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Late September 1815
Anthony straightens his coat and then his sleeves. He looks up into the mirror, watching as his wife tidies up the last few details before they walk out of their bedroom.
A single candle burned on the heavy oak dresser, and its flame, tall and sinewy, danced madly in the draft from the window, casting gold and blue shadows across the looking glass. Anthony Bridgerton, Viscount, stood squarely in front of the mirror, his back ramrod straight, intensely aware of the significance of the evening and of the eyes that would soon be upon him. The chill in the London air had already seeped into the house, and Anthony felt it now as he slipped his arms into the deep blue of his evening coat, the color rich and almost decadent, the fabric heavy. He was not a vain man—he had always considered himself too full of purpose for vanity—but when he caught his own gaze in the mirror, there was a flicker of something like pride. Or perhaps it was resignation, finely aged and decanted only in moments like this.
He pulled at a stray thread on his sleeve, then remembered himself and flicked it away. Behind him, Penelope was working her deft fingers through her hair, twisting it into a soft chignon pinned with a cluster of seed pearls. The movements were familiar and quick, like a habit learned young and practiced in secret. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, standing with her back to him, and for a moment, he was not Anthony Bridgerton, Viscount, eldest son, but simply a man watching his wife, young and clever and altogether unexpected.
If someone had told him even a year ago that he would be here, married to Penelope Featherington—no, Penelope Bridgerton, he reminded himself with a small inward grin—he would have laughed, loud and incredulous, maybe even cruelly. He had thought himself beyond marriage, beyond romance, the concept of love a frivolous luxury for those with less responsibility. He could still hear the echo of his own voice, mocking his siblings for their sentimentalism, for chasing after what he had always believed to be a myth: a marriage of true minds. Yet here he was, and when he looked at Penelope, he felt the landscape of his future shift under his feet.
He straightened his lapels, then let his hands fall, buzzing with a nervous energy he would never admit to anyone, least of all to his wife. He examined his reflection for signs of weakness, for hints of the boy he was, the brother who had once tried to outrun expectation by breaking as many rules as possible. But the man in the mirror was every inch the Viscount, jaw set, eyes steady, the weight of the Bridgerton name sitting on his shoulders—and for the first time, it fit.
Penelope finished with her hair and turned, smoothing the front of her gown. The same blue as his coat, Anthony noticed, and he wondered if she had chosen it deliberately, a silent assertion that they were partners in this, the color echoing down the hallways of their new shared life. Penelope caught him looking and tilted her head, a knowing smile tugging at her mouth.
"Are you ready for this?" she asked, her voice low, almost playful, but trembling with anticipation.
He tried to answer, but the words would not come. The question was bigger than it first appeared. Was he ready? For the evening, yes: the guests, the spectacle, the elaborate game that he and Penelope had orchestrated with such cunning precision. But for the life that followed—for marriage, for the possibility of happiness—he was not sure. He nodded anyway.
Penelope closed the gap between them with two quick steps and reached up to straighten his cravat. Her fingers brushed the hollow of his throat, lingering there for half a second longer than necessary. Anthony caught her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. The gesture was half instinct, half performance; he could never entirely disentangle the two.
"The house sounds full already," she murmured, nodding toward the door, beyond which a low hum of voices and laughter floated up from the grand foyer. "Cressida Cowper arrived early. I saw her carriage from the window."
Anthony rolled his eyes. "Of course she did. She never misses an opportunity to make an entrance." He paused, considering. "Are you certain you want to do this?"
Penelope squeezed his hand, her grip surprisingly firm. "We have to. Someone needs to end this. And who better than us?"
He nodded, the decision now final, the anticipated chaos of the evening stretching out before him in sharp relief. They had spent weeks planning, every detail accounted for, every contingency anticipated—but the prospect of what was to come still made his heart hammer in his chest.
She let go of his hand and turned toward the door, stopping only to glance back at him with a look that was equal parts conspiratorial and affectionate. "Shall we?"
He gestured for her to lead the way, and together they stepped out onto the landing. The warmth of the hallway, redolent with beeswax polish and the faintest trace of Penelope’s perfume, wrapped around them as they moved toward the grand staircase. The sound of their guests grew louder, an orchestra of voices punctuated by the clink of crystal and the occasional peal of laughter.
They paused at the top of the stairs, surveying the scene below. The entryway was ablaze with candlelight and the glow from two roaring fires, their guests already assembled in dazzling array—ladies in jewel-toned silks and gentlemen in crisp, colorful coats, all of them waiting with thinly veiled anticipation for what the evening would bring. Anthony saw Eloise, his sister, standing with her head thrown back in laughter next to Benedict, who was balancing a glass of claret on the edge of a side table, as if daring the laws of physics to intervene. Colin, the third Bridgerton brother, hovered at the edge of the crowd, scanning the room for familiar faces or perhaps for trouble, as was his wont.
Beyond the crush of guests, Anthony caught sight of Cressida Cowper, her blond curls piled improbably high, her gown a confection of pale pink and ivory, so overburdened with lace that it looked like she had been dipped in a vat of sugared almonds. She was already in full gossip mode, clutching her fan with claws of anticipation, eyes darting from guest to guest in search of her next victim. Anthony suppressed a grin. If tonight went as planned, Cressida would soon have something worth gossiping about—and for the first time in her life, she might be speechless.
A footman materialized at his elbow, so silent and efficient that Anthony wondered if he had been lurking in the shadows all along. "My lord," the servant intoned with a slight bow. "The guests are assembled, and the first course is about to be served."
Anthony nodded in acknowledgment, then glanced at Penelope, whose face was lit with a mixture of nerves and excitement. He placed her hand on his arm, feeling the warmth of her through the fabric of his coat sleeve, and together they began their descent.
The staircase was long and curved, its banisters polished to a deep black sheen, and as they moved downward, all eyes in the foyer turned upward to watch them approach. There was a hush, brief but unmistakable, as the assembled company took in the sight of their hosts, perfectly matched in midnight blue, the picture of marital happiness. Anthony felt his stomach twist, the familiar sensation of being observed, judged, weighed, and measured. But this time, he did not bristle against it; instead, he met every gaze head-on, shoulders squared, Penelope at his side.
As they neared the bottom of the staircase, the crowd parted—a small courtesy, but enough to remind Anthony that he was, in fact, master of this house, and that what happened tonight would change the course of several lives, not all of them invited.
He leaned toward Penelope and whispered, "Ready or not, here we are."
She smiled up at him, mischief lighting her eyes. "Let's give them a night they'll never forget."
They stepped off the final stair and into the throng, the room immediately swelling to greet them. Lady Danbury swept in, cane tapping a brisk call on the floor, her smile sharp and impatient. "About time, Viscount," she said, eyes crinkling. "Your guests are hungry for scandal and soufflé, not necessarily in that order."
Anthony bowed his head in deference, then maneuvered Penelope past the dowager and toward the dining room, where the double doors stood open, revealing a table set to impress, silver candelabra ablaze, crystal glasses catching the light, plates arranged with precision. The seating chart had been a battleground, with alliances and rivalries carefully considered, every placement a move in the evening’s complicated chess game.
As they moved through the room, Anthony caught snippets of conversation—whispers about Lady Whistledown, speculation about the next issue, guesses as to who would be the subject of scandal by sunrise. The tension was as thick as the scent of hothouse roses arranged in opulent bouquets along the table.
At the far end of the table, Queen Charlotte herself was seated, resplendent in a towering wig and a gown that looked as though it had been stitched from molten gold. She surveyed the crowd with the practiced gaze of someone who could spot a lie or a secret at a hundred paces. Anthony felt a shiver of anxiety, knowing that her approval—or lack thereof—would determine the fate of their plan.
He and Penelope made their way to their seats, the room growing quiet as they as moved.
Anthony and Penelope walked and stood in front of the queen. With a slight bow of his head, Anthony said, “It's a pleasure to have you here, your majesty. I hope that everything is to your satisfaction.”
Queen Charlotte beamed, revealing her dazzling white teeth. "As do I," she said, pausing to survey the crowd.
Anthony had extended invitations to many guests for the gathering, including his family, which encompassed his brother-in-law, the Duke Simon Hastings, and his sister Daphne. Additionally, he'd invited several Lords and Ladies from prominent families with whom the Bridgertons had maintained strong connections over the centuries, such as the Hastings, the Dankworths, and the Finches. It would have been impolite not to include his wife's sisters’ husband as well. The main dining hall of the Bridgerton estate buzzed with the presence of various aristocrats, illuminated by numerous candlelit chandeliers.
Anthony and Penelope, with the poise of seasoned partners in both war and ballroom, lifted their heads together and surveyed the room before returning to their own seats at the table. The subtle choreography of hosting was not lost on either of them: Queen Charlotte, of course, occupied the place of highest honor at the head of the table, her presence a living punctuation mark at the end of every sentence, every glance, every unfolding scheme. But as head of both family and household, Anthony situated himself immediately to her right, with Penelope at his own right hand, reinforcing the new lines of power that had emerged along with their union. It was a small statement, but in a room like this, every seating arrangement was a declaration.
He raised an arm, signaling to the butler stationed at the edge of the room, who responded with a crisp nod and set in motion the first act of the evening’s edible extravaganza. Through the golden haze of candlelight, a parade of footmen and under-butlers advanced, each bearing trays with the solemnity of men entrusted with priceless cargo. The kitchen had been a hive of activity for days, and Anthony had instructed the chef—an Italian whose name none could pronounce with certainty, but whose sauces had reduced Dowager Lady Bridgerton to tears—to outdo himself. Seven full courses, each more elaborate than the last, for all forty-seven guests. It was an act of culinary pageantry as much as hospitality, and in the weeks leading up to the event, Anthony had found himself both dreading and anticipating the result.
As the first plates were set before them—delicate rounds of quail’s egg, each perched atop a whisper of caviar, the presentation as pristine as a miniature still life—conversation began to ripple around the perimeter of the table. It started as a polite murmur, the kind that hovered just above the silverware, but soon gained momentum as the guests loosened their manners and, in some cases, their tongues. At the far end of the table, Lord Finch began an earnest if somewhat dry monologue about the recent reforms in county taxation, his words rolling out in a steady dribble like a poorly decanted port. Across from him, Lady Cowper—who had been watching Anthony and Penelope with the predatory patience of a barn owl—shifted her focus to her immediate neighbors, extracting opinions on the quality of the pink wine and comparing the merits of French and English embroidery, though her true sport was always rumor.
For his part, Anthony made a show of listening intently to the Queen, who favored him with observations on the state of the Empire, the unreliability of English weather, and the alarming prevalence of substandard lapdogs in the Ton.
“They are nothing but yapping dust mops with feet,” she declared, pausing long enough to accept a glass of Tokaji from a passing footman. “I do not trust an animal that can be trampled by a well-aimed boot.”
Anthony laughed dutifully, his mind skating over the Queen’s words and instead cataloging every twitch and flutter at the table, every flicker of expression on the faces of his siblings and peers.
The second course arrived with military precision, a consommé so clear it gleamed like amber in shallow porcelain bowls, accompanied by impossibly thin slices of bread. Penelope, who had always regarded soup as more accessory than sustenance, took a few careful sips and then set her spoon aside, favoring Anthony with a glance that said she would sooner starve than risk a spill down the front of her gown. He gave her a small, secretive smile in return, one that did not go unnoticed by Eloise, who sat further down the table and was at that very moment attempting to restart a conversation about women’s education with a disinterested Lord Dankworth.
It was not lost on Anthony that every guest in attendance belonged to a stratified world in which the slightest misstep could become the topic of a thousand whispered tales. From the table’s midpoint, he could hear his brother Colin regaling a pair of young ladies—one of whom was already blushing furiously—with stories from his recent travels. There was a kind of reckless charm in Colin’s storytelling, a willingness to embroider the truth that Anthony alternately admired and envied. Benedict, by contrast, seemed almost disinterested in the proceedings, doodling abstract designs on the linen with his fingertip while occasionally accepting bites of food with the distracted air of a daydreamer woken for roll call.
The third course was game bird—snipe, to be precise—roasted and fanned across the plate with a reduction of blackberries and red wine. Anthony found the taste both rich and slightly metallic, a reminder of country hunts with his father and the weight of expectation that had followed him even then. He caught himself glancing at the Queen, who dispatched her snipe with surgical efficiency and then dabbed her lips with a napkin as if nothing in the world could possibly surprise her.
It was during the fourth course, a formidable display of poached salmon surrounded by a moat of aspic, that the table’s energy shifted. Cressida Cowper, emboldened by the flow of wine and the apparent success of her latest toilette, leaned forward and addressed Penelope across the centerpieces.
“Lady Bridgerton,” she trilled, “I must know how you manage to look so well-rested. I scarcely sleep at all, what with the pressure of so many social obligations. But you! You seem positively radiant.”
Penelope did not blink. “I attribute it entirely to my husband’s good influence,” she replied, voice syrupy sweet. “He is so generous with his time and attention. I scarcely have a moment to be weary.” The words were harmless on the surface, but Anthony recognized the edge beneath them, the private joke meant for him alone. He felt a flush of pride—and, beneath it, a flicker of something deeper, more dangerous.
Cressida smiled thinly, but Lady Danbury, who had been eavesdropping with palpable delight, let out a sharp cackle.
“You see, Miss Cowper, it is not enough to marry well. You must marry wisely. Some men are more conducive to rest than others.” She eyed Anthony, and for one dreadful moment, he was certain she meant to bring up his most infamous escapades, but the moment passed, and she turned her attention to Queen Charlotte, who was now orchestrating the demolition of the salmon with both knife and wit.
By the time the fifth course arrived—a shimmering terrine of vegetables, each layer a different color and flavor—Anthony was beginning to feel the effects of both the food and the conversation. There was a rhythm to these gatherings, a kind of social fugue that alternated between revelation and concealment. Guests whispered, laughed, occasionally argued, their voices overlapping in a complicated harmony. The Queen presided over it all as both conductor and arbiter, smoothing ruffled feathers or fanning incipient scandals as the mood dictated.
Yet even as he played his part, Anthony’s mind kept returning to the narrow band of responsibility that defined his life, the duty to keep his family safe, the need to maintain appearances, the constant, gnawing fear that one misstep could undo everything he had built. It was not a new feeling—he had felt it since the day his father died, perhaps even before—but tonight it pressed close, as if the ghosts of every previous Viscount Bridgerton were gathered at the table with him, silent and hungry and waiting to be fed.
He glanced at Penelope, wondering if she sensed the shift in his mood. Her face was calm, the set of her mouth almost serene, but her hand found his under the table and squeezed it, grounding him in the present, in the warmth of her touch and the certainty of their shared purpose.
For all his privilege, for all the comforts he had inherited or secured through cunning, Anthony knew better than most how quickly fortune could turn. The specter of loss haunted him, sharpened by memory and the impossible standards to which he held himself. He had never gone hungry, never spent a night in the cold, but the idea of failure—failure to provide, failure to protect—was more terrifying than any privation he could imagine.
He had always been lucky to have enough money and enough connections to keep his family safe, warm, and fed even during their darkest time after his father had died.
By the arrival of the sixth course—a restorative consommé, infused with shreds of chicken and aromatic tarragon, the kind of broth a convalescent might beg for in a fever dream—Anthony’s palate was beyond cleansed. It was exhausted, nearly as weary as the guests themselves. He mustered an appreciative expression for the benefit of the footman who set the bowl before him.
Still, his attention drifted not to the flavors, nor even to the ever-encroaching fullness in his abdomen, but to Penelope. She had gone glassy-eyed, her decorum undiminished but her stamina visibly flagging with each successive offering. He could almost feel her longing for the sanctity of their own chambers, away from this cacophony of measured wit and ambition.
He caught her gaze, and in that brief communion found a wry, companionable understanding. Yes, this was absurd, but it was also necessary. The theatre of the Ton required regular performances, and tonight’s was a command performance, the Queen herself in attendance.
Anthony squeezed her hand under the table, just once, a pulse of solidarity in the storm of obligation. Even across the table, Lady Danbury’s sharp eyes noted the gesture; she tilted her head as if to say, “Well-played, Viscount,” then resumed her own silent survey of the crowd.
The soup course—elegantly simple, a mere suggestion of nourishment—proved oddly fortifying, as if the chef had distilled the exact nutrients necessary to propel the gathering through its final act. As Anthony dabbed the corner of his mouth with a linen napkin, he allowed his mind to drift to the night’s actual business. The matter of the Lady Whistledown pamphlets and the Queen’s interest in them. He had not spoken openly of the recent developments, not even to his closest siblings, but the burden of the secret pressed at his ribs like a too-tight waistcoat.
During their honeymoon wanderings—days spent in the sun-drenched calm of Greek country estate, evenings full of laughter, conversation, and the experimental clumsiness of new intimacy—Penelope had received a letter from the palace, stamped with the Queen’s signet and carried by one of her own liveried footmen. The contents had been as chilling as the delivery was formal: a new Whistledown pamphlet, written in Penelope’s characteristic hand, had appeared during her absence, spinning fresh gossip and targeting new recipients with precision.
The Queen, ever the tactician, expressed admiration for Penelope’s powers of misdirection, even as she pressed for an explanation. Had she, in anticipation of her honeymoon, planted a cache of pre-written pamphlets to maintain her coverage? Was this a clever feint, or merely a lapse in her resolve to retire the persona?
Penelope had shown him the letter late at night, sitting by the window where the moon could catch the glint of her hair but not the worry in her eyes. He had read it twice, the first time marveling at the Queen’s acuity, and the second time marveling at his wife’s capacity for subterfuge—even when, as she swore, she had not authored so much as a sentence of the new pamphlet.
“I promised you I was done,” she said, her voice steady but her hands nervously restless in her lap. “I promised myself, too. And I meant it. I still mean it.”
He believed her, but the question of authenticity gnawed at him. If not Penelope, then who? Who could mimic her voice so precisely, who could know her habits and sources well enough to usurp her place in the ever-churning rumor mill of London? The answer, he knew, would not come easy, and until it did, every day would bring new risk—for Penelope, for himself, for their entire family.
The Queen’s request was both subtle and absolute. She wished to see Penelope, in private, to discuss the matte r. Not a summons, exactly, but a call that could not be refused.
At the conclusion of their honeymoon, scarcely a day after their return to the city, Penelope and Anthony found themselves conveyed by royal carriage to a discreet parlor in the palace, where Queen Charlotte awaited them with the air of a woman who had already solved three-quarters of the puzzle and was merely confirming the last few pieces.
It had been a tense interview, at once flattering and terrifying. The Queen spoke with the easy assurance of a master chess player, moving through conversational gambits with a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. She parried Penelope’s denials and explanations with the grace of a fencer, subtly signaling her expectation that Penelope would resume her post as London’s unofficial chronicler, but only with the Queen’s tacit approval and abiding interest.
“It would be such a shame,” the Queen had said, swirling a glass of wine, “for so fine a pen to go idle. Or, worse, for it to fall into… unworthy hands.” The implication was not lost on either of them.
Penelope, to her credit, had not been cowed. She insisted upon her retirement from the scandal sheets and pressed the point that any new pamphlets were forgeries. The Queen, after a moment’s consideration, accepted the explanation—outwardly, at least—but her parting words left a chill in the air: “It seems, my dear, that if you do not wish to write, you must content yourself with reading about yourself. That, I think, will be harder than you expect.”
Now, weeks later, they sat in the golden candlelight of their own ballroom, surrounded by every potential suspect in the greater London area and every potential confidante for miles. Anthony’s mind raced as he considered the implications. The impersonator must have access not just to Penelope’s writing style but to her network of informants, her schedule, and even her publisher. It narrowed the field, but not nearly enough.
He tried to trace the possible suspects around the table. Lady Cowper, who had the social ambition and the grudge; Lady Danbury, who seemed constitutionally incapable of subterfuge but was surprisingly well connected; Lord Finch, whose wife had once been the subject of a particularly scathing Whistledown entry and who might welcome the chance for revenge. Further down the table, even his own sister Eloise had the wit and cunning to perpetrate such a scheme, though he doubted she had the patience for sustained deception.
As the sixth course was whisked away, the hum of conversation grew from a polite drone to a more raucous, jovial din. The wine was now flowing freely, the guests’ reserve melting with each fresh pour.
The Queen herself seemed to be in high spirits, regaling her half of the table with increasingly outlandish anecdotes from the continent. Anthony watched as the guests leaned forward, drawn into her orbit by a mixture of awe and terror, and marveled at how easily she could control a room. He wondered what she thought of the evening’s undercurrents, whether she had already guessed at the identity of the new Whistledown, or whether she enjoyed watching the rest of them squirm in anticipation.
Only Penelope maintained her composure, her mask as flawless as her complexion. If she felt the tension of the ongoing investigation, she did not let it show—except, perhaps, in the way she kept her hands folded neatly in her lap, refusing to fidget, refusing to yield to the urge to reach for her glass or to smooth the napkin in front of her. Anthony admired her discipline and felt a renewed, almost painful affection for her.
The seventh course was dessert—a honeyed sponge cake, layered with candied lemon and frosted with a glaze so delicate it clung to the cake like morning dew. It was a triumph, and the guests responded with murmurs of delight, but Anthony barely tasted it. He was already plotting, already building a mental case board of motives and means and opportunity.
Penelope leaned in, her lips barely moving. “You are brooding,” she whispered, her voice pitched so low that only he could hear.
Anthony smiled without looking at her. “So are you,” he whispered back.
She gave a tiny, resigned shrug. “I suppose there are worse things than having one’s identity stolen. But I do worry about what they might write next.”
He covered her hand with his own, squeezing it gently. “We will find them,” he promised. “And when we do—”
“—we will congratulate them on their cleverness?” she finished, a spark of mischief in her eyes.
He grinned despite himself. “Not quite.”
As coffee and cordials were served, the mood in the room reached its apex. Guests began to rise, stretching legs and resettling themselves in new clusters, ready for the transition from formal dinner to the informal amusements of the evening. The servants, who had been silently gliding through the room all night, now set about clearing the last of the dishes and refilling glasses for the parlor migration.
Anthony stood and offered his arm to Penelope, who accepted it with her customary grace. The Queen signaled for them to lead the way; as they exited the dining hall, the rest of the assembly followed, like a caravan of peacocks, each angling for position in the informal hierarchy of the sitting room.
The drawing room was as much a stage as the dining hall had been, but the atmosphere was lighter, more conspiratorial. The younger set immediately gravitated to the pianoforte, where Colin was already improvising a risqué ballad that left half meandering closer to the host of the evening himself and his wife, and half surrounding the piano.
“Charades, anyone?”
"Yes, charades," His brother Benedict chimed in, "I always enjoy a bit of wordplay," he added with a wink. The game commenced with ten people gathered on the couches facing the fireplace. Anthony stood ready.
"I adore the game of charades," Eloise exclaimed.
"Great, who wants to begin?" Anthony asked, eyebrows raised as he sat on the couch.
To everyone's surprise, his wife stepped forward, moving away from the fireplace and turning to face the guests with her head held high. She cleared her throat and walked up to the front of the room.
"My second is conveyed to my first by the company of family," she started, "my whole is a creation of spring."
"A creation of spring. It must be some kind of flower,” he heard someone comment to his left.
"Lilies?" Anthony guessed. "Forget-me-not? Lilacs!"
Eloise's laughter rang out from behind him. Anthony glanced at his sister. "Ease is brought to the heart by the company of family," Eloise repeated, "Heart's-ease, the flower."
"Eloise is right," Penelope confirmed with a nod. The majority of the room claps and nods towards his sister. He blushes under the attention.
"Well done, sister," Anthony said, clapping his hands together.
“Here we go. Round two.” Benedict commented as he looked across the room.
“Thank you,” Elosie nods to Penelope with a slight bow.
Penelope nods in acknowledgment, then gracefully steps aside to take a seat next to Anthony. Anthony watches attentively as his sister Eloise makes her way toward the front of the room, her presence confident and focused. She turns to face the assembled group, preparing to give the next challenge. Since Eloise won the previous round, she now has the important task of providing the clue for the upcoming charade, adding an element of anticipation and excitement among the participants.
Eloise cleared her throat, stepping into the hush that fell over the room as all eyes fixed on her. She wore the look of a general about to reveal the next maneuver in a campaign, chin aloft and arms clasped behind her back, as if the furniture and bric-a-brac of the parlor were her troops and this was the eve of battle. The anticipation was electric; even Her Majesty, with a half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth, seemed momentarily caught up in the girl’s performance.
“My first is a contraction for society,” Eloise began, voice crisp and carrying easily to every corner of the room. “My second denotes a recluse. My third forms part of the ear. My whole is just a quibble.”
A moment of silence, then a pop of speculative chatter—heads turning, lips pursed, fingers tapping against glass and porcelain. The Queen’s eyebrow rose nearly imperceptibly, as if to say: Don’t disappoint me.
Benedict, who had been sprawled in languid comfort on the sofa, sat upright and declared, “Something new?” with a cocked eyebrow.
“Yes, exactly,” Eloise replied, unable to suppress a note of pride, as if the answer had already begun to assemble itself in the minds of her audience.
Out of the silence, Anthony’s voice, sharper than he intended, called out: “Earlobe. Earlobe!” He felt the weight of Penelope’s hand anchor his shoulder, a gentle reminder to restrain his competitiveness—though she herself was just as invested, if not more. His own eagerness momentarily embarrassed him; competition among siblings was a habit not so easily retired.
“Um, no! Wait, no,” Eloise replied, hands fanned out as if to physically restrain the guess from manifesting in the air.
“Is it not, um…” Lady Cowper ventured, her tone tentative, as if unwilling to risk appearing too eager.
Penelope, who had a talent for both solving and creating puzzles, answered softly, “A conundrum?” She watched her sister-in-law closely, her gaze a challenge and an invitation in equal measure.
“Yah! Yes!” Eloise nearly shouted, relief and triumph in her tone, as if Penelope had fished her from the very jaws of a social faux pas. The room erupted—applause, laughter, and the delighted clatter of glasses. For a moment, the parlor felt less like a crucible and more like a living, breathing organism, each person a cell pulsing with shared excitement.
Anthony, pride swelling in his chest, leaned over to Penelope and whispered into her ear, “Clever.” He watched as she flushed, just barely—her composure a mask so expertly applied that only those who knew her intimately could read its subtle shifts. She glanced up at him, their eyes meeting in a brief but electric moment of private complicity.
“Well done!” exclaimed Miss Featherington, who had positioned herself to best advantage near the Queen, her own daughters arrayed about her in a tableau of family unity and ambition. Her attire, a composition in competing greens, managed to be both garish and oddly compelling—a signal flag for attention, which she had no shortage of.
“I must say, the wit in this room tonight far exceeds that of my last soiree,” she added, a dig at some unnamed rival that sent a ripple of knowing laughter through the assembled guests.
“You are good,” Benedict conceded, offering Penelope a theatrical bow from his seat, which she acknowledged with a dry arch of the brow.
“So, who wishes to give the clue?” Penelope asked, voice pitched to carry over the fading laughter as she scanned the faces arrayed around the room. There was a pause, as if the entire assembly were holding its collective breath, waiting for the next move. Benedict, never one to shrink from the spotlight, rose from the couch with a flourish and strode to the front, his every motion calculated for maximum effect.
“My first, I would venture for. My second, I would venture in…” Benedict began, letting his words hang in the air with the practiced timing of an orator.
The game continued in this fashion. Each round a joust of intellect and bravado, with the room splitting its attentions between the verbal duel at the parlor’s heart and the quieter, more private intrigues unfolding at its margins. The Queen watched from her seat, alternately amused and appraising, her gaze often lingering on the faces of those who, for one reason or another, seemed to care less about the game and more about the shifting alliances it revealed.
Between clues, Anthony found his attention wandering—not from boredom, but from the sense that something important was happening just out of sight. Each round of charades became a microcosm of the city’s larger games: secrets, strategies, performances, and, always, the question of who was truly playing whom.
At the far end of the room, Lady Danbury presided over a rival circle, her laughter booming and infectious, drawing the younger set to her side as moths to a lantern. She had an uncanny ability to redirect conversation away from herself, all the while absorbing every detail and gesture for later use. Anthony noticed that, despite her ostensible disengagement from the Whistledown affair, she kept a careful watch on Penelope, as if waiting for her to slip up or betray an unwary confidence.
Meanwhile, Colin had migrated to the pianoforte, where he improvised increasingly ribald lyrics to whatever tune came to hand, providing a running commentary on the evening’s events that alternated between the hilarious and the mortifying. The younger gentleman, emboldened by drink and the Queen’s apparent tolerance for impropriety, joined in with gusto. Even the staid Lord Finch was drawn out of his shell, his laughter surprisingly high-pitched and genuine.
The evening wore on. Plates of candied fruit and marzipan disappeared, wineglasses refilled themselves with a sort of magical inevitability, and the parlor slowly fractured into a dozen shifting clusters of conversation. Some guests settled into the game with renewed intensity, determined to outwit or at least outlast their rivals; others drifted toward the card tables, where fortunes were won or lost in the time it took to shuffle a deck.
Throughout all, Penelope remained close to Anthony, her behavior markedly deliberate. She engaged with her sisters only when approached, and with her old friend Eloise, she maintained a playful, almost conspiratorial rapport, as if the charades were an elaborate code only they could decipher. Anthony marveled at how thoroughly she had adapted to life as Viscountess—how she could glide through the room with self-assurance while simultaneously observing and recording every detail, as if her new role demanded both performance and constant vigilance.
He caught her once, in a lull between rounds, studying the Queen with an intensity that would have been alarming had it been directed at anyone but Her Majesty. Charlotte, for her part, seemed equally interested in Penelope’s reactions, as if the two of them were engaged in a subtler, deadlier game beneath the surface of the evening’s amusements.
The next round of charades began. This time, Lady Cowper volunteered with a grand, sweeping motion, so theatrical that it momentarily silenced the room. “My first suggests the braying of a donkey,” she declared, “my second is a sound a lady ought never make in public, and my whole is an instrument of torture.”
The room exploded with guesses—mostly wrong, a few shockingly right. Penelope, after a moment’s bemusement, leaned close to Anthony and muttered, “I believe she means ‘scandal-monger.’”
Anthony grinned. “Fitting, isn’t it?”
“Scandal-monger!” Eloise shouted, unable to contain herself.
Lady Cowper gave a gracious bow. “Correct! Though, perhaps, I should have said ‘Whistledown,’ given the company,” she said with a sly look at Penelope.
There was a ripple of laughter, and Anthony caught the briefest flicker of annoyance in Penelope’s eyes before she recovered. “Careful,” he whispered. “They’re baiting you.”
“I know,” she replied, lips barely moving, “but I believe I’m the better fisherman.”
The rounds continued, each one more outrageous than the last. Lady Danbury’s clues required feats of interpretive gymnastics. Lord Finch managed to make his challenge into a thinly veiled dig at the Queen’s penchant for matchmaking, which Charlotte accepted with uncharacteristic good humor. The younger set devolved into farce, their clues barely disguised innuendo that sent the older generation into paroxysms of disapproval.
Anthony found himself drifting from the main event, letting the conversation, the laughter, the games swirl around him like so much smoke. He watched Penelope—her careful restraint, her strategic engagements, her subtle manipulations—and wondered, not for the first time, just how much of her life was performance and how much was real.
As the hour grew late, the guests wandered in and out of the parlor, forming small, transient confederacies in the hallways and on the stairs. Lady Danbury and the Queen conferred quietly by the window, their heads inclined like conspirators at a council of war. Eloise, emboldened by her success, regaled a captive audience with tales of her social misadventures, each more extravagant than the last. Benedict and his date found a quiet corner to themselves, their laughter muted but constant, the sort of private joy that only siblings could share.
His wife was presently across the room, engaged in conversation with some of his business associates' wives. They were exchanging friendly small talk about their days, aiming to forge or strengthen social connections. The women had positioned themselves conveniently near his brother, who was comfortably settled at the piano. Occasionally, he would play music intermittently, providing a melodic backdrop for the guests mingling in the household. The atmosphere was lively yet sophisticated, with guests enjoying the harmonious blend of conversation and music.
Anthony sipped his brandy and discussed new trade routes with Lord Greyrat, who headed a transportation company specializing in long-distance carriage travel. The Dankworth family had recently experienced repeated thefts using their usual carriers and suspected the transport company might be involved. Philippa’s husband suggested they try a different service to determine if the robberies persisted.
“Who’d pursue a matter as trivial as Whistledown’s identity?” the question was posed by Penelope's mother, Miss Featherington herself. The woman had consumed a few glasses of wine and seemed to be teetering between joy and excess.
“It all feels… vulgar,” the woman next to her stated, Lady Sophie Beckett, recently widowed, dressed in black and green, befitting a lady of her status.
“I would argue Whistledown is the vulgar one.”
“Though the Ton can do with a little vulgarity,” his brother Benedict cut in with a smirk.
“What I was trying to say,” Miss Featherington continued, “If she is unmasked, it will spell ruin for her family. And certainly, any hope of marriage. ”
He internally winced at Miss Featherington’s words. Anthony was concerned by the implication but reminded himself that the entire event had been orchestrated by the Queen, who was fully aware of his wife's concealed identity.
“Such reward is not enough to entice Lady Whistledown to come forward,” Lady Beckett stated as she took a sip of her wine.
“ Indeed, many would commit wilder acts for such a sum ,” Miss Featherington smiled as she raised a wine glass to her lips.
“Perhaps she would love to be unmasked. The power, the infamy, freedom to do whatever she wants. Not to mention the money,” a wildly looking fellow with a smirk stated from behind his mother-in-law, dressed in brown.
The men surrounding Miss Featherington laughed at the remark. Although his wife never explicitly said it, he had actually asked if she wanted to be unmasked and revealed to the entire social circle. He suspects that if she had the choice, she would continue writing for as long as possible. It not only provided her with additional income but also served as a creative outlet, he discovered.
During their honeymoon, he visited a bookmaker and selected a beautiful journal, having her initials embossed on the cover. He later gifted it to her that week. He recalls the way her eyes sparkled when she opened the box and saw the leather-bound journal with its blank pages. He felt a warmth inside as he watched her, thinking only of her happiness, her radiance, and her smile. While they might not have been each other's first choice initially, he believes they turned out to be the best choice for one another, despite the circumstances that brought them together.
“ And then, of course, there’s the fact that she would not have to marry ,” Lady Beckett pointed out .
A flash of pink flashed at the corner of his eye as he listened in on the conversation. He glanced over momentarily, noticing how a familiar pink embroidered dress lingered on the edge of the conversation. His eyes started back to his wife, who had glanced back at the same pink embroidered dress that he had noticed, and continued her conversation.
Miss Featherington looked up to the other women and nodded with a raise of her glass, “That is a good point. She may see herself living a finer life than any of us .”
“ But can you imagine living with that secret all this time ?” asked Miss Alice Devereaux. “ It must burn away at her .”
He must’ve snorted a little too loudly because Lord Greyrat wasn’t necessarily pleased that he snorted at one of his gracious offers to transport silks for the Dankworth family just moments before.
Anthony opened his mouth to apologize to the Lord in front of him when he heard a familiar voice, Miss Cressida Cowper.
“Excuse us, everyone,” she announced as she walked down toward the center of the room. “I have an announcement.”
The room, once filled with soft conversations, fell silent. The sound of the piano faded, and the clinking of glasses stopped.
Although the topic of Lady Whistledown was not the main focus of the evening, it had been mentioned several times. Lady Whistledown, not the women, had been manipulating the majority of the Ton for the better part of the last few years. She had always been at the center of controversy. How could one simple pamphlet change the course of lives and governments? Yet it could—and it had. Now, as Penelope put it, Lady Whistledown would finally be at rest. Or at least, her false identity would be.
“It is time that I put an end to the speculation,” she continued. “You would like to know who Lady Whistledown is? You shall know.”
Miss Cowper stood alone on the rug in the center of the room, half-lit by the flickering chandelier as if she’d stepped onto a makeshift stage. All eyes were upon her now—some incredulous, others predatory, but most simply dazed, like a flock of sheep suddenly aware of the wolf in their midst. She squared her shoulders with a dignity that almost seemed borrowed from another, more regal woman, then took a bracing breath that caught against the starched edge of her bodice.
“I am she,” Miss Cowper declared, her voice clear, almost bell-like.
A ripple of unease passed through the crowd, palpable as a sudden chill. Anthony watched the effect with mounting fascination. He’d expected laughter, perhaps a chorus of “well played!” and “you do amuse,” but what followed was something far stranger—a thick silence, then the hesitant, choked sound of a single snicker, quickly stifled. The men exchanged glances over their glasses, lips tight, while the women pressed handkerchiefs to their mouths, as if stanching a nosebleed.
Anthony’s mother-in-law blinked twice, as if willing her vision to reset, then burst into incredulous laughter, “Miss Cowper, surely you jest!” She made a feeble attempt to rally the room with her mirth, but the sound landed with a hollow plunk, like a stone dropped into a dry well. Most of the women looked to the Queen, gauging her response with the fine-tuned instinct of those who had spent a lifetime interpreting the moods of sovereigns.
Miss Cowper’s composure faltered for only a heartbeat. Beneath her powdered cheeks, a flush of genuine irritation crept up her neck, though she quickly schooled her expression into something halfway between hauteur and martyrdom.
“I jest not,” she said, her tone a shade lower, the vowels clipped clean.
A murmur rippled through the crowd, as if the guests had all inhaled at once and forgotten how to exhale. Penelope, standing at the fringes, arched an eyebrow in a way that could have been either amusement or alarm—Anthony was too far away to tell. Beside her, Eloise covered her mouth, her eyes bugged nearly out of her skull, while Lady Danbury tapped her cane three times on the floor and grinned in the manner of someone who knew a secret no one else did.
“I am Lady Whistledown,” Miss Cowper repeated, softer but more resolute, as if she were rehearsing the words for her own benefit. She let her gaze drift deliberately from face to face, settling last on the Queen, who offered nothing in return. “And you are right. I can do whatever I want.”
Several of the younger gentlemen exchanged incredulous whispers, and at least one young lady—Miss Alice Devereaux, if Anthony was not mistaken—looked faintly sick. The older set, meanwhile, regarded Miss Cowper as one might regard an entertainer at a fair who had gone off-script and started reciting prophecy.
The entire room seemed to pause in collective anticipation, awaiting the next move. Anthony felt the weight of it pressing in on his chest, a sensation strangely akin to the moment before one is unhorsed in a riding match. Someone was going to break, and he hoped it would not be him.
What followed was a series of reactions so staggered and overlapping that it would have taken a phrenologist to chart them. Lord Greyrat, who had only just recovered from Anthony’s earlier snort, emitted a strangled “Well!” and nearly spilled his port.
Miss Featherington, never one to cede the spotlight, rallied herself for a counterattack, “But Miss Cowper, you haven’t the—pardon me, but the wit—nor the means!” She turned to her neighbor, seeking affirmation, but her words hung in the air like smoke.
Miss Cowper smiled with a regal resignation. “It is precisely because no one suspects me that I have succeeded so well."]
Queen Charlotte’s lips curled in the faintest, most imperious smile, barely perceptible unless one was both trained to look and foolish enough to believe she smiled for any other reason than to savor the spectacle before her. She reclined in her gilded chair, a lone monarch surveying a battlefield littered with the debris of expectation and ambition, and watched as Lady Cressida Cowper—she of the acid tongue and relentless self-promotion—stood in the center of the room, hands pressed demurely at her waist, eyes shining with a proud, mad defiance.
It was all, as always, working precisely according to the Queen’s unspoken design.
The hush that followed the announcement was not the hush of shock, nor of outrage, but the hush of a crowd that had just witnessed a play’s first act and was hungry for the second. Every head in the room, from the youngest debutante to the goutiest baron, pivoted in a slow, eager arc toward Penelope Bridgerton. Even her own mother, frozen mid-toast, stared at Penelope as if the answer to this absurd riddle might be written directly upon her daughter’s forehead. The Queen, for her part, did not look at Penelope at all; she waited, confident that the web she had spun would catch every fly.
Penelope felt the heat of a hundred gazes pin her to the settee, but she was so practiced in the art of invisibility that she could compose her features into whatever the moment required. She did not so much as shift in her seat, only let her breath settle and slide her eyes to Anthony, who met them with a crooked, resigned smile: What happens now?
The plan had been elegantly simple, and yet it had all the complexity of a Minuet, where every step, every turn, every pause mattered. The Queen would stoke the fire, setting off a citywide chase for the infamous author. She would goad and flatter and threaten in equal measure, letting the ton stew in its own feverish need to unmask its tormentor. And then, when the temperature was just right—when the suspects were at each other’s throats, when the alliances were most brittle, when the heat of scandal had softened the boundaries between Truth and Performance—then the Queen would sit back and let the Ton do her work for her. Someone would inevitably seize the moment, eager for the infamy if not the glory, and a name would be named. It did not truly matter whose. The act itself was the thing. After that, the rest was just clean-up.
In those first, fraught seconds after Cressida’s declaration, Penelope was half-certain Charlotte’s bet would pay out in some other direction. There was a logic to it. Eloise had always possessed a streak of rebellion that bordered on recklessness, and she had the kind of mind that delighted in upending convention. It would have been a delicious twist, Penelope thought, for Eloise to stand in front of this crowd and claim the title for herself—particularly since Penelope suspected she had, at some point, nearly done so, if only to see what would happen next.
But then Penelope looked at her friend, and saw not the burning, iron-willed certainty of a Whistledown, but the wide-eyed, almost childlike delight of someone who had just witnessed a magic trick for the first time. No, it would never have been Eloise. And, in truth, it would never have been any of the others, either; the bluestockings and half-shunned wallflowers who milled at the margins of these gatherings, their intelligence forever overlooked in favor of their lack of beauty or breeding. Too clever, or too cowardly, or too careful. Only someone as audacious—and as desperate—as Cressida would dare.
Penelope was expected to say something, to do something. The entire room expected it. But she had learned, over years of observation, that the most dangerous thing to do in a moment of chaos was to move first. Instead, she watched the Queen.
Queen Charlotte did not so much as blink. Instead, she let the announcement hang in the air, ripening, as if she had all the time in the world. Her gaze swept the room with a slow, deliberate inevitability, cataloguing every reaction, every twitch of surprise or resentment, every furtive glance. She was not interested in the answer so much as the consequences of the answer, the new and shifting alliances that would ripple out from this moment for years to come.
Cressida’s face, however, was a study in practiced bravado. For a moment, Penelope almost pitied her.
She had made her move, but the crowd’s attention was fickle, and already the mood was shifting from awe to calculation: What advantage could be gained by aligning oneself with the new Lady Whistledown? What would one lose by opposing her? Even her closest confidantes stood a half-step away, as if afraid the taint of scandal might be contagious.
“My word, Miss Cowper. You have stunned us all,” Lady Danbury said, her voice slicing through the silence like a saber. The comment was as much a challenge as it was a compliment. The older woman eyed Cressida as one might study a rare but potentially venomous insect, her cane tapping out an erratic rhythm against the parquet floor.
“I live only to serve, Lady Danbury,” Cressida replied, with a curtsy that would have been graceful had her knees not been visibly trembling.
Laughter rippled through the crowd, but it had an edge to it now—a sense of peril, of uncertainty. Penelope glanced sidelong at her mother, who had raised a hand to her chest and was mouthing the word “Whistledown” repeatedly, as if the repetition might somehow exorcise the scandal from the room.
In the far corner, Lord Finch—who had, moments ago, been regaling a group of bored Lords about his exploits in Parliament—leaned forward, the tips of his ears flushed crimson.
“How very bold,” he muttered, almost to himself. “How very… modern.” He looked as though he might collapse at any moment.
Penelope’s brother-in-law, Benedict, raised his glass in salute to the spectacle.
“To Lady Whistledown,” he proclaimed, his date Lady Beckett snorting laughter into her wine.
Only Anthony seemed unmoved. He was watching Penelope, not as a husband but as a fellow tactician, silently willing her to reveal her next play. But she did not move, or speak, or even smile. She waited.
At last, the Queen issued her pronouncement.
“Well,” she said, her voice as cool and implacable as carved marble, “so you are Lady Whistledown?”
Cressida squared her shoulders and nodded, her blonde curls quivering like a flag in a stiff wind. “I am, Your Majesty.”
The Queen held her gaze for a long, dangerous moment. Then, without warning, she turned her attention to Penelope, her tone suddenly as soft as new velvet.
“And you, Lady Bridgerton? What have you to say?” The Queen’s voice was velvet and steel, the sort of question that was not a question at all, not really—a command delivered in the guise of curiosity. The entire room swiveled again, like lilies orienting to the sun, and found Penelope at the center of collective attention for perhaps the first time in her life.
Penelope’s smile was small and deliberate, the corners of her lips pulled tight in a way that suggested both pleasure and discomfort. She could feel the bones of her own face, every tendon and sinew straining to maintain its composure beneath the invisible weight of expectation.
“I think Lady Cowper has done something wonderful,” she replied, her voice pitched carefully to carry, but with just enough warmth to suggest genuine admiration. “Although, personally, I do not think I would have announced it to the world in such a fashion.”
There was a ripple of nervous laughter, uncertain of whether Penelope was being arch or sincere. The Queen’s mouth twitched, the barest possible indication of delight.
“Hmm,” she said, her gaze lingering on Penelope for a beat longer before she pivoted, predator-smooth, back to Cressida. “My dear, I do believe an applause is in order.”
A few tentative claps rang out—Lady Danbury’s cane thumping the floor in time, a military beat—and then the room, sensing the Queen’s approval, blossomed into full applause. The sound was uneven, a mob of mismatched emotions: loyalty, admiration, envy, fear. Cressida took her bow, and for the first time in memory, she looked almost human; her eyes shone, not with triumph, but with something softer, almost relief.
The Queen let the applause swell before raising her glass, the crystal catching the light and scattering it across her bodice. “To Lady Whistledown,” she announced, her words ringing with the finality of a royal decree.
“To Lady Whistledown!” echoed the company, their voices overlapping and tangling. Anthony found himself caught up in the moment, flanked by his brothers and the remainder of the family, all of whom raised their glasses as if they’d rehearsed it a thousand times. Across the room, Eloise—once certain she would be the family’s great subversive—clinked glasses with Lady Danbury, the two of them united for a moment by sheer spectacle.
Penelope felt the toast pass through her like a current. She met Anthony’s eye, found there a glimmer of something—pride, perhaps, or the kind of understanding that required no translation.
Benedict winked at her, as if to say: What a show, sister, you never disappoint. Colin, who had been half-listening to a debate about the laws surrounding agriculture, leaned sideways and said, “That’s one for the family history, eh?” She nodded, numb but not ungrateful.
The Queen did not lower her glass, not yet. She turned, making a slow, deliberate circuit of the room, forcing each guest to meet her gaze, to acknowledge the world had shifted and they were now living in it. When her eyes, eventually, returned to Penelope, they were heavy with meaning—an entire conversation conducted in silence.
“To many more,” the Queen said, her tone subtler, almost conspiratorial.
It was only then she drank, and the room followed; a gulping, synchronized ritual that sealed the moment into the collective memory of the Ton.
Afterward, the party attempted to limp back to normalcy. The band, which had been frozen mid-bar during the announcement, restarted with a nervous flourish. Footmen scurried to replenish emptied glasses, and a few daring souls even tried to strike up conversation about the weather or the price of oats, as if nothing extraordinary had happened at all.
But the truth was, the room had been irreversibly cleaved. On one side: those who saw Cressida’s revelation as an opportunity, a new alignment of power and favor. On the other: those who watched with the cold, secret hope that she would devolve and burn herself out, that the real Lady Whistledown would emerge from the shadows and expose the pretender for the fraud she must surely be.
Penelope, for her part, became a point of subtle fascination. No one dared approach her directly, not yet, but she could feel their questions scratching at the surface of her skin. What did she know? What would she do next? Would she write about this, or had she already done so? It was as though she had been transformed, in the blink of an eye, from a fixture of the wallpaper to a living, breathing scandal unto herself.
Anthony, always attuned to the currents beneath the surface, sidled up to her with a glass of port. “You handled that well,” he said softly. “I expected a fainting spell, or at the very least a dramatic swoon.”
Penelope allowed herself to laugh quietly. “You mistake me for someone with more delicate sensibilities.”
He smiled, genuine now. “You are full of surprises, Lady Bridgerton.”
They did not linger long after that. The party, though still nominally in progress, had clearly peaked; the Queen herself departed not ten minutes later, trailed by her glittering retinue and a dozen or so gossips eager to dissect what had just transpired. The crowd began to thin, the sense of the event now replaced by exhaustion, and Penelope found herself shepherded by Anthony to the waiting carriage.
Inside, the silence was thick and companionable. Anthony drummed his fingers against his thigh, lost in thought, while Penelope stared at the moonlit streets unspooling outside, her mind a tangle of memory and anticipation.
“You know,” Anthony said, after a long pause, “it’s not every day one watches a friend become both legend and scapegoat in the span of an hour.”
Penelope smiled but did not turn. “It was her choice.”
“She’ll be eaten alive,” he said, not unkindly. “And you—you have to watch it happen.”
Penelope considered this, watching as the carriage wheels ground underfoot as the guest departed for the evening. “I have watched worse,” she said, and meant it.