Romancing Mister Bridgerton (29 page)

Colin watched Penelope as she read. Every now and then she would smile, and his heart would leap, and then suddenly he realized that her smile had become permanent, and her lips were puckering as if she were suppressing a laugh.

Colin realized he was smiling, too.

He'd been so surprised by her reaction the first time she'd read his writing; her response had been so passionate, and yet she'd been so analytical and precise when she spoke to him about it. It all made sense now, of course. She was a writer, too, probably a better one than he, and of all the things she understood in this world, she understood words.

It was hard to believe it had taken him this long to ask for her advice. Fear, he supposed, had stopped him. Fear and worry and all those stupid emotions he'd pretended were beneath him.

Who would have guessed that one woman's opinion
would become so important to him? He'd worked on his journals for years, carefully recording his travels, trying to capture more than what he saw and did, trying to capture what he
felt
. And he'd never once showed them to anyone.

Until now.

There had been no one he'd wanted to show them to. No, that wasn't true. Deep down, he'd wanted to show them to a number of people, but the time had never seemed right, or he thought they would lie and say something was good when it wasn't, just to spare his feelings.

But Penelope was different. She was a writer. She was a damned good one, too. And if she said his journal entries were good, he could almost believe that it was true.

She pursed her lips slightly as she turned a page, then frowned as her fingers couldn't find purchase. After licking her middle finger, she caught hold of the errant page and began to read again.

And smiled again.

Colin let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

Finally, she laid the book down in her lap, leaving it open to the section she'd been reading. Looking up, she said, “I assume you wanted me to stop at the end of the entry?”

It wasn't quite what he'd expected her to say, and that befuddled him. “Er, if you want to,” he stammered. “If you want to read more, that would be fine, I guess.”

It was as if the sun had suddenly taken up residence in her smile. “Of
course
I want to read more,” she gushed. “I can't wait to see what happened when you went to Kintyre and Mull and”—frowning, she checked the open book—“and Skye and Ullapool and Culloden and Grampian”—she glanced back down at the book again—“oh, yes, and Blair Castle, of course, if you ever made it. I assume you were planning to visit friends.”

He nodded. “Murray,” he said, referring to a school chum whose brother was the Duke of Atholl. “But I should tell you,
I didn't end up following the exact route prescribed by old Angus Campbell. For one thing, I didn't even find roads connecting half the places he mentioned.”

“Maybe,” she said, her eyes growing dreamy, “that is where we ought to go for our honeymoon trip.”

“Scotland?” he asked, thoroughly surprised. “Don't you want to travel someplace warm and exotic?”

“To one who has never traveled more than one hundred miles from London,” she said pertly, “Scotland
is
exotic.”

“I can assure you,” he said with a smile as he walked across the room and perched on the edge of the bed, “that Italy is
more
exotic. And more romantic.”

She blushed, which delighted him. “Oh,” she said, looking vaguely embarrassed. (He wondered how long he'd be able to embarrass her with talk of romance and love and all the splendid activities that went with them.)

“We'll go to Scotland another time,” he assured her. “I usually find myself heading north every few years or so to visit Francesca, anyway.”

“I was surprised that you asked for my opinion,” Penelope said after a short silence.

“Who else would I ask?”

“I don't know,” she replied, suddenly very interested in the way her fingers were plucking at the bedcovers. “Your brothers, I suppose.”

He laid his hand on hers. “What do
they
know about writing?”

Her chin lifted and her eyes, clear, warm, and brown, met his. “I know you value their opinions.”

“That is true,” he acceded, “but I value yours more.”

He watched her face closely, as emotions played across her features. “But you don't like my writing,” she said, her voice hesitant and hopeful at the same time.

He moved his hand to the curve of her cheek, holding it there gently, making sure that she was looking at him as he
spoke. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said, a burning intensity firing his words. “I think you are a marvelous writer. You cut right into the essence of a person with a simplicity and wit that is matchless. For ten years, you have made people laugh. You've made them wince. You've made them
think,
Penelope. You have made people think. I don't know what could be a higher achievement.

“Not to mention,” he continued, almost as if he couldn't quite stop now that he'd gotten started, “that you write about
society,
of all things. You write about society, and you make it fun and interesting and witty, when we all know that more often than not it's beyond dull.”

For the longest time, Penelope couldn't say anything. She had been proud of her work for years, and had secretly smiled whenever she had heard someone reciting from one of her columns or laughing at one of her quips. But she'd had no one with whom to share her triumphs.

Being anonymous had been a lonely prospect.

But now she had Colin. And even though the world would never know that Lady Whistledown was actually plain, overlooked, spinster-until-the-last-possible-moment Penelope Featherington,
Colin
knew. And Penelope was coming to realize that even if that wasn't all that mattered, it was what mattered most.

But she still didn't understand his actions.

“Why, then,” she asked him, her words slow and carefully measured, “do you grow so distant and cold every time I bring it up?”

When he spoke, his words were close to a mumble. “It's difficult to explain.”

“I'm a good listener,” she said softly.

His hand, which had been cradling her face so lovingly, dropped to his lap. And he said the one thing she never would have expected.

“I'm jealous.” He shrugged helplessly. “I'm so sorry.”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said, not intending to whisper, but lacking the voice to do anything else.

“Look at yourself, Penelope.” He took both of her hands in his and twisted so that they were facing one another. “You're a huge success.”

“An anonymous success,” she reminded him.

“But
you
know, and
I
know, and besides, that's not what I'm talking about.” He let go of one of her hands, raking his fingers through his hair as he searched for words. “You have done something. You have a body of work.”

“But you have—”

“What do I have, Penelope?” he interrupted, his voice growing agitated as he rose to his feet and began to pace. “What do I have?”

“Well, you have me,” she said, but her words lacked force. She knew that wasn't what he meant.

He looked at her wearily. “I'm not talking about that, Penelope—”

“I know.”

“—I need something I can point to,” he said, right on top of her soft sentence. “I need a purpose. Anthony has one, and Benedict has one, but I'm at odds and ends.”

“Colin, you're not. You're—”

“I'm tired of being thought of as nothing but an—” He stopped short.

“What, Colin?” she asked, a bit startled by the disgusted expression that suddenly crossed his face.

“Christ above,” he swore, his voice low, the S hissing from his lips.

Her eyes widened. Colin was not one for frequent profanity.

“I can't believe it,” he muttered, his head moving jerkily to the left, almost as if he was flinching.

“What?” she pleaded.

“I complained to you,” he said incredulously. “I complained to you about Lady Whistledown.”

She grimaced. “A lot of people have done that, Colin. I'm used to it.”

“I can't believe it. I complained to you about how Lady Whistledown called me charming.”

“She called me an overripe citrus fruit,” Penelope said, attempting levity.

He stopped his pacing for just long enough to shoot her an annoyed look. “Were you laughing at me the whole time I was moaning about how the only way I would be remembered by future generations was in
Whistledown
columns?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “I would hope you know me better than that.”

He shook his head in a disbelieving manner. “I can't believe I sat there, complaining to you that I had no accomplishments, when you had all of
Whistledown
.”

She got off the bed and stood. It was impossible just to sit there while he was pacing like a caged tiger. “Colin, you couldn't have known.”

“Still.” He let out a disgusted exhale. “The irony would be beautiful, if it weren't directed at me.”

Penelope parted her lips to speak, but she didn't know how to say everything that was in her heart. Colin had so many achievements, she couldn't even begin to count them all. They weren't something you could pick up, like an edition of
Lady Whistledown's Society Papers,
but they were just as special.

Perhaps even more so.

Penelope remembered all the moments he had made people smile, all the times he had walked past all of the popular girls at balls and asked a wallflower to dance. She thought of the strong, almost magical bond he shared with his siblings. If those weren't achievements, she didn't know what was.

But she knew that those weren't the sorts of milestones he
was talking about. She knew what he needed: a purpose, a calling.

Something to show the world that he was more than they thought he was.

“Publish your travel memoirs,” she said.

“I'm not—”

“Publish them,” she said again. “Take a chance and see if you soar.”

His eyes met hers for a moment, then they slid back down to his journal, still clutched in her hands. “They need editing,” he mumbled.

Penelope laughed, because she knew she had won. And he had won, too. He didn't know it yet, but he had.

“Everyone needs editing,” she said, her smile broadening with each word. “Well, except me, I guess,” she teased. “Or maybe I did need it,” she added with a shrug. “We'll never know, because I had no one to edit me.”

He looked up quite suddenly. “How did you do it?”

“How did I do what?”

His lips pursed impatiently. “You know what I mean. How did you do the column? There was more to it than the writing. You had to print and distribute. Someone had to have known who you were.”

She let out a long breath. She'd held these secrets so long it felt strange to share them, even with her husband. “It's a long story,” she told him. “Perhaps we should sit.”

He led her back to the bed, and they both made themselves comfortable, propped up against the pillows, their legs stretched out before them.

“I was very young when it started,” Penelope began. “Only seventeen. And it happened quite by accident.”

He smiled. “How does something like that happen by accident?”

“I wrote it as a joke. I was so miserable that first season.” She looked up at him earnestly. “I don't know if you recall,
but I weighed over a stone more back then, and it's not as if I'm fashionably slender now.”

“I think you're perfect,” he said loyally.

Which was, Penelope thought, part of the reason she thought he was perfect as well.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I wasn't terribly happy, and so I wrote a rather scathing report of the party I'd been to the night before. And then I did another, and another. I didn't sign them Lady Whistledown; I just wrote them for fun and hid them in my desk. Except one day, I forgot to hide them.”

He leaned forward, utterly rapt. “What happened?”

“My family were all out, and I knew they'd be gone for some time, because that was when Mama still thought she could turn Prudence into a diamond of the first water, and their shopping trips took all day.”

Colin rolled his hand through the air, signaling that she should get to the point.

“Anyway,” Penelope continued, “I decided to work in the drawing room because my room was damp and musty because someone—well, I suppose it was me—left the window open during a rainstorm. But then I had to…well, you know.”

“No,” Colin said abruptly. “I don't know.”

“Attend to my business,” Penelope whispered, blushing.

“Oh. Right,” he said dismissively, clearly not interested in that part of the story, either. “Go on.”

“When I got back, my father's solicitor was there. And he was reading what I wrote. I was horrified!”

“What happened?”

“I couldn't even speak for the first minute. But then I realized he was laughing, and it wasn't because he thought I was foolish, it was because he thought I was good.”

“Well, you
are
good.”

“I know that now,” she said with a wry smile, “but you have to remember, I was seventeen. And I'd said some pretty horrid things in there.”

“About horrid people, I'm sure,” he said.

“Well, yes, but still…” She closed her eyes as all the memories swam through her head. “They were popular people. Influential people. People who didn't like me very much. It didn't really matter that they were horrid if what I said got out. In fact, it would have been worse because they were horrid. I would have been ruined, and I would have ruined my entire family along with me.”