she knew, the boy she loved. So full of laughter and joy, suffering because of something he couldn’t control. Because of something that made him, him .
Colin leaned into her touch. “It was more than the hand, Pen. It makes you doubt everything. You start wondering what else in you is wrong. What else will they try to fix? ”
They sat there in the stillness, the only sounds the soft crackle of the fire and the steady thrum of London beyond the glass.
“I never meant to hide it from you,” he said finally. “I simply… forgot.”
Penelope placed her forehead against his. “Then let it be forgotten. Not because it is shameful, but because it no longer needs hiding.”
He exhaled, a long, shaking breath that seemed to leave his lungs lighter.
Colin’s shoulders had just begun to loosen beneath her when his hand moved—almost absently at first—and came to rest on the gentle rise of her belly.
His left hand .
The same hand that had once been bound and bruised. The one that had been shamed, punished, hidden.
Now it cupped the place where his child lay nestled, as if in defiance of all that had come before.
He was quiet a long moment, his palm splayed wide and reverent, as though he could feel more than just the subtle pressure beneath the skin. As though he could touch the future, if he held still enough.
Then, without lifting his gaze from her belly, he said quietly, “I sometimes fear they’ll inherit it.”
Penelope, who had been stroking small circles on his collarbone with her thumb, stilled.
Colin swallowed.
“Not the hand itself. I know it’s foolish to care about that. But the treatment. The shame. If they’re a boy, and they favour the left…” His voice trailed off into the hush. “What if they do to him what they did to me at Eton? What if—” he swallowed, voice fraying, “what if I can’t stop it?”
Penelope blinked back the sudden sting in her eyes. Then, slowly, she placed her own hand over his, twining their fingers together over the curve of their child.
“Our child,” she said, fiercely now, “will have you as a father. And there is no greater fortune than that.”
Colin looked up, startled by the steel in her voice.
“You are the kindest man I have ever known,” she continued, her voice low and trembling, “and if this little creature in here grows up to have your cleverness, your laugh, your hands— your left hand—I will count us both blessed.”
A beat passed.
Then she added, with a lift of her brow, “Besides, if any teacher so much as thinks of tying their hand to anything, or beating him, I shall rain hellfire on their entire institution.”
Colin huffed a laugh, breathless and cracked. “I don’t doubt that in the least, love.”
She leaned in, brushing her lips softly against his. “They will never feel shame in this house. Not for how they write, or speak, or are. That is our promise.”
Colin closed his eyes again, his forehead pressing to hers.
“And I will write with this hand,” he whispered, curling his fingers gently, “so they see that it is not cursed. Only different. And sometimes, even better.”
For a time, they simply breathed together, wrapped in silence, wrapped in each other. The candle on the desk had burned low, casting its last flickers across the scattered manuscript pages—a testament to a journey that had taken Colin across continents, only to find his truest destination here, in a quiet Bloomsbury study, beneath his wife’s steady hand and unwavering gaze.
Penelope stirred first, brushing a knuckle along the line of his jaw. “Come to bed, husband,” she whispered, voice thick with love and exhaustion. “You’ve written enough for tonight.”
Colin hesitated, eyes lingering on the page.
But then he looked at her, and whatever tether had kept him to the desk snapped without protest. “Yes,” he said, rising with her still nestled in his arms. “Yes, wife.”
They moved together in the practiced waltz of their marriage, Penelope leaning into him as he helped her up, careful and unhurried. She took his hand—his left —and led him down the familiar hallway, the soft pads of their bare feet brushing against the polished wood floor.
Their bedchamber waited, lit only by the dying embers in the hearth. The room was warm, the linens freshly turned down, pillows plumped and inviting. Penelope eased herself beneath the covers with a sigh that was equal parts weariness and contentment. Colin followed, shrugging off the last of his clothes and slipping into the space behind her with practiced grace.
He gathered her against him, spooning her body with his, one leg slipping between hers in a habitual, intimate tangle. His left arm curved carefully around her stomach, palm resting flat against the quiet miracle growing within.
Penelope took his fingers in hers, guiding them slightly higher, where the baby often kicked. “Here,” she murmured. “That’s where they danced earlier this evening. Likely in protest of your absence.”
Colin chuckled against her hair, his breath warm on her nape. “Then I owe them an apology.”
She turned her head just enough to catch his lips in a soft kiss. “You’re already the best of fathers.”
His mouth curved against hers. “I only try to be the man you believe me to be, Pen.”
She sighed, full and sweet. “Then you shall always succeed.”
Another kiss. This one longer, slower. Less about passion, more about promise.
They settled again, the rhythm of their breaths slowly aligning, limbs entangled, hearts eased. Colin’s thumb stroked lightly across the fabric of her nightdress, tracing slow, silent circles over the curve of new life.
“I love you, Pen,” he whispered into the nape of her neck, his breath a hush against her skin.
“And I you, my darling man,” she murmured. “With all that I am.”
They lay there in the hush of night, wrapped in firelight and blankets and each other. The world could wait. The past could rest. The future, whatever it held, would be met together.
Colin drifted to sleep with his left hand on her belly, his heart quiet at last. Penelope followed not long after, the rhythm of his breathing like a lullaby she had known all her life.