Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When the ship finally docks in London, Colin Bridgerton knows he should enjoy the feeling of finally arriving home, but in the place of excitement, there is an anxious nervousness that leaves him feeling…unmoored. 

The grey skies hide the sun, which is usual for this time of year, casting an all-too-familiar gloom over the bustle of the people. There are some gentlemen like him, third, fourth, and fifth sons returning or embarking on their grand tours. There are couples, some older and greyed, and others that wear a newlywed shine, climbing into carriages. Lower-ranking families pull their luggage and trunks, stacking them into wagons pulled by rented horses, their little children running around, chasing each other. It brings a small smile to his face, a reminder of his siblings that he has not seen in months. 

After the workers fill a hired hack with his belongings, Colin climbs inside it and takes a seat, exhaling.

Exhaustion thrums through his muscles, in his legs, in his stomach, in his mind; he’s too young to be feeling this kind of listlessness, but it still unfurls like a plume of smoke, snaking down his throat, threatening to choke him.

A cough burns through his chest; he lifts his hand to cover his mouth. He hoped it wasn’t an ill-timed sickness, something he had from the brutal winds on the sea; even with the heat of the summer, the air rushing off the crashing waves had brought along a chill that swept through the cracks in his window. The cabin he stayed in had not been costly; most nights he shivered until he fell asleep. Those nights, he missed little more than the comfort of his bed. Coming home should feel better than this pit in his belly, sinking lower and lower the further away he gets from the docks.

Despite feeling like it had been ages, Colin had not travelled for that long. Some of the travellers he met overseas had been gone from their families for more than a year, some even two or three. Colin had left after last season’s end and traipsed from city to city, tasting wines and foods and women—a new experience he was uncertain what to make of—and still, London felt like a familiar stranger. These cobbled roads, the people milling on the sidewalks, the storefronts with open doors; this ought to feel like home. 

And yet, there are these small, subtle changes, ones he would have grown with had he stayed, but it seems the city has evolved without him. 

This was only his second tour. After his first, upon coming home, he had enjoyed stepping back into his place, sitting with his family after being away from them for so long, cataloguing faces, noting the changes that had occurred in his absence; the streaks of grey in his mother’s hair, Hyacinth and Gregory growing quicker than he could anticipate. 

Colin sat in the smoky air of the gentlemen's clubs he frequented, staying for drink after drink and talking about all he’d missed while he was away.  

Things he already knew because he kept correspondence with some of his siblings, mainly his mother, Francesca, and Hyacinth. 

And Penelope. Who is not his sibling, nor does he wish her to be. Regardless, she is his most faithful correspondent. Or perhaps she used to be. 

It struck him as odd that he didn’t hear from her, not even once, the entire time he had been away; he had written to her, letter after letter, all that he had seen while he was away like he had done on his first tour, but every letter had gone unanswered. 

Part of him could have given up, but there was a feeling in him that he should not. So, he continued writing. Funny anecdotes in case she needed a laugh. Terrible poetry in case she needed a bigger laugh. He described the architecture, the crumbling stone of old buildings that had fallen during wartime. He told her about the soft, fine grit of sand, how she would delight in sticking her toes in at the edge of the shore. He wrote her descriptions of grassy plains and clouds shaped like sheep that would hide behind mountaintops. He told her everything he could, and asked after her health, her wellbeing, her happiness. He wrote promises that if he had done something wrong, he could work to rectify it. It would not do to have a rift in their friendship. It was much too important to him. 

In the back of this carriage, still a fair distance from home, he wonders about his friend, with her curling red hair and her rosy cheeks. He hopes that she is well. 

He hopes—

Well, he isn’t sure what he hopes. Something must have occupied her time for the off-season, had taken away from her quills and her paper, had taken her away from him.

An odd thought, he thinks. She isn’t his, to begin with. She is his friend. And still, there is something so bothersome about not hearing from her. It was common to feel unsettled about not hearing from one’s friend, of that, he is sure.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When the carriage finally makes it to Bridgerton house, Colin greets the footmen with a smile, requesting that his things be taken to his bed chamber.

Inside, it is exactly like he remembers, and the floral scent of his mother’s—or rather his brother’s—home settles some of the anxiety that had been burning through him for the last few days.

In the drawing room, his family is gathered; Francesca sits at the piano, his mother and Eloise on the sofa with needlepoint and a book, respectively. Benedict sits on the floor with Hyacinth and Gregory, overseeing their game of jacks, his sketchbook and charcoal forgotten. Anthony and Kate sit opposite his mother and sister, entertaining a quiet conversation, Anthony with a folded newspaper in his hand and Kate with a cup of tea. Daphne must be off with Simon at Clyvedon Castle, so it makes Colin wish that she were around; he can picture her with his mother, sitting in the armchair with her own needlepoint, Simon moving between conversing with her and wandering into Anthony and Kate’s conversation. 

They all get on so easily without him; for a moment, he wonders if they miss him at all.

It’s such a morbid thought. Self-pitying, but with so many of them, they would hardly notice if he were gone for longer. He isn’t important like Daphne, the first daughter, a diamond. He isn’t Gregory, the youngest son, a jovial trickster. And he certainly isn’t Hyacinth, with her omniscient smile despite her young age. Colin, for a heavy moment, thinks about leaving the doorway and climbing back into the carriage, heading to the docks, boarding a ship, and writing responses to a sparse delivery of letters. Eloise calls his writing dreadful. Perhaps he is dreadful. 

God, it is the day of Francesca’s debut—how like him to be self-important on a day where he matters the least. It does not matter if they missed him. Or if they wrote him. Or if they liked him. 

Did they like him? 

Anthony and Benedict still think him a fool for his failed engagement two seasons ago, and for continuing to be so naive and inexperienced the season before, truly lost and purposeless. Marina called him a boy. Eloise didn’t think much of him on a good day and even less on every other day. Francesca—well, he isn’t sure she likes anyone since the Bridgerton siblings tend to be loud and boisterous when gathered, and she prefers it when it is calm and quiet. Hyacinth and Gregory were the closest in age, and because of that, they usually stuck together. Daphne has always been his confidante, the sibling he feels closest to, his twin in some ways, even though they were born a year apart. He felt selfish for wishing she were here rather than living her life as a new wife, as a mother. How had she gotten so far in life so quickly, and all he had was a journal full of thoughts and questions rather than a memory full of milestone experiences?

It’s his mother who notices him first, looking up from her canvas and turning her head towards the open doorway, like she can sense him. She smiles at him, sweet and motherly, and guilt rides the length of his spine; of course he was missed.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

After Colin says his hellos and collects his greetings, he is rushed upstairs to bathe and dress, lest they be late for Francesca’s debut. 

As they climb into the carriages, Colin looks across the square towards the Featherington House. There isn’t much movement, nothing he can see through the windows, and this far away, as much as he’d like to have caught a glimpse of Penelope’s face (just to confirm she’s well), he does not, and the disappointment sits within him like acid. Is she all right? 

“Is Penelope all right?” Colin asks once the carriage is pulling them away. Across from him sat his mother and Francesca, Hyacinth to his right.

“I would think she is on the mend if not fully recovered; Lady Featherington mentioned her being ill some months ago,” his mother says simply. “But we have not heard news from her since.” 

“And she has not been to visit since we returned from Aubrey Hall,” Hyacinth explains. “She did not visit once for tea whilst we were in the country either. When I asked Eloise, she brushed me off rather rudely.”

“Did she?” Colin looks at Hyacinth, tilting his head.

“What is the matter?” his mother asks.

“Nothing—well. I am not sure. I haven’t heard from her is all.” Colin fiddles with his jacket, feeling his body warm underneath the constraints of the fabric. His mistake is glancing at Francesca, who has her eyes narrowed.

“How would you? You have not been home.” Francesca blinks once and then again.

“She wrote to me on my previous tour,” Colin explains with a false confidence that he hopes his nervous hands will not betray. “I would have thought we would have continued writing. She pens quite lovely letters; her writing is remarkable.”

There is a pause in the carriage as though everyone, even little Hyacinth, is gathering their thoughts.

“Letters…to Penelope?” Hyacinth is the first to speak. “Do you like her, Brother?”

“Of course, I like her,” he says, nudging her gently with his elbow. She shies away from him with a giggle. “She is my friend.”

“Both of you are unmarried; that cannot be proper,” Francesca says, eyebrows arched in surprise. She glances to their mother and then sets her gaze back on Colin. “Although I must say, that is quite sweet.”

“Sweet? Sweet how? She simply keeps me up to date with the goings-on while I am away. Things none of you care to write in your letters back.” Colin’s accusation hangs, and Hyacinth pats his arm. 

“Not me, brother. I wrote letters every day. Anthony promised he would send them for me. He has sent them, has he not?” Her shiny blue eyes stare up at him, and Colin nods.

“Of course, Hy. I’ve gotten each and every one.” Colin watches as she beams, sitting back in her seat, almost too smug. “That is why I bring you the most gifts,” he whispers loudly to her, and Hyacinth chirps with laughter.

“Colin, dear—” his mother begins.

“Mother, it is no matter. I am simply concerned for Penelope.”

When he looks at her, there’s a softness around her eyes; it is the kind of distress that he hasn’t seen from her in a long time. Violet Bridgerton has always worn her emotions on her face, except when she doesn’t want to, and Colin knows he’s broken open a topic he’s never wanted to have scrutinised before.

“We shall call her over for tea tomorrow,” Violet says, reaching across the space in the carriage and patting his hand. “You will see for yourself that she is quite all right.”

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Francesca’s debut goes about as well as the rest of the debutantes, and in the gardens, as all the families have gathered, Colin tries to find Penelope. He isn’t sure that she has arrived; from what he knows, both of her sisters are married now, and since Penelope is still on the marriage mart, it would make sense for her to mingle and chat with all the other young ladies. Yet, even as he spies Prudence’s frown and Philippa’s wandering eyes, Penelope remains out of sight.

After a while, Eloise sidles up to him, nudging his arm and handing him a glass of lemonade.

“How have you been, sister?” Colin asks, peering down at her.

Eloise appraises him with a raise of her eyebrows. “I have certainly been worse. Also, I have been better.”

“It seems like everyone has had a bit of an odd time away in the country.”

“I had read every book in the library it seems. Benedict accompanied me a few times into town to visit the bookshop to acquire more. Things were quite…dull. Or rather, duller than I am used to them being.” Eloise gives him a shrug, sipping from her glass.

“And your visits with Penelope; surely, they were not so dull. She is your favourite person.” Colin already knows her answer, but he asks anyway, attempting to get some insight he was not able to get earlier.

“Penelope did not visit. I fear she’s grown weary of me. She will not respond to my notes or letters. Her mother has declined invitations for tea and dinner on her behalf. I have not seen her since you left, actually.” Eloise frowns. “Her mother says she is ill, but I suspect she has gotten married in secret, and her husband must be quite ugly if she is not proud enough to tell me about him.”

“Married?” Colin nearly chokes on his lemonade, sputtering through a cough. “She is married?”

“I said I suspected. Christ alive, Colin, you look positively green.” Eloise laughs. “With envy or sickness, I cannot tell.”

“I am—I am simply surprised, El.” Colin drinks from his glass to clear his throat, finishing its contents. He hands the empty glass to a passing footman.

“Well, I would not know either way. But what else can it be? We have spent nearly every waking moment together since we met, and she has not come to spend her usual week during the summer at Aubrey Hall. If she is truly so ill that she cannot be seen, then Lord and Lady Featherington would not keep her so hidden. Has she written to you?”

Colin shakes his head, fingers fidgeting, his thumb rubbing circles into his forefinger. “I must have written a dozen letters. All of them went without response.”

Eloise frowns, her brow pinching. “Even Mama has tried. But perhaps if you call on her, it might do the trick. She always seems to fancy a conversation with you.”

“Does she?” Colin immediately hates the way he straightens his posture, nearly preening underneath Eloise’s pseudo-compliment. “I always thought she might find me rather boring in person, considering how easily she runs away with you when you interrupt us.”

Eloise rolls her eyes. “Obviously, I am much better company than you are. What could you possibly entertain her with other than the colour of the grass in Italy? I must imagine it is the same colour as it is in Mayfair.”

“How would you know?” Colin bites back at her. “It could be blue, and you could not contest.”

“That may be true, but I would have to be stupid to believe you.” She raises her glass in salute.

Colin grins.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Eventually, they are corralled back into carriages and on their way home; though Colin, along with Anthony and Benedict, make a stop at Will’s club for a drink. Benedict does not even make it to their table before he is whisked away by a gentleman Colin does not recognise.

Once they are seated and a bottle of whiskey is delivered, Colin crosses his legs and rests his hand on the table. Anthony pours them their servings, sliding Colin’s glass over to him.

“Your honeymoon was quite long, was it not? How is Kate? I imagine she is fitting in quite perfectly with the family,” Colin says as he lifts his glass from the table and takes a hearty drink.

“She is well. She decided to stay behind to have a chat with Lady Danbury. They have not taken tea with one another as we have been away.” Anthony sighs rather dreamily.

“It seems marriage rather suits you, Brother. I have never seen you like this.” Honestly, Colin never would have expected Anthony to let go of all his staunch beliefs and allow himself the pleasure of a union that would bring him happiness. In that moment, Anthony closely resembles his father; his eyes sparkle so brightly because his wife has put stars in his gaze. 

“It is rather agreeable, especially when one’s wife is…” Anthony breathes in, pausing momentarily as though he is searching for the correct words. With his soft smile, Colin cannot believe his brother, a notorious rake, could become so besotted. Colin imagines small hearts dancing around his head. “Kate is…she is truly extraordinary, Colin. She is strong-willed, intelligent—not to mention she is absolutely breathtaking. She is unlike any of the other ladies in the ton, droning on about their needlepoint and watercolours. As if I care about watercolours.”

“You must admit, there isn’t much else society sets the debutantes up with.” Colin frowns. Anthony’s smile curves wryly; the adoration for his wife taking a temporary rest so he might make fun of Colin for a moment or two. 

“Ah, so you have seen how other cultures manage their women and have come back to change the world,” his brother muses, and Colin inhales deeply, shrugging.

“Is it so bad to want more for them? To unchain us from all of these imaginary rules?”

“You sound like Eloise,” Anthony grins, pouring more whiskey into his glass. 

“Perhaps. But being away for the length of time I was gone and meeting people who didn’t conform to such…confinements—”

“Colin, these rules are in place so society can thrive. It would be out of place for noble families to adopt the mannerisms of the lower classes. How else would we distinguish ourselves?”

Colin rolls his eyes—his titled brother would not understand, and Anthony’s tour had happened a decade and a half ago; Colin isn’t even sure if Anthony remembers what it was like to be freer. Or free from his cravat, at the very least. When Anthony was on his tour, Colin was still in shorts, playing with his baby siblings and trying to keep Eloise and Daphne from ripping each other’s hair out.

“I suppose,” Colin relents because he does not have any fight left inside of him. This day has dragged on, and still, the sun is in the sky, and he wishes to sleep for the next fortnight, hoping his wits will have settled into their appropriate spaces. Perhaps after a super-slumber, he will have returned to normal. “Is it odd?” 

“What?”

“Marriage. Being in love.” Colin sips from his whiskey.

“There was a time you fancied yourself in love, brother.” Anthony arches an eyebrow.

“Yes, well,” Colin huffs, reclining back in his chair, uncrossing his legs only to recross them as he warms underneath his brother’s scrutiny. “I concede to your point that I had gotten ahead of myself. It was not love as much as it was a desire for things to fall into place. Though, to explain this to a first-born son seems…pointless, considering your entire life has been planned.”

Anthony’s brow furrows. “You do not mean to say my journey has been easy. Do you?”

Colin sighs. “No, of course not. I mean to say that there is a purpose for you. There has been since you took your first breath.”

“And what? Being third born should mean you throw whatever idea you spawn at the wall and see if it sticks?” Anthony laughs.

“No—well, I suppose not.”

“It isn’t odd, to answer your question,” Anthony says, shifting to stand tall and taking the seat next to Colin. “It just is.”

“And you are happy?”

“The happiest I have ever been.”

Colin raises his glass to Anthony before finishing it off.

“And you brother? Do you intend to take a wife this season?”

“Would you allow it if I did?” Colin retorts sharply. 

Anthony rolls his eyes. “You just conceded—”

“I know, I know,” Colin grumbles. “I apologize.”

Anthony recoils in surprise. “Colin, you seem to be out of sorts.”

“I am. I do not know why. I thought being away would…” He groans. “I do not know what I thought. Perhaps I was certain that bedding some women would fix whatever feeling I—”

“So, you did?” Anthony arches a single eyebrow, and the question irritates Colin that he imagines himself taking a match and burning off the fine hair.

“Yes. At your insistence truly, considering you all but dropped me off at the feet of a lady of the night.”

“It’s a rite of passage, Colin. Men find their manhood by learning of…carnal pleasures. It allows for you to release frustrations, and if the lady is amenable, you are able to do things with her that you would never do with your wife—”

“Do not tell me you are visiting those places while married to Kate,” Colin pleaded earnestly.

“Of course not. She would hang me by my bollocks. Kate is rather—excitable to trying new intimacies. I have no use for whores when the woman I love pleases me every single way I could possibly imagine being pleased.”

“Are you saying you would, if there were something Kate would rather not do?”

“No.” Anthony leans forward, his elbows on the table. “A wife and the intimacies you share with her are for both of you. If she is not agreeable to something you would like to try, then it has no place in your bed chamber.”

Colin raises his eyebrows. “You are an entirely new person, Anthony.”

“Well, bending and breaking to Kate’s will has done that to me.”

“Curious.”

“You are rather new yourself.”

“Am I?” Colin’s neck warms as his brother eyes him. 

“Did you not rant and rave because here in Mayfair you may not see a lady’s ankle and are forced to wear a cravat?”

“That was not the conceit of—”

“I jest, Colin. I know. But you must admit, it is all rather…different.”

“I suppose. The winds of Italy must have knocked me one way and Paris the other and I cannot say which way is north.”

“I suppose some time out in the season chatting with debs will right you well enough.”

“You know I will not be searching for a wife this season.”

“You can still talk to debutantes without marrying them. Or did you not know that?”

“Fuck you,” Colin spits, but he grins into the rim of his glass after he pours himself a refill.

“I simply ask, considering what occurred with Miss Thompson…”

“Lady Crane,” Colin corrects. “In truth, part of me wishes to leave again.”

“Why did you come back?” Anthony wonders. “Most men your age take a while longer to return.”

“I suppose I missed home.” Which is a simpler, omissive way to mention that he was unsettled that Penelope had not answered his letters, and he felt unsettled in a way that he did not like. “Or—perhaps I grew bored of moving so quickly through foreign lands.”

“Certainly, that cannot be true. You came back from Greece and barely breathed between tales, let alone words. It must be something else.” Anthony squints his eyes. 

“Could it not be that I missed my bed?”

“Perhaps. But that is even stranger still; you added countries on your last tour.”

“Anthony—”

“No, there is something more to it. Did you get into trouble?”

Sitting across from Anthony does have a high probability of being interrogated, and yet, part of Colin enjoys it, this game he plays with his brother that borders on playful irritation, like one step too far might sour the whole moment. But Colin has grown up and he has gotten better at battling Anthony. Even then, whatever Anthony is trying to uncover cannot be uncovered because there is nothing to uncover. 

“What kind of trouble could I have possibly found?” Colin groans. “I’m not you. Or Benedict.”

“And yet, trouble seeks anyone despite their disposition.”

“I did not get into trouble,” Colin insists. 

“So, then, it must be a woman,” Anthony reasons.

Colin chokes on his whiskey. “A woman? What woman?”

“This is my question to you. Someone held your attention before you left—and perhaps you have lost it,” Anthony continues, needling incessantly.

“I would have mentioned a woman,” Colin proposes casually. “Surely.”

“No, I do not think you would, especially if you were not courting her. Is it a widow? Or perhaps a woman from a lower class. You realise Benedict was traipsing around with the modiste—” 

“Madame Delacroix is a kind woman—”

“Did you tup her, too?” Anthony raises his eyebrows.

“Jesus Christ, no!”

“Then who?”

“Is it not enough to miss my mother and my siblings?” Colin says fully exasperated now.

Anthony tugs at his earlobe and shakes his head. “I have a sneaking suspicion that you would tell Ben—I suppose I will ask him after dinner.”

“He would not know because I have not confessed about missing her to anyone!”

“Her!” Anthony exclaims excitedly. “I knew it! Who is she?”

“Please—I—”

“You have already confessed halfway, might as well be done with it.”

Colin stares at his brother, frustrated and irritated, knowing he’s caught in Anthony’s web. Anthony has always been good at poking at him until he spilt his little secrets, and it seems marriage has not softened his blade. And Colin has not grown the armour needed to make it through these encounters unscathed. 

“Do I know her?” Anthony wonders. “I must. Shall I begin with married women or—

“Christ, Anthony, please. It is nothing. I am not courting her, nor do I intend to. I simply have been worried.”

“Worried? Who could you be worried about? Besides our sisters. And our mother. And—”

“Eloise told me something quite interesting today,” Colin interrupts, finally relenting, lest Anthony name everyone in their family tree and Colin keels over from sheer boredom. “She mentioned she suspected Miss Featherington to be married. Have you…heard anything regarding such a thing?”

“Yes...” Anthony furrows his brow. “To a Dankworth, I believe. No title. I rather thought I’d never see the day Prudence was to marry. Her countenance is fine, but her disposition—or rather, her attitude…” Anthony shivers. 

“That is obviously not the Miss Featherington I am inquiring about,” Colin mutters, leaning back in his seat. Anthony cracks a sly grin.

“I did enjoy having you on the hook there for a second,” Anthony admits, his eyes sparkling.

“Tosser.”

Anthony ignores the insult. “No, Colin, there has not been any word of Penelope Featherington marrying. Though if she has, it might not have been in London. For all you know, she could have been whisked away to Gretna Green.”

“Right, of course,” Colin mumbles. “I thought she would have at least sent word.”

“Do not fret. Eloise has been spouting her suspicion of Penelope’s secret, unwanted marriage for the better part of a month; it hardly holds any merit.”

“Very well.” Colin fixes himself another drink and tosses it back quickly. “I ought to let you get back to your wife.”

“Is that the root of your problems?” Anthony asks, his tone much softer, which feels unlike him, considering how they had gotten here.

“I am not sure,” he says honestly. “I shall decide so by morning and let you know.”

Anthony hums, knocking on the table before standing and drifting away.

After another drink, and one more, Colin feels properly in his cups, wading in amber waters, thinking about wives and marriage, about love and intimacy, about why he felt so empty—

It had become worse after the first time. He begged her for her name, and she took pity on him, with a crooked smile. She was pretty, slender, with small breasts and curvy hips. His body reacted to her touch, her soft hands on his chest, his shoulders, unbuttoning his shirt and then his trousers, leaving him naked in her room. 

He remembered telling her he had never laid with a woman, and her eyes softened around the edges. Her cheeks wore a pretty blush that reminded him of the swing set at Bridgerton house, fiery plaits and the brightest blue eyes he’d ever seen. 

The woman was kind and patient. She soothed the tremble in his hands but stoked the rapid beat of his heart. He had paid more than he needed to for her, and after he spent the sunlight traipsing around Italy during the day, he fell into her bed at night.

How did you—how did you come to be—

A whore? She finished for him. He nodded, frowning. That is not a polite question.

He had apologized profusely. She answered him anyway.

Illegitimate children have no place in proper society. I’m sure you know. I would have been a Contessa, but alas, life weaves paths, and some of them are harder than others.

That was the last night he saw her. She drew her thighs apart for him and he laid between them, fucking her like she taught him. He spent on her belly, her hip, breathing hard and cursing her name. And while he could admit he held some affection for her, it felt born out of pity. After she shared her story, he could not lie with her knowing that she was a wedding away from the same life he lived. Or his sisters. He wondered if there were similar stories in the other rooms of the brothel, if the other ladies here were daughters of barons and earls and viscounts, shunned because they were born to mistresses.

“And where did Anthony go?” Benedict’s voice cuts through his memory, and Colin looks up at his brother.

“You were gone an hour,” Colin says dismissively. “He missed his wife.”

“Ah.”

“Where did you go?” Colin asks.

“Chilton was regaling last night’s dealings. Apparently, there is some kind of man in town who plays big; Chilton just so happened to win and has been bragging about it to anyone who will listen.”

Colin raises his eyebrows. “Can’t be any different than the gambling tables at White’s,” he muses.

“I would think not, and yet, there are rumours that the man dabbles in sorcery.”

“Oh, come off it,” Colin laughs. “Sorcery?”

“Chilton says he gambles for anything. Looks to fill a garden.”

“Was Chilton also in his cups?” Colin quipped.

“Very much so. Looked to be in need of a bath.” Benedict snickers and Colin rolls his eyes.

They share a couple more drinks, and when night has properly laid her blanket over their city, Benedict tries to convince Colin to join him at a party. His body reminds him he is tired, and he has no energy to converse and even less to lay with a woman he will not learn the name of. Rather than find some deeply stored enthusiasm, he goes in the opposite direction and heads home.

 .𖥔 ݁ ˖.

In his bedroom, Colin stands at his window, looking out towards the square. Odder and odder. He wonders if Eloise’s suspicion is right; Penelope’s window has always been lit late into the night. (Books, she had admitted to him shyly. It is the only time I am able to read uninterrupted.) Her window is dark, and Colin stares at it, nearly willing the pane to glow with the light of a candle, hoping that it will show him some sign that Eloise’s suspicion is wrong.

Although, if Eloise turned out to be correct, it would make sense. Penelope, as a married lady, could not hold a friendship with him as a bachelor. It would be more improper than two unmarried young adults trading letters. At the very least, Colin could explain the letters and their innocence, but Colin would be branded with a reputation if he were to befriend a married woman, and Penelope’s reputation would be sullied, and so would her husband’s honour. It was not to do, not in this society.

And still, the idea of it would not sit still in his stomach. It rattles about, clanging against his bones, knocking along his ribs and up his spine, lodging in his throat. It makes him feel breathless, choking on the mere thought that Penelope would be inaccessible. That he wouldn’t be able to talk with her or hear her laugh or bring the parchment she used to write him up to his nose and catch the remnants of her perfume tucked away in the loops of her Ls and Ys. 

His silly little heart threatened to give out at the thought of never again being able to listen to her speak her mind or speak to her about purposes or speak about…anything.

As Colin lies in bed, shuffling underneath his blankets, he closes his eyes and pictures Penelope in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle up to a faceless man. He pictures a veil as long as the train of her dress. Her cheeks pink with rouge, and her blue eyes glimmering beneath the light pouring through the frosted window of the church. He thinks of her saying her vows. He thinks of her tearing up—because a wedding would make Penelope emotional, definitely her own—and he thinks of her being kissed by a man who could never properly care for her. That would know her. That could make her fully and completely happy. There wasn’t anyone on the face of this earth that could make her happy. Not really. 

Could they make a fairytale come to life? Could they make it a reality for her? Not the dragons or the knights or the princess, but the unconditional way she hoped and wished to be loved?

Colin thinks about her letters, how, after the first handful, he would ask her a question and she would write her response in beautiful prose that made him wish to see her. He always wondered how it was that she could do such a thing, bewitch him with her words. 

The length of her letters had always left him wanting more; they weren’t short, sometimes lasting for pages, but the end of them always ripped him out of his reverie of sitting beside her on a sofa, usually in his mother’s drawing room, watching as she made her jokes, or looked away from him from a gently astonishing and revealing admission. Her cheeks would flush, and if he touched her, if he would ever be so bold to reach across the miles of space between them and touch her, he would feel the heat of her shy vulnerability, sharing with him a secret, something precious and sacred, meant for the palms of his hands.

Why would she stop writing him? Eloise’s theory of her marriage holds water, even if the barrel is leaking, but even worse, what if Penelope loved the man she married?

Acid rises from Colin’s stomach and burns in his throat. What if her letters stopped, because the man she married had somehow been the man she’d been waiting for? The love of her life, a…a great love that he wasn’t expecting. Or she, rather. There was no reason for him to expect anything.

Maybe that is what bothers him the most: that he never really expected Penelope to marry. He saw them living their long lives, friends who corresponded, who laughed together at garden parties and danced at balls. 

In the deep recesses of his mind, he does not think he ever truly saw a future where Penelope was not bound in a corset underneath a gaudy yellow dress that made the redness of her blush pop, like blood in the palm of a pricked hand. 

Was he really so stupid to expect that she would actually remain a spinster? For all her and Eloise’s talks of waiting out their mamas and owning a cottage together, finally free to do whatever it is that spinsters do; did he wrap himself in a fantasy where Penelope remained his?

Not—not his. But his in the way his breaths are his. They keep him upright and alive. Penelope felt like that at times, especially her letters, scented so freshly, kept with him on his long journeys. He took them with him—God, they were still in his pack that he travelled with on his person. For when it felt like loneliness had him by the throat, he could reach into his pack and untie the twine, unfold her letters and read them, only a few of them at a time; he would feel that tethering feeling—sitting beside her on a sofa and watching her cover her laugh behind her hand. A curl of her carefully pinned hair would fall, and Colin would desperately wish he could cross the space between them to touch her, to wrap it around his finger. Would she respond to that kind of affection? What would she say to a move so bold? Would she even say anything, innocent as she was? Her blush would speak for her, Colin was sure. The shiny, bright blue of her irises would respond valiantly. He would know how she felt, simply because she looked at him.

With all the stress running through his body, he should fall asleep from the sheer exhaustion wrangling his body. He can’t.

Twist. Turn. Twist. Turn.

Even the blankets and sheets of his bed cannot make sense of him, bunching at the end around his ankles. His skin feels too tight like his body is growing too big; he will burst at the seams, drenching his bed in blood and flesh, bits of him that could not fit behind his fragile skin. What is becoming of him? 

Over letters? 

Or a married miss he has no claim to? 

A friendship that could not become anything more because the binding bounds of society would faint if he so much as touched her skin ungloved?

The thought of doing so lit his entire body on fire. Touching Penelope? He has done—a million times, it feels like, between the edges of their youth, at the lake on the grounds of Aubrey Hall, underneath the sun and its handsome rays, bathing light over them, spotting Penelope’s cheeks and the bridge of her nose like a constellation. If he had a quill, he would connect them and find out what picture those little dots make. He had touched her a dozen times that summer and every single one that followed, until her first season. His mother warned him. For what? He would never think to ruin someone so sweet as Penelope, with her shy smiles and cutting words and sweet laughter. No, of course not, she was a lady. To be wed to an honourable man, become a mother, and oversee a household. And he knew that.

Of course, he knew that. He knows that now, lying on his stomach, his eyes closed, that image of Penelope in a wedding dress still at the forefront of his mind. He knows that she would have married. That she will if she isn’t married already.

But….

But why had the thought never truly occurred to him? When he danced with her at balls, when he held her in her arms and she looked up at him with those spectacularly blue eyes (like oceans, and when he was aboard a ship, he felt surrounded by her), why had he never thought that this proximity, that their closeness would vanish?

Colin hates the man she’s married (if she is married, he still does not know). He hates him and feels like he could kill him, and it would be justified to do so, because how dare a man unworthy of Penelope marry her. And how could Penelope have said yes?

With sleep miles away, Colin drags himself out of bed, feeling more and more like a puppet, a marionette on strings (he did enjoy the ones he’d seen in the streets of Vienna). He barely feels like himself, he barely feels like anything.

When he enters the hall, he isn’t sure where he is going, where his feet are taking him, but he recognises the door (of course, he does), hesitating to knock.

Standing there for moments, minutes, what feels like hours but aren’t, he raises his hand to the cool wood of the door and knocks just loud enough that it would wake his mother, who was surely sleeping on the other side.

In the moments he waits, he remembers standing here, eight perhaps, or even younger, knocking on the wood with his little fist, scared of the nightmare he’d had or the thunderous storm outside his window. Back then, it would be his father who answered, opening the door and dropping his gaze to Colin’s little face, streaked with tears. And his father, a strong man, would pick him up and cradle him against his chest and let Colin be scared of nightmares or storms or even imaginary monsters that were hidden underneath his bed.

Now, the door opens, and he sees the face of his mother, so much older now; it is rare to see her without her hair pinned back or in something so intimate as her robe, but she recognises him, her small boy, and she gathers him, as much as she can before he crumples.

It feels odd to be this old and seek out the comfort of his mother. But in the doorway, his tears bleed out from behind his eyelids. She pets his hair and hums for him, something soft and familiar, the same melody that would chase away the storms or the bad dreams that would duel the monsters underneath his bed and win, keeping him safe for another night.

For a while, that’s where they sit, and Colin allows himself to feel every bit of seven years, or eight, or three and ten, or eight and ten—all the years that came before these two and twenty.

“My son,” she murmurs.

Somehow, he finds himself lying in his bed, and at the edge, Violet sits, petting her hand over his forehead, combing her wise fingers through his hair.

“Will you tell me what is the matter?” she asks.

“I would if I knew,” Colin says, but it feels like a lie because when he opens his eyes, there at the edge of his bed, he sees the ghost of her, a small girl with her rosy cheeks and Titian braids. He wonders why it feels like he is too late.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When Colin wakes in the morning, his head throbs, and his body feels like it’s been trampled by a horde of horses. His mother was long gone; they didn’t speak much before, but with her help, he’d finally drifted into a dreamless sleep.

The light peeking through his bedroom curtains was bright; it had to be fairly close to noon, if not after. He is not as bottle-weary as he thought he might be, but he still does not feel like getting up, much less dressing for the day and speaking to his family. He knows his mother will have questions, ones he does not have the answer to. Ones he would like answers to.

When his valet pokes his head in, for the third or fourth time that day, surely, since Colin has yet to ring for him, Colin doesn’t protest. Curtains are drawn open, and light filters in almost violently, a roiling in his stomach arguing with the blinding light. There is nausea that makes his mouth grow wet, and for a moment, he thinks he is going to vomit, but his body thankfully settles enough that he is able to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

Once he finishes his bath, Colin gets dressed, does not bother wearing a cravat or a jacket, and heads downstairs for something to eat.

There isn’t anyone in the drawing room; he had expected someone to be, but even Kate and Anthony are not home. He knows there is a ball tonight, one he is hoping to see Penelope attend wearing a yellow dress adorned with flowers or butterflies or whatever other splashy stitching; somehow, even though they are not as pretty as the other dresses the debutantes wear, Colin finds she wears them well. She always has.

Before he leaves the house, he nearly collides with his mother at the bottom of the steps.

“Colin!” she calls.

“I am off, Mother. I shall return in time for dinner.” He thinks that’s enough for her to let him go but she catches her fingers on his arm, holding him back.

“Are you well?” she asks gently. “You were so melancholy last night.”

“I am better,” he says, giving her the smile he knows she is looking for.

Violet puts her hand on his forehead, feeling for his temperature. “You seem to be in higher spirits. Is there anything you would like to discuss?”

Colin shakes his head. “I promise, I am better,” he insists, nodding to her.

“Very well. Please do be in attendance tonight; Lady Danbury appreciates when we are all there at her gatherings.”

“Yes, I will. I promise I will return in time.”

“Where is it that you are going?”

Colin feels his chest tighten, and he hesitates to answer. “To the florist. I owe someone a bouquet.”

“Do you?” she asks, her face brightening. “Are you going to see Penelope?”

“I am going to try. Please do not make this something bigger than it is. I am only seeing a friend.”

“Please send her our regards and best wishes. Invite her for tea or dinner, Colin,” Violet says, squeezing Colin’s arm. “I’m sure the rest of the family would like to see that she is well.” She lets him go, but Colin can still feel the pressure of her fingertips as she walks away.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

The walk to the florist clears his head some. A small bit only as he is still thinking of Penelope and her husband, certain that she’s been given away to a man who does not deserve her. Eloise knows Penelope better than anyone, potentially better than he does, and he likes to think he knows her rather well. Enough that it feels embarrassing not to have known why she has completely disappeared. During his first tour, Penelope wrote to him more than anyone else who had answered him. He would receive responses to his missives, and they would trade jokes. What began as one-page letters, folded neatly in on themselves and stuck closed with wax had flourished into pages and pages, things he would have never confessed to anyone. 

How could they just stop coming?

It pains him. To have had something so constant that he had not thought twice about what would happen if it disappeared…and now, something he had never even fathomed happened and he is not certain what to make of it. 

Once he reaches the florist’s shop, he takes his time, looking through flowers, asking the shopkeeper what the flowers mean—he knows Penelope and her romantic nature would understand this language, and he does not want to give her anything that she wouldn’t like, or that would say something other than, I miss you. 

When he has collected his colourful bouquet and paid extra for ribbons adorned with gems, he carries it carefully all the way back to the square, crossing over to the Featherington House. There isn’t anyone outside, no carriages to say that someone else might be visiting, and calling hours are long from over, so he doesn’t feel at odds with his unexpected visit. He clears his throat, fixes his jacket and lifts his fist to knock.

Briarly, the Featherington butler, answers the door, a surprised look on his face quickly masked into one far more blank.

“Mr. Bridgerton, how may I help you?”

“Good day. I am hoping to see Miss Featherington. Uh—Miss Penelope Featherington. Though I suppose she is the only Miss Featherington as I hear both of her sisters are now wed…”

Briarly, surely taking pity on him, gives him a smile. “I will inquire with Lady Featherington, but I am told Miss Featherington is not to take any visitors. Please, come inside and wait here.”

Colin does as he’s told shifting his weight from one foot to the other, clutching the bouquet of flowers in his hands. Briarly climbs the stairs and after a very short moment, Lady Featherington descends the staircase, Briarly trailing behind her. She looks rather serious, almost stoic, which worries him because he does not remember Lady Featherington to look as morose as she does. It would not make sense to be greeted in such a way—Lady Featherington always seemed excited to have a member of his family over for a visit. For the life of him, he cannot think of any reason as to why Lady Featherington would be upset with him.

“Mr. Bridgerton, I am happy to see you made your way home safely.” Lady Featherington stops at the end of the stairs, standing on the last one, giving her some height so they are matched in stature.

“Yes, it is very good to be home,” Colin says politely. “I hope you have all been well. I was hoping to see Miss Featherington if—”

“She is not available to take visitors,” Lady Featherington interrupts, her tone short. 

“Oh, is she not home? Briarly mentioned he would—”

“She is ill.” Lady Featherington’s face hardens some more. “She cannot be seen.”

“How long has she been ill for? Is it serious? Eloise says she has not seen Penelope for quite some time.” Colin fiddles with the ribbon of the bouquet. 

“She has not gotten better—”

“All the more reason to see her—”

“It might catch—”

“I am well-travelled Lady Featherington. I am not afraid of catching her illness.”

“No.”

Colin stops at that. “Not even for a few minutes?”

“Mr. Bridgerton, you have been friends with Penelope for a while, have you not? At least that is what she tells me. I remember two seasons ago; she was writing letters to you whilst you were away.”

“She is—”

“Then, as her friend, would you not want to leave her in peace so she may have the rest she needs?”

“Lady Featherington—”

“I said no!” Lady Featherington snaps. “And that will be final. As I have told your sisters and your mother, I would wish that you would respect our privacy as Penelope recovers. If she is well enough, she will send an invite for tea. As for now, you should head back home and would do well not to attempt to see my daughter again.”

“Lady Featherington—”

At the top of the stairs, Lord Featherington appears. “Mr. Bridgerton, please do not force me to take action.” 

Lady Featherington turns and begins climbing the stairs. Colin’s shoulders fall in defeat, until he thrusts the flowers out in front of him, calling Lady Featherington’s attention.

“Will you at least give these to her?” Colin asks, feeling his throat close with the threat of tears. “I picked them out, especially for Pen—er, Miss Featherington. I would not want them to go to waste. Perhaps they will lift her spirits as she recovers.”

Lady Featherington shakes her head. “What Penelope needs is a miracle, not a bouquet of flowers. Take them with you. Briarly, please see Mr. Bridgerton out.”

And with that cutting dismissal, Lady and Lord Featherington disappear, leaving Colin alone in the front room.

Briarly is polite as he steers Colin towards the door, and Colin turns to the butler and hands him the flowers. “Would you please see to it that Penelope receives these?”

“You heard Lady Featherington. I would be terminated from my post should she find out I went behind her back.”

“Please. If Penelope is unwell—if she is so ill that she cannot see me, I would prefer she at least know that the Bridgertons send their love and best wishes.”

Briarly eyes him and Colin urges the flowers forward once more.

“Please. I have never asked for anything from this family, but I beg for this one small favour.” With his free hand, Colin reaches into his pocket and takes out all the coins he has, dropping them into Briarly’s hand. “Please.”

“Very well, Sir,” Briarly relents, taking the flowers and the money.

“Mr. Briarly?”

“Yes, Sir?”

“Is—well. It seems Penelope is still residing in her family home. That is to mean she has not married?”

Briarly raises his eyebrows. “No Sir, she remains unmarried.”

“Thank you. Good day.”

The door closes behind him and Colin feels heavy, like he might sink into the floor. Truthfully, Colin does not understand how to carry this news. This information. Penelope is not only sick, but the illness will not leave her. No, it will consume her fully. He isn’t sure what it is, whether it’s a sickness that spreads and causes fevers, or if perhaps she’s been bitten or hurt by a garden animal. Was it a bee? Like the one that felled his father? Was it something so small and innocuous that Penelope hadn’t even noticed it fluttering around? Was she so engrossed in a book, laying in a field, underneath the shade of a tree, that it pricked her?

It makes Colin sick to think about that she’s locked away in her bed chamber, like a princess in a tower, left to—

Surely Lord and Lady Featherington would not be so cruel. Why would they not want her friends to see her? Wouldn’t they want the people who care for her surrounding her?

It does not make sense for Penelope to wish for something like this. Penelope has always sought out the company of the Bridgertons, be it Eloise or any one of his siblings; playing in the gardens with Hyacinth and Gregory, gossiping with Daphne and Eloise, sitting quietly with Francesca as they both read underneath the shade of a tree. There were times Penelope would converse with Anthony or Benedict, and as rare as those occurrences were, they still seemed to adore her.

And himself. He was included, never truly sought out, but Penelope was always where he needed her to be whenever he had the urge to see her. And she would look up at him and they would converse—they could converse for hours if they were allowed the simplicity of uninterrupted conversation—of philosophy, of books, of sciences Colin learns of and tells her about. Of the things she hears as she hugs the walls of the balls they attend, like a butterfly with its wings spread and pinned down.

If Penelope does not recover, he cannot leave her, thinking that none of them cared enough or tried to see her again. Considering how Lady Featherington rejected his gift for Penelope, he wonders if she knows his family has written to her. Has invited her to their home. He wonders if Lady Featherington is so cruel that she would have her staff intercept letters holding his family’s crest. Could she be?

With the way he feels, he cannot go home. He nearly wants to fall to his knees, drop down and pray. Colin has never found himself to be a religious man. It was hard to be, considering his father was dead. A god that claimed to love all his children would never do something like that to a family, to take a life and distort the lives of all that were left behind.

Surely, He would not steal Penelope from him, too.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

It is bad enough that he has resorted to this, climbing over the locked gates of a family house that did not belong to him, but he could not wait any longer. If Lord and Lady Featherington would not allow him to see her, he would take matters into his own hands. 

It worries him that she is being kept away. 

When Colin was younger, he remembered his grandparents, older and withering, ailed by age, even they had time to see Colin and his siblings, even only for a few moments to exchange words of love, soft smiles and gentle laughter, before he and his siblings were corralled out of the room and ushered into the nursery to play. And when his mother was drowning in her grief, refusing to see anyone, sometimes Colin was able to see her, even for a handful of seconds before she sent him away, sobbing into her pillow, staring at him like she’d seen a ghost. He knows better now that he, out of all his siblings, looks the most like his father—but still, his mother had kissed his forehead and told him to tell the rest of his brothers and sisters that she loved them.

Climbing the trellis outside of Penelope’s bedroom felt like he had gathered all of their love to give to her. They will be happy to know that he has seen her for himself. They will be happy to know that she has not entered into an unwanted marriage, something loveless and boring. Colin felt that he would climb through her window like some knight aiding a princess, and he would see her, and somehow, he would make her better. He had to, of course. He had to do something that would allow her to get better and live a flourishing life, one she was meant for.

The season before, they had spoken so much of purpose. Outside in the gardens after Anthony’s first wedding failed and Edwina Sharma had (rightfully) run away, he’d seen Penelope, in her yellow dress and copper hair pinned back, and told him that her purpose would set her free. As her friend, as someone in which she was able to confide such a thing, he would make it his purpose to ensure that she is freed. 

Penelope was too lovely to be caged, to live her life with only the view from her window. There was so much she had not seen; it could be his purpose to show her.

So deep in his thoughts, his foot slips on a vine and he nearly falls to the ground, but he is strong enough to keep himself upright with his hands. Heart beating raucously in his chest, he pulls himself a step upwards and then another, more determined; as a Bridgerton, there was nothing truly worse than being told he couldn’t have something.

The curtains were drawn over the window, but they were sheer, like some kind of gossamer that allowed him to peer inside.

A single candle lit the room, flooding it with a haunting light that reminded him of night terrors, of stormy midnights that kept him awake, and of the monsters he was certain hid under his bed.

Did Penelope feel like that sometimes, that even in their adult ages, there were terrors only they could see? He couldn’t voice such a thought to anyone, not even his mother for the fear of embarrassment taking hold of him by the throat, but something in his chest, his heart, told him Penelope would understand what he meant. Not a goblin or gremlin, but something worse, something that built anxiety brick by brick, until it was so tall it seemed to tower over them, imposing and looming, as though it would tumble down and cover them in wreckage where they would never be discovered.

Although he could not see her through the glass, considering the hour, she must be in bed. Part of him felt wrong for bothering her, but if he could simply see her face, he knew he would be able to rest.

Gently, he raps his knuckles against the glass. It doesn’t gain her attention, so he tries again, and then again, until he sees Penelope sit up in her bed.

What a fright he must be giving her; he feels a trickle of shame, but it clears when she shoves the blankets off of her body. Carefully and slowly, she stands from the edge of her bed, and Colin taps his fingernails on the glass, beckoning her to where he is. She startles, jumping softly with a hand landing over her chest. He gives her an apologetic smile.

The window slides open easily enough, and Penelope frowns at him.

“Did you get my flowers?” he asks.

“Have you lost your mind?” she seethes. There’s a pinch in her eyebrow; he would have thought she would be much happier to see him.

“Probably,” he says softly. “Your parents would not let me see you, and I could not wait any longer.”

“So, you thought climbing the side of my family’s home was a good idea?” Penelope’s expression goes blank, and Colin feels like he’s made a mistake, but one she appreciates if anything. 

Colin grins at her. “I needed to see that you were well. Your mother made it seem as though you were dying. I was concerned.”

Penelope sighs and doesn’t return his smile. There’s a pinch between her brow and her bottom lip wobbles like she might cry.

“Pen?” Colin calls to her, reaching out his left hand, holding onto the sill tight with his right hand. She pulls her arm out of reach before he can touch her; it’s not something she’s ever done, and it makes his stomach sink, then his heart, and then his soul. It is then he notices that she wears gloves despite that she is dressed for bed and alone in her chambers. “Pen, what is it?”

“My mother was right to refuse you. Despite the fact that I am not yet fully consumed by my illness, it is better that no one sees me. It is unseemly.”

“If it is an illness, perhaps I could have Anthony reach out to some physicians in Mayfair and you could be seen—”

“It is not that kind of illness, Colin.” She glances at him, and he takes in the full sight of her. Even when she spent time at Aubrey Hall during the summer, Colin didn’t much see her at night; it was improper to do so, and even though Colin didn’t much care for societal rules, there were still boundaries he could not push, for fear the freedom they had would vanish at any notion of Penelope’s reputation being ruined.

At this moment, however, he could see her most intimately, with her hair unbound and cascading over her shoulders, softened waves that she must have brushed while sitting at her vanity. There were strands that caught the light, gently lit like woven gold. Her skin was clear of any rouge or sparkles on her eyelids. Penelope always had skin that reminded him of smooth porcelain, hand-crafted dolls with pink cheeks. And even in the dim light, her cheeks still wore that soft blush, her pouty lips just as pink. She was beautiful this way, perhaps more beautiful than he’d ever seen, and it was because she was as she was supposed to be.

“Colin, you are staring,” she whispers, her hands fiddling with the skirt of her robe; the fabric pools around her feet and gives the illusion that she is standing in a puddle. His eyes snap back up, and he clears his throat.

“I apologize. It is—it is nice to see you,” he confesses because this had been what he wanted. To look upon her with his own eyes, to ensure her safety and well-being, and to him, she looks as she always has. So, what illness could she possibly combat if she is not bedridden with a fever?

“Is it?” she asks. “I thought perhaps you—” she shakes her head. “I am not certain what I thought. But I did get your flowers. My maid delivered them in secret but there was no note, so I did not know they were from you.”

Happiness fills him. “Did you like them?”

“I love them.” Penelope steps closer to the window. “I have set them beside my bed.”

“May I come in?” he asks, still standing on the trellis. Her eyes widen and she takes a step back, glancing towards the door. She moves, slowly walking across the room, and shifts the lock in place.

“You may,” she agrees. Colin has never climbed through a window before, and what he thought might be easy turns out clumsier than he anticipates; his elbow catches the window jamb, and then he falls to his knees, nearly losing a shoe when the toe box catches on the windowsill. He is in one piece, and Penelope covers her mouth when she giggles.

“You were quite graceful,” she says, kneeling beside him.

“I will get better,” he promises, grinning at her. “If this is the only way I am to see you while you are recovering, then so be it.”

“You cannot possibly make a habit of this. You might get caught and then we would both be ruined.”

“I would marry you then. There, that solves it.”

“Colin,” she warns. “Do not be ridiculous.”

Truthfully, when the words fall out of his mouth, they do not feel wrong. Or forced. Or even anything he would find issue with. He finds the words taste rather sweet, and even with Penelope’s warning, Colin can see the twitch of a smile at the corners of her lips.

“Tell me what ails you. I will find whatever is needed to cure it.”

Penelope sighs, lifting herself to stand. She holds out her hand for him to take and he does, standing in front of her. Slowly, as if she is in pain, she leads him to a sofa that is tucked by a bookshelf. She clears the space where books had laid, some of them open, pieces of parchment tucked in to keep her places.

She motions for him to sit next to her. “I do not wish to talk about that.”

“But—”

“It is what it is. We have already had physicians visit and check, and unfortunately, nothing can cure this. None of them have seen this before.”

“So, we shall find a physician who can.” Colin reaches for both of her hands, expecting the fabric of her gloves to be warm, but they are cool to the touch and her fingers, which should have a soft give, are hard, like she’s made of glass. “Anthony has connections. We can find someone—”

“Let us converse over something else,” she pleads. “I am so happy to see you, I do not—I—” she makes a pained noise, taking her hand back from his, her arms folding around her belly as she doubles over.

“Pen!” he cries, alarmed. “Pen, are you well?”

“I-it is all right,” she croaks. “It is merely a symptom. But keep your voice down. The staff—”

“Perhaps you should lay down,” he hears himself say, but all he can think of is Penelope shattering before him, into millions of little glittering glass shards. He reaches for her shoulders, intending to be gentle, but he feels—a hardness again, as though she is stone. And he shouldn’t, but he feels the urge to squeeze her, and when he does, her flesh should allow the press of his fingers, but it does not.

“Are you wearing some kind of armour underneath your dress?” he asks, and Penelope stands, an incredulous huff of laughter falling from her mouth. It nearly sounds sarcastic.

“No,” she answers. She climbs into her bed, pulling the blankets over her body. She looks…frail. Perhaps in his selfish need to see her, he did not realize that she does look sick. That there is something off about her. And his insistence to be in her company—maybe Lady Featherington was right about him interrupting her rest.

“Has the pain subsided?” Colin moves towards the edge of her bed, kneeling so he can look her in the eyes. Slowly, he reaches for her hand, and she allows him; the hardness of her fingertips confuses him. If not armour, then what could it be? Some kind of fashion he is not privy to? Perhaps Madame Delacroix has been experimenting with reinforcing her fabrics?

“It has.” Penelope’s eyelashes flutter and they set on him. “It becomes worse as time passes. But I shall see another day.” 

“Would you allow it if we met again like this?” Colin wonders.

“You wish to?” Penelope asks with wide eyes. 

“If it means conversing with my favourite person, then yes,” he explains easily.

“Am I truly your favourite?”

“There is no contest.”

Penelope smiles, and alarmingly, her eyes well up with tears.

“Pen, what—did I say something unkind?” he breathes, clutching at her fingers. She squeezes back.

“Forgive me,” she mumbles, sniffling. Her other hand reaches up to her face and swipes away the falling tears. “I did not think I would see you again.”

“Why Miss Featherington, did you miss me?” he teases lightly, guiding her away from her tears, and Penelope ducks her head down. 

“Would it be so improper if I did?” She gives him a gentle smile. “That was a stupid question.”

“It wasn’t. And it isn’t. I missed you.”

“Did you really?”

Colin nods. His knees begin to ache, and he thinks since they have blown propriety out of the window now, he sits on her bed, his hip colliding gently with her thigh. He keeps her hand in his. “Of course I did. I was worried I did something wrong when I received no responses to my letters.”

“You wrote to me?” she asks.

“I did. A dozen or so, maybe a few more if I am honest.”

“I—I—” she frowns, glancing towards the door. “I wonder if they were lost in the post.”

“Perhaps they were.” It sits with them for a moment that they both know his letters were intercepted. He doesn’t level accusations, and neither does she.

“Well, I hope to hear of their contents in person,” she says softly. “As you practice climbing through my window of course. Though, Colin—you should make peace with the fact that I will not get better.”

“Surely, you cannot think so. I can bring something for the pain—”

“The pain is only a symptom,” she interrupts, squeezing Colin’s fingers. “Eventually, the pain will leave, and I will perish. It is only a matter of time.”

“Perish?” Colin’s chest tightens with panic. “No—that is—that is not—” His breath comes in shuddery and shallow, and he searches her eyes like he might find proof that she is overreacting or misreading her symptoms. “Penelope—”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It is not news I wished to share.” 

Colin’s eyes well up, and on the back of his night with his mother he still feels raw; he cannot keep the tears at bay, so they fall down his cheeks. Penelope—it would not be—he could not fathom a world where she was not alive. The thought of her being married had made him spiral into his mother’s arms. If Penelope died, Colin imagined he would spiral right into his father’s. 

“Pen, please, you will get better,” he insists. “Let me help you.”

“No physician has had any hope of a full recovery, Colin. One night you may attempt to climb my window, and you will receive no answer. I will leave the window unlocked should you like to climb through anyway.”

“Now, I am afraid to leave you at all,” he confesses softly.

“It will not be tonight,” she laughs, watery and soft, her own tears dripping down her face. She wipes them away with her gloves, and her cheeks stain red from the pressure. She sniffles. 

“How am I to know?” 

“I will be all right for tonight. Surely until the next time you visit me.”

“Eloise will be furious,” he frowns. “She will be livid, Pen. She will want you to seek help—"

“Colin, you must keep this a secret. If Eloise knows…my mother—she’ll put me on the first carriage out to Ireland, and then I won’t be able to see any of you. I would prefer to die in the comfort of my room with all my small comforts.”

“Pen…”

“Please, just for now. We—we can arrange to meet Eloise another day. Or perhaps you can show her how to climb through the window. She would enjoy that.” Penelope’s smile is brighter than he’s seen all night, and part of him wants to touch it; not her mouth—no, not that, at least he thinks so—but the light of it, the warmth, the teasing; all intangible things but there is something about her that reminds him of summer. She has been doing that a lot lately; reminding him of summer, of childhood, of something innocent, sweet. The taste of sugared lemons and jumping from the low branches of the surrounding trees—

“What is on your mind?” Penelope’s voice is soft when it breaks through his memories.

“Summertime,” he answers honestly. “When we were much younger than this.”

“You speak as if we have become so much older than we are. You are but two and twenty, Colin.” She blinks slowly at him, shifting so she’s lying on her side. Perhaps he has gone mad. The distance between them or the time they’ve spent apart, he reaches his hand out and brushes her hair back over her shoulder. He rubs his thumb along the apple of her cheek.

“Colin,” she whispers.

“Did I make you uncomfortable?” he asks, pulling his hand away. “I promise, I did not mean—”

“No, it is not that.” She sighs, taking his hand in hers. “I…do not want to get used to this.”

“To what?”

“To you.”

Colin smiles. “Is it so bad if you did?”

Penelope turns her head to hide in her pillow, and Colin cannot describe how it feels to see such a thing. His heart blooms in his chest.

“We have wasted—I have wasted so much time. I could have stayed for the off-season—” Colin sighs, wiping his face with the back of the hand not holding Penelope’s. “God, Pen.” 

“I know. It is unsettling,” she admits, peeking at him. She sits up, her hair falling over her shoulders in a way that reminds him of the paintings he had seen in the Louvre. He nearly misses her apology. “I am sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Colin says. And he lets go of her hand so he can touch her hair, curl a lock of it around his finger like he has been begging to for the longest time. “How have you been? Truly?” 

Penelope shrugs. “It is one thing to sympathize with the character of a book, or perhaps imagine yourself in one’s shoes, but it is something different altogether to live such a life. I think—I think I had mostly made peace with it.” 

“You had?” he repeats.

“Well, it was before seeing you,” she admits. “I do not have very many close friends.” 

Colin shakes his head. “This is not—” he doesn’t continue, because what is he to say? What can he say of such a situation, to this girl with her beautiful smile and copper hair and blushing cheeks? To this girl, who wrote letters to him and kept him company an ocean away. To this girl, who he had taken for granted.

“I know you will hold this, Colin, and you will be tempted to look for people who can help with medicines and cures, but will you promise me that you will not overwork yourself for a hopeless situation?” 

“I could never make such a promise,” he whispers, looking down at their clasped hands. “You would search for an answer to a seemingly impossible question, wouldn’t you?” 

Penelope’s mouth twitches and her eyes well up again. She turns to hide her face into her shoulder and Colin lets her cry. He rests his hand on her arm, rubbing softly, soothingly. 

“You should go. Lady Danbury is holding her ball tonight,” Penelope mutters. “She would want to see you since you have been away for so long.” 

“I do not care. I would rather sit here with you,” he insists. He can hear the pleading in his voice. 

“Colin,” she sighs. “They will wonder where you are.” 

“Let them wonder,” he says. “They will find me exactly where I am meant to be.” 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Chapter Text

As reluctant as Colin is to leave Penelope alone in her bed chamber, Colin knows he will be missed if he does not make the appearance he promised he would if he stayed for longer. 

It seemed so…unimportant. Everything else, that is. Being here with her, watching as she spoke, her eyes glittering like he’d never seen. How could her mother shelter something like this? 

The thing is, he has never had her this way. In the comfort of a warm room where no one knew they were together, where she continued to hold his hand, far longer than propriety could ever allow, and yet, he felt as though he might die if she were to let go of him. Which felt preposterous and outlandish and so many other similar synonyms that made him feel like he was not quite in his body anymore. It felt unreal, and he didn’t want to let her go, let alone leave. He knew when he lay in bed later that night, he would think of her, panic that she would have died, and he had not said all he wanted to. 

And even now, as she looks at him, with her pretty eyes framed by shadowy light, he knows there are words he wants to tell her, but he does not know how to put them together. And it pains him, because he knows this is important. Whatever has magnetized the two of them, whatever has led him here, to sit with her in her room, underneath the cover of night—it feels life-changing. 

Colin had never felt this way before. There were pivotal moments in his life; his father’s tragic death, leaving for school at Eton, the embarrassment of his failed engagement, his first tour, and then his second—though his second only felt monumental for his flesh, not really his soul, and even then, it struggled to swim at the bottom of his list—but for the most part, all those moments seem to push him further and further away from what he knows he needs. These moments in his life had only served him more confusion, more aimlessness, listlessness, some kind of solitary confinement where his greedy insides begged for something, anything, and every decision he made was wrong. 

But this is not one of those moments; she is not one of those decisions. And while Colin does not know what to make of that, he knows here, in the comfort of her walls, underneath the curious weight of her gaze, with the warmth of her hand in his, he knows this is right. 

“I keep losing you to your thoughts,” Penelope says softly, shattering his reverie, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. It draws his attention to where their clasped hands sit over her lap. “Have I bored you?” 

“No, God, not at all,” he breathes. He glances up at her, and she tilts her head; her hair falls over her shoulder, just along the line of her neck, and Colin’s mouth goes dry. 

“Tell me, then,” she coaxes. “What keeps your attention from me?” 

Colin sighs. “Have you ever felt like you were so close to something…big?” 

Penelope hums. “I did. During the summer.” 

“What happened?” 

“I decided to change my life,” she says softly. “I had Genevieve make new dresses for me, with literally any other colour than the terrible yellows my mama has always forced me into.” 

“And the dresses…were life-changing?” he asks, his tone confused, surely conveying that he was as such.

“No,” she laughs. “It wasn’t the dresses, but the intention. I had done that so I could prepare myself in search of a husband.” 

“Oh,” Colin breathes again, but this time, it feels like his breath is vacuumed out of his lungs, leaving them crumpled like crushed paper in the palm of a hand. His body felt hot, moist like in the summer when there was too much heat and not enough breeze. “You wished to marry?” 

“I have always wished to marry,” she says dreamily. “I have always wanted to leave this house, and I had dreams of—” she clears her throat, looking away from him, presumably at their clasped hands, and Colin wonders what it might be like if he could hear her thoughts.

“What?” he urges gently. “Tell me.”

“What most girls dream of, Colin. A family of their own. A sweet husband, the kind that brings flowers and trinkets just because I was on his mind.” Penelope sighs. “I thought I could have something. If not flowers and trinkets, then surely contentedness. Quiet hours where I might have time to read or write, should I like to. A child to care for.” 

Colin frowns. “Your sickness is so bad you cannot—” 

“I do not have that kind of time,” she says. “But, like I said before, I have made peace with it.” 

“You said you had.” 

She gives him a wry smile. “Well, what is a girl to do if she cannot dream?” 

“I shall ask my sisters,” he says teasingly. Penelope snorts. “I—I had always thought you would be like Eloise—that you were like Eloise. Resistant to marriage. Or—perhaps, part of me thought—the rest of me must have been unconvinced considering how often it is a tale of love I read in your letters.” 

Penelope’s smile is soft. “Can you imagine?” she whispers. “To be loved and be in love. I wonder what it feels like. Will you tell me what it feels like?” 

Colin swallows thickly, shrugging his shoulders slowly, as if he is unsure that he is unsure (he is very unsure). “I…I do not know.” 

Penelope’s smile falters. “I thought—well—” 

“I thought I did. I thought it was,” he admits. “Or—I keep saying as such, but I am not sure that I thought it as much as I wished for it. For a moment, everything seemed perfect, and in hindsight, everything seems so—crooked.” 

“What do you think it feels like, if it is not what you thought?” she asks. 

And is that not the question? What we expect this emotion to feel like when it happens upon us. For Anthony it seemed to take hold of him until he relented. For Daphne, it happened slowly, and then all at once. And for his mother and father—well, they had begun as friends. 

“I do not know.”

“You will,” she says, nodding her head. “When you are ready, you will.” 

“How could you be so sure?” he asks, blinking slowly, his grin widening. “Have you a crystal ball hidden away in here?” He waves his hand, gesturing to her bed chamber.

Penelope giggles. “I just know. Your heart is too big for you not to share it. And whoever you do share it with will treasure it the way you deserve it to be treasured.”

“I think you have too much faith in the cosmos.” 

“I have faith in you,” she says. 

Colin opens his mouth to say something, but she’s stolen his words, leaving him speechless. It is probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said about him. “Pen—”

“Now,” Penelope says decisively. “You must go. I am certain your mother is expecting you.” 

Colin flops back on her bed. “Must I really?” 

“You will have fun,” she says, giggling. “You always do.” 

“I only enjoyed myself at balls because you were there, with your witticisms and incredible dances.” 

“Unfortunately, flattery will not cure me.” 

“Pen—” 

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “Forgive me. It’s been months of this already for me, I forget it is new for you.” 

Colin grunts, sitting up. “I will come tomorrow. Just after midnight.” 

“Do be careful, Colin. My father is out and about at odd hours of the night, and I would hate it if you got caught in his crosshairs.” 

“Promise,” he says, and he takes her hand in his, lifting her knuckles up to his lips and pressing a kiss to them. 

Penelope smiles at him.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Colin is not so late that the ball has ended, so true to his word, Colin catches a carriage out to Lady Danbury’s estate. His melancholy feels reinvigorated, and out of her presence, he feels that sadness trickle down inside of him until it fills his lungs with too much water, and he cannot breathe anymore. 

No longer was he worried that she was married to another, or that she was angry with him; she was ill, and Colin would speak to Anthony first thing in the morning about contacting a physician, just so he can get something for Penelope’s pain—it is the least he can do. He still is not certain what is the cause of her symptoms, what it is that truly ails her, but he imagines with a bit of coaxing, she will open up to him like she usually does.

As he enters the ball and people turn their heads to regard him with nods and blushing cheeks, Colin cannot get the image of her out of her mind. That special moment when he had been brave enough to touch her hair; softer than silk he recalled, so delicate on the backs of his fingers; her blush bloomed like watercolours on a canvas. He cannot remember ever having seen her so beautiful, unguarded; she did not recoil, but she did warn him, and at least she had the sense of mind to do so; in that handful of moments, sitting with her on her bed, Colin’s mind raced with memories, but also unbidden visions of something else, something foreign. It was not tangible or even something he could reach out and grasp with his mind. It was only a wisp of something, skating through his thoughts at a daring speed, there and then gone. It had been warm, though, and he hopes when he is in bed tonight that his worries that Penelope had been taken from him subside, and he can figure out exactly what the vision was.

“Dearest.” Violet’s voice is gentle but excitable. “I thought you were going to miss it. Lady Danbury has been wanting to wish you a warm welcome from your travels.”

“Has she?” Colin asks. “I shall find her and take her for a turn about the room.”

“Where were you?” she wonders. “I had thought you would arrive ages ago.”

“Oh, yes, apologies.” Colin clears his throat, both hands brushing down the front of his jacket. “I was…taking care of an errand. Nothing to worry about. I do not look out of sorts, do I?”

“No, not at all,” Violet smiles, patting his cheek. “Handsome as ever.”

Colin makes a face at her, rolling his eyes.

Violet laughs. “Go, be off. And please dance with some of these ladies—”

“Mother, I am not—”

“A dance will not kill you.”

“No, I suppose it won’t, but perhaps turn your attention to Benedict? He has been a bachelor much longer than I have.”

Violet huffs. “He has already disappeared from the ball. I’m not sure he was here for all of twenty minutes before disappearing. As he’s prone to do. Sometimes I think he and Eloise choose to be this frustrating just—”

“It is simply not their time yet,” he says softly.

“And when will your time come?” she asks, tilting her head.

“Was it not two years ago you said you were not prepared to have another child leave your nest?”

Violet laughs. “Frankly, I did not want you to marry that girl, Colin.”

Colin smiles, feeling sympathy, knowing she has seen Daphne married and then Anthony—she is looking to make lightning strike a third time. Colin does not think he is capable; he is not a conductor for lightning—and with Penelope’s face so fresh in his mind, it does not seem possible that another woman could capture his attention. Not tonight, for sure. As for the season, the storms are kept at bay, and much to his mother’s dismay, the skies are clear.

“You certainly got your wish,” he mutters, raising his brow at her.

“Did you have any luck calling on Penelope today?” she asks, her eyes twinkling in a way that frightens him because it almost always means she knows something he does not yet know about himself, and he is too tired for her riddles.

“I tried, but I was turned away.”

“Eloise has tried, and I thought, perhaps since you are—well.” She clears her throat. “I thought Lady Featherington might have been more receptive to you considering you were the one she tried to—well.”

Colin shakes her head. “I do not remember Lady Featherington being so cold. Although, perhaps, it makes sense considering she says Penelope is sick and cannot take visitors. She should be sad for such a thing.”

“We shall send her some flowers and perhaps a few novels, so she is not bored.”

Colin does not tell his mother that Lady Featherington rejected his flowers, even when he had insisted; he nods instead, thinking of another bouquet to put together and wondering how he might get it directly into her bedroom as he will need his hands for climbing.

At his mother’s insistence, he does say hello to Lady Danbury and meets her brother, Lord Marcus Anderson, who seems kind and much less intimidating than Lady Danbury.

After he mingles with other acquaintances, Benedict suddenly appears by his side.

“A drink. Or two?” Benedict says quietly.

“Have you been hiding from Mother?”

“Come quickly before she spots me and throws me into the arms of a long-toed debutante.”

Colin laughs and allows himself to be dragged out of the ball.

The night air is refreshing, like the rush of cool water at noon; Benedict slings his arm over Colin’s shoulders.

“And where were you all night?” Benedict asks, peering at him as they walk towards the carriages.

“Nowhere,” he says, unconvincingly, but he does not think Benedict will catch it. 

Truthfully, he feels intoxicated from Penelope’s company, like she had been a few fingers of whiskey. He still cannot get her face out of his mind, the blush on her cheeks or the pink of her lips, even in the dim light of her bed chambers; he had wanted to stay. He can recognise the feeling inside of him; he’s too far from her, and he hates it.

This feeling has assaulted him before; a tug at his centre, like they are tied together. A ship to its dock; he’s drifting away on waves now when all he wants to do is turn around and climb through her window and plead with her to let him help her get better.

No…that’s—well, while that is true, what he would truly like to do is lay beside her. 

Hold her. 

It is innocent when he thinks about it, her soft, plush form against him. He could curl his entire body around her and protect her from harm. He would be willing to do so, every day and every night. Is that not what friends did for one another?

It is confusing to have such a feeling and not be able to act on it. Truthfully, he is not sure what the feeling is. An urge, perhaps. An attraction…an ache. Oh, it aches, does it not? To be away when his body begs to be close again?

Whenever he mused about Penelope, there was always daylight, there was his mother’s sofa in the Bridgerton House drawing room. There was Penelope and her red hair and shockingly bright blue eyes and her smile that made her cheeks go round; her eyes would take the shape of crescent moons when she laughed, and somehow, Colin’s body took that sound and transformed it into something that he could tuck away in his chest, harbour it until he needed a piece of her. 

If he tried hard enough on nights that terrified him, when the storms raged, and the ship rocked so much it rolled him from his bed onto the ground, he tried to think of her laugh, melodic and rich, a perfect, joyful sound. It quelled his fears enough that he could survive through the night, and his eyes would open in the morning to rays of sunlight, warming his cabin a few degrees too warm and signalled it was time for air above deck.

Lying with Penelope, though it is a new thought, it was a wonderful one, if Colin is honest. Like the Contessa in Italy, there were other women he had lain with, but he had never slept beside them. Once he reached the heights of his pleasure—which never felt high enough—Colin would make sure the ladies were paid, and he would throw a charming smile their way and head back to whatever lodgings he had secured for himself. 

And while the places he stayed in were never truly terrible (the bedding was fresh and the fireplaces full of flames and firewood and a meal to fill his bottomless stomach) it felt like losing his senses. Not all of them at the same time, but one of them; too quiet, like he couldn’t hear anymore, even though he could see the men circled around tables, talking and laughing, regaling overzealous and partly untrue tales of wild adventures. 

Sometimes it would be his sight; too dark around him, and he had to feel with his hands, unsure of where he was going or what would come next. Those nights were especially dreadful because even his mind’s eye was blind, unable to conjure up the memories that would soothe this brand of loneliness. Other nights, he would lose his sense of smell or taste, and while he could get through those with scraped elbows and knees, it was losing his sense of touch that wounded him the most.

Colin, for all intents and purposes, usually felt all right in his body. These were his arms and legs. This was his chest, these his ribs, this his beating heart. There were nights though when he felt too small for his body, undeserving of it perhaps, like he was wasting it. This body and all its proficiencies, capable of climbing ropes and chopping wood; fingers deft and nimble, able to carry a quill and write letters to his family. His mind, his eyes—it all felt like they didn’t belong to him.

This particularly occurred after meeting with a lady in a brothel, after touching and being touched. After searching for something that he could not find with any of his senses. These nights were the worst, where all he could do was stare into a fire or the bottom of his whiskey glass or the ceiling of his darkened room and wonder how it was that someone could feel so numb to it all. Not pins and needles—no, this felt like he was outside of his body, perhaps right next to it, unable to truly feel what it is he is supposed to feel.

And the Contessa, because she was the first, seemed to dig a hole in him, black and greedy and miserably unsatisfied, and every woman after that picked up a chisel and chipped away at him. Was it his body or perhaps his soul? A tether severed between the two while others felt what he could not feel? Reached peaks that he was never destined to reach?

And, of course, those nights were long. The moon dragged its glow across the deep, dark sky, the stars twinkling at him, taunting him; he could ask them, he could ask God, but it would not matter much since neither would answer.

Colin knows his brother, Benedict, tall like him, strong like him, was not plagued by the same sadness. No emptiness. There was passion and disruption and uncomplicated happiness that came in the form of women, drink, and art.

Before, Colin would think it attributed to having a purpose. As though art had led Benedict to a fountain he could drink from and receive the map of life. And Anthony—well, Colin felt like since he could remember, Anthony had always seemed poised and purposeful. Colin had thought bedding women would have fixed his faults. He thought it would sew up the tattered seams and keep everything inside and he would return and present as though he were brand new.

Thinking of Penelope’s bed, and her bedsheets, and the soft fabric of her duvet—perhaps it would not cure him to sleep upon her mattress; it was obviously not the bed itself, but somehow this woman, a woman he had befriended during childhood, a woman that he seemed to orbit as though he were a measly planet winding its way around the sun. Perhaps she was part of it. What he needed. It certainly felt like it.

It strikes him that he has never held her.

As children they would wind their arms around each other, but it was playful nonsense, stuff of races and games. But to hold her, to want to hold her, another new thought, like lying in her bed. It makes his body rush with heat; the idea of wrapping his arms around her, and that she would welcome his embrace, that she would bury her face into his chest, breathe in all the scents he has collected throughout the day; parchment and sugar, whiskey and smoke, grass and sunlight, all the things that take up his time when he is not with her. 

He would think she would erase all those scents and replace them with her own, the softness of her soap, a citrus that makes his mind ablaze and soothes the running thoughts to a slow, trickling stream. Could she have the power to do such a thing? Take all that he is, rearrange and sort him until he is the him he wishes to be? Were her hands strong enough to tear through his flesh like a blade that she might hold onto the bones in his chest and crack them open? Would she find anything inside?

Or would he be so empty that she wouldn’t be able to do anything for him?

It unsettles him, thinking of her peering inside of him and finding nothing but dust on the insides of his body.

Conversely, if he ever had the chance to open someone as beautiful as Penelope, perhaps it would be like swinging open the gates to heaven. The gates would give way to his hands because he is worthy—he must be to handle her in such a way, to see the radiance of her lungs grow with each of her breaths, to find her heart and watch it beat, thumping with life. She would have light inside of her, glowing like the sun does as it comes over the horizon. She would be dazzling, sparkling, luminescent…holy.

To be fair, despite his disbelief in God, his distance from religion, part of him felt that all beautiful things were holy. To be able to look at something and feel the insistence of tears, the urge to weep; that felt holy in and of itself.

Looking at Penelope tonight felt like that. It had felt like looking at an angel, and for the record, even at the risk of going blind, if that had been his last sight, her lovely face and her Titian hair and the bright blue of her eyes, Colin would not care if he ever saw anything else ever again.

In this moment, he had one wish, and it was to return to her. To spend these invaluable moments with her. To hear her breathe while she slept. If she was so certain that her life would end because of her ailment, what was Colin doing wasting time like he is? 

His brother is saying something, a story perhaps, a recounting, but Colin cannot hear what it is that he says. Colin cannot bring himself to care. Now, all he would like to do is allow his body to give into the pull of the rope tied around his spine, to follow where it leads, to end up underneath her window and climb the trellis. To tell her—

What would he tell her? That in the time that he has spent away from her (a handful of hours at most), he has not been able to stop thinking about her? That he wishes to be near her, that he is so frightened that he will lose all his time with her? How could she respond to such a thing; it would fill her with guilt; he knows her, he does, and to confess that he is worried that every second he is not with her is a second wasted—it would damage what little spirit she has left. And yet, if it allowed her to make concessions, if it allowed her to break away from the chains of all they were taught and let him lay beside her, even for one night, just so he might know what it was like, he would do it.

And after, when the light bleeds through her gauzy curtains and the sun spills its first breath over the horizon, he knows her guilt would disappear and his worry would follow because it would simply be them. And that is what he needs. Right now.

Right now.

Right—

“Colin, honestly, you have not heard a single word I have said this entire walk!” Benedict’s voice is amused, but Colin knows his brother well enough to catch the slight, hidden tone of concern.

“My mind has been elsewhere. And you must like the sound of your own voice; we have been walking for ages at this point, and you have only just said something.”

“My, my, what a prickly thing you are tonight.” Benedict’s grin is in jest, teasing as he is prone to do. “What is on your mind? Perhaps I can offer some advice. Or at least a distraction.”

For a moment, a brief second, Colin considers it. He thinks about telling Benedict where he was tonight, and what he wants and that he still feels the pull in his belly, a call from her that only he can hear. Ultimately, Colin decides against it. Not because Benedict cannot be trusted; Benedict does have the ability to be serious. But he knows that his brother will use the moment for a joke. Benedict is a whiff of whiskey from singing sea shanties he’s only heard second-hand from drunk sailors. 

“It is nothing,” Colin says with a nod that convinces absolutely no one.

“I am not one to pry, but I must say, you have been so strange since you have returned.”

“It has been two days.”

“Yes, but I have known my little brother for two and twenty years. Months away will have no bearing on how well I can read you.”

“Well, I do not wish to be read.”

Benedict grunts. “Is it about Penel—”

“No,” Colin denies vehemently. “And I should kill Anthony for opening his idiotic mouth.”

Benedict snickers. “Calm down,” he says, but the snickers turn into laughs. “Anthony has not shared anything with me.”

Colin turns his head sharply to look at Benedict. Then he sighs. “I fell into a trap. Again.”

“You are rather shortsighted when it comes to her.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

Annoyingly, Benedict shrugs. “It seems now that you are forced to be apart from her, you are in quite a mood.”

“That—” Colin rolls his eyes. “You do not know of what you speak.”

“Perhaps not. But even I thought this would be when you would finally open your eyes to her. Though perhaps, after what you said last season, I should have thought differ—”

“Last season? What did I say?”

“That you would never court her.”

Colin nearly tripped over his feet in shock. “When did I say that?” 

“At her family’s ball. I did think you were rather drunk—it was so unlike you.” Benedict makes a face, disappointed and offended and unsurprised, all at the same time.

“I…” Colin tries to recall his words, but he cannot, and it isn’t like Benedict to tell a lie, but— “Did I really say such a thing?”

Benedict shrugs. “How anyone believed you is beyond me; immediately, Anthony and I looked at each other. We thought—”

Now, his conversation with Anthony that morning made much more sense. Anthony had been goading him the entire time.

“What?” Colin asks, when Benedict doesn’t continue his thought. Benedict shakes his head.

“I thought—I suppose I am not sure what I thought. But did it not seem like you were protesting?”

“About courting her?” Colin frowns. “No. I did not intend to court her.”

“And how about now? She is still available.”

“She is ill.” Colin clears his throat. “It is not courting she needs. What she needs is a husband to rescue her from her careless mother.” 

“You are aware of what courting leads to,” Benedict says pointedly. “Aren’t you?” 

“Of course, I am.” But Colin had just spent time sitting with Penelope and listening to her describe the love she craved. And though she allowed him liberties—like sneaking into her room at night when no one else was around, which was behaviour that could ruin her—he did not think that she wanted to marry him. All he needed to do was ask a question, but with the certainty that she did not love him, that she would not marry him, it seemed unwise to pose something like that to her. What he needed to do was find something that would help her, and to do that, he needed to find out from her what exactly it was that she was sick with. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

The night is spent drinking, sitting at a table with men he does not care to listen to as they talk about sex and conquests and a string of mistresses that seem to blur together in his mind. 

Of course, he cannot stop thinking about Penelope, about her hand in his, the softness of her fingers hidden away by the rigidity of her gloves. He wished he could have felt her skin, and he drank to chase the warmth he wished he could feel. And then he drinks again as his thoughts cloud with the colour of her hair. And then he drinks some more, thinking about the curve of her smile, the blush of her cheeks—he swears he can sit and describe the colours to Benedict, and he’d be able to get it right. He knows the colour by heart. It’s in the sunsets, in the petals of blooming flowers in spring, inside of him, when he pricks his finger, and it smears like a reddened peach across his skin. 

When someone asks him where his thoughts are, where his mind is, and what he is thinking of, he shakes his hand and asks for another drink. But it makes it worse, it makes it hurt. 

Penelope does not love him. Perhaps she cherishes him and their friendship like he does. But coming home, seeing her, knowing her the way he does, it feels like more. Like maybe there is supposed to be more. It feels like he should know what, but perhaps this is a sign—her impending death; there was nothing more meant for them. He will lose her and then he will be floating in the raging ocean, stuck in a torrential storm, until the world ceases to exist.  

When did he start needing her so much?

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When Colin wakes, his mouth feels as though he has eaten handfuls of sand. His forehead aches. 

Through the squint of his eyes, he can see he hadn’t even reached his bed, his body strewn across the floor, like he had dragged himself in here, or worse, his brother had dragged him and left him for near dead. At least it feels like he is nearly dead.

And if he dies at least Penelope will not be lonely in the afterlife.

Colin snorts, rubbing his face against the carpet.

Could one hold disbelief for God and distance themselves from religion and believe in a holy place like the afterlife?

On Sundays, when his mother felt particularly concerned about their family’s image, Colin would sit in mass and listen to the sermon and sing along to hymns between Hyacinth and Gregory to ensure there wouldn’t be a commotion amongst the pews. Colin would listen to the vicar and read passages in the bible and take issue with an omniscient being creating so much uncertainty. If people had free will, how could everything be predetermined or even fated?

Was it a choice or was it all an illusion? And even then, after all of this, living for three generations and pouring one’s life into one’s children and one’s spouse, did one die and live another life? Not to be reborn, but to live on. Would his soul remember the life he lived? Would his soul search for another’s?

After all of this, to find oneself in the afterlife, would his soul find Penelope’s?

That is, if one had a soul; though, like holy things (beautiful things), he liked to think so. A kind of light at the centre of him. Of his being.

Dimmed now, surely. Last night, he had sat with her, held her hand for as long as she let him. Touched her hair. He remembered that. He remembered her voice, sweet after months of not hearing it. Part of him couldn’t believe she let him inside her room, but she had always forgiven him for overstepping clear boundaries. What would make her do such a thing?

Groaning, Colin tries rolling over, but his entire body aches with exhaustion, alcohol and the desire to see Penelope. God, he wants to see her more than he wants to breathe. He has no idea what time it is, but it’s impossible now with her mother keeping everyone away.

Does she believe she is holy? Would it matter? He recalls her face in the glow of the candlelight, and her eyes, so clear they were nearly transparent. Could they see through him?

Submerged in misery, walking along the tightrope that is his bottle-weariness, he wants to be seen now. Maybe not through his flesh, not where Colin is sore and bruised, mixed-up, and confused. Not there, no, but he’d like her to see him. He’d like her to look up with her beautiful eyes and notice him. She’s always noticed him. And it was such a shame that she wasn’t here.

Not that she could be in his bed chamber. But if he could sneak her out; if he could scoop her up and carry her away…perhaps they could outrun her sickness. Perhaps whatever ailed her would be too slow to catch them, and they could hide away, somewhere they would never be found. They could live lifetimes together.

Would she be amenable to something like that? If she could not love him, she could trust him. 

All he can do now is crawl further into his bedroom, wispy thoughts of his sweet friend luring him into the softness of his bedsheets.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When he wakes again, he rings his valet and calls for a bath. The hot water is soothing, and Colin feels the urge to cry; keeping Penelope’s secret makes him feel worse than he had when he arrived. He will see her again tonight. He must. 

Somehow, he knows he needs her. And perhaps her ailment, her sickness is what is bringing her closer to her, or him to her—he is not quite sure, even less sure that it matters—but he must do something about it, make sure she recovers as best as she can because he cannot continue like this. 

When he is clean, he dresses in clean clothes his valet left for him. Trousers buttoned and shirtsleeves tucked in. He does not feel like putting on his vest and coat, but he does so because it is required, and he would rather not disappoint his mother. 

Colin is aware there is a part of him that does not care about the reactions of his family regarding his behaviour—his aloof pensiveness—if they were privy to what he knew, he imagines they might act similarly. 

He will see her tonight. He will gather the gifts he had gotten for her while he was on the continent, and leave her with fresh flowers, and perhaps that will right him, fix him right up, and he will be as good and fresh as new. 

After giving a footman clear instructions on flowers to purchase from the florist, Colin walks into the dining room, where his family are gathered. Anthony sits at the head with Kate to his right and his mother to the left. The rest of his siblings surround the table, sans Daphne and Simon, and Colin sits next to Violet, the only seat available. It does not escape him that the lively chatter wilts as he sits, but he does his best to ignore it, taking a drink of water from the glass in front of him. 

“Good evening,” he greets his family. Benedict does not look at him, and Anthony’s expression is hardened, reminiscent of what he used to look like before Kate softened him. 

“Are you well, dearest?” Violet asks and Colin nods. 

“Yes, I apologise…I hope I did not concern you, Mother,” he says gently. 

“I am happy to see you are all right,” Violet says, but he can see it in her face, the tightness of her mouth, the exhaustion underneath her eyes—

“I am well,” he promises, though there is an emptiness inside of him that she knows he can see. 

Violet gives him a nod and dinner re-commences, and he engages with everyone at the table instead of counting down the minutes and hours until he can cross the square. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When dinner ends, Colin joins Anthony and Benedict in Anthony’s study for a drink. Conversation flows easily between his older brothers, and Colin sits silently, slipping from his glass while his brothers trade crude jokes. He would be remiss if he did not feel slightly more at ease. 

With his brothers he felt small, but in a way that made him comfortable. Perhaps he did not know what would come of his life, but in the company of his older brothers who had paved ways Colin begged to follow as a child, it was comforting to listen to them squabble and laugh. For a single moment, he felt worriless. 

It would be ruined the second they noticed him sitting and half listening, his glass drained of his drink. And then he would try to shove off their inquiries and their teasing until he gave in and smiled. It was all so predictable; it is no wonder why he is a creature of habit, for these habits offer a comfort he needs and has not had in such a long while. 

And like he said they would, they poke at his quiet. 

“You have been so quiet lately,” Anthony points out, raising his glass. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing,” Colin says with a shrug. “I am simply pensive. Not all our thoughts should make their way out of our minds.” 

“He is telling you to shut up,” Benedict says to Anthony, snickering. Colin grins into his empty glass. 

“And what good will that do?” Anthony muses. “Come now, Colin. Perhaps we can offer some advice.” 

“You both seem to think I need your advice. I am not sure either of you could help—if there was something that I needed help with.” 

Benedict whistles low, and Anthony arches his brows. 

“He has grown past the need for us,” Benedict fakes a teary sniffle. “What shall we do?” 

“Well, you do have another brother—I am certain he will need all the help he can get,” Colin retorts, thinking about little Gregory, barely at the age for Eton. 

“Out with it, Colin,” Anthony says, and this time his voice is bereft of humour. No mirth sparkles in his eyes. They narrow as he sets his gaze on Colin, and Colin frowns, reaching forward to set his glass on the edge of Anthony’s desk. 

“Why must I divulge everything, and when I inquire into either of your issues, I am shoved off with an insult and ‘it is none of your business’? Can I not carry my own secrets?” 

“Not if they weigh so heavy you might crumble underneath them,” Benedict says softly. Humour is gone from his face too. 

“It is not my secret to tell,” Colin says definitively. “Perhaps with time, but I have yet to uncover some of the details and telling this secret now might be more harmful than good.” 

“Are you certain?” Anthony asks. 

“Yes,” Colin nods. “Though, perhaps I could use a favour: could you give me the information of the best physician you are acquainted with? Even if he is not located in Mayfair—” 

“What do you need a physician for?” Anthony wears a slightly contorted expression, panic in his brows and the tightness of his mouth. 

“I just do,” Colin says, sitting up straight. “Can you pass me the information or not?” 

Anthony looks over at Benedict and then back to Colin. Colin shifts a look at Benedict, and then back to Anthony. 

“Fine,” Anthony relents, pulling out a book and flipping through the pages. As he writes, he explains what he knows about the physicians, which is helpful; Colin feels like perhaps he can arrange something—figure out how to sneak Penelope from her chamber and accompany her to be seen. Surely one of these physicians could help her condition.

Colin tucks the pages with the information into his shirt pocket and resolves to write letters first thing in the morning.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

For the next few hours, Colin sits in his study, attempting to keep his attention on something other than the ticking hands of the clock. Minutes pass so slowly, and hours drag even slower, and he is unsure how he is meant to pass the time, so it does not feel like he is going insane.

A drink; a book; then his journal; back to the book; considers another drink; it all seems to blur together in the same five minutes until midnight finally chimes on the clock. He’s tired; he can feel it etched into his bones, weary as he walks steadily across the square. Excitement, though, begins to simmer underneath his skin, like it burns off the older parts of him, the parts that are confused and wild and aching, because he knows, when he sees her, he will not be anything of those things in her presence. He will be sure, and calm, and soothed—he will be as he is supposed to be. 

So, he climbs the trellis, with a bag full of flowers and parchment and quills and other trinkets she might take delight in. 

When he reaches the window, he clicks his fingernails against the glass to get her attention, but as soon as he does so, he wishes he had held on for another moment, just to cherish the vision of her. Her nightgown peeks from underneath her robe, her hair is like a curtain where she had her head bent; she moves and the image is gone, but he is rewarded by her smile, sweet and mischievous, beautiful. There are more candles lit tonight, and Colin can see her form so much better. Her skin glows golden and her hair looks radiant. She’s a goddess. 

“Colin!” she greets. “I did not think I would see you tonight.” 

“Really?” he asks. “Why?” 

“I thought perhaps you would have found something better to do with your time.” 

“Nonsense, Pen. I have been waiting all day to see you. Time has been my enemy since I awoke. Every clock has taunted me.” 

Penelope giggles and Colin climbs through, slightly more graceful than he had the night before; he manages to stay on his feet. 

“I brought gifts.” 

“Gifts? Colin, you should not have,” she says, but he can see the sparkle in her eyes that gives her away. 

“Oh, come now, Pen. I had an entire trunk for things to bring home, and I saved you some space.” He grins at her, swinging off his bag and placing it on the bed. “But first, how are you?” 

“I am well. As well as I can be in this state. I have spent the day reading.” 

“Have you? You can tell me about it if you wish,” he says gently. “Or if you prefer to continue reading, you could read aloud so I can follow along.” 

“I would rather converse with you,” Penelope says. “Come, sit. I had my maid bring some tea a little bit ago before she was dismissed. It might still be warm if that is all right with you.” 

“Would that make her suspicious?” Colin asks with his eyebrows raised. 

“Perhaps, but I simply said that I preferred a clean cup for my second pour.” 

“You have thought of everything,” he beams. Penelope grins. 

After serving them both, Colin finds the tea lukewarm, and even Penelope makes a face. 

“I appreciate the effort,” Colin says, mirroring her expression. 

“I did not want to offend you by not having something to offer.” 

“You could never offend me, Pen. You are a good girl.” 

There is a light that flashes in her eyes; Colin is curious about her thoughts, about what she is thinking to make her eyes alight like this and then darken with a tilt of her head. 

“Despite her reputation, my mother did teach me manners.” 

Colin laughs with her, and Penelope takes their tepid cups of tea and sets them on the small table. 

When she returns, he showers her with the gifts he’d brought her. Quills and parchment, pink and purple ribbons for her hair. Flowers from some of the cities he’d travelled to, which he’d pressed between the pages of a novel he had picked up for her. 

“This is my favourite of them all,” she says, tracing the gilded edges of the pages and admiring the binding of the spine. 

“Is it?” he says. “I will keep that in mind.”

“The flowers are lovely, too. I love it all,” she breathes. “You really…you really picked out these things specifically for me?”

It feels like an odd question, and he wonders where it comes from because who else could he have picked gifts like these for? Perhaps Eloise, but Eloise didn’t admire the niceties as much as Penelope did. Eloise was practical, whereas Penelope had an eye for glimmer. “I saw them and thought of you,” he says, without hesitation or uncertainty, because he had. 

As he walked through the cities, he always kept an eye out for things that the people he loved would like. He would spot something, and it would ignite a memory or spark a picture of a sibling, or his mother, or Penelope, and he could not help but spend coin after coin collecting things he knew they would like. And Penelope’s gifts, well, they were the easiest, because most things seemed to remind him of her. She had eyes the colour of rare jewels, hair the colour of warm fabrics, and a blush the colour of an assortment of rouges. Colin could spend hours in a shop and find a reason to get Penelope anything they sold. Books, pressed flowers with gentle meanings, quills made from the finest feathers so she could pen her letters, and parchment made by an old man who made the paper smoother than Colin has ever seen; it was not difficult to pin Penelope down. And thus, he ends up with a trunkful of gifts he could give her, though he could only carry so much through her window. 

“I will bring more tomorrow,” he promises. 

“There is more?” she says with widened eyes. “Colin, surely, I cannot accept all these gifts. It is too much.” 

“It is not,” he urges. “It pained me to be without your letters during my tour. And perhaps because of your silence, you were on my mind more frequently, and I could not help myself.” 

Penelope smiles. “I am sorry,” she whispers. “If I had received them…” 

“I know. And—well, it is no matter since now, you have plenty to keep your attention.” 

“It is not the gifts I value, Colin,” she admits. “They are wonderful, and it would be a falsehood should I tell you I do not love them, but to hear I accompanied you somehow on your travels. It warms me.” 

“Does it?” Colin feels his heart trip over itself. 

“Of course it does.” She runs the end of a quill over the line of her jaw, her eyelashes fluttering shut. 

Oh, to be the feather end of that quill. 

“It is a shame I have no one to write to these days,” Penelope muses rather sadly. She opens her eyes and looks down at the spread of gifts on her bed. 

“Perhaps I could pass on a letter—I know Eloise would be happy to hear from you. She’s not quite herself these days. She misses you.”

“I miss her, though I fear she will not take the news of my sickness well, and I would hate for there to be some kind of confrontation between her and my mother or your family and mine.” Penelope frowns, and Colin reaches for her hand. 

“So, do not write of your—” Colin clears his throat, still on the edge of refusing to believe Penelope could die. “—er, the part where you fear you will perish.” 

“It is not a fear, Colin. It is a fact.” 

“I cannot contend with that. I will find you help, Penelope. I will.” 

Penelope smiles, sighing greatly. “I think you are…ambitious. But I would hate for you to have exhausted yourself should your search end fruitlessly.” 

“You said just last night you had faith in me.” 

“In matters of the heart!” she defends.

“This is a matter of the heart!” he exclaims.

They stare at each other, Penelope’s frown deepening and Colin’s throat catching fire. He hates his sensitivity in these moments, his penchant for tears. But his eyes well up and a tear falls overboard, like a sailor thrust into the ocean. Colin wipes his face furiously, looking away from her. Her hand in his clutches around his fingers. 

“Penelope—just last night you told me you think you will die. And I told you I would not let that happen if I could help it. And when I said as such, it was not in jest or simply because that is what someone says. I meant it. And I mean it now. Whatever you are sick with, I will do everything—spend every coin if necessary to ensure you live long and happily. As your friend, I could not imagine doing anything else.” Colin swallows back his tears, forcing himself to regain his composure, but it seems he has struck something within her, something soft and delicate. He wishes to hold her. God, he wishes he could wrap his arms around her, sit her on his thighs, and hold her. 

“You are extraordinary,” she whispers brokenly. Colin turns his head to look at her. “There has not been a single soul on the face of this earth that cares for me the way you do.” 

“Then allow me to care for you,” he whispers vehemently. “Please?” 

“Colin, hope is so dangerous. You must know that.” Penelope’s tears fall, and they glisten on her cheeks. “And for you—for you to—” she shakes her head. 

“Allow me to try, Pen. I understand your hesitance, but…there must be something I can do.”

Penelope frowns, but ultimately, she nods her head. Colin, feeling victorious, reaches forward with his right hand and places it on her cheek. “You will get everything you want from this life,” he whispers. “I will make sure of it.” She leans into his touch, covering his hand with her own. 

“Very well, Colin,” she whispers. He gives her a gentle smile. 

“I apologize for being—for—” 

“It is all right,” she says, taking his hand from her face and holding it in both of hers. “I did not understand how you were feeling about all this.” 

“You think I would climb through any young lady’s window, is that it?” he murmurs teasingly, and she giggles. 

They stay here, in this playful bubble for a little while longer, holding hands, and talking softly with each other. Colin admits he had not done much in the span of the day since he had too much to drink. Penelope tells him about the book she finished the day before, and after Penelope puts all her new gifts away, she lies in bed, Colin sitting next to her, and he listens to her read until she falls asleep.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

After the family breaks their fast, Colin corners Eloise, taking her by the elbow and drawing her into his study. 

“You brute,” she huffs. “Could you not use your words?” 

“I have found a way to speak with Penelope,” he says, and Eloise’s face lights up, and Colin feels a rush of satisfaction. 

“You have? How? Is she sneaking away—have you been—” 

“No,” he lies, and Eloise frowns. “It will be by letter. I have found a servant that has managed to bring a note to Penelope directly without raising suspicions,” Colin explains. 

“Which one?” Eloise asks. “I have tried that route, and they were all terrified of being dismissed.” 

Colin shakes his head. “I am not sure. Terribly, I did not ask her name.”

Eloise hums, looking at him carefully. “You have been speaking with her, then?” 

Colin takes a breath. “I wanted to know how she was faring in her illness. I was worried.” 

Eloise seems placated by that. “And how is she? Her mother has been so tight-lipped about it; I do not even know what she is ill with.” 

“She…” Colin is not sure how to answer the question, because truthfully, Penelope seems to downplay how she feels just to make Colin feel better, but it must be worse than either of them could ever know. “She is…” 

“What?” Eloise presses. “Is she alright?”

“I cannot say that she is well; she has mentioned some pain,” Colin answers finally. 

“I wish we could see her. Can you not persuade Lady Featherington to stand down and allow her some visitors?” 

“I have tried. She is insistent on Penelope recovering without any interference.” 

Eloise rolls her eyes. “If I could—” 

“I know, but it will not help your case to go to her home and insult her.” 

With a sigh, Eloise seems to relent. “It is not as though she does not deserve it. For what she has done to you. What she is doing to Penelope—” 

“Penelope will recover, Eloise. I will make sure of it.” 

“How could you, Colin? You are not her family.” 

“Yes, we are. For all intents and purposes,” he says gently, “are we not?” 

Eloise sets her hand on his shoulder and gives him a soft smile. “I know why Mother says you are most like Father. When I think of him, as young as I was, there was a kindness to him, and he gave that to you. Lord knows it skipped over Anthony and Benedict.” 

They share a laugh, and Eloise does not shy away when he moves to embrace her. 

“All will be well I promise,” he murmurs. 

“See to it. I will write her now. You know, I tried bribing any servant I could with my pin money, but it must not have been enough.” 

“Well—” Colin clears his throat. “I am certain I have handled that portion quite well.” 

Eloise shrugs. “The inequality—” 

“I know, I know. Go on and write her a letter. I am certain she is dying to hear from you.” His choice of words feels acrid on his tongue, but he tries his best not to show it. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Colin knows that he cannot spend every single night with Penelope; someone will become suspicious of him (Penelope had said as much during their conversations), but the pull he feels to see her tugs at him, leaves his body raw and tender. 

The only thing he can soothe it with is a drink, so he goes out with his brothers, and sits while they chat and stands with them while they gamble, and he loses himself in his glass, and then finds himself just for long enough to lose himself in another. 

Across the room, Colin spies Penelope’s father, Lord Archibald Featherington. He does not look well, his hat askew and his clothes wrinkled; it is the end of the night and most everyone looks dishevelled in some way or another, but there is an unease inside of Colin that tells him something is wrong. 

The easiest explanation would be that Lord Featherington has lost a sum of money in a poor hand of cards or perhaps in the boxing ring, but the man Lord Featherington speaks to is tall and looming, almost threatening. Colin does not recognise him—that is not uncommon as there are a number of lords who live out in the country, away from the ton and this bustling city. But even the cut of his clothes, the posture he carries; Colin figures he is a foreigner, perhaps from a place Colin has not yet been to. 

When the conversation ends, the strange man leaves Lord Featherington in his place. He fiddles anxiously with his hat and Colin feels bad for him, even worse for his family, and more so for Penelope. The pity turns to a simmering anger, a burning rage when he knows Penelope is sick and he has been visiting her, and her father is here of all places, making bets, rather than using the money in his coffers to seek help for his daughter. 

After Colin drains his glass, Colin stands from his seat, adjusting his coat, and crosses the room towards the dejected Lord Featherington. It is not the best time for any kind of conversation, but perhaps the Lord will share information that might help Colin help his daughter.

“Good evening, Lord Featherington,” Colin says, standing awkwardly. “Are you alright?” 

Lord Featherington looks up at him, a haze in his eyes like he does not recognize Colin. And it very well could be that he does not; Colin has only spoken directly to the man a handful of times. “Fine,” Lord Feathertington says eventually. “The Bridgerton son, correct? The third or fourth?” 

“Third,” Colin corrects. “There are four of us, but—” 

“Right.” Lord Featherington furrows his brow. “What is it you need? My daughters have married.” 

Colin swallows hard, but his nostrils flare because he knows Penelope has not; why her parents never seem to include her makes the simmering anger burn harsher inside of him. “I did not hear of Penelope’s betrothal—” 

“Did you not visit the house and hear my wife tell you she was sick? Are you well in the head?” 

Colin is taken aback by Lord Featherington’s accusation that his intelligence is less than, though, he figures losing large sums of money in mere minutes might make a man sore enough to do so. 

“I did, but you said all your daughters—” 

“I clearly meant the eligible ones.” 

“What is Penelope sick with?” Colin asks, straightforwardly, looking Lord Featherington in the eye. 

“Something incurable,” Lord Featherington offers, but he turns on his heel to leave, rather than elaborate. Colin reaches out his hand and takes Lord Featherington by the arm.

“Please. We are worried about her,” Colin pleads. Lord Featherington looks down at Colin’s hand clasped around his arm, and then up to Colin’s face, his brow furrowed. 

“Worried? You barely know the girl,” Lord Feathering mutters, yanking himself loose from Colin’s grasp. 

Colin understands this moment is pivotal; should he rush into this, baring all his and Penelope’s friendship, it is likely Lord Featherington will throw accusations at him, even call into question his honour for ruining his daughter. Part of Colin knows in doing so, he will have secured a better future for Penelope, considering they would marry, and Penelope could be surrounded by the members of his family whilst he searched for her cure. 

But in doing so, he loses his upper hand, which is privacy and secrecy and these moments where he is not forced to share Penelope with anyone. What good would it do her to take her from her room in her parents’ home to lock her away in a new home and forbid anyone from taking up her time from him?

So, rather than playing his cards, he folds, allowing Lord Featherington a win. 

“My sisters have been desperate to see her. They are all very close you know. Especially little Hyacinth,” Colin says, clearing his throat. “Lady Featherington has not let anyone in to see Penelope, and I’m afraid Eloise especially is shattered by the loss of her very best friend.” 

Lord Featherington sighs. “There is not anything I can do about that. Portia has restricted Penelope’s visitors.” 

“Well, if not a visitor, perhaps I can assist with finding a cure for her ailment—” 

“There is no cure, Mr. Bridgerton. It would do you and your family well to understand that Penelope cannot be cured.” 

“How can you be so sure! We can assist with finding physicians who might—” 

“Mr. Bridgerton, I have entertained this conversation for long enough. Please leave it be.” 

This time, when Lord Featherington walks away, Colin does not stop him. 

If there is one thing Colin is certain of, stubbornness runs as rampant in the Featherington family as it does in his own. 

Defeated, Colin crosses the room, patting both Benedict and Anthony’s shoulders as he passes them to let them know he is leaving. Once he is outside, the fresh air nearly knocks him over, and Colin feels vibrant and awake. It’s well after midnight, probably nearing one or two in the morning, and as badly as he wishes to go to Penelope, he knows better. He had already told her that he would not come, but he wonders if she misses him. If she is lying back in bed, letting her mind wander through thoughts of him. 

“...this debt. Please. I—I will do anything—” Colin recognizes Lord Featherington’s voice, but a stranger’s voice interrupts his begging. Colin quickly hides himself, close enough to the opening of the alleyway, so he might be able to hear the conversation.

“Ah, unfortunately it seems you have nothing left,” the stranger says. “There is no more time on the table left to make any wagers.” 

“Then take money—” 

“I have no use for money, Lord Featherington.” 

“Please…my daughter—” 

“You bet her in the first place. You must lie in the bed you have made, even when it is infested with fleas.” The stranger comes out of the alleyway, and Colin can see him, truly see his likeness—they have never met, but there is something sinister about him, the dark of his eyes, backlit by flames. Not candlelight or even the glow of a fireplace, but something worse, larger, like a wildfire, or even hellfire. 

“Good evening, Mr. Bridgerton,” the stranger says, nodding his head, and Colin feels stuck in place, unable to even return the greeting. And when Archibald Featherington exits the alleyway, he spies Colin and Colin looks fairly caught. 

“Have you been following me?” Lord Featherington questions.

“No,” Colin assures him. “I came outside, and I heard elevated voices—I-I did not realize it was you.” 

“Spying can get you hurt, boy.”

“I do not think you will hurt me,” Colin says confidently.

Lord Featherington eyes him, replacing his hat. 

“What is it that you are betting if not money?” Colin asks. “The man—whomever he is—” 

“It is none of your concern—” 

“What did you bet?” Colin repeats, a little louder now, losing more and more of his patience by the second. 

“Time! I bet time,” Lord Featherington yells. Colin recoils slightly, trying to parse through his words. 

“Time? What does that mean?” 

“It is no concern of yours, Bridgerton!” 

Lord Featherington climbs into his carriage, and Colin is left standing outside of White’s, wondering what Lord Featherington is on about. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

“I would like to secure my own lodgings,” Colin announces the next morning in Anthony’s study. 

“No,” Anthony answers swiftly; he does not spare a glance at Colin which irritates him. 

“Why not?” 

“What do you need your own lodgings for?” Anthony asks, his tone adopting something serious and exasperated. “You are two and twenty and have told me you were not seeking a wife this season.” 

“Can I not have my own space?” Colin rolls his eyes. 

“No.” Anthony lifts a stack of papers and straightens them, tapping the bottom on the desk. 

“No?” 

“Colin, I do not have the patience to discuss this with you at present. You have everything you need provided here, and should you decide to seriously court a woman, we may discuss a home for your family. As it happens, you have done nothing to show that you are ready to live on your own. Mother would have my hide should she find out I allowed you to have your own lodgings. So, no, Colin. And this is the end of this discussion.” 

His first instinct is to argue back; Anthony had lodgings by the time he was Colin’s age, and Colin knows what he was doing with those lodgings, and it isn’t the same for Colin; he simply wishes not to have so many eyes on his person whenever he walks into a room like he cannot be trusted to act normally, fully within the bounds of propriety. It embarrasses him, and having his own place where he can be as moody as he wishes without eight of his family members asking if he is well cannot be so difficult to imagine. 

However, Colin does not open his mouth to say anything, and instead, leaves Anthony’s study with a curt nod, and walks out of the front of the house with a thought like perhaps he should just board a ship and leave Mayfair again and not return for a year or two or five, perhaps, until his presence no longer bothers them all. 

But what would become of Penelope? Surely by then she will have gotten better. She will be healthy and lively, with not a single shadow of fear or worry clouding her eyes. 

Or perhaps she could come with him. 

As he ambles on the sidewalk, allowing the fresh air to wash over him, he thinks about it, about Penelope packing a trunk with all the dresses she favours the most—though, if Colin knows his friend, as he suspects he does, she would fill it with books, ones she’s read before and ones she has not had the time to, and the trunk would take three or four men to lift because it is so heavy. And he would have to tell her Pen, I will buy you more books, and she would smile at him and say, With what money, Colin? And she would be right to ask because he would have enough to get them somewhere, aboard a ship and perhaps to the Mediterranean Sea. He could find some kind of work; he is not certain for what, but he could use his sturdiness for something. And she would be home, in their home—did he wish to have a home for her? In this fantasy, he does, he wants her to be in a drawing room they share. A drawing room that is theirs.

Friends cannot live together—he has never heard of such a thing, but they would not be a part of society anymore and perhaps no one would think them wrong for cohabitating.

It would be a modest home, but it would be theirs, free from the clutches of her rotten family and his overbearing viscount brother, and they would take their meals wherever they like, he would learn to make them, and he would stoke a fire like he has done in so many lodgings, and she would spend the evenings reading to him—she had quite the voice. And they would talk about their days, and he would hear of the books she has spent her time reading and the friends she has made in this little village, and she would look at him with her beautiful eyes and he would kiss her—

He would—

He would kiss her—

He would kiss her, and she would kiss him back—

She would look at him with her beautiful eyes and he would lead her to the bedroom they shared—

Colin blinks rapidly, feeling his throat tighten. They were friend, and friends, from what he knows, do not kiss. 

In his thoughts, he had mixed the fantasy of her with something he had not touched in a while. Kissing—he did enjoy it. It was delicate at times, playful others, steamy and arousing. It was so unlike joining, almost innocent; sometimes when he thought too hard, he found it odd that two people touching mouths seemed silly, but it was fun and did not run him ragged like sex did.

Kissing Penelope, however…he can imagine it.

As he continues walking, he imagines her, so small and rather short. He would have to bend his knees to reach her. Or perhaps she could stand on an apple crate, and that would close the gap well enough that he could press their mouths together. She…she does have a rather nice mouth. It is soft-looking, and her lips are plump and pink, and he thinks if he ran his thumb over her bottom lip she would gasp softly. Would she? He cannot imagine that she would want to kiss him, or that she would entertain such an idea. The two of them kissing. 

Colin snorts, and then he sighs because he is curious, and this will begin to eat at him. 

Once he reaches the park, he finds some shade by the water and sits for a moment. He looks out across the water, where ducks swim and flap their wings. There are not too many people about; the time for promenading has ended and now that it is past lunch and will soon be dinner, there are only a few stragglers, like himself, left behind. 

As a couple passes by him, a chaperone in tow, Colin wonders when it was the last time Penelope had been outside. He wishes he had the capability of showing her how lovely the weather is, or perhaps images of the ducks swimming. He thinks she would like that. And perhaps if he could do such a thing, he would be rewarded somehow. Maybe a kiss. 

The fantasy is broken now, and all that is left are thoughts of Penelope in this new light, glowing in the centre of his mind like a beacon. Surely, she has not kissed anyone—Penelope is a good girl, unlike some of the other debutantes who are easily seduced by some of the rakes that get their hands on them, Penelope would save her kisses for someone she loved. For the man she married—which, much like when he returned, upsets him, because the man she married would have to be good, and Colin fears the ton does not have any good men left. 

Colin mourns the loss of their little house by the sea. It was never real, but in his mind, it felt like it. In his mind, he was a good man, and the Penelope in his mind would have saved all her kisses for him. The Penelope in his mind, in this fantasy, in this house by the sea would peel him apart, first his clothes and then his skin and then his muscle, and she would see all the goodness inside of him, etched into bone like an engraving in stone. He was certain this Penelope, with her red hair illuminated by the rushing fire lit in their bedroom, would peer inside of him and know he is good. And she would kiss him and make him more good, because she is good. 

The Penelope in real life is like that, though she does not bestow his person with kisses to make him good. It seems the Penelope he knows drives him crazy, fits of insanity because—because she insists that she will die. 

What becomes of a sailor without his boat, or a traveller without his compass, or a writer without his quill. He feels the loss of her, a phantom, and there is a pang in his chest. 

It is so unfair that a woman like Penelope, a woman who is good, made up of the sweetness of sugar cane and the tanginess of lemons—the most refreshing on a hot summer day—would have this in her cards. A short life for a woman who seemed like she could transcend time itself, as though she were immortal, living forever and ever, because she was fated to see the future and make it good. 

Colin, in all his curious melancholy and angered confusion, wondered if it were possible to switch places with her. Penelope would be missed much more than he—Eloise would be able to see her friend again, and Hyacinth would get to play with her. And his mother—Colin knows his mother misses Penelope, quite like one of her own children. Violet would get a daughter in place of a son. And then Penelope could live on, making everything good. 

He can almost hear her protest—he knows Penelope would be upset with him for saying such a thing, but it was true. He would endanger himself or risk his life for a chance that Penelope would be safe and live long enough to see the end of the century. 

Yet, all Colin can truly do is pick himself up and pray to a god whom he holds no belief in to turn the tables somehow. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When he knocks on Penelope’s window, she appears before him, radiant as ever. 

“You are getting better at climbing,” she says, her smile soft, unsure. 

“Practice makes perfect,” he says, climbing through, much more gracefully this time. “How have you been feeling?” 

Penelope’s eyes flicker with sadness. “More of the same,” she admits. “Better now that I have something to take my mind off it.” 

“Really?” Colin takes her hand and leads her to her bed, pulling her to sit next to him. She nods, pressing her other hand over his and Colin’s heart flips in his chest. 

Penelope shakes her head, but she keeps his hand between both of hers. “I am afraid my appetite has left me; I no longer wish to eat.” 

Colin frowns. “I did bring some biscuits. You should have some.” 

“Later,” she says with a smile. “You must tell me about your day!” 

Sitting beside her is the most comfortable he has been since the last time he saw her, and Colin fears that when he is forced to leave, he will become reckless once again, lose himself and drink too much, begin to fight and fear that he is losing her much too quickly. How dreadful it is to realize you have taken one for granted. 

So, he tells her about his day, and tells her about his travels, and his dreams of a little house by the sea. 

“I wish to go,” she says wistfully. 

“It would suit you,” he encourages. “I think the people of the town I visited would have loved to see you. They would have fawned over your hair. I did not see a single soul with hair like yours.” 

Penelope giggles. “It would be unsightly,” she teases, and Colin shakes his head. 

“No, Pen. Quite the opposite. You would have admirers. Many of them. Bringing you all the gifts and treats you can imagine.” 

“I would pay them no heed.”

“Is that so?” 

“It is,” she grins. 

“And why not?” 

“I do not think any of them would catch my eye,” she muses with a shrug. 

Colin hums. “They would bring you the loveliest things, Pen. Books and ribbons and quills—all things you enjoy.” 

Penelope tightens her fingers around his hand. “Why should I accept those gifts when surely you would have brought them to me first?” 

It is such a brazen question Colin feels like the breath has been knocked out of him. Was Penelope flirting with him? After he spent all day thinking about kissing her in their imaginary house by the sea? Could she hear his thoughts? Has she already peeled the outsides of him and allowed herself to look at his insides? 

“I apologise,” she whispers. “That was—” 

“No, please do not apologise!” His eagerness surprises her, and he can see her eyes sparkle. He wishes that she did not wear her gloves, that he could feel the softness of her skin, the weight of them, how they would fit against his palm so well it would make him wonder if they were somehow made of the same mould and split in two. “You caught me off guard, is all,” he says, clearing his throat. 

“I only thought that if I were in this—this—” she shakes her head as she searches for the words. “If I were there, by the sea, in the town you visited, I would not be alone.” 

“No, of course you would not.” 

“You would be there,” she confirms. Assures. Says so certainly, it almost feels like it is set in stone. 

“I would,” he says. “Of course, I would be.” 

“So then, I would not need any attention from any of these strangers you claim would adorn me with gifts, because you will have already given me the gifts.” 

Colin smiles. “You are correct. As always.”

Penelope sighs happily. “If it were not for my condition, I would beg you to take me. It would be nice to see anything other than the colour of these walls. I am quite sick of them.” 

“I would take you,” he says. “We could see the whole world if you wished.”

“The whole of it?” 

Colin nods. “Even the places I have not been.” 

“We could explore it together—though I do not imagine there are many lady explorers,” she says with a laugh. 

“You would be one of a kind, Pen, like you are now.” 

“Perhaps,” she agrees. “I wonder what it is like. In all the places we have not seen.” 

“It would be wonderful.” 

For a moment, they share the fantasy; it is like they are connected; perhaps she feels the tether, the rope, the string that ties him to her; he has always imagined that it is simply a rope she holds in her delicate fist, but now, as he sits with her here, closing his eyes when she tells him to, imagining what it might be like, he cannot help but wonder if the same rope is tied around her spine, running through the centre of her. 

With both of them lying back, Penelope yawns, though it has barely been twenty minutes since he has come through her window; he must have overstayed his welcome. 

“Do you wish to sleep?” he asks her, turning his head to look at her. She shakes her head. 

“Not more than I wish to keep your company,” she admits. Shyer than she was earlier; he wonders what has changed. 

“Rest is probably the best medicine for you,” he tells her. 

“And I will not take it until I have had my fill of you,” she murmurs. 

Colin laughs. “You know,” he says carefully, “I had an odd thought last night.” 

Penelope hums. “Really? How odd?” 

“I thought of lying next to you,” he admits to her ceiling rather than her face. 

“As we are now?”

For the sake of not scandalizing her, he nods, though, the thought had been different.

“That does not seem so odd.” She yawns again. “In fact, as I feel sleep take over me, it sounds rather nice.” Penelope sits up, gathers her hair with her gloved hands, and quickly assembles a braid. Her speed is impressive. “You can lay here with me, just until I fall asleep and then you may leave.” 

“You command my presence?”

“I do. Now that I have had it, I do not want to give it up.” 

“You are something else,” he breathes. 

“No, Colin, I am dying. And I simply desire to have what I want before I do.” 

The frankness of her words sends shivers down his spine, and his mouth drops open. Penelope reaches out, smiling coquettishly, and presses her fingers underneath his chin to close his mouth. 

If he was not sure if he wanted to kiss Penelope before, he is certain he wants to now. 

“Remove your boots so you do not get the bedding dirty.” 

Without a single word, let alone a thought, Colin does as she asks, pulling off his boots and setting them carefully next to her bed. She arranges herself underneath the blankets, slowly, and Colin follows her—not underneath. That is far too close to her for him to be any kind of calm—any kind of gentleman, really—but he lays beside her, his legs stretched out and his hands clasped over his stomach like he might do when he is lying in his own bed. 

Penelope’s bed feels different; it is comfortable, but it feels so much unlike his own. He shifts, resting his head on her pillow, trying not to feel every beat of his racing heart, or give in to the butterflies batting their wings against his stomach. He feels so happy, and it brings tears to his eyes. He blinks them away, quickly, before she can see them. 

“Are you comfortable?” she whispers softly. 

Colin nods. “We are very close,” he admits. “Are you comfortable?”

Penelope hums. “I know you will not harm me,” she says. “Even though you might say things only a fool could say.” 

Colin’s heart lodges in his throat. “What do you mean?” 

“It is no matter,” Penelope says. “I—” 

“No, please, tell me.” 

“I heard you at my mama’s ball claiming you would never court me.” 

Colin hums. He can feel her eyes on him, hot and curious. “I am sorry, Pen. I should have never said something so callous.” 

“But it is not untrue.” 

Colin is not quite sure that is the truth, so he says nothing. 

“You would, however, climb through my bedroom window,” she teases. 

He laughs, feeling weightless. “I suppose you are right. I really am sorry, Pen.” 

He looks at her then, already looking at him. And for a moment, it is so much easier to pretend that they are in their house by the sea, and the sound of the waves crashing along the shore could lull them to sleep. That he might be able to reach across their bed for her and pull her body close, kiss her for the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth. 

“Colin,” she whispers, with her eyes still on him, like she is staring into his unholy soul with her holy eyes and making him good. He can feel her making him good. 

“Penelope,” he whispers back, and she smiles for him, something that can only be described as brilliant, luminescent, radiant. He knows then that whatever rope is tying them together illuminates like gold between them. 

“I…” she breathes in deep. “I wish for you to be closer. Is that alright?” 

“Penelope, you could ask anything of me, and I would move mountains to retrieve it for you.” 

“That is quite the declaration.” 

“And I mean it.” 

“Hold me,” she says. It isn’t a question, and she is not shy when she commands it, and he is powerless to do anything but give her what she wants. So, he turns on his side, and he takes her by her waist, her soft waist that feels plush in his hand, gives underneath his fingers and he yanks her into him. She yelps, he knows it is in surprise, but Colin would be remiss if he did not admit to himself that it sounded more like a whimper. 

They are not in the house by the sea, and perhaps they never will be, but they are here, and he is holding her. He winds his arm around her waist, and she tucks her head into his neck, and it feels like—

It does not have a name. It does not have a precedent. There is nothing like this that he has felt before because he has never held someone like he is holding her. Her breaths come in each time he exhales. They are perfect, just as they are now, existing for each other at that moment. She is touching him, making him good, holding him together just as he holds her. 

“I do not wish for you to go,” she whispers. “This is the most at ease I have felt in a very long time.” 

“Then I will not go,” he says decisively. 

Penelope hums and he feels it rattle through his bones just before it dances into his heart.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Colin does not sleep. How can he, when he has her so close, it makes his chest ache even worse than when she was further away? Penelope’s eyes are closed, and her breathing is so soft there are times that panic rises in his chest, rushing through him, his mind convincing him she has died, right there in his arms. But she will snuffle, rub her cheek against the fabric of his vest, or she will sigh, and relief courses through him, leaving him lightheaded and dizzy. 

It is rather peculiar; there is something underneath her clothes that feels hard, like her fingertips are in his hands, like glass or stone; as his hand rubs slowly over her back, he can feel a groove where the hardness begins and where her flesh is, soft and perfect, luscious. 

It is not good for him to lay there, with her in his arms, wrapped and held, safe for another night; he thinks of her, of their house by the sea, and wonders what they would do during the nights, if they would be long, begging for the moon to hang high for a little longer so they might continue an exploration of each other. With her lying atop him, her edges fitting so neatly against his, it makes him wonder about fate and God and whether two people could be meant to fit together like this. Colin has been with woman, has had the distant pleasure of their flesh, hands on his body, all over his body with soft lips trailing close behind, sweaty and naked—it does not compare to this, how her knee rests on his thigh, her tiny hand fisted in the fabric of his shirt as she sleeps. He could spend the next one hundred years in this moment, holding her, watching over her, keeping his promise that he would not leave.

Colin recalls their conversation last season—he had promised her he would always look after her, and he knows he has failed. She holds no ill will towards him, which he is grateful for, but even then--he had boarded a ship and crossed the ocean and while he had written her a dozen letters, perhaps a few more, it still made him shrink underneath the microscope of his own scrutiny that he had not been around to look after her like he promised. 

Would she be okay if he had? 

It almost feels self-important to think this had anything to do with him—it might have been the outcome even if he had stayed in London for the off season. It might have still happened if he were home in Aubrey Hall, combatting the summer heat with naps underneath the large trees by the lakeshore. 

Perhaps he should have stayed; he would have gotten to see her in the summer, when her freckles are their darkest and her hair is lighter underneath the sun, and she is happy, free. She walks barefoot in the field, and her dress drags along the high grass on the outskirts of the property, where the land is less kept. It feels wrong that Penelope will not experience another summer like that, sipping lemonade with Eloise as they giggle over conversation, or as she daydreams and catches Colin looking over at her when he is not supposed to be…

In hindsight, it seems egregious for him not to realise that Penelope held a special place in his mind—in his heart—until he was forced to face the fact that she could be gone sooner than he anticipated. It was not fair, but such is life and the cards they are dealt. Such is the plan of God, which Colin cannot describe as anything other than cruel. 

On his knees, at the altar, he would beg for more time. He would beg for centuries, for millennia. He would ask and plead, clasp his hands and barter and trade—

Now that he knows what it is like to lay with her, to hold her, to breathe her soft breaths; it would be greedy to want more from her. 

It is almost five in the morning when Colin sneaks back through her window and out into the fresh morning air. The sun is due to rise in an hour or so, and Colin’s body is heavy with exhaustion now that he is no longer cycling through panic and relief. 

Bridgerton house is quiet, and as he is on his way towards the family wing. Anthony is in the hall, dressed for the day, quietly shutting the door to his and Kate’s chamber. She must still be sleeping. 

“What are you doing up so early?” Anthony whispers with an arched brow. 

“I am just coming in,” Colin admits. 

Anthony’s eyebrows shoot upward. “Where were you?” 

Colin shrugs and lets Anthony make inferences about the fact that Colin is not wearing his jacket, and the rest of his clothing must look rather rumpled. 

“You are being careful—”

“I am not stupid, Anthony,” Colin grumbles, heading into his bedroom and shutting the door behind him. He should have known that would not stop Anthony. 

“I do not think you are stupid, Colin,” Anthony says as soon as he enters. He closes the door much gentler than Colin had. “You are young and—eager, perhaps. I only wish—”

“What is it that you wish, Anthony? It would seem you would prefer that I am in line with your expectations, however, what I wish is that you would simply leave me be.” Colin drops his jacket over his desk chair and sits on his bed.

Anthony lingers for a moment longer, and Colin is waiting for the lecture, but instead, Anthony says, “Very well,” and leaves Colin alone. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

When Colin wakes, it is to the news that Lord Featherington has been found dead. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Chapter Text

Time. 

It was a peculiar concept in and of itself. Colin was not certain where the concept came from, nor did he particularly care in this instance, but the word tumbled through his thoughts. He keeps picturing the face of Lord Featherington and how he had seemed so…

Frightened. Panicked. 

It was nothing short of harrowing, now that Colin knows he is dead. 

There is much more than a sneaking suspicion that the man Colin had seen with Lord Featherington had something to do with it. He, with his sinister eyes, had told Lord Featherington that there was nothing left to barter with. And now, the man was dead. 

Sitting in the drawing room with his mother and siblings, he pondered the well-being of Penelope; he was sure Portia Featherington and her other daughters would be distraught, but Colin knew more about Penelope than he did them. And Penelope seemed to sit on the outskirts of her family, not quite the same as them, shaped differently, from her hair to her eyes to her waist—

Colin shook his head, sipping his tea. It was not the appropriate time to think of Penelope’s waist. But the thought still warred to be centred in his mind; he wanted to think about her waist. He could spend hours thinking about her waist and the weight of her body tucked into his side, the way she breathed so softly that the rustle of his own sheets sometimes sounded like the rush of air she exhaled through her nose. He wanted to think about Penelope. He wanted to trace the shape of her mouth in his memory, wanted to hold her, rest his hands just above her bottom, where she was lovely and plush and generous. It was all he could do not to think of her. 

When he arrived home that morning, lying in bed had not immediately put him to sleep; thoughts of her kept him company. Her laughter. Her sweetness. Her boldness when she told him she would ask for whatever she wanted. It filled with a rush of—something he had never felt before. Desire, in its true, pure form. It rioted inside of him, unruly and incautious, pushing him to want to be closer to her. His entire body burned from it, begging to cross the square and demand entry to her home just so he could see her, hold her cheeks in his palms, that he might bridge the distance between them and kiss her. Because he wanted that so fervently now. 

It seemed so—obvious. Penelope had always been special, had she not? A beacon of light. A sweet spot in so much sourness that surrounded them. A balm for when he missed home and could smell her perfume in the letters she wrote to him while he was away. She had always been there, not just in front of him, but in his periphery. In the twilights and morning spill of dew and pink petals in gardens of those he visited. She was in the air, a phantom breeze that caressed his flesh on hot afternoons. She was in a quill or a beaded reticule or a gemstone the colour of the sea. She had always been there. 

It seemed preposterous for him not to recognise his own heart. All of this longing, this devastation ate her fate, the way he was so dead set on ensuring her safety. 

What else could it be if not—

That first night, on the floor of her bedroom, he had told her he would marry her if they were found, and it did not strike him as an odd thing to say, and how could it be, when she was so radiant he could only think about protecting her. He wanted to protect that radiance so much. 

It often felt like he was the only one who could. 

Everyone in the drawing room seemed slightly morose, though he could not fathom that it was because of Lord Featherington’s death. Anthony did not like him, and his mother, while kind, did not approve of the way he and his wife treated Penelope. Eloise had, of course, her own opinions, but at that moment, she sat with paper on her lap, her quill flying across the pages, no doubt another letter to Penelope—

A pang shoots through his heart as he remembers that he had not delivered the first one as he had promised. But he would see Penelope that night, and he would give it to her then, give her a moment to pen a response if she chose to. Colin wondered what state she would be in. If she would be so devastated that she would not want to see him. He did not think it a possibility, but part of him thought that perhaps she would be sensitive, knowing she was going to die, and finding out that her father had passed. It must weigh on her.

As Hyacinth played with dolls on the floor and Gregory attacked her dolls with figures of his own, Colin watched them, wishing for that kind of youth, the innocence of life where death did not bring such sodden, grey clouds to dampen their moods. 

In that wistful wishing, he remembered Penelope like that, underneath the sun, where nothing could harm her, save for too much heat on her cheeks, sprouting freckles in its wake. Perhaps if Colin could find a way to turn back time, he might be able to save her then, figure out the way he felt much sooner, while he was still in shorts even, young enough to promise that he would marry her the first chance he could. And she would blush for him and look up at him with those blue eyes that saw right through him every time. But he would insist. He would tell her that they were supposed to be together. Could she not feel it? Even as young as they would be, could she not feel the way it sparked when their hands met? 

She would think him mad, and perhaps he was, but still, if he could feel it, as strong as it was, he imagined she had to feel it, too. Sure, he was the only man who climbed through her window in the dead of night to see her, but if she had not wanted to be held by him, she would not have asked. Or perhaps, she pitied herself and could see the desperation in him to be closer to her and allowed him to take the liberties he did with her. 

Maybe all she felt was his need. Not quite sharing it, but indulging in it, like a meal, developing a taste for it, though perhaps she did not like it much. 

That hurt worse. Thinking that she did not feel the way he did. It was possible; it was possible that she did not see him like he saw her. That when she set her eyes on him, he did not shine for her. He was normal, without the gleam of desire or the vibrance of love. 

Because that was it, was it not? Love? 

Colin did not know, though perhaps it was since he had not felt it before. Or—

Because he had not felt it this intensely. It had always been there, this feeling, a warmth beneath his skin, always rising in temperature when he was close to her. Cooler when he was away, almost freezing when he was on the continent until her letters arrived and the sun rose inside of his bones and filled his body with a light so bright he was sure she could see it from Mayfair. 

Oh, he had to see her. He needed to see her. He needed to search her gaze and understand if she could feel it. If they were tethered like he dreamed they were, if she loved him, too. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

The day was long, so long, despite Colin’s late rise, and as he waited for sundown, and then dinner, and then the last handful of hours, it felt like time was torturing him. Time. 

Blasted time. 

If he had known his conversation with Lord Featherington was to be the last he would ever have, he would have pressed harder for information. He would have chased him down and asked more questions. He would have pressured the lord until he crumbled and confessed. There was something about his daughter; he had heard that correctly, had he not? Or perhaps the portion of the conversation he had missed contained what Colin wished to know. 

For now, all Colin could do was speculate, think over and over again of Lord Featherington’s begging. Surely Colin had what was needed; if Lord Featherington could not bet anything more, perhaps Colin could. He was flush enough that he could build a small mountain with his funds, and he speculated Eloise would do little else than help Penelope if she needed it.

Help her how, though? There was something missing from the story. Something that Colin was desperate to know, and perhaps tonight, he would be able to pull it from Penelope, alleviate the thorn in her paw, and carry the weight of it with her. Colin was not sure how Penelope’s sickness related to Lord Featherington’s inability to pay his debt, but he would find out. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Penelope’s window is cracked open when he reaches it, and it slides up easily when he pushes on the edge of the glass. She is sitting on the edge of her bed where they normally sit together during their midnight rendezvous. It does not seem right that he would be here, but when she sets her eyes on him, he knows he made the right choice in coming to see her. 

“Colin,” she breathes into his chest once he is inside her room. Her arms wind around his waist, and he holds her close across her shoulders. 

“I am here, Pen,” he says, dipping his head forward to breathe in the fresh scent of her hair. It is slightly wet against his lips when he presses a kiss onto the crown of her head. She smells of roses. 

“My father—he has passed,” she whispers. “I do not know what my mama will do. She is distraught. She has been yelling at the help, and even Prudence and Phillipa have taken the brunt of her attitude. She would not allow them to depart for their own homes—their husbands had to come get them.” Penelope leans her head back, looking up at him, her bright blue eyes wet. 

“All will be well,” he assures. 

“How could you know?”

“I—well. My father—” 

“Of course,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “I did not mean—” 

“I know,” he says gently. “Everything is alright.” 

“It is not,” she whispers. “But you are here, and I could not be more grateful.” 

Colin’s heart swells in his chest, dancing behind his breastbone, settling delicately atop his lungs. “Anything to make you smile. Besides, I have brought something for you.” 

“Later,” she mumbles, pressing her face into his chest. “I have been waiting all day for you to hold me again.” 

“Well, let us not keep you waiting any longer.” 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

There is a peaceful tranquillity in lying in bed, holding Penelope against his chest. It must be the love. Or what it makes him feel. Floating, like when he is atop the surface of the lake, and his body feels like liquid, like he is water. That is how it feels to be with her. She melts into him, and they melt into the earth; if he closes his eyes, he can feel the earth take its breath. 

Is that not fascinating? Right then, he feels like he understands every sonnet. Every poem, every novel—it all makes so much sense, like a language only a man in love could understand. He has only ever written of his travels, musings and stories about his nights with the Contessa and other women at the brothels he visited, but now? He wishes to write of Penelope’s hair and her eyes and the way her lips pucker when she is trying not to laugh. He could spend hours writing of the warmth in her cheeks and the brilliant shine of her eyes and the slope of her nose, and the gloss of her lips when she is all made up from the day, and how he wishes to kiss the gloss away. 

A hundred sonnets to her lips, yes. A hundred and one more for her eyes. And then an infinite number about the warmth he can feel drip from her heart and into his, desperate to drink it up like a man dying from thirst. 

“How is Eloise?” Penelope wonders, lifting her face to look at Colin. He blinks himself out of his reverie. 

“She is well,” he assures her. “Sad that she cannot see you. I have brought letters from her, though. Would you like them?” 

Penelope lifts her head, her face alight with surprise. “She has written me?” 

“Of course. She was thrilled to. She worries about you, you know.” Colin grips his hand over her back, just gentle enough to convince her that there are people who love her. 

Penelope frowns. “I wish I could see her.” 

“I will arrange it,” he murmurs. 

“How could you do such a thing?” 

Colin laughs. “Eloise is quite skilled at tree-climbing. She does not care for her dresses, as you know. Should it get caught in the vines, she will not mind.” 

Penelope giggles and sits up, allowing Colin to move away from her. But just as she does, Penelope gasps, clutching her stomach, and when Colin looks back over his shoulder, he can see her face contorted with pain. She crumbles in on herself and alarm pushes him forward. 

“Pen! Pen, what is it?” He rushes back to her, trying to meet her eyes, but she has them shut tight. 

“The—” she groans, reaching out to clutch his arm, her fingers like talons. “The pain—” 

Colin looks down at her stomach, at where her hand presses into her robe, and when she pulls her hand away, he can see the stain of something dark. Penelope’s glove, once he looks at her palm, is covered in red. 

“Penelope, you are bleeding!” he gasps, taking her hand to inspect it. 

“Do not be alarmed, Colin. It is a part of the—” She groans again, clutching her stomach, and her fingers on his arm tighten. It hurts, but Colin does not move away from her, stays close until the wave of pain passes. 

“You need a physician, Penelope. Please, I can send word, he will be discreet if needed—” 

“It is not a matter of medical science. It is something worse. Sinister. A curse.” 

“A curse, what—” 

Penelope draws back her hand from his arm and reaches for the hem of her dress. She draws up the fabric, and Colin watches as she reveals her legs. Her feet are bare and pale, but when her dress comes above her ankles, he notes that there are wounds, her flesh ragged and scraped, scabbed over where it has healed, but her calves have turned grey. It pokes through her skin, like it’s blooming from the inside, sprouting through her flesh. There does not seem to be any kind of symmetry, just grit shredded through her sweet, soft-looking flesh. 

“You have been wondering what my illness is,” she explains gently. “This is what is happening. But—it is all over my body. There are spots on my arms, on my back, even the tips of my fingers.” 

He cannot stop staring, trying to comprehend what he is seeing. She looks as though she is made of stone. “Pen…what happened to you?” 

“Sometime after the season ended, I awoke with a startling pain in the night,” she begins, lowering the hem of her dress. It is then that Colin lifts his gaze and meets her gaze. She gives him an encouraging smile. “I called for my maid, and she brought my mother with her. When she inspected my body, she found there were parts that had hardened. It began on my back, just where my shoulder blades are, like I was growing wings.” She laughs softly. “For a little while, I let myself believe I was. She called for a physician, and when he examined me, he determined this was like nothing he had ever seen. He could only prescribe a tea for the pain, so my mother called another physician, and then another, and none of them could make sense of it. It has begun spreading, as you have seen, but now, I am left with this unknown sickness. Even the vicar has come to pray for me, but not even God will listen. I imagine one day I will be a girl crafted of stone. Like the pieces of art in the Queen’s garden.” 

The breath in Colin’s lungs leaves him, and his heart races so furiously it dizzies him. “Stone?” he echoes, and Penelope nods. 

“I am not sure how it happened. It is painful when it begins to overtake parts of me and leaves a soreness that cannot be soothed with tea. I feel as though I am used to it now, mostly wishing that it will run its course and take me so I will not have to feel it anymore.” 

“Penelope. You must not—” 

“Colin, now you know,” she whispers, resting her hand on his thigh. “You cannot do anything for me. It is as it is, and nothing will change that. We have already tried.” 

Tears fill his eyes—no, that cannot be it; this cannot be all there is. He feels the tears fall down his cheeks, and Penelope smooths her fingers underneath each eye to clear them, but more tears replace them. 

“Oh, Colin. You have too soft a heart for this world,” she whispers. Her cool fingers brush along the line of his jaw. 

“It is soft because you have made it that way,” he mumbles, sniffling. Penelope smiles, shaking her head. 

“You think so good of me.” 

“I cannot think of you any other way.” He lifts his hand to hold her cheek, and her eyelids flutter. 

“May I share a secret?” she whispers, leaning into his touch. 

“Of course,” he encourages. He wipes his face with the back of his left hand, which Penelope takes afterwards. 

“I am not certain you—well. I always wished you would touch me like this,” she admits softly. 

“Like how?” he wonders, soothing the pad of his thumb over her cheeks. Bursting heat burns him so delightfully. 

“Like this. Like…like you care for me as a woman.” She takes his hand from her face and holds it, so when he looks down at their clasped hands, he can see her small fingers clutching his, the fabric of her gloves soft against his skin. “As a girl, even before I debuted, we used to spend those summers at Aubrey Hall, do you remember?” 

Of course he remembers. He is unlikely to ever forget, even when he has aged, and his mind has turned brittle and there is nothing left of him but the gentle summertime memories of Penelope in the gardens at Aubrey Hall. “I do.” 

“When it was late at night, I would go to bed with Eloise, and we would talk until she tired, and I would have dreams that you would come find me and…kiss me.” 

“Pen,” he says, astonished. “Did you really?” 

Penelope nods, smiling sadly. “It was nothing but a little girl’s fantasy. But when you touched my face—it was all I could think about.”

It is all he has been thinking about for the last couple of days. Of holding her by her waist and pressing their mouths together. If only to try to convince her that he needs her. That he wants her and wishes for her and dreams of her. 

“But no longer?” he wonders. 

“Hmm?” 

“You no longer wish for me to kiss you?” he clarifies.

“I did not say that.” She laughs, looking away from him. “It will be a fantasy until the day I die.” 

“Penelope—” 

“It is—” she inhales, and her fingers lift to touch down his neck, to his throat where his cravat is still tied. He does not know why he still wears it, when he is only coming to see her. And like she is reading his mind, she tugs on the knotted fabric and pulls it loose, pulling it off and setting it on the bed. He wipes the palms of his hands on his trousers—suddenly sweaty. “It is a thought that keeps me company, warm even. If I could not have your kisses in this lifetime, at least in my dreams, you thought of me differently. You thought of me kissable.” Her fingers press softly along his throat, and Colin swallows thickly, his mouth parting just to breathe better. 

“Pen—” 

“I know, it is silly, for a girl like me to have such a thought, to think of such things…you must think me wanton,” she murmurs, humming.

“I do not,” he says, taking her hand in his, looking her in the eyes. “God, Penelope, since I arrived, I have not been able to stop thinking of you.” He laughs, almost humourlessly, because it is not so funny when he has been in agony. “I have been thinking about nothing else. I arrived home and Eloise had an insane theory that you had married, and I panicked. I had not known why at the time, but I do now.” 

“And why is that?” she whispers. “Because you have seen my wounds?” 

“No,” he says, clutching her fingers closer so she can rest them on his chest, just over his heart. “No, it is because I—Penelope, can you not feel it? That we are tied together? Perhaps by God, or magic, or even something we have yet to discover?” 

“Colin—” she admonishes with a huff. “Just because I am dying—” 

“Penelope, at night, when I am alone in my bed, I close my eyes and dream of holding you. Of kissing you. Dreaming that you might look at me and find me worthy of someone like you. Of someone so good that you might make me good. I dream of escaping this hell we have found ourselves in, and running away to—to—” 

“To the house by the sea?” she fills in for him, giggling softly. 

Colin grins. “To wherever your heart desires.” 

Penelope lies back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I would think I am dreaming,” she murmurs, “but in my dreams I am not stone.” 

He lies back alongside her, twisting his body so he is lying on his side. He takes one of her hands, her left hand, and he lifts her knuckles to his mouth to warm her with a kiss. 

“Do you really mean what you said?” 

“Which part?” 

“Is there a part you did not mean?” she baulks. 

Colin laughs. “No! No, I meant every single word. Thinking about you—” he kisses her knuckles. “Dreaming about you—” another kiss to her knuckles. “Wanting to kiss you—” 

“Would you?” she breathes. He rests her hand against her stomach, dropping it. 

With his hand on her cheek, he leans over her, hovering for a moment, taking her in. The beauty of her, her radiance, almost ethereal. Angelic. Just as she is in his dreams. 

“Colin,” she whispers, and it sounds like a plea; he’s never heard his name whispered in such a way, somehow sounding foreign to his ears. Different from her tongue, like she has bewitched him. And probably, she has. 

So, he descends, his eyes falling closed just before their lips touch; she bleeds warmth into him, and for the first time in his entire life, he feels like he is in his body, that he is here with her, enjoying this thing they share. There is music without a quartet, and they are dancing though they lie in her bed. It feels like they are flying, high above the Earth, among the stars. 

When he pulls back to look down at her, she meets his gaze, reaching up to touch her own lips with her fingers. 

“Is that what it is like?” she says, awed. 

“Not with everyone,” he muses. 

“No?” 

“No,” he insists. “I think it is like this because it is us.” 

“Kiss me again,” she murmurs, her fingers combing through his hair, pressing against his nape to coax him down. With a laugh, their mouths press together; it is somehow better than the first time, like they have unlocked something within each other that makes it feel as though they have successfully become one being. 

Perhaps this is what he has been missing. Whatever emptiness there was inside of him fills with her. Her warmth, her touch, the achingly good press of her lips. He is whole and good enough. 

It is easy to lose himself in her. How can it not be when she is so pliant before him, responding to him so greedily; is this what it feels like to be wanted? Here, Colin had thought there was no way Penelope could return his feelings, and yet, here she is responding to him in kind. It is thrilling, heat pouring through him, shooting through his gut, submitting to the heat of her breath and the softness of her sighs.

It is more than anything he had ever experienced. Beneath him, Penelope opens up, blooming like a flower finding its petals in the spring; he marvels at it, at her, pulling back to look at her again, to gauge how much she wants this, wants him, if at all.

"Colin," she coaxes gently. "Are you well?"

"Yes," he whispers. "I—"

"It feels like so much, does it not?" Penelope tilts her head, and her curls catch the soft light. She was made to be kissed. To be loved.

And Colin was made to love her.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

"You said you brought me letters?" Penelope asks later, tracing lines over his chest. He hums.

"Yes. I meant to deliver one last night, but I forgot. So, you will have two today. I am certain Eloise offers her condolences," Colin explains, extricating himself from her hold, even as she hesitates and hangs onto him. He stands from the bed and heads over to his bag, pulling out the pieces of folded parchment and handing them to Penelope once he reaches her bed.

"I shall read them in the morning," she says, setting them gently on her night table.

"I do not mind if you would like to now," he says, running a hand over her thigh; he can feel it, where she is stone and where she is human. It frightens him like nothing else.

"No," she says, catching the drift of his hand, tugging him forward. "My time with you is limited, and now that you have kissed me, I fear it is all I want to do."

Colin grins. "Is it?"

"Do you not feel the same?" she asks. "Does it not excite you?"

"Of course it does," he murmurs, crawling up the bed beside her. This time, he nudges her knees open for him, just enough so their bodies might press together a little more closely than they had before.

"What are you doing?" she asks with a breathless giggle. She winds her arms around his neck, nuzzling her nose along the line of his jaw. "You are so heavy."

"Am I hurting you?" he whispers.

"No, I like it," she confesses. "It makes me feel protected. Safe, even. I cannot be harmed if I am hidden away beneath you."

"Shall I keep you here, then? Tucked beneath me?" He leans in, brushing his mouth against her cheek, trying valiantly to hold back his grinning.

“Yes,” she breathes. “Would you? I can think of nowhere else I would rather be. In fact, I suspect it is where I belong.”

“Pen, you cannot say such things,” he murmurs, capturing her mouth with his. And from the second their lips touch, it feels like a race, like they are desperately trying to reach somewhere they have not gone. She clutches him with her tiny hands, her fingers digging into his back, the fabric of her gloves scraping along his vest. Colin wishes to remove it, to remove all of his clothes and rid her of hers, so they could be even closer.

Instead, he allows her a moment of reprieve, her heavy breaths in his ear as he kisses down her neck, nipping at the flesh just behind the corner of her jaw, revelling in the way she moans. It is a soft little noise, more of a whimper, but it is no less potent. It floods through his body, melting like liquid fire, and his body responds; of course it does. He loves her, he loves her, and his body needs her—maybe he has always needed her this way, in the simplest way two humans can need one another.

Colin leans up on his forearms. “Is this all right?” he asks, breathing hard, thankful that she is short enough that his hips are not pressed into hers.

“Do you expect me to push you away?" she teases, her eyes alight, lips reddened by his. Her blush runs rampant, trailing along the high points of her cheeks.

"No, I am—" he shakes his head. "It does not feel real."

"What?"

"That I am kissing you. Even you said it felt like a dream."

Penelope hums. "Then we should kiss until it feels more real than anything else."

"Seductress," he whispers, and Penelope lowers her chin, looking up at him through the fan of her dark lashes. She draws her fingers over his throat, where he swallows hard, shivering as she presses a finger into the dip of his throat.

"I wish you would not wear a cravat anymore." Her fingers dip lower, down into the open collar of his shirt. "May I?"

"As you wish." He watches her face as her fingers pull apart the buttons of his shirt. She presses her palm to his chest, and he is sure she can feel the thunderous beat of his heart. Does she enjoy that it beats so wildly for her? He wonders if it pleases her.

"You are so different from me," she says. "I did not think men had hair on their chests. Women do not."

Colin laughs. "We are different in many ways."

"Will you show me all of them?" She glances up at him, her eyes darting back down to his chest where her fingers—still gloved—rub over his skin. Colin nods.

"If you desire as such," he affirms.

"I desire you," she says softly. "Is that all right?"

Colin kisses her then, hungrily, to show her that yes, it is all right. It is all he wants. To be desired, and more so, be desired by her. By Penelope and all her goodness wrapped in supple flesh and hardened stone. While her heart is still soft and her mouth still begging, he wants her, and even then, he'd love her.

This kiss burns hot, and Penelope is quick to learn, flourishing underneath him like they've kissed a million times before. And perhaps they have; a million small kisses, a million gasps and sighs, a million quiet whispers of his name on her lips when he latches his lips underneath her jawline to suck at her racing pulse.

He does not mean to get carried away, but he cannot help it, not when Penelope unbuttons his vest, then his shirtsleeves, and pushes the fabric off his shoulders. He sits back for a moment so he can take them off, dropping them into a careless heap on the floor. Penelope leans up on her elbows, reaching out one hand to drag down his chest, over his stomach.

"You are quite beautiful," she whispers. "It is no wonder all the debutantes are after you."

Colin hums, giving her a lopsided smile. "And yet, I am here with you."

"You are. And I still think, just a little, that I am dreaming."

"What is it that we do in your dreams?" he asks, bending forward to kiss her belly, then upwards and more boldly, her chest until he has pressed his face into her throat.

"This," she whispers. "We are close, Colin. It is all I have ever wanted. To crush the bounds of propriety and hold you. Lay in the cradle of your arms. Kiss...though, forgive me, our kisses in my dreams did not burn as much as they do here." Penelope's hands slide up the expanse of his back, pressing against his shoulder blades. His mind conjures the feeling, the thought of them just like this, him held by the cradle of her thighs, her fingers digging into his flesh, the call of his name in his ear...

"You are so sweet," he says, laughing softly. "They teach you so little."

"So little of what?"

"The marital act," he murmurs.

Penelope shifts underneath him; perhaps it is instinct the way her thighs widen for him, her dress bunched up between them. Her legs are exposed to him, wounded and stony in parts, soft and fleshy in others. He is careful when he touches her, keeping his fingers gentle until he slides his hand underneath the fabric of her dress to grab her hip, which is soft and plush in his hands.

"It is not unlike what we are doing," he whispers.

When he looks at her, gauging her expression, her lips are parted, and that ruddy blush has travelled down her throat and over her chest. She shifts underneath him again. "What is it like?"

"I am not sure," he says honestly.

"Have you...I thought...well—is that not what men do when they leave for their tours? Mama says you boys must leave to become men." She sets her hand on his shoulder, squeezing him. "Is that not what you did?"

"I suppose. If you were to describe it in such plain terms."

"I cannot describe it in any other way. But I am curious; will you tell me?"

"Another time," he says with a smirk.

"Oh, you are so frustrating." She shoves him away, and he falls onto his back, laughing. She turns onto her side, resting her head on her palm. "You will not tell me even a little bit?"

"I did tell you a little bit." He arches a brow. Penelope rolls her eyes.

"Liar. You enjoy toying with me, sir."

Colin grins, taking her hand from his chest and kissing each of her fingertips. "I admit I do find it humorous. We are friends, are we not?"

"Always," she agrees, smiling back at him.

"Now that I know what is causing your sickness, will you remove your gloves for me? I am so desperate to feel your hands."

Penelope sighs, frowning. "It is a grisly sight, Colin. I am afraid you will find it revolting."

"Nonsense, Pen." He leans up, matching her posture, up on his elbow, and leans in for a kiss. "It is a part of you. And there is not a single part of you that could ever be revolting. You are beautiful."

Sitting up fully, Colin pulls Penelope up with him, settling among her pillows so he can make space for her between his legs.

"We have become so familiar with one another," Penelope marvels, crawling closer to him. "Is this what you are like on your travels?"

"You think me a rake?" Colin grins.

"You are charming enough." Penelope sits with her back against his chest, gathering her hair over her left shoulder. Carefully, Colin lifts the sleeve of her robe up her right arm until he reaches the edge of her gloves. "Colin…” she whispers, but he does not allow her to hide from him anymore. "Colin," she says again, her tone slightly more alarmed, a warning if anything, or perhaps an I told you so, as he pulls down the fabric of her glove. It snags on the edges of stone and scab, but it does not deter Colin from carefully removing the fabric from Penelope's delicate fingers.

"Does it hurt?" he asks, but it's muffled slightly, his lips pressed into the crown of her head; he bestows a light kiss.

"No," she says, flexing her hand. The tips of her fingers have gone to stone, just up to that first knuckle, and there is stone that creeps down over her forearm, close to her wrist. "My body feels heavier than it used to, so I move slower, and in some parts I have lost feeling. I am still able to write, so I thank God for that at least."

Colin hums. "What is it you write?" he asks, taking her other arm and carefully lowering the glove.

"I keep a diary," she admits. "For my thoughts, since I rarely see anyone but my maid and my mother. My sisters have both wed, and they no longer come to see me. Which is expected; we never did get on."

"Does that bother you?" Colin is gentle as he traces a fingertip over the stone on Penelope's forearm; it must be old because the flesh it consumes no longer looks ragged and raw; it has healed some.

"If we were closer, perhaps, but I cannot sit here and mourn something I never had." Penelope shifts her head to look at him. "You are curious this evening."

"Is it a crime to want to know you better?" He grins.

"Not a crime, though, there used to be a time when I thought you knew everything about me. I am not so exciting that there is much to learn."

"That is where you are wrong," he insists. "You are fascinating."

Penelope smiles, and Colin kisses her, wrapping his arms all around her and pulling her closer.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

Colin dreams.

There are pews in the church, filled with people he knows. He sees his mother sitting in the row behind Anthony and Kate...there is music playing, something gentle and soft, and there are curtains parting at the end of the aisle.

Penelope.

Oh, beautiful Penelope, her lovely skin luminous; there is an abundance of light, bright, filtering through large windows. She walks towards him, her dress sparkling. She looks at him. Her eyes have never looked so blue, he thinks.

She pauses in the middle of the aisle, and the sunlight disappears, a sudden darkness blanketing everything, and he can no longer see her. There is a candlestick in his hand, and wax drips onto his skin, burning him, but the panic of Penelope disappearing consumes him; he shouts her name. He calls for her over and over again.

Colin! she screams. He can hear her, so far away. Where could she have gone? The wax burns his hand, melting quicker and quicker, and Colin is running, he is running so fast his lungs tense in his chest, his breath too shallow.

Colin! Penelope screams again.

Pen! Pen, where are you? he yells for her, and suddenly he is rooted to the ground; vines creep up the length of his legs, up his hips, and tighten around his waist and chest. He cannot breathe, struggling to rip through the ivy, but it is too strong. It curls around his arms, consuming him, and he cannot breathe—he cannot call her name! Pen! he gasps. Pen! He cannot breathe; he cannot breathe—

Colin bolts upright in his bed, his throat raw from the sharp gasp. He tries to orient himself, taking in his surroundings; it is only his bedroom, draped in shadows; through the cracks in the curtains, Colin can see that it is still daytime. The clock on the mantle above the fireplace reads eleven in the morning when he squints his eyes.

Exhausted, he falls back onto the mattress and forces his breathing under control.

It is not often that he dreams, and when he does, it is almost always some kind of unsettling scene. When his father passed, he used to dream of falling. There had been a weightless feeling that plagued him for months after they laid his father to rest, and some nights, Colin would wake screaming from the way his body jolts awake in panic; usually he remained alone in his room, forced to find sleep again, but some nights, he would creep into Benedict's bedroom and sleep next to his brother because it felt safer where there was someone bigger than him around. 

On the very first night it happened, he had tried Anthony first, and that had been a mistake, because Anthony had forced him back to his own room. But Benedict was gentler, as though he could sense something deeply torn inside of Colin, something—not wrong, but so unlike him. Carefree and curious—Colin had always been a bright young man, slightly cautious, mostly thoughtful, and thoroughly in love with a good joke. He enjoyed joy. There was life in happiness.

When Edmund Bridgerton died, it seemed that happiness did not exist any longer. Colin later learned that it was not that it did not exist, it was simply harder to come by.

In church, after Colin would have those nightmares, he would pray. He would kneel and ask God to rid him of these frightful nights and allow him the sleep he needed, but God had taken his father, so what use was there in asking to have Him help with something as trivial as dreams?

Now, as he lay in bed, he wished for the joy of Penelope's smile. Her soothing voice. The way she would touch him with her hands, like he was made of glass. And perhaps he is. In places. Almost the same as her, made of stone in parts. Hardened to the world. Colin was softer, breakable, delicate, though he wished he were not.

Turning onto his side, Colin shifts underneath the blankets, staring across the room at nothing, closing his eyes. He wishes she were here. The scent of her skin would chase away these nightmares. He would not have to worry about her because she would be with him, in his arms, cradled by the strength he worked so hard for. She would be here, with her bright blue eyes, sparkling, even in a shadowed room like this, because she was Penelope and there was light inside of her.

God, he needed to save her. He needed to do something. He cannot waste any more time wishing for what he desires, just to run out of time and wish that he had more.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖.

After dressing for the day, Colin heads down to the drawing room. Only Hyacinth and Eloise are there, Hyacinth with her dolls, and Eloise with a book.

"Brother, are you well?" Hyacinth asks from the floor. Colin gives her a smile, nodding reassuringly.

"Better now that I have seen you," he says, and Hyacinth jumps up and embraces him. Eloise looks over at them.

"You slept for so long I had thought you had gone out," she remarks with an arched brow that reminds him of Anthony. Colin shrugs his shoulders, and Hyacinth sits beside Eloise on the sofa.

"I had a headache," he says. "Where is everyone?"

"Mother has gone to visit a friend. Your guess is as good as mine regarding Anthony and Benedict. Gregory is outside, and Francesca is in the library."

Colin picks at the table spread, but he finds himself less than hungry.

“Brother, will you take us to the market?” Hyacinth chirps. Colin turns to look at her and then at Eloise.

“Yes, I would like to peruse the collection of books. Perhaps there is something new I would like to read. I think I could also find a gift for—" Eloise pauses. “A friend.”

“What friend?” Hyacinth wonders, her eyes alight with curiosity. “I thought Penelope was the only friend you had.”

Colin snickers, crunching his teeth through another biscuit.

“Hush, you. You do not have friends either,” Eloise shoots back.

“With as many siblings as I have, what is the use?”

“Penelope is your friend,” Hyacinth says. “So, she must be special.”

“Indeed, she is,” Colin agrees, tugging on one of Hyacinth’s coiled curls. “Come along, you two. The market must be crowded.”

“Will you buy me new ribbons?” Hyacinth jumps off the sofa and takes Colin’s hand in hers.

“Do you not have enough ribbons already?” Eloise huffs, walking past them. Colin smiles down at his youngest sister.

“You can have as many as you like,” Colin promises. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

As Colin suspected, the market is flooded with people; mothers and children, couples, friends—it seems as though everyone from the ton has gathered here. The day is bright and gorgeous, the sun pinned high overhead.

As soon as they happen upon the booths, Hyacinth preoccupies herself with ribbons, shawls, and other fashionable items, whereas Eloise disappears towards shelves of books bound in fresh leather. He watches as she traces the spines, flipping some of them open, wondering if she yearns to tell Penelope of what she has read. Colin is certain that Penelope would love to hear all about it, which makes him think more and more of helping Eloise climb the trellis outside of Penelope's window, just so they can see each other. Surely that would win him some points in both of their favour.

With his sisters occupied with their interests, Colin ambles along, dodging running children and greeting acquaintances. He notices a booth selling gloves, and he peruses the selection, finding a pair in a shade of pink he has only ever seen in the morning, accompanied by the drowsy rise of the sun. He had slept in a field, and when he woke, it was dawn, blue light draped all throughout the land like a whisper. There was nothing but grass for miles, and the air held a quiet he had never known. Not even on the acres of land in the fields at Aubrey Hall had held this kind of tranquillity. Those fields held the giggles of his little sisters, Benedict's guffawing, and Anthony's booming laugh—he sounded so much like their father at times. But in that field out on the continent; God help him, Colin cannot remember which country held that small stretch of peace, but he remembered the spread of light across the sky; the clouds broke open like shattered glass, parting to expose the watercolour splash of tangerine and golden orange—and that soft, coquettish pink that reminded him of Penelope.

Everything seemed to remind him of her these days. And now, looking down at the fabric of these gloves, he knows the only thing more peaceful than that morning was spending his nights in Penelope's bed, her arms around him, her mouth sighing his name, her body tucked away beneath his.

"Are you looking for a gift, sir?" the woman behind the booth says. She sets out additional pairs of gloves, some adorned with crystals and others sheer; Colin gives her a smile.

"I had not set out to," he says, honestly, "but the shade of this fabric brought forth a memory."

"She must be lovely to stop you in your tracks," the woman says knowingly. "They will make a fine gift."

"I should think so," Colin says, and he cannot help the warmth in his cheeks. Is there a look about his face? "Is it so obvious?"

"That you are in love?" the woman clarifies.

Colin's mouth parts, in a gentle rush of surprise. "Love?"

"You wear your heart on your sleeve." The woman pulls the pink gloves from the display and wraps them in shiny paper. She fastens the package with a bow.

Colin hums, grinning. "If you knew her, you would understand." He takes the package and tucks it into his jacket for safekeeping and gives the woman a coin in return.

Looking around, he expects to easily spot his sisters; he finds Eloise talking off someone's ear, but when he searches for Hyacinth, he comes up short. Hyacinth is a wanderer, curious by nature—to be a Bridgerton is to stick your nose where it, for the most part, usually, does not belong—and Colin had not warned her to stay where he would be able to see her. He takes the same route he had when they arrived, thinking she might be lost to another booth of shiny trinkets, holding an armful of things she will beg Colin to buy her, and yet, booth after booth, he comes up empty. He doubles back and finds Eloise, interrupting her passionate speech.

"Excuse me a moment,” he interjects. “Have you seen Hyacinth?" he asks her, tugging her by the arm with an apologetic look to the woman Eloise had been conversing with; the woman nearly darts away, and Eloise grumbles something about manners. She yanks her arm loose.

"I have not. Was she not with you?" Eloise points out.

"She was, but she was stopped by something pretty, so I meandered on, and when I looked back, she disappeared." Colin glances around again, and it felt needless for the panic to set in; children did not simply go missing in Mayfair, but he worried that she was hurt somewhere. He pictured her with eyes the size of full moons and tears like fat raindrops as she clutched a sore ankle.

"Mother will wring your neck if something has happened to her," Eloise taunts. "She cannot have gone far. Her legs are much too short."

"Well, help me look for her," Colin says impatiently. "Meet me by the entrance once you have searched this end."

"Aye aye, Captain," Eloise agrees, though her tone is rather deadpanned. Colin rolls his eyes before the two of them break off in opposite directions. Eloise heads back towards where Colin has already looked for her, and Colin searches the rest of the market, looking between booths and behind tents, at the table of sweets and the array of dolls. He does not find her.

Colin has never had to truly think about what would happen if he lost one of his siblings. There were so many of them, and they were always around, it seemed odd that their even eight could dwindle before they had all gotten old and grey. No one has ever come down with such a fever or had injured themselves so terribly that it threatened their life. And Colin knows in his heart that he will find his sister, and she will be well, but it still shook him.

Perhaps on the tail end of Penelope being sick and her father's passing, Colin could not stomach any more hits to the people he holds so dear (not that Lord Featherington was especially dear to him, but his death had and continues to affect Penelope, and that was his main worry these days).

Truthfully, he had never contemplated mortality as much as he had this week. Every morning when he woke, he opened his eyes, and he simply was. But now, with time slipping through his fingers and his heart sinking like an anvil cutting through water, perhaps he should be more grateful for something so fragile.

To his left, off to the side of a tent, comes a tinkling laughter he would recognize anywhere. He whips his head toward the sound and finds Hyacinth standing with her arms clasped behind her back; she looks to be speaking to a man, the same man who had been speaking to Lord Featherington the night before he died. 

Somehow, he had known how to address Colin despite never meeting beforehand.

"Hyacinth," Colin says, loudly and humourlessly, and Hyacinth looks over at him and scampers toward him, oblivious to his tone of voice.

"Colin! I was looking for you, but I could not find you."

"How did you end up all the way over here?"

"This man helped me! He said we ought to wait for you to pass by."

"Surely you would be looking for such a bright little lady," the man says, standing his full height. If Colin were someone else, he might have been intimidated, but the man stands no taller than he does.

"You have no business with my sister," Colin smarts, nearly tucking Hyacinth behind him. She hangs onto his hand. "As you can see, she is not of age."

"Please, Mister Bridgerton," the man says easily, too relaxed for Colin to rest his own tense posture. "I assure you nothing out of sorts occurred. I was simply telling Miss Hyacinth a story to pass the time."

"I am sure you have your own acquaintances to tell your stories to." Colin's clipped tone makes the man laugh.

"I do. In fact, I quite enjoy telling my acquaintances all about the maiden with hair like fire and skin like stone." The man's expression hardens into a sharpened glee; Colin does not gasp, but he feels his lungs tighten in his chest.

"She lives in a garden," Hyacinth chirps from behind him. "She has friends, and they are also made of stone."

"Stone," Colin repeats. It jogs his memory, something Benedict had said about one of the lords at the club—Chilton, he thinks. Something about a sorcerer and filling a garden.

"There you both are!" Eloise huffs. "I have been waiting—"

"Eloise, will you take Hyacinth to grab a treat? I'll be there in a moment." Colin does not leave room for argument, and for the first and potentially only time in Eloise's entire life, she does not have a quippy remark. She takes Hyacinth's hand, and they head down the path and disappear into a tent.

"Why send them away?" the man asks. "It is quite the titillating tale—"

"What do you mean skin like stone?" Colin steps forward, clenching his fists by his side.

"Exactly as I said. A gruesome affliction, I am told."

"You are told? How is it cured?"

"There is no cure," the man reveals with a jeering chortle. 

Colin grinds his teeth. "There must be something that can reverse it," he insists.

The man shrugs. "Perhaps, though you do not seem to be the desperate type."

A better man would have fallen to his knees and begged, but Colin does not feel like being better, or even good. He takes the man's jacket in his hands, fists his lapels with a grip so tight it tears the fabric. He looks the man in the eyes, confident, assured, and plenty desperate to save the sweet girl that lives across the square.

"Tell me how to reverse it," Colin demands. 

"There is no telling." The man rolls his eyes. "Nothing in the world is free, lad."

"How much?" Colin lets the man go, his breath rushing into his lungs. Hope. "Name your price. A hundred pounds? A thousand?"

"I am not after your coffers, Mister Bridgerton." The man tilts his head. “The game I play has no need for coin.”

"Then what is it you want? It is clear you are responsible; you've done this to her," Colin seethes. “Reverse it. Reverse it now. Leave her as she was before you—”

"I did not do anything to anyone. I am only a man interested in playing games, and you,” the man presses forward, poking a solid finger to Colin’s chest, “do not possess any currency I am interested in taking."

"That implies you will win," Colin says, caustic and acidic.

The man's grin spreads wide, showing off his teeth; somehow, in this light, they appear sharper, like the fangs of a bear. A slight shiver begins its run down his spine, but Colin's posture is too rigid for it to make its route; instead, there's a chill that makes his skin feel tight, like he might split open. 

"I always win," the man says. "Most men have too much pride to heed my warning. At some point, you will do the same."

"I do not care for any games," Colin seethes. "Tell me how to fix her. You have done something—you and Lord Featherington—"

The man laughs—it nearly feels like he shakes the earth underneath Colin’s feet with his cruel joy. "He offered her so quickly. He ran out of his own time, and he said, Please, take my daughter's life."

Colin's jaw hurts from how hard he clenches it.

"A shame," the man continues. "I am to understand that his daughter was quite beautiful. I am certain she will do well in a garden, among other daughters men have offered me to save their own lives."

To be sensitive—or perhaps, to be in love—has always made Colin aware that at some point during a fight, during an argument, his tears will well up and they will drip down his cheeks. Colin was still a boy when his father passed, and he had not gotten to learn how to face his emotions and compartmentalize them, so they did not show on his expressive face. Instead, here he is, standing in front of a man who seems to be the devil himself, with tears dripping down his cheeks because the woman he loves is in danger and he is wading through riddles.

"Would you?" the man goads. "Would you offer her life for your own if it meant you would live longer—"

"No. Reverse it. Please. I am begging you, please do not take her. She is innocent," Colin begs.

"And yet, it is always the innocent who pay the price for the deeds of the guilty." The man tips his hat to Colin and steps around him, and when Colin catches the man's arm, he is so hot to the touch that Colin yanks his hand back, looking down at it, at the searing red splotches all along his fingers and palm. 

When he looks up, the man is gone.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

Near the sweets tent, Colin finds Eloise and Hyacinth sitting in the grass. In a rare moment of sibling camaraderie, Eloise has her arm around Hyacinth as Hyacinth reads through the passages aloud.

It is Hyacinth that looks up first, her eyes curious and searching, and she is too young to unravel Colin like their mother can, but in this moment, he feels small and young, not quite tall enough or big enough or old enough to understand. Somehow, some way, Hyacinth can read that on him, even before Eloise lifts her head to look at him. He gives Hyacinth a smile, as weak as it is, and she lifts to her feet and bounds for him, hugging him around his middle.

"Are you well, brother?" she asks, and in her mind, there are no problems other than ribbon-stealing older brothers and big sisters that do not want to play right now, and a mother that tells her she has had enough sweets. But somehow, she has intuited, even if she cannot understand, what she has unravelled.

Eloise, on the other hand, looks at him, tilts her head like she knows better than to stab at the moment with her prickly words.

"Who was that gentleman you were speaking with?" she asks, her grey eyes boring into him for answers. And he has none that he can share.

"No one," Colin dismisses.

"Did not appear as much. Did you know him?" Eloise presses. Colin shakes his head, taking Hyacinth's hand in his so she will not wander away.

"No." Colin sighs. "He was speaking with Hyacinth, and I—"

And what? He learned that somehow, a woman he cares for deeply is turning to stone because her father offered her life to a man with a body made of fire? Even he feels like he is dreaming, or perhaps this is what nightmares are when one becomes an adult. Something impossible and ugly and deeply traumatizing, because when he visits Penelope tonight, he will see her, her sweet face and her pouty lips, and he will want to fall into her, and he cannot save her. He cannot save her, but that man was wrong, because he is desperate enough to try.

"And you what?" Eloise continues.

"Nothing. I simply told him he should not be conversing with young girls who have not debuted."

Eloise makes a face. "Rather odd."

"Indeed."

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

When they make it back to the house, Hyacinth goes bounding up for her bed chamber, but Eloise stops him with a hand on her arm.

"Have you received any word from Penelope?" she asks. "You have delivered my letters?"

"Yes, I have. I will check with the servants this evening and perhaps you will have something tomorrow." Colin gives her a soft smile.

"Well, in that case, I will write another. Will you deliver it?"

"Of course."

"Colin..." Eloise sighs. "Are you well? You—"

"Nothing to worry about," he promises.

"You are not cross with me, are you?"

"No, no, nothing like that. Have you...done something I should be cross about?" Colin arches a brow.

Eloise laughs. "Probably, if I'm honest."

Colin grins at her. "There comes an age where—"

"Oh, hush. You are barely any older than I am. You act like it is a world apart. In a world of gentlemen, you are regarded like a child, and I am nearly a spinster."

Rolling his eyes, he levels her with a look. "One day, a man will love you and you will want to do nothing but love him back and bear his children."

"Ha!" Eloise cackles. "And on that same day, I will have touched the sun."

Colin shakes his head, and Eloise turns on her heel and heads for her bed chamber. With nothing else to do, he decides to head to White's.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

There used to be a time when he found some pleasure in having drinks. Usually, he is surrounded by his brothers, laughing at their jokes, included in salacious stories, listening to them talk about women and politics and money—it was odd, but he has grown into it, has become used to it. But now, Anthony is married. Truthfully, Colin understands Anthony's desire to be by his wife’s side at all times. Colin wishes to see Penelope now, but the sun has yet to dip behind the horizon, casting a dark, golden glow across Mayfair.

It is early enough that there are not many people in the club. He recognizes some older men, smoking their cigars and sipping on brandy. There are some younger gentlemen, men his age, and though he knows them, he does not try to insert himself into any conversations. Instead, he watches, observes.

Everyone is so wrapped up in themselves. In their own worlds. Just in this club, there are so many worlds. Worlds he is familiar with and some he has never been in. Some he never wants to visit. It is odd, life, how there are so many different lifetimes overlapping, and they are here, in this establishment having so many different conversations about so many different things.

It occurs to him that he used to be like this, that he used to not care so deeply. Or maybe he always has and never understood why, so it was easier to live with. Perhaps it was why things like this were difficult for him, because he felt so much, and it centred itself in his universe, and he could not think of anything else.

Like—well. Like his heartbreak after Marina. And despite his understanding now, he had used her words to push himself out of his comforts and attempt at this manhood that seemed so alluring to others but felt so flat with him. At the time, it had made him feel broken, or rather like he did not know himself. He had pondered and sat with thoughts of her, of why it was that he allowed himself to get so swept away in her. Even then—even then he had tried. Husband. Fatherhood. These were things that made the men of the ton the men they were. And Colin had been so desperate to be like them. But now, he looks around and sees masks on each of them. Hiding behind the glass of their drinks or the smoke of their cigars, booming laughter to hide the yearning for something more. Maybe it was that these men were better at hiding, whereas Colin knew he no longer wished to hide.

His soul, if he had one, was too big for his body, and he has yet to learn how to make it all fit together. The strings that weaved through him and kept him together were so worn; like an old teddy, passed down from sibling to sibling, until an eye was missing, and the stitching had come undone on one of the arms—the stuffing poked through, and it felt like he had never been new his whole life.

After a few hours, he realizes he had drunk more than he had meant to. Conversation came and went with other patrons, friends, and acquaintances, and the sun had gone down and candles were lit, and the air was smokier, and the men were louder; there was not a ball to attend this evening, so they were all here.

Once the women filtered their way in, Colin took it as his cue to leave.

As he passed through the tables, heading for the exit, he spies the man from earlier that day—the sorcerer; rather than leave, Colin pivots, striding over to the table where the man held a glass of brandy, nearly empty. He smiles at Colin, and Colin's skin prickles.

"You burned me," Colin accuses without a greeting. The man laughs heartily.

"Mister Bridgerton," he greets, lifting his glass in a salute before drinking the last of it. "I did not think I would see you so soon."

"What is it you want?" Colin tries again, leaning forward with his palms on the table. "You said you have no use for money. I will give you whatever if it means she is left unharmed."

The light in the man's eyes turns dark somehow, and Colin shivers, like his body knows he has encountered someone truly sinister. "You have nothing I want."

"So, you prey on something—perhaps on men too weak. Is that it?"

The man takes a deep breath.

"Tell me your name," Colin demands. "You have known who I am this entire time."

"You need not know who I am. You ought to worry yourself with spending time with the girl you are valiantly trying to save instead of wasting what little there is left."

"What constitutes a man desperate enough if not willing to offer everything he has for the one person he loves most?" Colin challenges, clenching his jaw.

"I do not challenge your love." The man stands. "Desperation is an art. You have not lost it all."

"If I lose her, then I will have lost it all. How can you not understand that?"

The look on the man's face is almost pitying, and Colin feels his irritation burn hotter.

"Please," Colin begs, hanging his head. "Please, I cannot lose her. I will—anything I have, I will give it. Without hesitation."

The arches a brow. "That is up to you," the man says. "When you have figured it out, I will find you."

Colin does not hold the man back when he walks away, remembering almost too late that the last time he'd touched him, his hand had been burned. He can feel the bandage now, the tight ache of his fingers, his palms. He breathes a deep sigh and leaves the club.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

Part of him is hesitant tonight. Standing at the foot of the trellis, he looks up at Penelope's window, the glow faint, just enough to let him know that she is still awake. Of course, she is; she waits for him. And he did not send any kind of word or signal that he would not show tonight, and truthfully, it would break his heart if she were to stay up as late as she could waiting for him, just for him to never arrive.

The second he pries her window open, Penelope bounces to her feet from where she had been sitting on the sofa near her bookshelves. She crosses the room quickly, anguish tucked into her featherlight features, darkened by shadows. She looks at him, terror in her eyes.

"Pen, has something happened?" he wonders, and she shakes her head. Once he's fully inside, she wraps her arms around him. He can do nothing but hold her.

"I—I could not shake this feeling—like you might have been in some kind of trouble," she mumbles against his chest. "It is later than you normally arrive."

"My apologies," he says gently. "Time slipped away from me if you can believe it."

"You smell like smoke and brandy," she whispers. She takes a deep breath.

"Does it displease you?"

"No. In fact, it makes me feel grown." Her eyelashes flutter when she looks up at him.

"You are grown, Pen." He grins at her. "I should know. I've watched you grow—though somehow you are still as tall as two apples stacked upon one another." He pats the top of her head playfully.

"Hush you," she giggles, and for the first time since the night before, he feels at peace. Perhaps because he is living with the certainty that he loves this woman. She looks at him with the sun in her sky blue eyes, like that is where the sun takes its rest. Right there in her irises, a glint of shine—her pupils are blown so wide it almost makes the blue imperceptible.

"Are you well?" she slides her hands up his stomach, resting them on his shoulders. "You are so tense."

"I am—" he shakes his head. "I am well. Tired, is all."

"Because I keep you awake all night, is that it?" But rather than it being some kind of flirty quip, Penelope frowns. Colin cradles her cheeks in his hands.

"No—"

"What has happened to your hand?" She tugs at his right hand, still bandaged, and peeks underneath the cloth. "Oh, Colin, you have burned yourself."

"I am all right," he says with a sheepish grin, racking his brain for an explanation. "Thought I could...set the fireplace myself, but the—the fire poker was left too close to the fire and when I grabbed it—well." He shrugs, wiggling his sore fingers at her. He feels dirty for lying to her, but he is not sure how to process today into words, that he is close to figuring out how to save her, and yet, he does not know what it is he can offer to the man. What could he possibly bargain away that would ensure Penelope would stay with him for the rest of their lives?

"You are quite lucky you are so handsome," she muses. Colin laughs.

Penelope takes his hand and leads him to her bed, the blankets rumpled from where she must have been lying before. Penelope wears only her nightgown tonight; he can see her arms where she has turned to stone, splotches of grey that weigh her down. It creeps over her shoulders and on the upper parts of her arms. She wears gloves, though they are much shorter, covering only her hands. Her nightgown is opaque enough that he can only recall from memory where there is more stone, but he tries not to undress her with his mind, when all they are poised to do is some kissing. He should not get ahead of himself.

Penelope is right, in a sense. There is a feeling like they are grown, somehow proper adults now. Is it how much he wants her? Is that what has changed him from a little boy to the man he is now? Is it knowing that she is soft beneath her gown, that she kisses so desperately that Colin cannot think of it for too long or he becomes erect? Is it looking at her lying in her bed, her red hair draped over her shoulders, soft and curled, the blush that bathes her cheeks that never seems to dissipate?

"You are staring again," she teases, lying on her side, resting her head on her palm. Her smile is knowing, even when she glances away from him, down to where her fingers trace patterns into the bedsheets.

"Can you blame me?" He grins as he removes his boots. Penelope watches him undress from his jacket and his vest; he leaves them in a pile on the sofa. With her words from last night knocking around his head, he unties his cravat and tosses it near his jacket. He picks up one of her books at random, so she will read to him for a while. Hearing her voice will be the soothing he needs. Something to settle the wildness within him. She can feel it somehow, or see it—something about him has shown her who he is tonight, and it liberates him as much as it makes him want to shrink away from her. She is too good to see the mess of him, is she not? She is too good to hold him the way she does. She is too good.

"I have been waiting all day to kiss you, and yet, you bring a book to bed," she murmurs, and Colin is so surprised by how bold she has become. He drops the book to the mattress, fully forgotten, when he touches her waist and pulls her into him. Her breathless laughter wraps around him so delicately, tying him together like a silk ribbon. He is only whole when she is near. Isn't that something?

"Have you really?" he wonders, his nose sliding along hers. She gives him a little nod.

"You hold me and everything else goes away. I finished my letters to Eloise, and then I daydreamed about how you might kiss me. I could barely keep my attention on my books."

Colin hums, trying his hardest to stifle his grin.

"You like that I have been thinking about you." It is not a question, nor is it posed as such. Her mouth twitches with a knowing grin. "That pleases you."

"I am only a man, Pen. And a woman as beautiful as you passing the time thinking of me? Well, I can only be honoured."

"You are so..." she sighs dreamily. "Charming."

Colin kisses her then, a gentle brush of their lips, reacquainting themselves with the feeling. He feels her hands shuffle between their bodies, pressing against his chest, his ribcage, rounding his waist to settle against his back.

It is hard not to get carried away. It is so hard not to fall into her, headfirst, diving like she is the deep, bottomless waters he aches to explore. She moans for him when he touches her. His hand on her knee moves higher on her thigh, pushing up the fabric of her nightgown up more and more until her naked hip is in his hand, soft and plush, warm for him. She feels incredible, like no one he has ever held before, and Colin wonders what it would be like to have her. To be with her, like a man and woman should be. Without rules and binding propriety. Without watchful eyes. To enjoy the simple freedom of enjoying one another's company, like this but more.

If Colin had it his way, they would never wear clothes and lie in the grass and swim naked in lakes that were only as deep as their waists.

Colin's hand reaches further upward, caressing her flesh, unmarred by her curse. He breaks apart their kiss to look at her. And there she is, his free girl, running wild. Can she see him the same? Does she feel the need to be closer? That perhaps if they could somehow manage to—to merge into one being, they might find the freedom they wish for?

"I like your hands on me," Penelope whispers, shifting underneath him. Her thighs widen, and Colin swallows thickly. "Reverent touches, like you have my soul cradled in your palm."

"It feels that way," he breathes, and Penelope combs her fingers through his hair, her fingernails scratching lightly at his scalp.

"Does it?" she wonders. He nods. "I like that."

Colin sits back on his heels, careful to pull her skirt down as he does so, keeping her modesty intact. She has not given him permission, and he has already taken so much.

"Is that how you will touch your wife?" she whispers, leaning up on her elbows. Her hair falls from her shoulders, and Colin stares at her, bewildered.

"What?" he asks.

"Is that—with your hands." She sits up further and then ends up on her knees. She wedges herself between his thighs, and from here, they are almost the same height, with her just a little taller than him. She takes his hands, resting them on her waist, but she does not let them go. "Like this?"

Colin's mouth feels dry; Penelope's gaze is so intense. He does not think he has ever been more aroused than he is now. "Yes," he finally tells her. It seems to please her.

"How else would you touch her?" Penelope asks.

He takes a shuddery breath. "Penelope."

"Indulge me," she says with a smile.

"I—" He squeezes her waist, and she hums, dropping her grip on his hands so she can rest her palms on his shoulders. "God, Pen." He squeezes her tight and then loosens his grip, unable to decide if he wants to go down first and cup her bottom, or reach upwards to hold her breasts, and in the end, he supposes that after one comes the other. With their mouths pressed together, Colin's hands round her hips and grab her arse, pulling her into him so they are flush together. She straddles him, and he groans, throbbing in his trousers.

This is what it is meant to feel like. Mind-blowing. Life-altering. Like he does not want to stop. They have barely broken through the surface, but when she whines and wiggles her hips against him, he breaks the kiss and grunts out his pleas. She calls out his name, softly, quietly, but the urgency is for him to hear.

Penelope bunches up the fabric of his shirt in her fists; they don't kiss, but their mouths are pressed close. They breathe from each other, trading the same breath back and forth. Colin helps her with his hands, his grip digging into the flesh of her bottom as she rocks her hips into him, whimpering little noises he soaks up as he watches her feel this newfound bliss. He had not known two people could find pleasure fully clothed like this. He could say something, ask for more perhaps, beg to undress her until she is bare and his, but he does not want to interrupt the pinch between her brow or slow her breathing or take her away from what he knows will be good for her.

Instead, he lays her back against the bed, and she makes an alarmed little noise, but he kisses her.

I am right here, he tells her, and she exhales heavily, wrapping her thighs around him, the heels of her feet digging into his backside.

I am right here, she echoes, her arms locking around his neck as they kiss deeper; it is messy and without finesse, and that is what he loves the most about it. That this is her exploration, this is her tasting him, devouring him; instinctually, she touches her tongue to his and Colin grinds his hips down into hers; she breaks from him and arches her body underneath his.

"What are you doing to me?" she moans, throwing her head back.

"Do you want me to stop?" he pants, keeping his rhythm, keeping their hips together, keeping her pinned underneath him, keeping her, keeping her, keeping her.

"Never, never, never," she chants, watching him with those wide blue eyes framed by her lashes; in the candlelight, they cast shadows against her cheeks, and she looks gorgeous, a little debauched, a little claimed and owned. His, perfectly his, breathing out his name as she scrapes her hands down his chest and then back up to comb through his hair. "Oh, God."

Colin can barely hang on; he's dangling from a loose thread, her pleasure thrumming through him, striking his every nerve. He has never felt like this, like he cannot take his eyes off of her. Like he wants to stay here, remain tucked away between her thighs. Oh, he had thought they would frolic in the grass and swim in lakes; no, they would spend their days this close, and their nights even closer. He would touch her and she would sigh, he would hold her and she would break apart into a million pieces, and he would put her back together just so he might have the pleasure of doing it again and again, over and over, until his heart gave out.

"Colin, I—" she holds his face in her hands and brings him down for a kiss, messy and wet, biting down on his lip. "Colin, Colin, please."

He rolls his hips harder, faster, rutting against her until her breath comes out in short, surprised little pants and her eyes flutter closed and she squeezes them shut. Her hips meet his, finding his rhythm, learning it, perfecting it, like every dance they have ever danced. It is like that, but better, and so much more. Penelope cries out, and Colin kisses her to try to muffle it, but the quivering of her body feels everlasting—he doesn't fare any better, choking out her name, one simple syllable that feels like an entire incantation. He spills into his trousers, gripping her hip so tight he might have reddened her flesh, might have marred it with a bruise, but it does not seem to alarm her. In fact, she curls her arms around his shoulders, breathing hard and giggling, kissing underneath his jaw, her mouth sliding over his sweaty neck. She laughs and laughs and laughs, and it sounds like music. It makes him want to cry.

"Pen," he murmurs, “Pen, Pen, Pen.” 

Her laughter peters out into soft hums. "Colin, my Colin," she mumbles dreamily. My Colin. He is hers, is he not? From the second he had climbed through her window and landed on his arse, he had been hers. Or perhaps it was earlier than that, when he danced with her at Vauxhall Gardens, and he knew what it felt like to have her in his arms. Or before that, too, when they were younger, playing in the grass during the summer. Could it be that he was hers earlier than all of those moments? Had he been born for the world to nudge him closer and closer to her, so he would orbit her like the moon makes its rounds about the earth?

"What have you done to me?” she whispers. 

He shares her laughter, kissing all over her face, even when she tries to squirm away. Even when she's nearly shrieking from it. Even when she looks up at him and he sees all the love he could have ever imagined knowing right there in her iridescent blue eyes.

"Is that what happens when two people kiss?" she whispers, tucked into his side. He shakes his head.

"No, that—" He clears his throat. "That is what two people do when they want each other. When they want to be close. It is a simulation of what will occur during the marital act."

"This is what mamas keep hidden away from their daughters, isn't it?" she wonders. "I want to do it again. Again and again, for the rest of my life."

Colin laughs. "We can, as many times as you would like. I only need a short reprieve."

"Can we be closer?" She leans up.

"Closer how?"

She shrugs. "I am expecting you to tell me."

Colin blinks at her. "We can, but that can come with consequences."

"What do you mean? Do not speak in metaphors," she huffs.

"I mean," he says, drawing his hands up her waist and over her back, resting his palms where she is still soft. "We would disrobe, our bodies will connect, and that can result in a child."

Penelope purses her lips, her gaze shifting away. "Perhaps I am not able to carry children. Part of my middle has shifted." She shrugs her shoulders, despite the sadness swimming in her eyes. "It need not matter."

Colin feels his body tense underneath the weight of her. "Pen—"

"I do find it humorous that you would not explain this to me last night," she murmurs, interrupting him, shifting away from the subject, "only for your resolve to break not a day later."

"You kissed it from me," he relents.

"I wonder what other secrets I can kiss from you, then, Colin Bridgerton."

"I am not full of secrets," he says truthfully. Aside from his earlier lie, he does not withhold much from Penelope, and when he does, it is only for her benefit. She need not worry about something he has yet to fix.

"You are." She traces his face with her fingers, gentle over his cheek and then his lips. "You hide from everyone."

"Not from you."

"Especially from me."

Colin looks away from her, running his hands up and down her back, over flesh and stone and back again, gently so he does not disturb any of her wounds. "I do not mean to."

"I know," she murmurs. "I do not mind."

"You do not?"

"Though I wish it were not the case, it is, and that is okay. You are here with me in the capacity you can be. One day, hopefully soon, you will not feel the need to hide any longer."

"What do you think I am hiding?" he asks, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. Her blush has remained since they finished making love, but it burns deeper now.

"I do not know. You are so different than I remember," she says. "You sneak through my window and kiss me and touch me and make me feel things I never thought my body capable of. Yet, there is...I do not know. Something. Perhaps you grieve me, though I am still here."

"It is true, I do miss you already," he admits. "I cannot help it."

"You will be happy, Colin. I am certain."

"How can you be?" he sighs. "How can you know?"

She shrugs, smoothing her fingertips through his hair; even though they are stone, they have warmed. Has he warmed her somehow? Has he managed that? "I still do not understand how it is that you are here with me."

Penelope's wistful sigh makes his heart ache.

"You with your dark eyes and sinful mouth." She traces his bottom lip with her thumb. "You are the kind of man women wish they could marry. Thoughtful, kind, passionate. You feel with your entire being, with your hands as much as your heart. So delicate inside..." she trails off. "Some nights, during the summers when you were away, I would begin my letters with confessions, that I thought of you, that I wished to kiss you, that you would come home and sweep me off my feet. Is that not silly?"

Colin does not answer—it is not silly, for the record, but he cannot help but give her space to spill her thoughts. Is this what rattles on in her mind?

"I would watch you dance with the other young ladies; and sure, I would be jealous, I would always be jealous, but there was something so…so beautiful about you. You moved like...like you were made for dancing. And you kiss like you were made to kiss. And you…well." And then Penelope blushes, and her entire face flushes, and Colin smirks, the implication hanging in the air despite her saying nothing more on the matter.

"I do not wish for you to leave when daylight breaks across the horizon.” She thrums her fingers on his chest. “Is that so greedy of me? To wish to wake with you, cradled in your arms. I fall asleep so peacefully when your heartbeat plays like a melody in my ear. It beats so fast, did you know?"

Colin taps her on the nose, and she giggles.

"My heart beats just as fast,” she continues. “I imagine them touching. If we press our chests close together, they might."

"They might, Pen," he says, unable to help himself.

"I apologize for these inane ramblings," she says.

"Do not apologize," he tells her. "There is nothing I love more than listening to you. You fascinate me."

"You flatter me," she shoots back. And then he rolls their bodies over, her smile grows wide, her eyelids grow heavy, and she looks every bit a seductress. So much like a woman meant to be loved.

So much time wasted. So much of it, blind to her beauty, her wit, her grace, her touch. Colin does not know how he can go on without the softness of her hands; even her stone fingertips are delicate when they touch him, holding him, easing him, carefully coaxing him. How she can do that, he does not know. A simple look now and he comes undone.

"You have ruined me," he murmurs to her, kissing along her neck, her décolletage, where he has not yet pleasured her.

"How?"

"Do you not feel it?" he teases her, and she shakes her head, sighing out. "Do you not feel what you have done to me, Penelope?"

"Will you show me? Where it is you feel it most?" She scrunches up her fingers in his shirt over his chest. It is a question that yields two answers; rather than exhibit rakish behaviour by shoving her hands down the front of his trousers, he takes her hand and presses it over his heart. "I thought so," she hums.

"See? I am transparent," he promises. "You think I am hiding, but you already know."

"Do I?"

He kisses her, like it will assuage her insecurity, like it might breathe certainty into her. And as much as he wants to repeat their tumble from earlier, he is desperate to hold more of her in his hands. Her fleshy hips and ample bottom have soothed an ache he had never felt before, but it has been renewed, and this ache is greedy, desperate, wishing to hold her in places he has never had the forthright desire for. Certainly not like this, like if he does not touch her, he will lose his mind.

"Touch me," she breathes. "I feel like I might die if you do not."

And there has never been a wish he has been more ready to fulfil.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

As much as neither of them wanted it, the sun does rise. Neither of them sleeps; Penelope stays awake with him, conversing between kisses and heated groping. He whispers into her skin, promises. Prayers.

"You make me believe in God," he murmurs, dragging his lips along the line of her collarbone, his tongue laving over the place where skin and stone connect. Penelope sighs a little laugh that makes a shiver shake down his spine. His stomach tightens, and his lips flare into a grin.

"Do I?" She cups his cheek and redirects him, bringing him in close to her so she can kiss him. "Do I truly make you believe?"

Colin nods. "Who else could have made something so beautiful?"

Penelope blinks slowly, the fan of her lashes almost hypnotizing.

"I would sit at your altar and pray," he whispers, brushing his lips along hers, speaking the words into her mouth. "I would repent for all my sins." His left hand sweeps up the side of her, cupping her breast when he reaches her chest. She arches slightly, pushing her body into his touch. Colin twitches behind his trousers.

"What sins?" she asks. "You are a good man; you could not possibly have any sins." She kisses him, practiced now, and it breathes life into him, makes him groan for her, sliding his tongue along hers, licking into her mouth like she tastes of candy, and he is addicted to her sweetness. The smack of their lips is loud in the room, noisy underneath their breathless panting. Colin finds her hands and raises them above her head, pinning her down into the mattress. Her thighs spread for him again, and Colin is out of his mind with the feel of her, the wetness against his belly he wishes to feel wrapped around his cock.

"This is a sin," he says, leaning up just slightly enough to look down at her.

"No, my Colin," she says. "This is heaven."

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

Eventually, he does manage to get out of her bed, even though Penelope keeps dragging him back in with her hands and her mouth and those thighs he will dream of later when he lies in bed.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

There is a small gathering to mourn Lord Featherington. 

“Do you think Penelope will—” 

“This is not a social call, Eloise,” Violet admonishes. “I know she is your friend, but you must offer your condolences.” 

Eloise rolls her eyes when Violet turns away, and Colin keeps her company at the end of the line of siblings.  

“Do not be disheartened, sister,” Colin eases. “I am certain Lady Featherington would not be so cruel to keep Penelope locked away.” 

“Your lips to God’s ears, brother,” Eloise huffs. 

After he expresses his condolences to Lady Featherington, keeping an eye on Eloise, it breaks his heart and puts it back together the second he sees Eloise run across the room. He watches as she embraces Penelope—tight enough that she must feel where she is stone, but perhaps in all her happiness to see her best friend, Eloise does not even notice. 

Over Eloise’s shoulder, Penelope gives him a small smile. He walks over. 

“Penelope! It is good to see you,” he says, taking her hand and lifting her fingers to his mouth. His lips may press longer than what might be deemed as friendly, but the blush that flourishes along her cheeks is worth any scandal they might set afoot. 

“Hello, Colin,” she greets, a picture of demure beauty. Her black grown and the overcoat she wears cover her secret. Her hair is pinned back with black pins, and there is only a small bit of colour on her lips. 

“Are you well?” he asks. 

“I am, thank you for asking.” 

“My family and I offer our condolences—” 

Eloise grumbles. “She knows, Colin. Please, I have not seen her in ages.” 

Forcing himself not to frown, he allows Eloise this win, only because he will climb through her window later that night. 

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

Time passes slowly during the day. He sleeps for a handful of hours, burrowed underneath his blankets, and then he gets ready for the day, attends a ball, and sneaks away to see Penelope. He delivers letters from Eloise and takes Penelope’s responses. He spends the night rolling around in her sheets, touching her, pleasing her, making her sigh and moan and whine, choking on his name like it is too big for her to say. He learns her body like an instrument, is careful where she is most tender, and enthusiastic where she is wet and hot and wanting.

It is a slow exploration, building on one thing after another and then another. He plays with her breasts, sucking on the hardened peaks, leaving marks on the undersides and in between them. She likes it when he does; her hips become erratic against him, even more when he pinches her pretty nipples between his fingertips.

The next night his fingers acquaint themselves with the heat between her thighs, sliding inside her hot cunt while she clutches at him, at his hair, his face, nearly clawing him while she reaches her peak over and over again, as many times as she can manage before she is spent on the sheets, gazing up at him like he has performed some kind of miracle.

The first night he gets his mouth on her, she cries, tears streaming down her face. At first, he thinks he has hurt her, but she burrows into him, kissing over his throat, his neck, his everything.

"My Colin," she murmurs. And Colin thinks that it sounds so much like my love when she says his name like that.

"Yours, Pen," he promises her.

It is not all heat and drenched sheets; there are interludes of peace, where he is content to lie beside her, listen to the scratch of her quill against parchment, or convince her to read to him (she does not like to because it puts him to sleep).

For hours, they talk. About life, about the lives they have lived, of what they imagine the future will hold. Colin says, Talk like you will live forever, and she does, unabashedly. He can see her in the future, streaks of grey in her hair, eyes still so vibrantly blue. She is his in that future.

It is like wishing. Like a star shooting across the night sky, and both of them closing their eyes and manifesting something that would be so uniquely theirs. In those moments, he cannot help himself; he peeks through his eyes and gazes at her, watches as she scrunches her nose, furrows her brow, and clasps her hands together like she is praying hard.

He learns more about her, things she had not shared with him before. She writes; not just letters or a journal. She allows him to read her short stories, pages and pages of people falling in love despite some grave obstacle keeping them apart. She confesses she had begun writing a gossip column the first year she debuted, but it had never been published because she did not have the means as a seventeen-year-old girl. She lets him read those, and he compliments how scathing she is, how she does not hold back for anyone. He remembers some of these scandals; he looks at Penelope, a wallflower, soaking up all the ton had seeped, their poisonous, rotten cores, and she had used it to create something sharp and witty.

"In another life," she sighs. "It would have been popular, and everyone would have waited at their doors for it to be delivered."

Colin smiles at her. "I believe it."

Then, of course, there was quiet. Quiet nights that did not ache as much as when he was alone. Penelope splayed out across his chest, his nose buried in her hair, breathing in her scent and committing it to memory so he will get it right when he dreams.

"You have brought me such joy," she says, dragging her thumb back and forth over the line of his jaw. "I did not know joy like this was possible."

Colin hums. He wishes to tell her something in kind, something sweet, a promise, perhaps a vow, and when he opens his mouth to say it, the door to Penelope's bedroom swings open.

"Penel—"

Colin, frozen, stares at Portia Featherington standing in the doorway, clad in her robe, staring back at him. The moment is tense and heavy before Portia speaks.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asks, her voice cutting. Penelope sits up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

"Mama! I—"

"Mister Bridgerton?" Portia's voice is scathing, furious—he has never heard her like this, and truth be told, he is an unmarried man in her daughter's room. He understands it. He does, but the fire lit in her eyes pierces through him, like what he imagines the bullet of a gun might feel like when it tears through flesh and lodges into bone.

"I—I had to see her," Colin explains, standing up from the bed, thankful, so thankful, they had not indulged in each other's flesh that night.

"Did you compromise her?" Portia shouts. "Did you compromise my daughter?!"

"No!" Colin says, but then he flinches, hearing Penelope's small squeak behind him. "It—not exactly."

Portia grabs his arm and drags him out of the bed chamber. Instinctively, Colin tries to wrench his arm free, but her grip is too tight for him to free himself without hurting her. 

"You think you can come into my house and touch my daughter? You are not entitled to her!" Portia continues.

"Lady Featherington, I only wanted to see her and ensure she was well!" Colin argues. "You have kept her away from everyone." He can hear Penelope calling after Portia, and Colin feels helpless, still trying to wriggle free; Portia's nails dig into his skin.

"What is it with you and your damn family that thinks they can waltz wherever they please and touch what is not theirs?" Portia yells.

"Lady—" Colin tries again, as Portia continues to drag him down the stairs.

"She is my daughter. Mine. And I will not let you take her away from me!"

The front door opens, and Colin pleads for Portia to listen to him, to hear him. He loves her, he loves her daughter. He needs her. "Please, Lady Featherington, I can fix this. We can marry—"

Portia pushes him onto the stoop, and he lands on his knees, solid stone scraping away flesh through the fabric of his trousers.

"Marry? She is dying. Not even if you had compromised her would I allow her to leave with you!”

"Lady Featherington, please," he begs. He is already on his knees, looking up at her, tears streaked down her cheeks, glinting in the barely there light from the street.

Portia crouches down, peering at him with a hardened, furious gaze. He hears the crack of her palm against his cheek before he feels it. The pain of the blow blooms across his face, white hot, and he’s so surprised—it stuns him frozen for a moment. 

"Mama! Please!" he hears Penelope's voice ring. “Do not hurt him!” 

"Do not ever come to this house again,” Portia demands, teeth gritted, and Colin takes in a sharp breath. "Penelope, inside, now!"

The door slams, and Colin can hear Portia yelling at Penelope, and Colin bangs on the door, uncaring if someone is out there. He doesn't care who sees. And instead of Portia opening the door or perhaps even Briarly, there is a set of younger footmen, perhaps his age or so, who come outside, standing tall and intimidating, grabbing him by both arms and seeing him to the street.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

If his mother knew he was walking barefoot across the square, it would undoubtedly send her into a tizzy. 

Despite what had just occurred moments ago, Colin feels...nothing. There is a blankness inside of him that feels protective, almost like a warning, like the mouthful of saliva just before expelling his stomach. 

Once he is inside his home, he stands in the hall, looking around; it is all so foreign. Has he forgotten where he is?

"Sir?"

Colin glances toward where the voice is coming from. A maid; he thinks she belongs to Hyacinth, but in the moment, he cannot be sure.

"Sir, are you well?" She looks up at him, searching his eyes, and Colin shakes his head.

"My apologies, miss," Colin says, voice cracking on miss. She shakes her head.

"No, nothing to apologize for." She puts a hand to his forehead, and when she seems satisfied with what she finds, she gently takes his arm and leads him to a bench. He sits. "I will find Mr. Dunwoody; he will assist you further," she tells him, and he barely hears it since she rushes away, but all Colin can do is stare across the room, at white walls, and wonder how everything could have possibly become worse than it was already.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

It is a quick shuffle up to his bedchambers. A tub is brought in, and there are servants pulling in buckets of water. Colin sits and waits for them to finish, drawing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his shins.

When the tub is full, the sun has broken over the horizon, and golden morning light pours through his windows. He is left alone, and for a moment, Colin considers crawling into bed—he is so tired—but he manages to undress; he is only wearing his shirtsleeves and his trousers after all. The rest of his clothes, even his boots, were left in Penelope's bedroom. He wonders if Lady Featherington tossed it all into a fire. He would not put it past her.

More than anything, he hopes Penelope is okay, that she is not bearing any punishment for him breaking the rules to see her.

The water is hot, and when it stings his arm, he can see the small welts left behind by Portia's talon-like grip as she all but dragged him out of the Featherington house. There are little dried pools of blood in each of the indents. He rubs his arm with his hand; it is not enough to even colour the water.

Part of him feels worthless. Useless even. What is he meant to do for Penelope if her mother would not even allow them to marry? There used to be a time when that was all Portia had wanted—or so he thought, considering his engagement to Marina—but now, she had looked at him so disdainfully, so...

Like she could see how worthless he was inside. Like he could see what he saw in himself. A man who did not know how to be a man, and if she could see that, could others?

Colin leans with his head back against the copper tub, trying not to wallow in his feelings, but the tears come, as angry as he is, but he does not sob. 

Has he lost her?

Has he truly lost Penelope because of his foolishness? Because if he had his mind right, had he not lost himself in the imaginary life they had built, nights in a sanctuary that had not been safe to begin with, he would have known to do this right. After the first night they kissed, he should have gone to Lady Featherington and told her he wished to marry her daughter. That he wanted to spend the rest of their lives together—no matter how short the time might be. If Penelope were gone, she would simply take him with her, and they would float in the afterlife, wispy remnants of their souls. As long as she was near, he would be happy. His grave plotted right next to hers.

When the water grows cold, he lifts himself out of the tub and dries himself off as best as he can, before he crawls into bed, climbing beneath the heaps of blankets and closing his eyes.

For days, he does nothing but sleep. There are interludes to drink water and empty his bladder, but he burrows into his bed and sleeps. He does not attend dinner, nor does he break his fasts with his family. He does not leave his chamber for long enough that there is a rotation of people who come to check on him.

His mother first, of course. Benedict, and Eloise. Anthony afterward, with Hyacinth in tow. Gregory then, and Francesca.

He sends them all away, hidden underneath his blankets, dried tears at the edges of his eyes. It hurts to blink, to even open his eyes. He prefers sleep. She is there when he sleeps. He can see her and touch her. He kisses her and she laughs. In his dreams, she is well, she is fine, just as he remembers. The scent of her skin, the warmth of it, the pink flood of her blush across her cheek...it is all there when he closes his eyes and drifts, and every time someone disturbs him, she is ripped away, right out of his arms, leaving him bereft, bloodied and wounded like she is a part of him.

"Please leave," he croaks when the door to his chamber opens.

"Colin?" Kate's voice is warm; he does not move, but he does not ask her to leave again. "I have brought biscuits," she says softly. "The—they are your favourite ones. Cook even put a little jam on the tops to make them a little sweeter for you."

He feels that urge, the rough spike in his throat and the wobble of his chin—he wants to cry, but he is all out of tears.

"I will set them here," she says gently. "I could also bring some tea if you would like. The kind from India that you complimented. I have plenty of herbs; they will make you feel better."

Colin lets his eyes fall closed, and against all odds, a tear slips from his eye. It drips over his nose and falls into his other eye, and travels down his temple. He imagines the droplet seeping into the bedsheets.

"Whatever it is," she begins, her melodic voice almost soothing enough to ease the ache. "Whatever it is that has you feeling this way, it will do you well to know that you have a house full of people who love you. They love and miss you."

After a beat, and then another, Colin hears the shuffle of her feet against the floor, and then the door creaking closed.

He falls asleep again.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖. 

The next morning, Colin looks for Anthony. He is in his study, as he is usually, with a stack of papers to his chin that he does not envy. Kate is sitting on a settee, sipping from a teacup, when Colin enters.

"Colin!" she greets brightly.

"Good afternoon, sister," Colin says with a brittle smile.

"It is good to see you. You have been somewhat of a ghost this last week."

"I..." he presses his mouth into a hard line, glancing back at Anthony. "I am simply trying to work through a...hardship. I am well," he says. She gives him a smile, soft and easy, gentle, like Kate knows he needs to be handled like glass right now—perhaps she can anticipate the possibility of Anthony shattering him. And maybe, that is exactly why he’s come here, for the sense Anthony is always ready to knock into him.

"Did you need something, Colin?" Anthony asks from behind him.

"Would you mind giving us a few minutes, Kate? I hate to disturb your tea,” Colin says. Kate shakes her head. 

"It is no problem. I will take a turn about the garden. I think some air will do me some good." She pats Colin's shoulder on her way out, and Colin drops to sit in a chair in front of Anthony's desk.

For a moment, there is nothing but the sound of scribbling on pages; the nib of the quill scraping against parchment; the shuffling of paper, Anthony's exasperated sighs; the tink tink of the quill hitting the side of the inkwell.

And then, there is quiet. Colin cannot remember the last time there was a moment of this kind of peace between him and his brother.

When Colin had come back from Eton, he was stuffed full of literature and sciences and would sit in Anthony's study as he worked, so long as he did not make noise, and he would read while Anthony worked—those moments were rare, Anthony kept company outside of the house and then he had his own lodgings and those moments grew rarer and rarer until they stopped.

“If you knew someone was going to die, and there was nothing you could do—" Colin begins, breaking off with a sigh.

“There is always something you can do," Anthony reasons, docking his quill. He sits back in his chair. 

“If they were sick? Incurable?” Colin presses, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He rakes his fingers through his hair.

Anthony looks at him. Really looks at him. His eyes are weighted by life, by death, by knowing and not at the same time. Colin cannot meet his eyes. "Is this about—"

"It is only a question," Colin insists, interrupting Anthony's inquiry.

Anthony pushes away from the desk, standing up. He rounds the front, sitting against the edge. Colin looks up. He knows, for the most part, his mother has tacked him with looking most like his father, but in that moment, Colin can see him, at the creases at the edges of Anthony's eyes, the furrow of his brow. 

"What is going on?" Anthony asks quietly. "You returned from your travels, and you have been acting so unlike yourself. You lashed out at me—"

"I apologise." He dips his eyes down again, feeling the slick sliminess of shame trickle down the back of his collar; it makes his skin itch.

"I did not take it to heart, brother. I—well. If there is anyone who can understand..." Anthony trails off. And then he shifts down on one knee. "You are warring with something, and I cannot help you if I do not understand."

Anthony's eyes are pleading, and Colin wants to burst with it. He wants to rip himself apart and lay himself out, his flesh, his bones, the beats of his heart and the breaths of his lungs; all in piles on Anthony's desk so Anthony might rifle through it all and figure it out.

Curses and stone, sorcery and men made of fire; Colin unfurls his aching hand and studies it, sees the welts. Some of the spots have turned slightly translucent, and he knows they will blister like a rope burn.

"Colin?"

"Anthony..." Tears form again. Colin hates them. He hates his body and the betrayal of his emotions. He hates how weak he is. He hates that his heart is too soft for this world. "I love her," he sobs.

Anthony gathers him, and Colin cries into his brother's shoulder, clutching at the fabric of his jacket. What can he do but feel his feelings? 

In that moment, what else can he do?