Romancing Mister Bridgerton: Penelope & Colin’s Story (Bridgertons Book 4)

A few days later, Penelope returned from a shopping expedition with Eloise, Hyacinth, and Felicity to find her husband seated behind his desk in his study. He was reading something, uncharacteristically hunched as he pored over some unknown book or document.

“Colin?”

His head jerked up. He must not have heard her coming, which was surprising, since she hadn’t made any effort to soften her steps. “Penelope,” he said, rising to his feet as she entered the room, “how was your, er, whatever it was you did when you went out?”

“Shopping,” she said with an amused smile. “I went shopping.”

“Right. So you did.” He rocked slightly from foot to foot. “Did you buy anything?”

“A bonnet,” she replied, tempted to add and three diamond rings, just to see if he was listening.

“Good, good,” he murmured, obviously eager to get back to whatever it was on his desk.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he replied, almost reflexively, then he added, “Well, actually it’s one of my journals.”

His face took on a strange expression, a little sheepish, a little defiant, almost as if he were embarrassed that he’d been caught, and at the same time daring her to ask more.

“May I look at it?” she asked, keeping her voice soft and, she hoped, unthreatening. It was strange to think that Colin was insecure about anything. Mention of his journals, however, seemed to bring out a vulnerability that was surprising…and touching.

Penelope had spent so much of her life regarding Colin as an invincible tower of happiness and good cheer. He was self-confident, handsome, well liked, and intelligent. How easy it must be to be a Bridgerton, she’d thought on more than one occasion.

There had been so many times—more than she could count—that she’d come home from tea with Eloise and her family, curled up on her bed, and wished that she’d been born a Bridgerton. Life was easy for them. They were smart and attractive and rich and everyone seemed to like them.

And you couldn’t even hate them for living such splendid existences because they were so nice.

Well, now she was a Bridgerton, by marriage if not by birth, and it was true—life was better as a Bridgerton, although that had less to do with any great change in herself than it did because she was madly in love with her husband, and by some fabulous miracle, he actually returned the emotion.

But life wasn’t perfect, not even for the Bridgertons.

Even Colin—the golden boy, the man with the easy smile and devilish humor—had raw spots of his own. He was haunted by unfulfilled dreams and secret insecurities. How unfair she had been when she’d pondered his life, not to allow him his weaknesses.

“I don’t need to see it in its entirety,” she reassured him. “Maybe just a short passage or two. Of your own choosing. Perhaps something you especially like.”

He looked down at the open book, staring blankly, as if the words were written in Chinese. “I wouldn’t know what to pick out,” he mumbled. “It’s all the same, really.”

“Of course it’s not. I understand that more than anyone. I—” She suddenly looked about, realized the door was open, and quickly went to shut it. “I’ve written countless columns,” she continued, “and I assure you, they are not all the same. Some I adored.” She smiled nostalgically, remembering the rush of contentment and pride that washed over her whenever she’d written what she thought was an especially good installment. “It was lovely, do you know what I mean?”

He shook his head.

“That feeling you get,” she tried to explain, “when you just know that the words you’ve chosen are exactly right. And you can only really appreciate it after you’ve sat there, slumped and dejected, staring at your blank sheet of paper, not having a clue what to say.”

“I know that,” he said.

Penelope tried not to smile. “I know you know the first feeling. You’re a splendid writer, Colin. I’ve read your work.”

He looked up, alarmed.

“Just the bit you know about,” she assured him. “I would never read your journals without your invitation.” She blushed, remembering that that was exactly how she’d read the passage about his trip to Cyprus. “Well, not now, anyway,” she added. “But it was good, Colin. Almost magical, and somewhere inside of you, you have to know that.”

He just stared at her, looking like he simply didn’t know what to say. It was an expression she’d seen on countless faces, but never on his face, and it was so very odd and strange. She wanted to cry, she wanted to throw her arms around him. Most of all, she was gripped by an intense need to restore a smile to his face.

“I know you must have had those days I described,” she insisted. “The ones when you know you’ve written something good.” She looked at him hopefully. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

He made no response.

“You do,” she said. “I know you do. You can’t be a writer and not know it.”

“I’m not a writer,” he said.

“Of course you are.” She motioned to the journal. “The proof is right there.” She stepped forward. “Colin, please. Please may I read a little bit more?”

For the first time, he looked undecided, which Penelope took as a small victory. “You’ve already read almost everything I’ve ever written,” she cajoled. “It’s really only fair to—”

She stopped when she saw his face. She didn’t know how to describe it, but he looked shuttered, cut off, utterly unreachable.

“Colin?” she whispered.Belongs to © n0velDrama.Org.

“I’d rather keep this to myself,” he said curtly. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, of course I don’t mind,” she said, but they both knew she was lying.

Colin stood so still and silent that she had no choice but to excuse herself, leaving him alone in the room, staring helplessly at the door.

He’d hurt her.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t meant to. She’d reached out to him, and he’d been unable to take her hand.

And the worst part was that he knew she didn’t understand. She thought he was ashamed of her. He’d told her that he wasn’t, but since he’d not been able to bring himself to tell her the truth—that he was jealous—he couldn’t imagine that she’d believed him.

Hell, he wouldn’t have believed him, either. He’d clearly looked like he was lying, because in a way, he was lying. Or at least withholding a truth that made him uncomfortable.

But the minute she’d reminded him that he’d read everything she’d written, something had turned ugly and black inside of him.

He’d read everything she’d written because she’d published everything she’d written. Whereas his scribblings sat dull and lifeless in his journals, tucked away where no one would see them.

Did it matter what a man wrote if no one ever read it? Did words have meaning if they were never heard?

He had never considered publishing his journals until Penelope had suggested it several weeks earlier; now the thought consumed him day and night (when he wasn’t consumed with Penelope, of course). But he was gripped by a powerful fear. What if no one wanted to publish his work? What if someone did publish it, but only because his was a rich and powerful family? Colin wanted, more than anything, to be his own man, to be known for his accomplishments, not for his name or position, or even his smile or charm.

And then there was the scariest prospect of all: What if his writing was published but no one liked it?

How could he face that? How would he exist as a failure?

Or was it worse to remain as he was now: a coward?

Later that evening, after Penelope had finally pulled herself out of her chair and drunk a restorative cup of tea and puttered aimlessly about the bedchamber and finally settled against her pillows with a book that she couldn’t quite make herself read, Colin appeared.

He didn’t say anything at first, just stood there and smiled at her, except it wasn’t one of his usual smiles—the sort that light from within and compel their recipient to smile right back.

This was a small smile, a sheepish smile.

A smile of apology.

Penelope let her book rest, spine up, on her belly.

“May I?” Colin inquired, motioning to the empty spot beside her.

Penelope scooted over to the right. “Of course,” she murmured, moving her book to the night table next to her.

“I’ve marked a few passages,” he said, holding forward his journal as he perched on the side of the bed. “If you’d like to read them, to”—he cleared his throat—“offer an opinion, that would be—” He coughed again. “That would be acceptable.”

Penelope looked at the journal in his hand, elegantly bound in crimson leather, then she looked up at him. His face was serious, and his eyes were somber, and although he was absolutely still—no twitching or fidgeting—she could tell he was nervous.

Nervous. Colin. It seemed the strangest thing imaginable.

“I’d be honored,” she said softly, gently tugging the book from his fingers. She noticed that a few pages were marked with ribbons, and with careful fingers, she opened to one of the selected spots.

14 March 1819

The Highlands are oddly brown.

“That was when I visited Francesca in Scotland,” he interrupted.

Penelope gave him a slightly indulgent smile, meant as a gentle scolding for his interruption.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

One would think, at least one from England would think, that the hills and dales would be a rich emerald green. Scotland resides, after all, on the same isle, and by all accounts suffers from the same rain that plagues England.

I am told that these strange beige hills are called tablelands, and they are bleak and brown and desolate. And yet they stir the soul.

“That was when I was rather high up in elevation,” he explained. “When you’re lower, or near the lochs, it’s quite different.”

Penelope turned to him and gave him a look.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Maybe you’d be more comfortable if you didn’t read over my shoulder?” she suggested.

He blinked in surprise.

“I would think you’ve already read all this before.” At his blank stare, she added, “So you don’t need to read it now.” She waited for a reaction and got none. “So you don’t need to hover over my shoulder,” she finally finished.

“Oh.” He inched away. “Sorry.”

Penelope eyed him dubiously. “Off the bed, Colin.”

Looking much chastened, Colin pushed himself off the bed and flopped into a chair in the far corner of the room, crossing his arms and tapping his foot in a mad dance of impatience.

Tap tap tap. Tappity tap tap tap.

“Colin!”

He looked up in honest surprise. “What?”

“Stop tapping your foot!”

He looked down as if his foot were a foreign object. “Was I tapping it?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” He pulled his arms in more tightly against his chest. “Sorry.”

Penelope refocused her attention on the journal.

Tap tap.

Penelope jerked head up. “Colin!”

He planted his feet down firmly on the carpet. “I couldn’t help myself. Didn’t even realize I was doing it.” He un-crossed his arms, resting them on the upholstered side of the chair, but he didn’t look relaxed; the fingers on both of his hands were tense and arched.

She stared at him for several moments, waiting to see if he was truly going to be able to hold still.

“I won’t do it again,” he assured her. “I promise.”

She gave him one last assessing stare, then turned her attention back to the words in front of her.

As a people, the Scots despise the English, and many would say rightfully so. But individually, they are quite warm and friendly, eager to share a glass of whisky, a hot meal, or to offer a warm place to sleep. A group of Englishmen—or, in truth, any Englishman in any sort of uniform—will not find a warm welcome in a Scottish village. But should a lone Sassenach amble down their High Street—the local population will greet him with open arms and broad smiles.

Such was the case when I happened upon Inveraray, upon the banks of Loch Fyne. A neat, well-planned town that was designed by Robert Adam when the Duke of Argyll decided to move the entire village to accommodate his new castle, it sits on the edge of water, its whitewashed buildings in neat rows that meet at right angles (surely a strangely ordered existence for one such as I, brought up amid the crooked intersections of London).

I was partaking of my evening meal at the George Hotel, enjoying a fine whisky instead of the usual ale one might drink at a similar establishment in England, when I realized that I had no idea how to get to my next destination, nor any clue how long it would take to get there. I approached the proprietor (one Mr. Clark), explained my intention to visit Blair Castle, and then could do nothing but blink in wonder and confusion as the rest of the inn’s occupants chimed in with advice. “Blair Castle?” Mr. Clark boomed. (He was a booming sort of man, not given to soft speech.) “Well, now, if ye’re wanting to go to Blair Castle, ye’ll certainly be wanting to head west toward Pitlochry and then north from there.”

This was met by a chorus of approval—and an equally loud echo of disapproval.

“Och, no!” yelled another (whose name I later learned was MacBogel). “He’ll be having to cross Loch Tay, and a greater recipe for disaster has never been tasted. Better to head north now, and then move west.”

“Aye,” chimed in a third, “but then he’ll be having Ben Nevis in his way. Are you saying a mountain is a lesser obstacle than a puny loch?”

“Are you calling Loch Tay puny? I’ll be telling you I was born on the shores of Loch Tay, and no one will be calling it puny in my presence.” (I have no idea who said this, or indeed, almost everything forthwith, but it was all said with great feeling and conviction.)

“He doesn’t need to go all the way to Ben Nevis. He can turn west at Glencoe.”

“Oh, ho, ho, and a bottle of whisky. There isn’t a decent road heading west from Glencoe. Are you trying to kill the poor lad?”

And so on and so forth. If the reader has noticed that I stopped writing who said what, it is because the din of voices was so overwhelming that it was impossible to tell anyone apart, and this continued for at least ten minutes until finally, old Angus Campbell, eighty years if he was a day, spoke, and out of respect, everyone quieted down.

“What he needs to do,” Angus wheezed, “is travel south to Kintyre, turn back north and cross the Firth of Lorne to Mull so that he can scoot out to Iona, sail up to Skye, cross over to the mainland to Ullapool, back down to Inverness, pay his respects at Culloden, and from there, he can proceed south to Blair Castle, stopping in Grampian if he chooses so he can see how a proper bottle of whisky is made.”

Absolute silence met this pronouncement. Finally, one brave man pointed out, “But that’ll take months.”

“And who’s saying it won’t?” old Campbell said, with the barest trace of belligerence. “The Sassenach is here to see Scotland. Are you telling me he can say he’s done that if all he’s done is taken a straight line from here to Perthshire?”

I found myself smiling, and made my decision on the spot. I would follow his exact route, and when I returned to London, I would know in my heart that I knew Scotland.

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.”

“What happened then? I assume it was his idea to publish.”

Penelope nodded. “Yes. He made all the arrangements with the printer, who in turn found the boys to deliver. And it was his idea to give it away for free for the first two weeks. He said we needed to addict the ton.”

“I was out of the country when the column began,” Colin said, “but I remember my mother and sisters telling me all about it.”

“People grumbled when the newsboys demanded payment after two weeks for free,” Penelope said. “But they all paid.”

“A bright idea on the part of your solicitor,” Colin murmured.

“Yes, he was quite savvy.”

He picked up on her use of the past tense. “Was?”

She nodded sadly. “He passed on a few years ago. But he knew he was ill and so before he died he asked me if I wanted to continue. I suppose I could have stopped then, but I had nothing else in my life, and certainly no marriage prospects.” She looked up quickly. “I don’t mean to—That is to say—”

His lips curved into a self-deprecating smile. “You may scold me all you wish for not having proposed years ago.”

Penelope returned his smile with one of her own. Was it any wonder she loved this man?

“But,” he said rather firmly, “only if you finish the story.”

“Right,” she said, forcing her mind back to the matter at hand. “After Mr—” She looked up hesitantly. “I’m not certain I should say his name.”

Colin knew she was torn between her love and trust for him, and her loyalty to a man who had, in all probability, been a father to her once her own had departed this earth. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “He’s gone. His name doesn’t matter.”

She let out a soft breath. “Thank you,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I—”

“I know,” he said reassuringly, squeezing her fingers with his. “If you want to tell me later, that’s fine. And if you don’t, that will be fine as well.”

She nodded, her lips tight at the corners, in that strained expression people get when they are trying hard not to cry. “After he died, I worked directly with the publisher. We set up a system for delivery of the columns, and the payments continued the way they had always been made—into a discreet account in my name.”

Colin sucked in his breath as he thought about how much money she must have made over the years. But how could she have spent it without incurring suspicion? “Did you make any withdrawals?” he asked.

She nodded. “After I’d been working about four years, my great-aunt passed away and left her estate to my mother. My father’s solicitor wrote the will. She didn’t have very much, so we took my money and pretended it was hers.” Penelope’s face brightened slightly as she shook her head in bewilderment. “My mother was surprised. She’d never dreamed Aunt Georgette had been so wealthy. She smiled for months. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It was very kind of you,” Colin said.

Penelope shrugged. “It was the only way I could actually use my money.”

“But you gave it to your mother,” he pointed out.

“She’s my mother,” she said, as if that ought to explain everything. “She supported me. It all trickled down.”

He wanted to say more, but he didn’t. Portia Featherington was Penelope’s mother, and if Penelope wanted to love her, he wasn’t going to stop her.

“Since then,” Penelope said, “I haven’t touched it. Well, not for myself. I’ve given some money to charities.” Her face took on a wry expression. “Anonymously.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just took the time to think about everything she had done in the last decade, all on her own, all in secret. “If you want the money now,” he finally said, “you should use it. No one will question your suddenly having more funds. You’re a Bridgerton, after all.” He shrugged modestly. “It’s well known that Anthony settled ample livings upon all of his brothers.”

“I wouldn’t even know what to do with it all.”

“Buy something new,” he suggested. Didn’t all women like to shop?

She looked at him with an odd, almost inscrutable expression. “I’m not sure you understand how much money I have,” she said hedgingly. “I don’t think I could spend it all.”

“Put it aside for our children, then,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate that my father and brother saw fit to provide for me, but not all younger sons are so lucky.”

“And daughters,” Penelope reminded him. “Our daughters should have money of their own. Separate from their dowries.”

Colin had to smile. Such arrangements were rare, but trust Penelope to insist upon it. “Whatever you wish,” he said fondly.

She smiled and sighed, settling back against the pillows. Her fingers idly danced across the skin on the back of his hand, but her eyes were far away, and he doubted she was even aware of her movements.

“I have a confession to make,” she said, her voice quiet and even just a touch shy.

He looked at her doubtfully. “Bigger than Whistledown?”

“Different.”

“What is it?”

She dragged her eyes off of the random spot on the wall she seemed to be focused upon and gave him her full attention. “I’ve been feeling a bit”—she chewed on her lip as she paused, searching for the right words—“impatient with you lately. No, that’s not right,” she said. “Disappointed, really.”

An odd feeling began to prickle in his chest. “Disappointed how?” he asked carefully.

Her shoulders gave a little shrug. “You seemed so upset with me. About Whistledown.”

“I already told you that was because—”

“No, please,” she said, placing a gently restraining hand on his chest. “Please let me finish. I told you I thought it was because you were ashamed of me, and I tried to ignore it, but it hurt so much, really. I thought I knew who you were, and I couldn’t believe that person would think himself so far above me that he would feel such shame at my achievements.”

He stared at her silently, waiting for her to continue.

“But the funny thing is…” She turned to him with a wise smile. “The funny thing is that it wasn’t because you were ashamed at all. It was all because you wanted something like that for your own. Something like Whistledown. It seems silly now, but I was so worried because you weren’t the perfect man of my dreams.”

“No one is perfect,” he said quietly.

“I know.” She leaned over and planted an impulsive kiss on his cheek. “You’re the imperfect man of my heart, and that’s even better. I’d always thought you infallible, that your life was charmed, that you had no worries or fears or unfulfilled dreams. But that wasn’t really fair of me.”

“I was never ashamed of you, Penelope,” he whispered. “Never.”

They sat in companionable silence for a few moments, and then Penelope said, “Do you remember when I asked you if we might take a belated honeymoon trip?”

He nodded.

“Why don’t we use some of my Whistledown money for that?”

“I will pay for the honeymoon trip.”

“Fine,” she said with a lofty expression. “You may take it out of your quarterly allowance.”

He stared at her in shock, then hooted with laughter. “You’re going to give me pin money?” he asked, unable to control the grin that spread across his face.

“Pen money,” she corrected. “So you can work on your journals.”

“Pen money,” he mused. “I like that.”

She smiled and placed her hand on his. “I like you.”

He squeezed her fingers. “I like you, too.”

Penelope sighed as she settled her head on his shoulder. “Is life supposed to be this wonderful?”

“I think so,” he murmured. “I really do.”