Chapter Text
Penelope freezes.
She turns, slowly.
Her heart, traitorous and trembling, begins to gallop.
Penelope stands frozen near the foot of the staircase, her spine straight, her hands clutched before her as if bracing for impact.
Colin strides in, cravat tied (bless Kate), coat clean, hair still a little wild from fingers tugging through it in frustrated longing. His eyes find hers immediately.
He stops.
His face is full of relief. Too much. It frightens her.
“Pen,” he breathes. “You’re alright?”
“Yes, Mr. Bridgerton,” she says carefully, voice cool. “I am quite well.”
He winces.
“Mr.—Penelope, why so formal?”
He takes a few steps closer. She doesn’t move.
“I—I came to check on you. Your health. After... after yesterday. The oil should’ve helped with any soreness. Coconut is good for the skin. You did wash properly after, didn’t you? You should, if you haven’t. And if you’re in pain, touching yourself, just lightly, sometimes helps. With tension. I’ve read that. You’re not in pain, are you?”
Penelope blinks.
“No,” she says crisply. “I am not in pain. Thank you for your concern, Mr. Bridgerton.”
The formality lands like a slap.
Colin stares at her, bewildered.
Why is she so far away? Why does she sound like a stranger?
“Come sit,” he says quickly, beckoning her. “By the window. Your window. I always thought of it that way. You can see straight to Bridgerton House from there. I never realised. How lucky we were. Me. And Eloise. To have had you there all our childhoods.”
He pauses. Softens.
“I suppose you’ll miss it. When you move to Bloomsbury.”
Penelope frowns.
“Why would I move to Bloomsbury.”
“Well, no, I mean, after we’re married. I assumed... I thought you understood.”
She is staring now.
“Understood what?”
Colin flounders. The blood drains from his face, then rushes back in a bloom of crimson.
“Penelope Featherington,” he says, voice suddenly loud, hands flailing slightly, “for God’ sake, are you going to marry me or not?”
Silence.
Penelope says nothing.
She just stares at him. Not blinking. Not nodding. Not moving.
Colin, still half-recoiling from the force of his own outburst, starts to visibly panic. He opens his mouth, shuts it, runs a hand through his hair again. He glances toward the door like maybe he could sprint out of it and never return. He adjusts his cravat even though it is not crooked.
She is still silent.
A full ten seconds pass.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
He clears his throat.
“I mean, I assumed, after yesterday, after everything, that we—”
Still nothing.
“Marry you?” she squeaks.
It’s not dignified. It’s not elegant. It bursts out of her like steam from a kettle. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, and she looks like she might faint or throw something or dissolve into giggles, or possibly all three.
Colin, suddenly pale, flounders.
“Well. Yes. Obviously.”
“Obviously?!”
“You, you said you wanted a kiss!”
“A kiss!” she says, voice rising. “Not an entire husband!”
“But we, Pen, you cried out my name! I’ve been having a crisis about it for hours!”
She covers her face with her hands. He grabs the window frame like it might save him from drowning.
“I kissed your nipples!”
“Yes!” she hisses, glancing toward the door. “I noticed!”
“And you didn’t think that meant anything?”
“You never said it meant anything! You said coconut oil helps with soreness!”
“I was trying to be practical!”
She throws her hands up.
“You’re an idiot!”
“But you’re in love with me!”
“Of course I am!” she cries. “I’ve been in love with you since my bonnet threw you off your horse. But I never thought you’d notice!”
A pause.
They stare at each other. Shaking. Red-cheeked. Breathing too hard.
Colin takes one step forward.
“Penelope Featherington,” he says again, quieter now. “Are you going to marry me or what?”
Penelope blinks. Her eyes brim. And then, she nods.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
The words barely leave her lips before the tears start falling. Silent at first. Then shaking.
Colin drops to his knees in front of her like he’s been felled by the sheer weight of her.
“No, no, don’t cry,” he pleads, reaching for her hands. “Please don’t cry, Pen, why are you crying?”
She can’t look at him. She’s too full. Too fragile.
“Because I thought I’d have to marry a man who’d rather be in the Pole with penguins than in my bed,” she says, voice trembling. “Because I thought that was all I was good for. A housekeeper with good hips and demonstrable tits.”
Colin’s hands find her skirts, just the hem, but his fingers clench there like she’s his tether to the earth.
“No one will ever be near your bed again but me,” he says, fiercely. “I’ll throw the damn mattress out if anyone else so much as looks at it.”
She lets out a watery laugh through her sniffles.
“But Colin... you were my exhibitor. Because we’re friends.”
He goes still.
Looks up at her.
“Yes,” he says softly, “but I—”
The words falter in his mouth. He chokes on them.
She watches. Waits. Still seated in her window. His hand in her skirts, his knees on the rug.
He looks so broken. So raw.
“I should have known,” he whispers. “I should have known that I loved you. It shouldn’t have taken a demonstration to make me see it. But I see it now.”
He leans forward, rests his head against her knee.
“You are my everything, Pen.”
She looks down at him, this ridiculous, infuriating, beautiful man on his knees, fists clenched in her skirts like they’re the only things anchoring him to earth.
And then, gently, so gently, she lifts her hand.
And runs her fingers through his hair.
The motion is soft, instinctive. The way she’s dreamed of touching him a thousand times in silence. The way she almost did, that night in the theatre, when she stroked his head like a farewell.
Now it is something else.
It is a beginning.
Colin shudders beneath her hand. Half from relief. Half from lust.
She feels the tremble in him. The heat that suddenly coils between them, warm and electric. His hands flex where they hold her skirts, just barely resisting the urge to pull her into his lap, onto the floor, against him.
But he doesn't move.
Not yet.
Because her hand is in his hair, and he wants to live in that touch a moment longer. Wants to memorize the feel of it, the way she touches him now that she knows he’s hers.
And he thinks:
I could die like this. And it would be enough.
Colin is still on his knees.
His pulse is loud, obnoxiously so. He can feel it in his throat, in his fingertips, somewhere much lower. Her lap is inches from his mouth. Her skirts drape over his wrists.
And for one long, dizzying second, he wants nothing more than to bury his face beneath them.
To part the folds, slide his mouth back into the heat of her, to drink from her like some starving, worshipful creature.
He wants to take her right here. On this upholstered bench. In front of the window, she’s watched him from since childhood.
He imagines her childhood bedroom upstairs.
He bets it’s yellow. That same vivid, awful, Portia-chosen shade of lemon that’s tried to hide her in plain sight her whole life.
He wants to ruin her in it.
Wants to lay her out on the childhood mattress, surrounded by floral pillows and girlhood relics, and deflower her like Persephone dragged willingly into his underworld.
Let them try to take her now.
But Anthony said no scandal. Said wait. Said they could marry like normal people, because there had been no true impropriety.
Colin’s body doesn’t care about that.
His soul is still reeling from the sound of her “yes.”
She leans forward. She kisses him.
It starts soft. Her mouth warm, pliant. Grateful. Then his hand comes up, cups the back of her neck. Her other hand slides down his chest.
Their mouths open together.
The kiss deepens.
His other hand moves to her waist. Her body shifts toward him instinctively.
She sighs against his mouth, and he groans into hers. The kiss turns needy. Messy.
His fingers twitch against her corset.
She tastes like hope and stolen time and everything.
“Penelope!”
The door crashes open like a stage direction from a tragedy.
Portia Featherington, in all her lavender-plumed glory, gasps.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Penelope leaps backward. Colin jerks upright, blinking like he’s come out of a trance.
“I, Lady Featherington, I came to propose,” he stammers, lips still glistening.
Portia sniffs, fans herself violently.
“I should hope so, Mr. Bridgerton. You may collect your scandal on the wedding night like decent people!”
Colin dares a glance at Penelope.
She is blushing. Smiling.
He grins.
He has never wanted to cause a scandal more in his life.