All the Time in the World

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/40796847.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandoms: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn, TiMER (2009)
Relationship: Colin Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington
Characters: Prudence Featherington, Portia Featherington, Eloise Bridgerton, Felicity
Featherington, Philippa Featherington, Anthony Bridgerton, Benedict
Bridgerton, Hyacinth Bridgerton, Gregory Bridgerton, Cressida Cowper,
Lady Danbury (Bridgerton)
Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate
Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2022-08-04 Completed: 2022-10-05 Words: 42,029 Chapters:
28/28
 All the Time in the World
by dontmakemeover

Summary

All ladies of the Ton are instructed by their Queen to implant a TiMER on their wrists when
they enter society at age 16. It is the truest and best way to find a Soulmate, with the TiMER
counting down until the first time they will meet. Countless marriages have started this way
(with at least a few of them ending the same way!) But Penelope Featherington does not
highly rate this technology, for when her TiMER was implanted, the screen was blank. And
what's more, she has seen the timer of the man she would like to be her true love, Colin
Bridgerton, and knows that whoever her soulmate truly is, his is not her.
 Chapter 1

Dear Reader:

It is that most auspicious of times once again. TiMER day. All the newly-out misses will find
out their future (and whether they will make it down the aisle before their older sisters!) and
at least a few gentlemen will feel their wrists buzz this Season. This author hopes for quite
the cacophonous roar the morning of Lady Danbury's ball, with answering alarms at the
arrival of the first dance of the evening. Who can forget the scandal of last season, when the
Second Mr. Bridgerton found his match in the lowly illegitimate daughter of the Earl of
Penwood? What will this Season's matches bring? Only time will tell, but until then, I
remain...

Yours,
Lady Whistledown
 The Older and the Younger

Penelope Featherington signed off her popular anonymous blog as she heard the shrill voice
of her mother calling from down the stairs.

"We mustn't be late for Felicity's implantation! She is the one upon which we must rest our
highest hopes!"

Penelope rolled her eyes in a most unladylike fashion as she ran an idle hand through her
carrot-orange hair. She had been her mother's highest hope, once upon a time. But with a
still-blank TiMER at the ripened age of 28, Portia has resigned herself to having an old maid
for a daughter. And Penelope had given up hope of ever finding her one true soulmate.

Her older sisters had managed well enough, if a bit belatedly, both marrying within at least a
reasonable amount of time to be considered respectable. Though hadn't it just burned
Prudence's toast when Philippa's TiMER went off a year before her own? Yet, Prudence
seemed more than satisfied with her husband Robert, as loud and obnoxious as he could be at
times. Both sisters had looked upon Penelope with the pity born of being the "haves" in the
equation to Penelope's "have not", and suggested that at least their Mama would have
someone to look after her in her old age.

Penelope rather dreaded when Felicity was out of the house, leaving her alone for her Mama
to focus her ire upon. With this in mind, as she entered the family Daimler (top down,
naturally), she hoped her younger sister could at least give her a couple of Seasons to get
used to the due date.

The Featheringtons raced down the streets of London, flames of red hair flowing in the wind
as both married and yet-unmarried ladies of the family gathered to support the fate of their
youngest member.

They still managed to be late, though only just a touch. St James' Palace was buzzing with
anticipation as young women (and at least a few men) lined up for their turn under the
watchful eyes of Queen Charlotte.

Penelope saw her long-time friend, Eloise Bridgerton, leaning against a pillar with a rather
bored expression, and hurried to join her while her family waited for their turn to enter.
Eloise's own sister, Hyacinth, was having her implantation that day as well.

"Oh, Pen," Eloise called out, "Can you believe this tradition persists when time and time
again, it is shown to be rather fixed? Why should the ladies be forced to flounce and flutter
about, looking for their soulmates, while many men choose not to even get their TiMERs
until they have decided they are ready?"

"That is rather rich coming from someone who has, in fact, kept strict watch on their own
countdown," Penelope countered, loving the repartee the two ladies had begun when they
were still young.
Eloise glanced at her wrist and huffed. "Pen, you know perfectly well that it has been
unnecessary for me to do so when Lady Whistledown has only been too happy to remind me
that I will finally be forced to marry despite my preference for the freedom of spinsterhood?"

They had had this conversation many times before, and Penelope was usually happy merely
to tease her friend, but with her much-younger sister having her implantation, she was feeling
a rawer nerve than she liked to admit.

"At least you have a countdown," she insisted, flourishing her own useless device. "You
know you will find your truest love, even if it is at a somewhat... advanced age."

Eloise frowned as she studied the distraught woman in front of her.

"I thought you had accepted things as they are?" she asked, "Weren't we talking just last week
about renting some cottage together and living out our lives happily?"

But before Penelope could decide whether to scold her friend or accept her... could she call it
pity?... her mother's voice rose above the din.

"Penelope! Penelope! We have been summoned!"

She waved off her friend as the dark-haired master of snark gave her a shrug of contentment,
and approached the doors to Queen Charlotte's throne room.

She couldn't help but remember the last time she had walked through those doors, 12 years
ago, almost to the day. She had been so young and full of hope.

Who wouldn't be? She was about to learn when she'd meet her true love.

Queen Charlotte waited expectantly, courtiers to either side. She was… there's no other word
for it… regal in her advanced age, her posture straight, but in a way that didn't look like any
effort.

"Ahh, the youngest Miss Featherington," she purred as the family approached. She sighed,
however, when she glanced at Penelope, and continued, "Of course, I had hoped to settle the
full set, but at least we have done the best we could."

Penelope felt her ears heat in shame, her fair skin making the pink of her cheeks and neck all
the more pronounced. She wished she could shrink into the shadows, where she was
comfortable. There were some benefits to being a wallflower. After all, she'd created an
entire gossip blog surrounding that very principle.

But before she could respond, Her Majesty was already beckoning her younger sister
forward.

If Penelope was honest, Felicity was the beauty of the family, what their mother had wanted
the other daughters to be from a young age. At 16, she played several instruments, spoke
French as well as she did English, and was even something of a talented watercolor painter.
All of this would be unbearable except for one fact: her little sister was also remarkably kind.
"Oh!" the Queen exclaimed, "You'll be meeting your perfect match tonight!"

That bitch.
 The History of Polin
Chapter Summary

Penelope has seen Felicity's TiMER. Now upset, she runs into the very last person she
wants to share her hurt with.

Chapter Notes

I saw some teasers for the filming of Season 3 and it kicked my butt back into gear to
keep working on this. I threaded in a couple references to the books in this chapter.
Hope you like it!

Penelope stared down at her sister’s TiMER and still couldn’t believe the countdown.

13 hours; 22 minutes; 44 seconds

Not only did Felicity have a soulmate, but she didn’t even have to wait 24 hours! Penelope
tried to hide her jealousy as she flicked her eyes back to her own wrist. The transparent
sapphire crystal remained as blank as ever. The white ceramic nearly blended in with the pale
snow of her skin, taunting her with its lack of movement.

She could feel the eyes of her older sisters on her back, just waiting with glee for her to cry,
panic, totally freak out. Mrs. Featherington was cooing over her youngest’s triumph and
hadn’t noticed Penelope’s reaction. In fact, Prudence and Philippa were the only people
paying any attention to her, but Penelope was already thinking about how she would have to
congratulate Felicity in Lady Whistledown . All the comments giving their opinions on her
match (Penelope would need to draft a post quickly to keep up her pseudonym’s reputation!)

She could picture it now:

HyHy03 - OMG! Can’t wait to hear those chimes on the dance floor!

DanburyBallOfficial - Of course, our event will be the host to this momentous occasion.

GregBridge - Always hoped you might wait for me, Lissy.

Lady.Twombley - Poor Penelope was in my debut year. I knew she would never make much
of a match, but I can’t believe Felicity supplanted her so well.
Penelope could hear her pulse throbbing in her ears. She needed to get out of the room.
That’s all there was to it.

And as Penelope burst back through the doors to the Grand Hall, she ignored Hyacinth
Bridgerton’s wave. She ignored her best friend’s questioning gaze. She wouldn’t stop. She
just had to get to the car. Get to the car without anyone asking her what had happened. She
just needed to…

And she was so busy trying not to make eye contact with anyone that she didn’t even notice
where she was headed until she slammed into a broad back and immediately rubbed her nose
as her eyes started to tear.

The man she bumped into? The last man she wanted to see at that moment. Colin Bridgerton
.

Her best friend’s older brother and the one she had always hoped would be her Soulmate.

His bright green eyes flashed with concern.

Oh no. He thinks I’m crying .

I’m not crying , am I?

“Pen?” he asked cautiously, “What happened in there?”

Before she could form words to brush him off, Colin had thrown one strong arm over her
shoulders and began to direct her off to a nearby hallway. He was so much taller than
Penelope that she burrowed perfectly into his side as he marched them determinedly away
from the nosy gazes of the crowd of onlookers.

She couldn’t say exactly when she had begun to fall in love with Colin Bridgerton; she had
been admiring him on some level for as long as she could remember. She remembered
visiting Eloise when they were both still not “out” and spending ages enraptured with his
stories of his desire to travel. When he made those desires into reality, she had become his
most devoted correspondent. She loved to live vicariously through his adventures as an
Englishman in Italy or Greece. She could still remember his exact description of the
Acropolis, the mountaintop ancient buildings dedicated to the Greek goddess of Wisdom.

No, that wasn’t true. She did know when she had realized she loved him. She had been
making her way to the barn for her very first riding lesson when two young men on stallions
came thundering across the field. One was a shining bay, while the other was an earthy dun
color. The horses’ dark manes streamed behind them as the two men raced. Would it be an
exaggeration to say the earth shook when they met? Her heart was pounding in her ears as
she could see the devilish smirk on their faces.

It had been a windy day and the scarf flew right off her mother’s hair. Penelope watched in
horror as the scarf danced in the breeze and slipped right over the face of the younger of the
two men. As his horse ran off without him, he fell splat! right into the mud.
Not only were his clothes smothered, but a bit of mud even dripped off the curl at the front of
his hair onto his nose. But he didn’t seem mad.

He laughed. And when that smile spread across his face, it was like watching a sunrise.

But he wasn’t smiling at the moment. His face was a mask of concern as he ushered them
into a side office.

Penelope’s tears had dried, though her nose still stung. She watched, a touch embarrassed as
Colin closed the heavy door behind them. As he reached for the handle, the sleeve of his coat
slid up and she saw his TiMER on his wrist.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen it, of course. All the Bridgertons got their TiMERs, though
the boys generally waited until they were sure they were ready. But Colin was 33, so he had
had one for years. Penelope knew what time it pointed to. He had another 13 months, almost
exactly.

“Pen,” he said, turning back to her, “We’re alone. Tell me what’s going on.”

She rubbed the back of her neck, which she knew was already heating up just being in a room
with Colin.

“Nothing’s going on,” she demurred.

He narrowed those emerald eyes at her and Penelope was struck by how the newly-grown
scruff across his jaw gave him a rakish appearance that made him look… a little more wicked
than she was used to.

“Penelope, I know when you’re lying.”

Well, that was just categorically untrue. Hadn’t she been writing Lady Whistledown for half
her life, undetected? And wasn’t she lying every time she treated him as just a friend when all
she wanted in her heart was for them to be more? When her TiMER had been blank on her
implantation day, she had excitedly waited for Colin to get his so hers just might activate. But
a few months later, he had shown up to a party with an adorned wrist and she was
disappointed all over again.

But he was looking at her, making such direct eye contact that she was frozen to the spot. She
knew he had kissed other girls with TiMERs before and she wondered if maybe… just
maybe…

She wet her lips almost unconsciously as she imagined him striding over to her, wrapping an
arm around her lower back, pulling her up toward him…

“What happened with your sister’s TiMER?” he asked, breaking the silence.

Not again, Penelope. Just accept that it’ll never happen.

“Tonight,” she let out bitterly.

At his raised eyebrow, she clarified.

“She’s going to meet her soulmate tonight.”

“Ah.”

And that was all he said. Penelope understood why he didn’t know how to approach her. She
hadn’t actually wanted to tell him herself, much less be the one to break the story for the
community.

“I just want to go home and disappear into my room,” she admitted, “I wish Lady Danbury’s
ball weren’t occurring tonight.

Colin winced, realizing the implications.

“I guess I should just go to the car and wait,” she finished.

And Colin responded in a way she didn’t expect. A cheeky smile crossed his expression and
he turned to offer her his arm.

“What?” she asked.

“Let me drive you home.”

Penelope didn’t think it was possible for her skin to grow any redder, but her embarrassment
proved that false.

“Colin, you don’t have to do that.”

“Nonsense,” he joked, “Please, Miss Featherington, allow me to escort you home.”

She rolled her eyes, but she still felt a thrill when she took his arm. Was it wrong of her to
sneak a feel of his bicep under her hand?

Penelope didn’t care. She would take any opportunity to be near Colin. Even knowing how
bereft she would feel afterward.

They snuck out of the Palace via a side door so they wouldn’t run into the crowd still waiting
for their turns. Penelope wondered if that was more for her benefit (to avoid questions) or his
(to avoid being seen with her).

His brothers had always teased him for giving her attention. The friend of his little sister.

She still remembered one night she had spent sleeping over with Eloise. Though her friend
had passed out over a movie marathon of All I Wanna Do and Drop Dead Gorgeous (Eloise
loved feminist films starring Kirsten Dunst), Penelope couldn’t seem to get herself to fall
asleep. She decided to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen, only to come upon the three
elder Bridgerton brothers playing cards at the table.
This was a good year before she had started Lady Whistledown, but Penelope always had an
ear for gossip. She kept herself out of sight in the hall, crouching down and listening,
worrying at the tiny rip in her bright citrus fruit pajama bottoms.

Colin’s older brothers, Anthony and Benedict, were each mouth-wateringly attractive in their
own way, as the many girls of her acquaintance had been known to moon over them. They all
had the same chestnut hair, but only Colin had bright green eyes, not to mention Colin’s
devil-may-care sense of humor. Colin was a total flirt and she was completely enamored of
him.

The older boys had been teasing him, as older siblings do. Penelope loved seeing the
Bridgertons interact. They were such a lovely family in a way her family seemed like mere
acquaintances in the same house.

“Did you see our baby brother drooling over Marina Thompson?” Anthony joked as he threw
a couple of cards into the center of the table.

“Gregory?” Benedict asked distractedly, as he tried to evaluate his hand.

“Shut up, Anthony,” Colin grumbled, rubbing the heel of his palm over his eye and yawning.

“Oh, what’s the matter, Col?” Anthony prodded, “Afraid your soulmate won’t be happy to
see you? You could always end up paired with Penelope Featherington.”

Penelope couldn’t help but lean forward slightly, excitedly listening for Colin’s answer.

“Penelope?” Colin scoffed, “What a ridiculous idea. Penelope isn’t my match.”

When Penelope fell over in shock, making a not-insignificant noise, Colin’s eyes shot up and
connected directly with hers out in the hall. To his credit, he looked guilty, but she still ran
back to Eloise’s room with tears in her eyes.
 Chapter 4

Dear Reader:

I am certain you have heard by now of the upset surrounding the implantation of Felicity
Featherington. What a coup for the young lady, to be the talk of the Danbury Ball tonight!
But who will it be? Which lucky gentleman felt his TiMER blink to life this morning? No
one is telling yet, but someone already knows she belongs to him. There are at least a few
gentlemen whose TiMERs are known to be temporarily blank: Lord Rupert Reiling; Preston
Rokesby, Marquess of Nottingham; Sebastian Smythe-Smith, perhaps? Imagine being forced
by familial duty to attend every single one of that family’s dreadful musicales? Only time
will tell, but everyone will be watching tonight, and so, Dear Reader, will I be.

Yours,
Lady Whistledown
 Chapter 5
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Penelope isn’t my match. What a ridiculous idea. Penelope isn’t my match. What a ridic-

Penelope felt those long-ago words flooding back into her memory as she ducked into Colin’s
cobalt blue Porsche, sliding along the buttery-soft black leather seat.

Colin had apologized when she had overheard him uttering those words. Of course, he had.
His sister would have almost quite literally killed him if she had known. Penelope supposed
that it was also because he was generally a well-mannered man and had been at least a polite
teenage boy if nothing else.

Just like now, driving her home so she could hide from the world just a little bit longer. He
felt obligated on some level. She was sure of it. Like she was some sort of proxy-sister by
association.

Colin donned a pair of rather sharp-looking sunglasses before smiling at her.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

And just like she had every single time, Penelope turned into a puddle at his smile. It was so
hard to distance herself from her feelings for him. She had been trying. She knew how long
she had left before he met his soulmate. Before she wouldn’t be able to ignore his bliss in a
woman who wasn’t her.

12 months, 289 days, and 7 hours, give or take.

“Do you…,” Colin began haltingly, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Penelope forced a thin smile. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. Of course I’m happy
for Felicity.”

The unrequited love of her life looked at her and Penelope couldn’t quite tell what emotion
was in his gaze. Sadness? Pity? She wasn’t sure if she could stand it. She needed to distract
him.

“Colin, please tell me about your time in Madrid.”

And she knew she had chosen the right topic, because his whole expression changed. He
began to speak animatedly about his travels, regaling her with all the details of his time
across the Channel.

“... and in the Plaza de Cibeles, there is this dramatic statue of a cart pulled by two shaggy-
haired lions. A representation of the Roman goddess Cybele,” he clarified, glancing at her to
make sure she was still interested.
Penelope only nodded enthusiastically. She had never traveled. Hell, she had never been
anywhere. Never even gone to Scotland to visit his younger sister Francesca, who had moved
there with her soulmate years earlier.

“When the football team wins, they have this massive party with a parade, and a member of
the team climbs the center of the fountain to adorn Cybele with their team flag. Oh! And I
was taken to Cibeles Palace, where I was able to ascend to the balcony and look out at the
entire panorama of the city before me. Oh, Pen, you should have seen it! The lights from the
partying Spanish people reached to run their fingers along the buildings’ every crevice, with
the darkness of the neighborhoods beyond hiding their faces from the glow.

“...And the tablaos of flamenco dancers! Their skirts flew across the room like flames as they
spun and stomped. I’ll admit it, I was entranced. I found myself talking to one of the dancers,
a raven-haired woman with a scarlet carnation in her hair…”

He trailed off and Penelope realized he had been about to go into a story of his dalliance with
this flamenco dancer, but had stopped himself on remembering who he was speaking to.

“The dancer?” she prompted.

He rubbed his neck in an uncharacteristically sheepish way. And though his eyes were
hidden, Penelope could imagine those emeralds darting about for a way to extricate himself
from the hole he had accidentally dug.

“It’s nothing,” he mumbled.

“I imagine that dancer would be disappointed to be referred to as ‘nothing’,” Penelope

quipped. Making a joke was better than picturing what they had done together, how this dark-
haired beauty had touched him.

And to his credit, Colin looked a little embarrassed at the notion.

“I meant that it wasn’t something I should be saying in front of you,” he said.

“Why not?” Penelope asked, feeling strangely provoked, “I’m not a child anymore, Colin
Bridgerton. I am a grown woman who is well aware of the many things two people can enjoy
together.”

If he was embarrassed before, he looked downright off-kilter at that.

“If anything,” she continued, “I was jealous of the many things you have seen and done. I
wish I could experience some of these things myself.”

“Oh, but you could,” he assured her quickly, “Why wouldn’t you travel?”

At that, Penelope could no longer stand to be facing him and sunk into her seat, keeping her
eyes on the tree-lined streets that led back to her house.

“Well, Colin, it doesn’t seem nearly as much fun to go by myself.”

 That was the last thing either of them said until the Porsche pulled up to the front door of the
Featherington home. Penelope gathered her bag and coat and stepped out, her sensible heels
not faltering in the slightest on the familiar cobblestone path.

Colin attempted a cheerful smile of salutation, but Penelope only gave a curt nod before
striding away. She knew she should thank him. She just couldn’t stand to have him see more
tears in her eyes.

Chapter End Notes

A bit of a short one, but I suspect the next will be extensive, so I wanted to put this up
now.
 Chapter 6
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

When the Featheringtons entered Lady Danbury’s ballroom at promptly 21:00, a crowd
began to gather immediately. Enterprising gossips all wanted to be the first to discover
Felicity’s match. They all hoped for that chime to ring and Felicity was quickly ushered over
to a seat on the burnt persimmon divan that had been helpfully cleared for her benefit. Many
of those watching on with eager eyes were the most voracious readers of Lady Whistledown.

Portia Featherington quickly grabbed the seat next to her daughter, wanting to be the center
of attention as much as Felicity was. Portia had dressed with her usual colorful panache, a
vintage cut deep pink Jaques Fath number that hugged her hourglass curves and sported a
plunging neckline that was quite daring for her age. She had, of course, dressed Felicity to
coordinate in a paler carnation pink tea length gown with layers of tulle underneath the skirt
to make it pop out in the style of a princess cut wedding gown. She had matching ballet
slipper-like flats on underneath, smooth satin ribbons crisscrossing up her shins and
disappearing under her skirt. Her dark auburn hair (some girls had all the luck!) cascaded in
ringlets down her shoulders. She was picture perfect.

Prudence Huxley and Philippa Finch (née Featherington) had their own gathering of society
members trying to work out if they had had any hints of the destiny to come. The older sisters
had decided that, instead of displaying jealousy at Felicity’s attention, they would be much
cleverer to direct some of the runoff to themselves, who after all hadn’t had as much fanfare
with their own matches.

Penelope, as usual, was on the very side of the room, watching but not consulted. Even when
her own family was at the center, she was the least thought of. She watched as the crowd held
their breath with each man who neared Felicity, only to sigh in disappointment when they
heard no answering alarm. They moved like the waves on the shore, ebbing and flowing as
one, together in their anticipation.

Portia in particular seemed exceedingly reluctant to even let her youngest daughter leave her
side for a moment. Penelope could see her frantically searching the crowd, but was startled
when her mother made eye contact with her and waved her over.

“Yes, Mother?” she said, when she had made her way to the divan.

“Your sister needs to,” her mother lowered her voice, “use the powder room.”

Penelope crossed her arms in disbelief.

“And?” she asked. “Felicity doesn’t need someone to wipe her arse for her anymore.”

“Penelope! We are in public! Keep your voice down!”

Portia glanced nervously as the throng tried to eavesdrop on their unusual conversation.

“I need you to go with her,” she said, “To make sure she goes quickly and gets back just as
quickly. Everyone is eager to meet her soulmate.”

Penelope was about to refuse out of principle when she caught a glimpse of her little sister.
Felicity was… scared? Penelope couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed. She was Lady
Whistledown, for Christ’s sake!

“Lissy,” she said, “Please, will you accompany me to the restroom?”

She knew she hadn’t imagined Felicity’s look of gratitude as she ignored the murmuring
crowd.

Probably think I’m trying to take her attention away.

“Oh my god, thank you so much, Penelope!” her sister exclaimed when they made it out into
the hall. Luckily, no one had been bold enough to follow them into the bathroom.

Wordlessly, Penelope enveloped Felicity in a tight hug. The younger girl was surprised for a
moment, but quickly recovered and wrapped her own arms around her older sister. Penelope
could feel as she released the breath that she had been holding, possibly since she had first
gotten her TiMER.

They made their way, hand in hand, into the ladies’ room. Felicity immediately collapsed in a
heap on the gilt fainting couch.

“Hey,” she said, “remember yesterday when I was a kid?”

Penelope felt her heart fall. She had been so wrapped up in the triumph, in the attention,
chronicling her sister’s story for Whistledown, that she hadn’t asked Felicity, even once, how
she was actually feeling about her newfound “fame”.

Penelope glanced over, studying the bubblegum pile of tulle that was her baby sister. She
noticed for the first time that—beneath the layer of makeup their mother had undoubtedly
caked onto her youngest—Felicity’s normally bright eyes were heavy, exhausted, and
pleading. She absent-mindedly twisted one of the manufactured curls around her finger,
looking like she would give anything to leave, to go back to grooming her pony or eating too
many pastries with Hyacinth. Of course, Hyacinth had her own TiMER too now, but at least
she had a couple of years to get used to the idea.

“Lissy,” she said quietly, “we don’t have to stay here. I could…”

Here, she paused to think.

“I could probably call a car to pick us up?”

Even as she offered it, she knew Felicity would never accept. She would do her duty to be the
newest spectacle. So Penelope held out her hand and Felicity accepted and stood up, brushing
her skirts down and checking her hair in the mirror.
“Ready?” she asked.

And the two Featherington women made their way toward destiny.

But when they were still a few steps away from reentering the ballroom, Penelope was
startled to hear a chime ringing from beside her.

She glanced over to Felicity, only to see her sister struck dumb. Following her gaze, there
was a young man with a very similar expression coming down the hall from the opposite
side. He was tall, with skin the color of freshly-turned earth and black hair worn short. When
he regained his composure, he smiled, his dark eyes flashing as he couldn’t take his eyes
from Felicity. A deep dimple in his cheek made him look all the more charming.

“Hello,” he said, “I hope you aren’t disappointed.”

Felicity nearly swooned at his velvety baritone. Penelope looked back and forth between the
two, feeling as though she was viewing something she shouldn’t, something very intimate
between them. But since her younger sister didn’t look to be able to find her tongue, she
knew she should say something.

“This, as I’m guessing you know, is Felicity Featherington,” she began, “Unless that is how
you normally begin conversation?”

His eyes flicked toward her, as if her question had reminded him of his manners.

“Yes, right,” he said, “Geoffrey. Geoffrey Albansdale. At your service.”

With that, he took one more step closer to Felicity.

“It’s great to meet you,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when my TiMER clicked on, and then
I heard my sister talking about your story on Whistledown.”

Finally, Felicity seemed to find her voice, saying, “Will you… may I have this dance?”

Mother’s going to be pissed she missed this.

The two new soulmates only had eyes for each other as they made their way back into the
ballroom, Penelope trailing awkwardly behind. As soon as they entered, everyone knew what
had happened. A path immediately cleared for them, though Penelope noticed that Cressida
Twombly only did so with some reluctance.

The Bridgertons were in attendance, of course, and even Eloise looked a little impressed by
Felicity’s match. She snagged Penelope’s arm as the latter walked past.

“Tell me everything,” Eloise insisted.

Eloise was quite the newshound, and she wasn’t ashamed of being seen as pushy. If Penelope
didn’t already know who Lady Whistledown was, she probably would have put her bet on
Eloise… or Lady Danbury.
The elderly dowager seemed inordinately pleased by the recent turn of events, using her
polished walking stick to help the new couple make their way to the dance floor. No one
wanted to anger their distinguished host and risk being uninvited from future soirées

“Well done, Miss Featherington,” she congratulated Felicity.

Then she clapped her hands with surprising volume and announced, “A song for Miss
Featherington and Mr. Albansdale!”

Felicity surprised everyone by interrupting Lady Danbury. Penelope supposed this was the
only evening she would get away with it.

“Please, Lady Danbury, could my family join me? It’s intimidating being stared at so much.”

And Penelope froze. Because why would Felicity do this to her? It was fine for the others.
Prudence and Robert moved with some haste to make their way into the sphere of attention
Felicity had opened up. Philippa and Albion followed soon thereafter. Penelope thought for a
moment that she might be safe, able to sit to the side with her mother, but that hope was
dashed when it became clear Portia had bullied some minor baron into escorting her onto the
floor.

The string quartet appeared to be warming into a lovely waltz, but Penelope’s heart was
beating a samba in her ears. It was repeating to her “alone, alone, alone” at a frantic pace.

Should she make a break for it? Eloise would probably run interference for her if she asked.

“Penelope, will you let me dance with you?”

She knew without turning around that it was Colin, and she hated that he pitied her in this
way. Still, she let him lead her onto the floor with the others. Felicity winked at her as she
neared, but she wasn’t in a charitable mood at the moment.

It wasn’t the first time she’d ever danced with him. Danced with all of his brothers, actually.
She was convinced that Lady Bridgerton had been behind it, pushing them to give their
attention to the wallflower, to make her feel chosen.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. They were caring, intelligent men. And Collin in particular had
always made sure to at least catch up with her at every party both families had attended.

Penelope raised a trembling hand to his shoulder (though with their height difference it was
really more his bicep that she reached) and felt his warm palm on her hip. She scolded herself
for how much his touch still sent shivers up her back, but she looked up into those beautiful
green eyes and she knew she would always react this way to him. She knew he would never
see her the way she saw him, not with such a short time left on his TiMER, but there was still
a proprietary animal that filled her chest. It swelled when she saw him and purred “mine”
whenever he looked back.

“You look wonderful.”

“Huh?” was all she could reply dumbly. She had been so lost in her own head that she had
forgotten she was far from alone.

He smiled, that famous crooked smile of his that had made more than one society debutante
swoon.

“You look wonderful,” he repeated, but this time with an extra warmth to his voice, as if he
wanted to make sure she knew he was in earnest.

“It’s not yellow,” she responded, feeling at a loss for words.

Her mother had finally given up on her in recent years, letting her dress outside the
“cheerful” family colors Portia had insisted on for most of her life. Penelope had run right to
their dressmaker (with some of her Whistledown money) to finally expand to greens and
blues. Tonight’s dress was a cobalt blue full-length skirt with an off-shoulder neckline that
showed more of her decolletage that she was used to. Penelope hadn’t known her red-orange
hair could look so good and gave the dressmaker the reins on her clothing choices from then
on.

“So, what do we think of Geoff?” Colin asked playfully as he spun her around the floor with
the practiced grace of his and his siblings’ years of etiquette lessons.

Penelope considered this.

“I don’t know a thing about him. He must not come to town much,” she admitted.

It was a hole in her Whistledown knowledge that tickled at the back of her annoyance. He
hadn’t even been on her shortlist of guesses about her sister’s soulmate.

Was that weird? Some families didn’t come in to London for the Season. They just stayed out
at their country estates. But then why did he come in this year? All questions Penelope was
hungry to know the answer to. It would make a great Whistledown, a profile on the
mysterious match!

It was then that Penelope realized Colin was looking at her expectantly. She had been so
focused on her persona that she’d completely tuned him out.

“Pardon?” she asked.

He laughed at her!

“Great to see I’m a valueless conversation partner to you,” he teased.

Penelope felt herself flush once more.

“No! Not at all! Please, repeat what you were saying. I promise I’m listening now.”

But the song was winding down to a close, so Colin said, “Come out on the balcony with
me.”
 “Alone?”

“It’s just us, Pen. The stars are bright tonight. Please, I have something very important to ask
you.”

Penelope knew she shouldn’t get her hopes up, but had she noticed Colin sneaking a quick
glance at her bosom? Madame Delacroix had definitely earned her commission!

“Meet me in 10 minutes on the balcony, Pen. Don’t be late!”

And he was off, blending into the crowd of other suited men and begowned women. Behind
her, Felicity and her new beau were finding somewhere to sit and get to know each other.

Penelope glanced in the direction Colin had gone, then back toward her sister. Familial duty
said this was Felicity’s night and Penelope should be nearby to support her. On the other
hand, Colin… well, when had Penelope ever been able to say no to him?

Chapter End Notes

I'm never certain what the proper place is to end chapters. We're getting close to a big
plot point now!
 Chapter 7
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

A Midsummer Night’s Dream decor theme was out of place for late November in London, but
Penelope supposed that with most of Society out in the country during the actual period of
Midsummer, Lady Danbury had decided to re-write the calendar to her benefit.

Preternatural levels of ivy and vines climbed the railings as if they might retake the building
into nature from whence they had come. Earthy colors dominated the scene, browns and
greens abundant with hints of light floral here and there, though in muted whites and yellows.
Lady Danbury’s decorator had provided stylized wooden furniture with luxe cushions and
baskets of throws for any partygoers that might catch a chill.

One such dark green roving knit blanket was draped over Colin Bridgerton’s arm as he
greeted her at the door.

“Pen, you’ve got to feel these things,” he enthused. “It’s basically a cloud.”

Without preamble, he stepped forward and patted her cheek with the edge of the throw. His
movement brought him so close that Penelope had to tilt her head to look at him, but when
the fiber touched her skin, she couldn’t help but close her eyes and let the sensation comfort
her. Colin was brushing it across her cheekbone in arching motions that reminded her of
when her Nanny had soothed her to sleep as a child and she was terrified of the shadows in
the corner.

His motions dislodged part of the edge and she felt the same softness sliding against her
neck. She opened her eyes again to look at him. Gone was the boyish grin of delight, replaced
with something more contemplative.

“What?” she asked self-consciously.

“I knew your eyes were brown, but I didn’t realize there were little gold flecks in the center.”

Penelope put a palm to the middle of Colin’s chest and pushed herself back so she could get
air.

“You know it’s not nice to flirt with me like that,” she said.

He frowned. “An observation is flirting?”

Every pearl that drops from your lips is flirting .

But instead, she crossed her arms (only partially from the cold) and said, “Why did you want
to speak to me?”

“Can we sit?”
He led her to a circular outdoor daybed with a clamshell wicker shading on the back. It was
just big enough for a few people to snuggle into it.

Or maybe do something else in it?

Penelope perched on the edge, refusing to let herself get comfortable physically or
emotionally. She didn’t know what favor he wanted to ask of her, but she assumed it would
involve something benign.

Colin sat next to her, trying to keep a respectful space between them. Penelope noticed that
his thick hair appeared especially disheveled, as if someone had been running their hands
through it, ruffling the dark strands beyond his normal messy grace.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he started.

Penelope immediately began searching her mind for what conversation he might be
referencing. Something about Eloise? About Felicity?

“About traveling,” he clarified.

Well, this is an unexpected avenue.

Colin looked almost… nervous? Penelope couldn’t imagine what was worrying him. He bit
the edge of his lip while he appeared to be searching for his words.

“Did I tell you I’m leaving for Italy tomorrow?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Sounds wonderful. Please let me know how it goes.”

Colin narrowed his eyes, rubbing his neck sheepishly.

“Er, no, that’s not what I mean. See…”

He took a deep breath and then, in a rapid tone with syllables rushing together, he said, “I
think you should come with me.”

Penelope laughed. It was so ridiculous an idea that she couldn’t fathom what he really
wanted, that he was starting with this joke. Only, it didn’t seem like Colin saw what was
funny.

“Why not? You said you’ve never really had the chance to travel, and that you didn’t want to
go by yourself… I could show you around to some of my favorite places? I’ve been enough
times that I would probably have to narrow it down, depending on how long you could get
away. I know this charming little cafe that serves the most amazing tiny sandwiches and…”

“Colin, don’t tease me like that. It’s not kind.”

“I’m not teasing!”

“It’s patently absurd!”

 “Why is it absurd?” he challenged. “I don’t always travel alone. I’ve taken my sisters with
me before.”

“Colin.”

“What?”

And he seemed frustrated by her lack of acquiescence more than anything.

“I’m not your sister.”

He crossed his arms, returning defensively, “I know that.”

“Do you?” Penelope countered, “Because if you think ‘Oh, this will be just like shepherding
Eloise around’, I believe you have another thought coming. Honestly, Colin, do you even get
how that feels for me?”

At this barb, Penelope felt a cool wind racing across her back. Damn the November night!

“Pen, please, you look so cold.”

He offered the cabled throw, and before she could protest, he circled her shoulders with it.

“Just Tuscany and Rome then,” he insisted, “And Venice. You can’t go your whole life
without seeing Venice. Pack maybe a week’s worth of clothes. I’ll be at your house to pick
you up at 6.”

“AM?” Penelope spluttered, forgetting for the moment that it wasn’t as if she’d agreed in the
first place.

He chuckled. “It’s a 2, 2.5 hour flight. Just in time for a cappuccino and cornetto after we
disembark.”

And before Penelope could say anything else, Colin was off, making his way back into the
ballroom.

“See you soon,” he called out as he ran off.

There Penelope sat, warm throw still around her shoulders, but out in the cold as to her
feelings.

Italy. Rome and Tuscany and Venice. Each word sent shivers down her spine. And seeing
them with Colin? With the boy she wished was her soulmate, taking advantage of that last
year before he found his real match? Did she dare?

Chapter End Notes

Did anyone guess it? Longer letter later, as they say.
 Chapter 8
Chapter Notes

You guys, I am such a comment whore. I guess it's to your benefit though, because it's
kept me writing!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The first bite was both soft and crunchy simultaneously, with a buttery aroma that tangled
with the fresh preserves in the middle of the crescent moon shaped pastry. The marmalade
was a perfect mixture of sweet and tart, with just a tap on the tongue from the bitterness of
the orange peel. The crust of the cornetto was a rich golden brown and little flakes of the
crust stuck to her fingers as she pulled them away.

Penelope gasped in delight at her very first taste of Italia.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Colin teased.

True to his word, he had picked her up in his car at 6. He’d needed to call to wake her; her
family hadn’t left Lady Danbury’s until three. She considered ignoring his call, but then he
texted to ask her cheekily if he needed to blow his horn or ring her doorbell to get her
attention. She hadn’t packed as he’d suggested and she was scrambling to find clean clothing
she thought might suit. She shook her head in dismay at her fire engine red “Postman Pat and
his black and white cat” duffle bag that was the only luggage she could get her hands on
without alerting her mother to her comings and goings.

She’d slept through the drive to Heathrow and passed out on Colin’s shoulder throughout the
flight. She was too exhausted to feel ashamed, and she hadn’t been able to enjoy a moment of
her first real plane ride. Her eyelids weighed several stone and the only time she remembered
being conscious once the plane took off was for a moment of turbulence, where she spied
Colin hastily storing away a worn leather book into his carry-on.

This breakfast at a small neighborhood cafe was her salvation, especially when she got her
first whiff of—

“Cappuccino?”

“Yes, please!”

“Do you know how you can spot a good Italian cappuccino?” Colin asked, “Let me show
you.”

He took the small spoon from the saucer and raised it toward the rim of the cup, a simple
white demitasse with a calligraphic letter G on the side.
“A good cappuccino should be roughly 40% foam,” he explained.

He slid the spoon slowly through that foam, turning a layer of it aside.

“Notice how you can’t even see the espresso. The bubbles aren’t too large; the foam is
creamy, showing a barista who didn’t under or over-steam the milk.”

Penelope could listen to Colin explain things for the rest of her life.

“Please, try it. I can’t wait to watch you have your first sip,” he insisted.

She raised the small cup to her lips, too aware of Colin’s attention on her. She took a small
sip. Penelope had expected the liquid to be too hot, but it was just pleasantly warm, spreading
from her head to her toes. The coffee wasn’t too bitter; the milk balancing it with subtle hints
of sweetness. The curls of chocolate garnishing the foam melted into the drink to bring a
lovely additional flavor.

Colin took the teaspoon still dangling in his hand, the foam clinging to it, and put it to his
own mouth, closing his eyes as the corner of his mouth turned up in appreciation.

Penelope wanted to kiss that corner, as if she could steal that smile for herself.

The pastry shop featured several bakery cases full of sandwiches and cookies and cakes.
Chocolates and macarons piled high on their ruffled silver plates. Tarts, custards, and cream
puffs, Penelope hoped they would come back to this cafe every day so she could sample
every one.

Intricately designed chocolate eggs the size of rugby balls drew attention from the cafe’s
front window, but the brightest star of the show was the pastry and cake sculptures. One
replicated an entire village, with marzipan swans in the pond and tiny cobblestones smaller
than the nail on Penelope’s little finger. Another was topped by a tiny stone cottage and a
gumpaste couple holding delicate, nearly invisible fishing lines.

Try as she might, Penelope hadn’t managed to extract an explanation from Colin as to why
he’d changed his plans for her. He’d only deflected, asking her questions about what she
might enjoy seeing while she was in Italy. As if she had any idea what to expect from the
country! Penelope felt as though the cappuccino was somewhat spoiled by her anxiety and
the hundreds of queries that bounced through her mind.

“Alessandro!” Colin called out to the old man behind the old-fashioned bakery case,
“Perfezione!”

Alessandro was a middle-aged Italian man in white shirtsleeves with a heather gray sweater-
vest and matching jaunty bowtie. The chandelier on the ceiling bounced warm yellow light
off his shiny, bald head. He nodded in agreement with Colin’s praise and turned back to the
elderly Italian men he was speaking to.

“Don’t mind Alessandro,” Colin said with a laugh. “He’s just grumpy because his football
team is doing poorly in their Autumn season.”
“You know each other?”

“Oh, Alessandro and I go way back,” Colin joked, “He told me I should marry one of his
daughters instead of returning to… I believe he called it ‘that sad, dreary place’.”

He glanced down at her, his green eyes soft as he said, “There’s too much I’d miss of
England if I never went back.”

“Yes, like your family,” Penelope added quickly.

“Oh, yes, them,” Colin said, slapping his forehead in mock embarrassment, “It’d surely be
noticed I was missing among the other… oh… twenty-something Bridgertons.”

“I would notice,” Penelope admitted softly.

Colin smiled. “I appreciate that, Pen. You really are a lovely friend to have.”

Friend. Great. Cool. Exactly what a woman wanted to hear.

“And in that spirit, I have a confession to make.”

She quirked an eyebrow, drawn in by his teasing tone.

“You see,” he said, “There weren’t any extra rooms left at the hotel where I had made
reservations for myself. And it was too late to cancel that reservation. So, it’s going to be a
bit of a tight squeeze for us during this trip.”

He was looking at her with apology in his green eyes, but Penelope’s mind was racing. Only
one room? Did that mean only one bed? She immediately began picturing the romances she’d
read starting with exactly that premise. She imagined a shirtless Colin cradling her in his
sleep. Lying next to him and inhaling the spicy scent of the soap he used.

She followed him, speechless, out of the cafe. Her mind was so full of images, flashes of
fantasies, and half-remembered dreams. She watched his broad shoulders, the narrowing of
his waist, the slight swagger of his step. She tried to imagine him saying her name,
whispering it against her lips or into her hair as he leaned in to put his mouth on her. Another
wave of warmth, reminiscent of the sensation of the cappuccino, smoothed across her cheeks
and the back of her neck.

And then she saw the peek of his TiMER out of his jacket sleeve and she was slammed to
earth.

Not for you. Not yours. Never yours.

By the time she became sensible enough to speak, Colin had gotten their room key (just
one?), an ornate silver actual key (!) and was leading her up the stairs to their room .

“Penelope,” he said, “Are you alright? You haven’t said a word to me since the cafe.”
He stood in front of her, and she was forced to meet his eyes. His shining green eyes that bore
into her own with a probing that left her feeling underdressed.

“Is the room thing freaking you out? I could see about getting a cot I could sleep on. I
promise, I have no intention of trying to sully your virtue. You are completely safe with me.”

Penelope shook her head, but she was still stuck in her mind.

No intention. No intention. Your virtue…

How did he know she was still a virgin? She’d thought once or twice about trying to get the
whole thing over with, just picking up some guy in a bar or club and having a one-night stand
just to say she’d done it. Her only kisses had been happenstance, including a spin the bottle
game where the boy showed obvious disappointment.

The thing was, every time she’d pictured it, she couldn’t imagine how she to get from
planning to completion. As in many other things, she was hampered by her blank TiMER.
After all, guys didn’t want what other men didn’t already want, even if they could look past
her not-exactly-a-size-two body. Every time she tried to put on anything approximating club
wear, she would look at herself in the mirror and just cry, knowing she wasn’t how the
clothes were supposed to fit. True, she had grown into her shape compared to the awkward
roundness of her preteen years, but she still didn’t believe she knew best how to dress it
without guidance from Madame Delacroix.

Who was she kidding? Even if she had gone through with it, found a man drunk enough to
overlook her lack, Colin would likely think her untouched. She was 28, single, and with no
soulmate on the horizon. Women like her probably ended up with a dozen cats, knitting
doilies and tea cozies to make up for the warmth she wouldn’t receive from a lover.

The sounds of her shoes on the tile hallway came to her ears like thunder cracks, echoing
over and over, “ mistake mistake mistake go home go home go home. ” The lock clicked open
with a “ loser loser loser .”

There was only one bed.

A plush, tufted white duvet formed a cloud over the queen-sized bed in the center of the
room. Penelope flashed back to the cloud of the cappuccino foam as it disappeared between
Colin’s lips. She glanced over at him, but Colin was preoccupied, settling their bags on the
luggage rack. His well-pressed, dark chino pants fitted itself against the curve of his behind
as he leaned over his suitcase.

Penelope had a sudden urge to tap his bottom. Or to get a good handful. Grab onto him while
he probed her mouth with his tongue.

What was she thinking? She put both hands to her temples in an effort to massage her
thoughts out of her mind.

Colin looked back over his shoulder, his green eyes dancing.
 “Ready to see your first glimpse of Roma?”

He hurried to the curtains at the foot of the bed and flung the gauzy white fabric aside,
revealing a quaint stone balcony that faced the city below. He presented his hand to help her
outside.

His palm was warm, but dry. Her own hand was dwarfed inside his and she would have spent
ages waxing rhapsodic on the joys of holding his hand, but then Penelope saw the city spread
out before her.

Ancient cupolas and terraces mingled with modern cars and garish brand logos. The city was
busy, but far enough away from their hotel that she wasn’t being attacked by the sound the
way she expected in London.

“What is that river called?” she asked.

“The Tiber,” he answers immediately, “It begins in the mountains of Central Italy and curves
through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio and empties to the south below Rome into the
Tyrrhenian Sea. In Ancient Rome, they called it ‘the blond’.”

“Is that because it’s fairly yellowish?”

He smiled appreciatively at her. “Exactly! Rome was founded on its banks, and rivers were
historically viewed as old gods lying on their side, their long beards forming the subtle waves
that flow forth. At the rise of the river, a column proclaims QUI NASCE IL FIUME SACRO
AI DESTINI DI ROMA.”

Before she could ask, he translated, his voice soft with wonder, “Here is born the river, sacred
to the destinies of Rome.”

Penelope shifted her gaze to his face, gazing toward the view with the half-lidded eyes of one
in love with their surroundings.

“How do you know this stuff?” she asked.

“Anthony is the Viscount. Benedict is the artist,” he said. “I don’t have a calling how they do.
No one expects anything of me except to live off the family fortune. Just another one of those
Bridgertons, not just Colin in my own right.”

He shrugged, glancing down at their hands, still joined. He flashed her an apologetic grin and
let her hand drop back to her side.

“Ready to go to the Vatican?”

Chapter End Notes

I'm thinking of writing some of the story from Colin's perspective as well, since that's
how the Bridgerton novels worked. Can I have some thoughts on whether you'd like me
to do this?
 Chapter 9
Chapter Notes

I've decided too much of this chapter is visual not to give you an idea of what Polin are
looking at. Hope you enjoy!

“I see you both hail from England,” a scowling elderly nun at the entrance grumbled. “Are
you aware that we have a dress code here that specifically prevents symbols that go against
God’s will?”

Colin looked quickly at himself, then at Penelope, standing befuddled beside him.

Okay, what is it she’s objecting to?

He was wearing the same thing he always wore in Vatican City, a nice jacket over a collared
white shirt and trousers. Penelope had followed his abruptly explained advice and had on a
sweet light blue cardigan and a pencil skirt that ended below her knees.

Let’s see… no shorts, no shoulders, no cleavage. Which is a shame, because I wouldn’t mind
seeing Penelope’s…

“I’m sorry?” Penelope squeaked out.

The skirt really makes her arse look… Wait, no. Off limits. Bad Colin. Bad.

“Your wrist wear,” the nun, covered from head to toe in black spat out. “Those things that
aim to take love out of God’s hands.”

Colin glanced at his wrist. He’d forgotten that, while TiMERS were far less common in many
European countries, The Church actively frowned upon them.

Penelope was tugging helplessly at her sweater, which featured sleeves ending at her elbows.
Colin’s cuffs could be easily settled lower.

“Wait, Pen,” he said, feeling guilty, “Why don’t you take my jacket?”

He rushed to whip off the dark blue blazer, settling it over Penelope’s shoulders. It looked
good on her, though it was humongous on her pixie-like height. And it made her red hair
flame-bright, a pop of color in an otherwise beige surrounding.

“Thank you,” she blushed.

“Of course,” he responded airily. “It wouldn’t do to bring you all the way here, only to be
turned away at the door.”

“You know, like Joseph and Mary,” he added, aware the lemon-faced old woman was still
listening.

“Hmph,” the woman grumbled as they passed her by.

Penelope had started following the crowds of tourists to the left, but Colin snagged her by the
elbow to halt her progress.

“We go to the right,” he said. “Thousands of people miss the Pinacoteca Gallery by going
left.”

“Ohhh,” she started cheekily, “I forgot I had the privilege of viewing these masterpieces with
an expert. Please, lead on, Mr. Bridgerton.”

Colin couldn’t even stop the smile crossing his face if he’d tried. Penelope was often shy and
soft-spoken, so when she let herself have moments of sarcasm or provocation, her dark eyes
shined with a light he wished she didn’t feel she needed to hide.

He cleared his throat, making his spine ramrod straight, and affected a bow.

“Miss Featherington, follow me this way, please. Most of the collections were gathered by
Pope Julius II, who coincidentally was the one who gave Henry VIII permission to marry his
first wife.”

“You mean the move that eventually led to us leaving the Catholic Church?”

Colin studied her innocent question, impressed by her quick grasp of the irony.

“What?” she asked, “I read.”

They began wandering through the paintings. Colin scanned the room for a conversation
piece that might interest his guest. In the third room, his eyes landed on Coronation of the
Virgin Mary by Lippi.

Bingo.

“Look at this triptych over here,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

They made their way through the crowd to a wooden-framed set of three paintings. At first
glance, it was the typical Renaissance painting, a bunch of religious characters with gold
halos.
“See the Virgin Mary, kneeling here in the middle?” he said.

Penelope only looked mildly interested. Colin aimed to change that.

“The painter was a former monk and the model he used for Mary was a young woman who
came from a convent. Her name was Lucrezia.”

Still nothing. Time for the kill .

“Lippi became obsessed with Lucrezia and kidnapped her right under the noses of the nuns
who were meant to watch her. It was such an enormous scandal that the Medicis had to get
involved, this super powerful family that threw their weight around to stop Lucrezia’s family
from going after Lippi.”

There it is.

Penelope glanced at the painting with fresh interest. He’d seen a similar look in his sisters’
eyes when they read Lady Whistledown , that gossip blog online discussing members of their
community.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

“Oh… um… they got married and had a kid,” he admitted. “It was the only way that it could
have turned out, in the end.”

Penelope sighed, a movement largely swallowed up by his oversized coat on her shoulders.

“Of course they did,” she said. “Women are always punished for the choices of the men
around them.”
Colin never knew how to respond when women brought up points like this. Accept them and
be accused of not listening? Try to discuss the nuance of history and be seen as unsupportive?
She wasn’t wrong , but he felt an itch to info-dump on her nonetheless.

“Would you like to play a game with me?” he asked.

It gratified him to see her perk up again.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked suspiciously.

“Have you ever noticed how most Renaissance babies look as if the painters have never seen
a real baby before?”

He looked around him.

“So, here’s Madonna of Foligno . Raphael.”

He considered the blond cherubic Jesus in the painting and the angel below him.
“Okay, so Raphael has probably seen a baby before,” he admitted.

He took her arm and rushed her across the room.

“But look at Fra Angelico. His babies look like the bloke on the American $1 bill.”

Penelope giggled, and Colin smiled once again. Penelope had a series of laughs that he’d
noticed throughout the over a decade he’d known her. There was the gossip snicker, the
joyful chuckle, the rare youthful guffaw, but his personal favorite was her giggle of surprise.
Her laugh started low in her throat before scaling up at least an octave to its full height.

“Your turn,” Colin said, “Leonardo da Vinci. What do you think?”

Penelope squinted up at the painting in front of her. She turned her head a couple of different
angles, considering. Colin found himself on edge, hoping she didn’t find his game too
frivolous or disrespectful.

“I think…” she began.

“Yes?”

“Bring me the Batman, my penguin minions!”

It was Colin’s turn to be surprised. His laughter escaped haltingly, a cough that escalated until
it finally burst free from his chest.

“That’s exactly right!”

He made eye contact with Penelope and saw her staring up at him, her brown eyes full of…
something? He wasn’t sure if he could give it a name. Colin found himself taking a step
toward her, then another. Her eyes widened, taking in his nearing form.

But then he stopped, and he just looked down into her face. She was waiting for something…
something… He needed to know, wanted to ask her what she saw that he didn’t. Wanted to
ask why, when everyone saw him as just “one of those Bridgertons”, she made him feel
like… well, just like Colin. She seemed to like just Colin. He wanted to show her more of
himself, but feared that there wasn’t as much to him as she thought there was.

“Well, Miss Featherington!” he exclaimed, forcing himself to take steps back. “Shall we
continue our tour of the Museum?”

“Oh, you’re doing a tour?” a voice called out from behind him.

Colin whirled about to see a small group of tourists looking up at him hopefully. They were
most likely Americans. The woman who had spoken wore bright stripes across her wide front
with hot pink leggings encasing her. Another man had on a Hawaiian shirt that questioned the
nature of a dress code that allowed toucans but not Penelope’s TiMER. There were maybe
seven people, all told.

“How much is it?” the woman continued.

“Oh, I don’t–” he started.

Penelope snatched his arm before he could finish his denial.

“He doesn’t take money until the end!” she burst out. “It’s a nice business model, because
you pay what you think is fair for the quality he gives you!”

Colin could only stare at her. Take money? She thought he should pretend to be a tour guide?
What if he didn’t know enough of what these visitors were interested in?

“I don’t know if I–” he stuttered.

“Oh, Colin,” Pen said fondly, “I know this was originally a private tour, but I think I can
share you with these enthusiastic knowledge seekers!”

He looked at her, then over at the group of tourists, then back at her.

“How… generous of you,” he said awkwardly.

He took a deep breath. He was really doing this? He was really doing this.

Here goes nothing .

 Chapter 10
Chapter Notes

I'm not done with Mr. Colin Bridgerton.

As the group of tourists (his tour group?) filed into the next room, Colin noticed that his first
guest had lagged behind, staring at the massive red-purple salad bowl-shaped bath in the
center of the Round Room. One of Penelope’s hands was idly running through her flame red
curls and her head was tilted to the side as she considered the artifact before her.

Assuring the last of the Americans that he would be along momentarily, Colin hurried back
toward the bath. As he approached, something urged him to sneak up behind his friend, to
surprise her. He had been described as a prankster as a kid, and as his younger sister’s friend,
Penelope had been caught up in a few of his tricks he played on Eloise.

But as he was just about to tap her shoulder (the one opposite where he stood, a classic), an
errant breeze from an opened door in the prior room blew past them, ruffling her loose, long
red curls and sending them tickling across his nose.

How does she smell just how Nutella tastes?

Colin had always been a big eater and the memory of one of his favorite foods stopped him in
his tracks. He took in a deep breath, filling his lungs with the warm chocolate-hazelnut scent.

He liked it so much more than the usual flowery and fruity soaps most women of his
acquaintance used.

“Pence for your thoughts?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, Colin!” she exclaimed. “I was just imagining what it might be like to have such a bath
of my own.”

“What were you imagining?”

“I was thinking of those old Greek myths… well, Roman too, I suppose… with the naiads
and mermaids.”

As he stood, still behind her, looking over her shoulder, he began to imagine too. He
imagined water, heated by an underground volcano, steam rising as servants filled the bath
that was nearly as wide as a city bus was long. He imagined a woman… okay, he imagined
Penelope… as attendants helped her descend into the bowl. Her hair was tied up in an ancient
style that involved braids and cascading curls. She began to drop her silk robe, revealing her
curves to him…
Wait. Wait… This is inappropriate.

Why couldn’t he stop his overeager mind from picturing her in those ways? Sure, it had been
a while since the last time he had… engaged… with a member of the fairer sex. By his own
choice, for while he enjoyed his adventures, he found his excitement in lovers who were
strangers waning.

Whenever he considered it, he found himself barred by musings as to the nature of his
prospective partner. What if she was a terrible person? What if someone was at home, waiting
loyally for her while he helped her betray them?

Sure, he told stories of women he flirted with. People expected it of him, the flighty playboy,
in contrast with his happily married siblings. The Bridgerton who couldn’t be serious about
much of anything.

“You know,” he teased, “mermaids in the old stories didn’t behave how we see in Disney
movies, sweet and flighty. I’ve always liked the tales of sirens: beautiful, powerful women
who lured men to their deaths for just the chance to be with them.”

He knew Penelope well enough to picture her face, flushed a pleasant pink. Perhaps that was
why he kept having dreams and fantasies starring her lately, that she was so familiar.

Not that he was as close to her as his sister, of course. Eloise would pick a fight with him if
he even suggested it.

The strangest part about his newest, sweetest dreams is that not all of them were sexual.
Okay, at least half of them were. Maybe two-thirds. And he always felt guilty upon waking
and realizing what his subconscious had done to him again.

But sometimes he just had dreams where he spent time with her. Hell, he’d once had a
detailed night of grocery shopping with her! Gazing across the breakfast table at her and
trying to make her laugh. Leading her to a waterfall in the middle of a quiet forest…

Okay, that one had eventually turned sexual, but still…

He wished he could make himself stop. Penelope had little in common with the lovers he’d
taken in the past. No, she wasn’t a quick fuck in a club, up against a wall because there was
no tomorrow. Penelope was a woman who deserved more than that. She deserved someone
she could rely on, who wanted to build a life with her, give her children, settle down.

Colin wasn’t sure he understood how to settle down.

Not that it mattered. He wasn’t interested in Penelope! No, he just…

Colin shook his head, bringing himself back to the present moment, to the woman herself in
front of him.

“Shall we go to the next room?” he asked. “I think you’ll really like it.”
He led her into the Hall of Muses, putting on a neutral face for the tag-a-longs waiting for
him.

“The Muses,” he began. “The guardians of all we call art, of writing and poetry, of song and
dance, of comedy and tragedy.”

“Who’s the man?” one tourist, a tiny Asian woman who had introduced herself as Mary,
asked him.

“Apollo,” he said, grateful for the distraction of his knowledge. “He was heavily associated
with music as well, hence the inclusion.”

Bernard interrupted him with a loud, “But what’s with the naked guy’s body in the middle of
the room?”

“Look at it,” Colin suggested, “Study it. Walk around all sides. When you’re done, tell me
what you think of it.”

Meanwhile, Penelope was still considering the statues of the Muses, a half confused, half
elated expression on her face.

“Erato,” he said, “She’s the muse of love poetry.”

“She has a tummy.”

“Hmm?” he asked, looking more closely at the statue.

“They’re not… heavy in the way I am,” she explained, “but they definitely don’t have flat
stomachs either.”

He realized what she was implying, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

“Actually,” he said, his voice low, “the Ancient Greeks had specific beauty standards. Would
you like me to tell you?”

“Okay,” she said in a small voice.

“The Ancient Greeks loved their women to be soft. To have curves was a sign of health and
prosperity. They looked up to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sex.”

He hadn’t meant his voice to drop low with his last words, but perhaps that’s just the
headspace he was in. Penelope was standing stock still, not looking at him, and he wasn’t
even sure if she’d heard him. He felt an urge to touch her, but of course, he held himself back.

“Whenever they depicted her,” he continued, “she had a very round bum and heavy…”

Somehow he couldn’t quite get himself to say the word breasts when he was this near to a
woman not unlike what he was describing.
“Well, you know…” he concluded lamely. “And Helen of Troy? You know, the face that
launched a thousand ships? The most beautiful woman in the land?”

He realized he might be making a mistake even as he said it, but the heady combination of
sexual desire and getting to share the subjects he was passionate about was making him dizzy
and eager.

“Did you know she had curly red hair?”

Penelope finally whirled around to look at him and he was afraid he had gone too far. Her
soft-looking pink lips parted in surprise. And maybe something else as well?

“I think I know what it is,” Mary announced from behind him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why is he doing this to me?

Penelope watched after him as Colin walked off to speak with the tourists they’d adopted.
There was no other word for it; her pulse was racing. Her hands were shaking. She lifted her
long hair off the back of her neck, trying desperately to cool herself.

How am I supposed to make it through today, much less an entire week of this?

She knew she couldn’t be imagining it; he had been flirting with her. And yes, sure, Colin
was known for being a flirt, but this was different. Because usually Colin just had a
flirtatious, friendly energy in general. This felt… intentional.

And once she thought of that word, she was stuck on it.

Because… why?
 Chapter 11

“Is this a dolphin?”

Penelope studied the coin Colin had just placed in her hand.

“With a boat rudder on the other side!” he responded happily.

And so there was. There was also a significant spattering of tarnish on the rudder side. She
turned it back over to the dolphin.

“What is this for?” she asked.

“It’s a 5 Lira coin,” he answered, not clarifying.

Penelope narrowed her eyes at Colin, letting him know she realized he was being purposely
vague. He was still smiling, but expectantly. He was practically bounding on the balls of his
feet. His dark hair had wilted somewhat in the humid air, falling over his forehead.

Penelope sighed.

“And why have you given me a 5 Lira coin?”

He led her along the street, which was significantly less busy with people at this late hour of
the night. Colin had told her that 20:00 was the average time for Italians to sit for supper,
which frankly baffled her, but it meant enough of a lull in the crowd that they could move
easily, even in the middle of Rome.

Still, after the day walking around Vatican City, her feet were aching inside her boots.

This had better be worth it.

Then, they turned the corner, and she saw it. A humongous stone structure stood at the
conjunction of three streets, water shooting from it, as a muscular, nearly naked stone man
balanced on a shell at the center. Water horses burst from either side of him, rearing up as
attendants tried to tame them. The streams poured off the rocks, illuminated in the night by
yellow lights. Tourists (who had likely eaten earlier in the day) ringed the fountain, posing for
pictures and tossing in coins.

“Oh, it’s a fountain,” she said.

“A fountain?” Colin asked incredulously, “It’s the Trevi Fountain, one of the most famous
fountains in the world! It’s been featured in a bunch of movies, like…”

“ The Lizzie McGuire Movie !” Penelope interrupted. “I knew the name sounded familiar.”

“I was going to say Roman Holiday , starring Audrey Hepburn, but sure,” he said, “that too, I
suppose. They say if you toss in a coin, you’re destined to return to Rome someday.”
They had only been in Italy for one day, but Penelope was already desperate to come back
again someday. She hurried forward, wanting to experience the tradition for herself. She
pulled her arm back, ready to let loose, but Colin grabbed her wrist before she could.

“What’s the big deal?” she asked indignantly.

“It doesn’t count unless you do it the right way.”

“Okay, Mr. Experienced World Traveler, what’s the ‘right way’ to do it?”

Before she knew it, Colin’s firm hands were on her shoulders, turning her around to put her
back to the fountain. This put her chest to chest with him. Well, on account of their height
difference, more like chest to abdomen.

He is so tall.

He backed her up until the heels of her boots hit the fountain ledge. She couldn’t stop herself
from imagining him backing her up against a wall instead, tipping her head back for a steamy
kiss.

“Now, it’s right hand over left shoulder, so the coin passes over your heart,” he explained.

“What?”

He was on the verge of laughing as he dropped two more coins into her hand.

“Here, take mine too,” he insisted. “I know I’m coming back either way, so this will give you
extra good luck.”

Joining her dolphin coin were a copper 20L coin with a sprig of leaves and a 50L coin with…

“Is that a naked man?”

He took her hand, checking what he’d given her.

“Er, that’s Vulcan, god of fire and volcanoes, working at his forge.”

“He’s still got his arse out, Colin!”

“Forges are very warm, Pen! Throw him in the water and free him from his torment!”

Rolling her eyes, she pitched the three coins over her left shoulder, unable to distinguish her
splash from those of other tourists around her. She wasn’t sure there was much point.

What are the chances a trip like this will ever come to me again?

Some people, like Colin Bridgerton, got to travel and see the world. Other people, like
Penelope, merely stayed in their own little corners and watched.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Their room was sweltering when they returned. The hotel was a small, local venue, but new
enough to have air-con available. Colin rushed to the wall control to see why it wasn’t
working, but Penelope lingered in the doorway.

She wasn’t exactly disappointed to delay the conversation regarding their sleeping
arrangements. There was no sofa in the room. They had not remembered to ask the front desk
for a cot.

Colin was tapping and rapping on the wall with nervous fingers as he fiddled with the
controls.

Penelope had to force herself not to take steps back into the hall as the silent moments
stretched.

Colin shucked his coat, pulling at his collar to loosen it.

“We have a problem,” he said, turning back to Penelope with an easy-going grin on his face.

He loosened his collar further.

“We’re going to melt into puddles in our sleep,” he joked.

“Maybe I can go ask at the front desk!” Penelope suggested quickly.

Anything to get out of the room with Colin unbuttoning the neck of his shirt. Penelope would
never have thought necks could be so admirable, but as a narrow bead of sweat trickled along
his Adam’s apple, sliding onto his chest below the fabric, she had to re-evaluate her
understanding.

Such a funny name, really. Adam’s apple. Named for the lump left in a man’s throat from the
stain of the forbidden fruit eaten in the Garden, which revealed their nakedness.

Penelope imagined that bead of sweat traveling Colin’s torso and immediately fled down the
hallway to the stairs.

Her shoes echoed against the worn tile steps, percussing the beat of her pulse. It was
November! Even in this Mediterranean city, it was still only 16 degrees. This was not a time
of year to show skin! This was the time of year for snuggling into jumpers and track bottoms
back home.

The marbled black and white of the hallway echoed the shadows of the floor-to-ceiling
window on one side. A middle-aged man stood at the kidney-shaped beige and brown front
desk, fiddling with paperwork as he passed his shift with little work to do. His hair was more
salt than pepper, and he peered through thick black-rimmed glasses in surprise as Penelope
dragged her feet into his domain.

“Signora?” the man asked, his voice rough from years of smoking.

“Oh!” Penelope exclaimed before she could stop herself. “Er, pardon. My… it is hot… up
there.”
She finished lamely, pointing in the vague direction of her room.

The man behind the counter quirked an eyebrow. Was he… judging her?

He cleared his throat, the phlegm banging against his tonsils in a futile bid to escape. He
adjusted his dark braces over his off-white, slouchy button down. Yanking out the tail of his
shirt at the front of his trousers, he wiped imagined grime from his glasses.

Penelope was about to turn tail and awkwardly walk back to her room when he finally spoke.

“Now, what is wrong with your room?” He paused. “ Signorina ?”

“Oh,” Penelope said again, though now embarrassed for a different reason. “The air-con
seems to be broken in my room.”

The man made a sound that was so phlegmatic that it was more indicative of a Semitic
language than Italian.

“Yes,” he agreed. “They are broken. It will be fixed tomorrow.”

Penelope waited for him to say more, but the man appeared to think he was done.

“Sir,” she began, “It’s over 30 degrees in my room.”

“Probably,” the man agreed. “It is unfortunate.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

The man finally appeared to consider her question, now that it was explicit.

“Ah… About the room or in Roma?”

“About the room!” Penelope wondered if she were going insane.

“One moment,” he said, before dipping into the room behind him and returning with an
oscillating standing fan. He plopped it in front of her and nodded, as if, once again, he was
certain they were done.

Penelope sighed, gripping the neck of the fan in one clenched fist.

She turned to leave, but a metaphorical tap on her spine made her pause.

“What do you suggest about Roma?” she asked, before she thought better of it.

“You must visit Trevi Fountain,” he insisted.

She turned back to him.

“We already did,” she said, brought back into conversation.

“Oh, Bravi! Did you throw a coin?”

“I did… Oh, I guess I threw three, technically.”

And something appeared to catch the old man’s attention. His whole demeanor changed, the
sunrise coming over his face.

“Complimenti!” he exclaimed.

“Excuse me?”

He smiled. “It is an old legend. One coin is for a repeat visit to Roma. Two is for a love affair.
Three is for a wedding. Your boyfriend, perhaps he is planning to take the next step?”
 Chapter 12

“Your boyfriend, perhaps he is planning to take the next step?”

An anxious, high-pitched giggle worked its way out of Penelope’s throat before she had the
wherewithal to stop it.

“He isn’t my boyfriend!” she exclaimed. “No, he hasn’t even met his soulmate yet. It’s not
me. I’m not his soulmate. I don’t have a soulmate. Look at my TiMER!”

And as she thrust her wrist out in the middle-aged Italian man’s direction, she knew she was
babbling, but she couldn’t seem to contain herself.

“See, my TiMER is blank! It always has been. Colin is just being nice to me by taking me on
a trip. He just passed me the extra two coins at the last second. He likely just had them in his
pocket, or maybe he was going to throw them himself, but he thought it might stack the deck
for me getting to come back to Rome if I threw multiple coins!

“Colin is supposed to meet his soulmate next year and I’m happy for him; I really am!”

She stopped to draw a breath and saw the old man giving her a look that was half fond, half
pitying. She wasn’t sure which side of his expression she was more comfortable with.

“So, you see,” she concluded lamely, “There’s no universe in which I end up married to Colin
Bridgerton.”

“Why not? You are a beautiful girl?”

Penelope felt… annoyed, perhaps? She felt condescended to. Beautiful? That word had never
been used to describe Penelope Featherington. Felicity, sure. Her mother, probably, in her
day. But never Penelope.

“This timer,” the man said, “It seems foolish to Italians.”

It was only then that Penelope realized it wasn’t just the nuns she had seen without TiMers. A
lot of Europeans didn’t have them, at least of the ones she’d seen that day.

“Why do you English wish to be told who to love?” the man asked. “Love is a feeling, not a
computer.”

Penelope covered her wrist with her opposite hand.

“It’s not being told who to love,” she answered defensively. “It measures your body
chemistry, hormones like oxytocin and vasopressin. TiMERs are able to tell not just when
you’re in love, but when you’re ready to be in love, ready to cling to that other person, to
love and defend them.”

“You don’t know when you want that with another person?”
Penelope didn’t know how to answer this question. People didn’t have TiMERs in her
grandparents’ day, sure, but those marriages were often unhappy, with people talking
themselves into loving others when in actuality, they weren’t feeling it. She supposed some
of them must have turned out, or where would love have come from? But it was a matter of
luck.

She could understand why people wouldn’t want to leave that up to chance if they didn’t have
to.

Still, it gave her something to think over as she began to hoist the large room fan back up the
stairs. The trouble was that she could see the argument both ways.

People who had entered early adolescent relationships that were broken up when one or both
of them aged into TiMER implantation. Supposedly happily married couples when TiMERs
first became available, who got their implants as more of a symbol, but ended up breaking up
when they were told they weren’t meant for each other?

But on the other hand, would a marriage like Colin’s older brother Benedict’s have even
happened 100 years ago? The eldest brother of a Viscount and an illegitimate, common
daughter? And they had been living together, ecstatically happy for the last year, Sophie
nearly ready to give birth to their first child.

Did it really affect her? She didn’t have anyone. Either way.

She had balanced the base of the fan on the top of her foot, swinging it along with her leg in
an attempt to keep moving, counterbalancing the neck with her hand.

Swing… thump! Swing… thump!

Penelope saw up ahead that the door to her room was still ajar, how she must have left it
when she had fled down the stairs.

Swing… thump! Swing… thump!

She felt proud of herself for helping to solve the problem. She imagined Colin’s grateful
smile when she showed him the fan.

Swing… thump! Swing… thump!

Just a few more meters to get back.

Swing… thump! Swing… thump!

With her free hand, Penelope pushed the door open so she could bring the fan the rest of the
way inside.

Swing… thump! Swing… CRASH!

Colin was in the room. Oh, yes, he was definitely there. All 1.85 meters of him. Clad in
nothing except a pair of black boxer briefs with colorful hearts.
He was sprawled out on the white duvet, arms and legs akimbo, his chest…

Penelope’s dark eyes darted over his bare skin, uncertain where to land when so much
territory was unexplored.

She had seen his arms before, of course, and his shins, at least, but most of the rest of him
was as much foreign territory as Italy was. His skin was a darker shade than hers, sun-kissed
from his many travels, and that shade continued onto those mysterious, now exposed areas of
his body.

His arms were corded muscle, strong but not bulging, with broad shoulders like an Olympic
swimmer. The hills of his torso and abdomen were glistening with sweat. A thin line of dark
hair trickled down his flat, hard-looking stomach to his…

And that’s when Penelope dropped the fan. CRASH!

Colin bolted upright from where he had been gazing idly at the ceiling, his green eyes wide,
as he immediately rushed to her side.

“Pen, are you okay?”

“I… I… I…”

His fingers roamed through her hair (looking for a head injury?), her cheek just centimeters
from his chest.

“Follow my finger with your eyes, okay?” he demanded.

With the reflex born of being a middle child, she automatically smacked his hands away and
took a few steps back.

“No, no, I’m not hurt,” she insisted. “I just…”

Got distracted by the overall size and shape of your groin?

“...tripped,” she finished lamely.

He looked past her and saw the toppled fan.

“Oh, excellent,” he said. “This room needs air movement.”

He knelt to pick it up, the muscles at his lower back flexing with his movement, his black-
hearted arse…

“Yes,” Penelope blurted, “They said the heat won’t be fixed until tomorrow.”

Colin frowned. “Unfortunate.”

He glanced down at his body, as if only then remembering his unclad state. Penelope was
surprised to see him flinch, shrinking in on himself.
“I apologize,” he said. “It was just so warm in here. Let me find my shirt.”

“No, don’t!”

He glanced up at her through his long, dark eyelashes, as if laughing at a joke she hadn’t
actually meant to make.

“Well,” he said (purred?), “if you don’t mind, we’re in for a long, sweaty night, and I’d prefer
to be as comfortable as possible.”

He must know what he’s doing. Mustn’t he?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Colin needed to stop flirting with Penelope. He knew this as well as he knew the back of his
hand, but the way she was looking at him was making that so difficult, as if she wanted to
devour him with her eyes. Eyes she mightn’t have even realized were tracing his body.

In that moment, he wished he hadn’t been so quick to shuck his clothing. Why couldn’t he
think before he acted, just once? Was this what they called middle-child syndrome, a need for
attention?

Oh, but the way she was looking at him… He wanted to pick her up and pin her against the
door frame, bury his face in her neck as he ground into her with his hips…

This is a dangerous place to let my brain go when I’m this exposed.

He spun away, too aware of what Penelope might see if he didn’t.

“Colin?” she asked.

Her voice was a squeak on the first syllable of his name, and he wondered if that’s how she
might say his name when she…

“Yeah, Pen?” he said.

He hated himself for doing that classic move of hiding his nervousness by lowering his voice.

What are you doing, Colin Bridgerton?

“Do you think we can…”

She paused, looking for her words.

“Should we go to bed?”

Go to bed. Oh, Pen, how much I want to.

“Sure,” he said, and that time his voice cracked in his throat, ratting him out for his crimes
against a good woman.
Once he had started the fan, he scrambled to cover himself with the fluffy white duvet.

“Colin, you can’t possibly need a heavy blanket!”

He chuckled, trying to sound more casual than he felt.

“No, no,” he said, “I was just going to peel it off. I didn’t think either of us would want it.”

She looked dubious, but luckily for him, she dropped it.

“Do you think we can…” she began again.

Why does she keep doing that?

“I forgot to ask for a cot. Should we just share a bed tonight?”

It was as if a ravenous lion in his chest rose and growled.

“Yeah, sure,” he attempted breezily. “Should I just go ahead and hit the lights?”

Dark. Dark was good. Darkness would hide all sins.

Terrible choice of words.

“I’ll just go change in the loo,” she said.

He nodded, trying for a casual mien.

“Sounds good, Pen. I’ll just get into the bed, shall I?”

He thought he was alright then. They’d sleep. It would be fine.

He raced to the light switch, watching as the overhead dimmed to a close. He threw himself
onto the bed, taking up as little of the far side from the en-suite as he could manage. Colin
was determined to make Penelope feel comfortable.

He could do that, right?

When Penelope opened the door to step out, he made the mistake of looking. In the brief
moments before the light snapped off, he glimpsed her thin pink vest that brushed the tops of
her thighs, flourishing out into full, luscious hips. The neck of the top skimmed her clavicle,
but the fabric clung to her, revealing her shape as clearly as if she were naked in silhouette.

The beast inside him roared.

She lay next to Colin in the bed and, as her body bent the springs of the mattress toward her,
he felt as if he should bury his hands behind him, so strong was his urge to grab her and pull
her on top of him.

Darkness spread across the room, and silence followed.

Could he even fall asleep, knowing she was right there next to him?

Not that he would touch her. Not allowed.

The silence spread for so long that he was sure she had fallen asleep, until he felt her body
shifting, rolling up onto her side and facing him. His eyes, adjusted to the dark, could see the
mountain range of her shoulders, her hips...

“Pen?” he began, and there was something in his voice that he was sure qualified as quiet
desperation.

“Yes, Colin?”

He loved the sound of his own name on her lips.

“What made you pretend I was your tour guide?”

She sighed loudly, and at once he became concerned that he was annoying her.

“I suppose…” she began, “In a way, you already were my tour guide. That’s what bringing
me here was, right? And you know so much about so many things from your travels that it
was a waste for you to share them with only me. Everyone should get the chance to
experience your passion…”

She coughed on that last word, but it still sent shockwaves straight between his legs.

“...your excitement for the subjects. I’ve always loved your stories, at least the ones you’ve
told me. But experiencing the sights with you? It’s so much better.”

“You’ve always been my most faithful correspondent,” he said.

And it was true. He had written her… god knows how many emails and Facebook messages
from his trips. No matter how mundane the subject, she always asked him the most
thoughtful and intelligent questions. His family members wouldn’t feel the need to give him
any attention, so it made sense they wouldn’t put forth so much effort.

“You should really think about doing this,” she said, “Being a professional international
guide, or something.”

Colin didn’t know what to say. His chest felt warm, like eating hot soup after coming in from
trudging through an Iceland winter day, sky black as night (never again). At the same time his
stomach dropped how it had when he’d gone skydiving in Hella during that same trip.

“I’ve never thought about it before,” he said. “You think people would actually want me to do
that? Like, they would actually request me if it was a business or something?”

“Of course they would, Colin!”

He really wasn’t sure, but how nice it was to hear it from her lips!
“Sleep sweet, Penelope,” he said, his brain already percolating with ideas.

“Sleep sweet, Colin.”

 Chapter 13
Chapter Notes

One more post before the weekend. I really hope you like it. It's been percolating in my
head for a while.

“Oh, here’s our ride.”

Penelope felt Colin’s palm press into the small of her back as he ushered her toward… an old
minibus? A friendly enough looking man waited in the driving seat as Colin grabbed the
handle with his spare hand.

“What?” she asked.

“Our ride,” he repeated.

“What, is this the part of the vacation where you and the locals conspire to harvest my
organs?”

Colin chuckled, but the sound did not reassure her.

He honestly expected her to get into this… unmarked, lightly rusted, grey minibus from
1999? Didn’t a disturbing number of European horror movies start just like this? He’d told
her to dress comfortably, to wear clothes that wouldn’t break her heart if they got dirty. She’d
thought he was exaggerating, so she’d just thrown on blue jeans and a thin sweater. But was
she about to be taken into some kind of hard labor?

Oh, god, he wouldn’t make her hike , would he?

Penelope allowed Colin to give her a hand into the minibus, a space even she needed to duck
to pass into, so she couldn’t imagine how he would do the same without doubling over. The
bench seat was a worn cloth that used to be black, but was now doing its best not to brown in
the sun. At least it was clean; that was one point in the “not being sold into sex slavery”
column.

She threw a nervous “Ciao” at the driver as Colin slid into the seat beside her. His burnt
orange henley didn’t seem a color that should flatter anyone, and yet on Colin’s sun-kissed
complexion it brought out the green of his eyes and the strands of lighter brown that had been
bleached through his hair by exposure to natural light and time.

Once he’d pulled the door shut behind them, he adjusted his long frame into the small space,
slinging an arm over the back of the bench behind her and slouching to achieve greater
comfort.
Off they’d driven. He refused to reveal their destination, so Penelope was forced to watch the
sights roll by out the window of the minibus. They’d been picked up from the metro station
(where she’d assumed they were going to ride a train!) and the scenery was initially the same
city streets she’d observed since their arrival the previous morning.

But at some point, the buildings were getting further apart. The minibus rumbled over roads
that became cobbled, the stones smooth and worn from centuries of travel over them, the lane
so narrow that she wondered how they would negotiate if a vehicle came from the opposite
direction.

“The Appian Way,” Colin began quietly, “is one of the earliest roads of the Roman Empire.
Constructed 200 years before the birth of Julius Caesar, it was an important thoroughfare for
the moving of supplies and troops.”

Penelope imagined not just cars, but carriages, perhaps even chariots (did people use those
for actual travel, or just races?) that bumped down the road, drawn by faithful horses that
shouldered the burden with their usual hardworking aplomb.

“Ever heard the saying ‘All roads lead to Rome’? This was the first road they were talking
about.”

With that, little oddities along the way stood out with more importance. A pale yellow boxy
building with turrets to either side, the bricks worn and stained from centuries of battle
against whatever elements came to challenge them. The ruins of a tower in the distance. A
massive grey stone house that seemed to be missing its entire roof.

Eventually the minibus turned onto an even smaller road, the sides of the vehicle brushed by
tall grasses that grazed the bottom edges of her window. They came to an old wooden gate
with a stone-faced lion snarling out from the intricate lock. There was no automation to open
this gate, and the driver parked to handle it himself.

“Colin, where on earth are you taking me?” Penelope asked again.

But just as he had every other time along the way, he smiled and replied, “You’ll see. I don’t
want to spoil it.”

An old-fashioned farmhouse lay beyond the end of the drive, with a couple of chickens
scratching at the ground, but they scattered when Colin and Penelope neared them. Along the
side of the house was a wooden pavilion of the sort wherein events were held. A couple of
long, white tables stretched across the length of the room, and at the other end of the pavilion,
a man in a black shirt with unkempt curly dark hair raised his hand in greeting.

“Signor Bridgerton!” he called out, patting his hands on the hem of his shirt. “Right this way.
Is this the young lady you told me about?”

Colin was grinning like the cat that got the cream.

“Giuseppe, this is Penelope.” He turned to her. “Pen, this is Chef Giuseppe, master of
traditional Italian cooking.”
“Oh, my friend, you are too kind,” Giuseppe said as he adjusted his rimless square glasses.

Penelope took in her surroundings. Behind the chef were multiple large outdoor ovens,
containers of ingredients, and a chubby Manx cat sleeping in the gravel under one table.

“Please, my friends,” Giuseppe said, “Wash your hands and push up your sleeves so we can
get started.”

“Is it just us?” Penelope asked as they moved to the side of the pavilion.

The handwashing station featured a white stone lion that matched the one at the gate, with
water that shot out of the mouth and fell into a marble basin below. The water was icy, but
Penelope endured it as best she could without complaining.

“Just us,” Colin confirmed. “A special favor I called in this morning. I’ve been thinking a lot
about what we discussed last night.”

The first thing that popped into Penelope’s head was him apologizing for appearing before
her, nearly nude, but she had to assume he was actually referring to his aspirations.

Giuseppe was waiting for them with a couple of rough white aprons slung over his
outstretched arm.

Before Penelope could make a move to take one for herself, Colin had grabbed both and
busied himself pushing the neck over her head, tugging the front smooth. He made a
wordless “turn around” gesture, spinning his pointer finger clockwise toward the ground.

When she complied, Colin bent down behind her, snagging the ties to either side of her apron
(his knuckles grazing against her sides in the process!) and securing the strings behind her.
He made quick work of his own apron, and Penelope wondered why she had never had any
Colin cooking fantasies before.

She supposed it had never occurred to her he might boil water without burning it.

The chef dropped a couple of lumps of dough in front of them on the table.

“Pizza,” he declared. “None of this Domino’s nonsense. You will cook on my wood-burning
stove!”

Penelope’s mouth began to water. She looked up at Colin, who seemed inordinately pleased
with himself. His green eyes were flashing with the same delight he’d displayed watching her
try her first cappuccino the previous morning.

She really liked when he looked at her that way.

They sank their hands into their respective doughs (but not before covering them with flour!),
kneading the soft, pale off-white lumps.

“Are we going to learn how to throw the pizza in the air?” Penelope asked excitedly.
“Bahhh,” Giuseppe scoffed, “This is Hollywood nonsense. It is not the right way.”

She watched Colin stretch the dough on the tabletop and attempted to copy his movements.

They got the opportunity to choose their toppings (“Use prosciutto, trust me,” Colin insisted),
and it was time to cook their pizzas in the oven.

The heat from the wood fire warmed Penelope’s cheeks. Colin arrived at her side holding a
gigantic metal road-sign looking thing with a handle as long as a broom. She watched as he
picked up her pizza carefully, laying it on the flat of the road sign.

“And now, we cook,” he said.

He handed her the metal contraption carefully, and she grasped it with both hands, concerned
she might let her creation hit the ground. She balanced the flat end on the stone of the pizza
oven.

“Try to get it near the middle,” Colin instructed.

Penelope pushed her pizza closer to the fire, watching in awe as the fat of the prosciutto
began to pop and sizzle.

“You need to periodically rotate it,” Colin said.

Penelope stared at her pizza, uncertain how she was meant to carry out this feat. Colin must
have noticed her reluctance, because he came to stand behind her, his much larger hand
wrapping on top of her small one.

His chest was pressed into her back and despite the heat of the fire, she was still aware of his
breath in her hair as he guided her hand. They slid a corner of the paddle under the pizza, just
enough to give it a corner turn, yanking the paddle back with a sharp tug. Even though he had
already demonstrated the movement to her, Colin didn’t back away, so they stood there
together, turning her pizza.

If only he would take that further step of intimacy, wrapping his other arm around her waist.
Penelope imagined it, being held fully against his chest, the closeness of such a slight
moment. His face would be so close that he could rest it fondly against her curls.

When it was time to eat, they each carried their own creation on an appropriately sized plate
to the picnic table just outside the pavilion. Colin’s was piled with prosciutto, a spicy Italian
sausage she had been too nervous to try, parmesan, mozzarella, basil, and mushrooms. It was
a tall order, but she had seen him eat before. She didn’t know how Colin kept such an
outstanding figure (as she had observed the night before) with how much he could put away
in one sitting.

“We’ll be making pasta after we eat this,” he explained as he picked up a slice to take a bite.

“Oh no,” Penelope joked. “How will I ever develop a thigh gap with all these carbs around?”
With his mouth full, Colin replied, “The only time you should think about your thighs having
a gap is when I’m between them.”

Penelope’s pizza dropped out of her hands, back onto her plate. Did he just…?

“What?” she exclaimed, her mind racing with how she could have misheard him.

Colin looked up and, with a grin, began to repeat, “I said…”

But then he froze. His smile fled off his face like a fox in hot pursuit. He looked almost…
scared?

“FUCK!” he yelled, shocking Penelope as he jumped up from his seat.

He glanced left and right, repeating (still at a sizable volume), “Fuck!”

And without a backward notice for her, he sprinted toward the far side of the house, past the
chickens, and disappeared out of sight behind the shed.

Penelope couldn’t move. She just stared after him, waiting for the world to make anything
resembling sense again.

Colin had only finished a quarter of his pizza.

 Chapter 14
Chapter Notes

There's not as much dialog in this chapter, but I feel like it tells you a lot about the Colin
I see in my head. I hope it was worth the wait!

Alternate Chapter Name: Colin Bridgerton Has Anxiety

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Why? Why why why?

Why had he said that after years of staying in control?

Why had he let himself get too comfortable and forget?

He needed to get away. He needed to run and hide and…

The chickens scratching for bugs on the old Italian farm scattered and squawked in protest as
he raced through their loose gathering, searching frantically for somewhere, somehow he
could escape.

Why did it have to happen out here where there was nowhere to get away?

He shut himself into the outhouse and his mind was racing so fast that he didn’t even flinch
the way he normally would have.

His heart pounded like a kettledrum, his blood pulsing in his ears. He couldn’t breathe. He
couldn’t BREATHE!

How had he been so stupid? He had just ruined everything! Typical Colin Bridgerton,
respects nothing, can’t keep his thoughts and ideas to himself for the time it took to blink!

He sunk to the concrete floor, his body folding in on itself, his head banging against the
wooden wall of the privy. His jaw fell open in a silent keen, his chest holding back the
scream his throat wanted to emit.

And again. And again. And again. His body trying to release the pressure and his arms and
legs shaking with the effort of holding onto himself.

He’d worked so hard! So hard and it was gone in an instant!

He heard a soft rap at the door and his neck and shoulders tensed and froze on the spot.

Oh no no no…
“Colin? Are you in there?”

Her? Why did it have to be her? Her soft, kind voice was pinpricks of needles in his
consciousness as he berated himself again and again.

But at the same time, at least he wasn’t shaking to pieces, though a tear or two threatened to
escape the tight prison he had on them.

“Colin, if you’re in there, can you just knock once on the door to let me know?”

He considered ignoring her, but how could he do that when he’d already ruined everything
else?

He raised a trembling hand and slapped the door, squeezing his eyes shut at the same time.

“Colin, what’s wrong?”

How could he possibly answer her when every word out of his mouth condemned him to
further guilt?

It was silent for a long moment, and Colin both hoped and feared that she had walked away.

“Colin?” she finally said again, “knock one for yes, twice for no. Can you tell me what’s
wrong?”

He quickly knocked twice.

“Okay, okay. You don’t need to speak. Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

Colin thought for a moment, then knocked once.

“Good, good. Are you hurt?”

He was slow and quiet, but he knocked twice.

His breathing had slowed slightly, but he still felt like he had just finished a marathon.

“Colin, did I do something wrong?”

How could she think that? Before he could interrogate himself, he pushed open the door
slowly.

“Penelope, what could you have done wrong?”

Her dark eyes were heavy with worry.

“I don’t know, Colin, but you ran from me,” she mumbled.

“I wasn’t running from you!” he exclaimed. “I was…”

He could feel his legs give out under him, but it wasn’t until he hit the dirt that he was even
aware he’d been sliding down the wall outside the privy.

“...I was running away from myself,” he admitted, only realizing it was true as he was forced
to put the thought into words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Penelope watched as the man of her dreams slumped, dejected, onto the ground, the most
disheveled she had ever seen him. Or the most he had ever let her see… She wasn’t sure
which.

She expected to feel anxious. She expected to feel self-conscious.

But she didn’t.

Well, perhaps when Colin wasn’t acting as he normally did, Penelope wasn’t either. There
was a kind of balance in that. She felt fiercely protective of him, this man who was so strong
and carefree.

She stepped forward cautiously, waiting to see if Colin would flinch away from her. Though
he didn’t move, he also didn’t make eye contact, keeping his head turned resolutely,
shamefully, downward.

Penelope reached out (surprised she dared!) and smoothed his thick, dark hair. She always
wondered what his hair would feel like. She’d wondered if it would be like Eloise’s (and was
it weird that she had fixed his sister’s hair many times to get this experience?)

Colin’s was even shaggier under its well-coiffed mask, almost mane-like at the roots. If he’d
been a girl, he’d have been the envy of their community (and didn’t it always work that way,
men getting the thickest hair and longest eyelashes?)

But more importantly, he leaned into her palm like a neglected dog desperate for affection.
So, she gave it to him, combing through his locks and letting her nails scratch his scalp
lightly as she waited for his breathing to slow.

She took another step and his head was against her abdomen, no doubt taking comfort in the
softness of her figure (she supposed it had to be good for something).

“Colin,” she whispered, trying her hardest not to spook him, “If you’re not up to talking, I
can ask Giuseppe to have his driver take us back into town. But if you do want to, or if you
think it might help, know that I’m here to be a friendly ear.”

Colin let out a dismissive sound that (under normal circumstances) probably would have
annoyed her. But one of them had to be the “adult” at the moment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Could he do it? Could Colin shake this off and be his normal public-facing self? He owed it
to Penelope to give her what she actually wanted. What people always wanted from him.
 If Colin was being honest with himself, he had known for years that Penelope had something
of a crush on him. He usually pretended he didn’t notice (because selfishly it had been easier
that way). If he admitted he knew some of his interest was reciprocated, how would he
continue to stop himself from acting on it?

He didn’t have the energy to be public-facing Colin full time. It was another reason he
traveled, so many people who didn’t know him by his last name first, personality last.

The saddest part of all was that he would have loved to be the Colin Penelope thought he
was. It would have been so much easier. He could imagine that Colin with Penelope. Hell,
baser parts of his anatomy already imagined it regularly.

If Colin let her see who he really was inside, who he was when he wasn’t using every ounce
of his energy to hide the dark places, Penelope would lose interest instantly. He had no
illusions with the way his own siblings had reacted before he learned to conceal them.

And yet… what a relief it would be, to be allowed to relax around someone, just one person
he didn’t have to lie to.

It was this thought that finally made him look up into her eyes. Her beautiful brown eyes with
the gold flecks that showed him all the affection he wished he deserved.

Why did all the men of their acquaintance seem to ignore this siren? She was smart, kind,
resilient. In short, she was wonderful. Surely there was someone out there in the world who
could give her what she should have, all the love and care that she could give them back.

As he continued to look into her eyes and she continued to run her fingers through his hair, he
had never felt safer. Or more confused.

Chapter End Notes

TBH, I've been working on this all weekend and it was kind of emotionally draining. I
hope it works. I hope it makes sense.
 Chapter 15

hey where r u? feel like i haven’t seen you for a couple days. was i 2 busy with Geoff?

Penelope was startled to see a text from her little sister and ashamed to realize she hadn’t
remembered her once since Colin had arrived to sweep her off to Italy. Felicity was going
through a monumental moment in her life and Penelope hadn’t been there for you. Still
wasn’t there for her.

And hadn’t even told her where she was going. Or left a note. Or text.

She couldn’t call herself the worst big sister ever, because she’d met her older sisters, but this
wasn’t the relationship she and Felicity had!

Before she could work out how to respond, her phone went off again. Eloise.

pen, so you’ve been mia lately. sister stuff? how weird is it that LW hasn’t written about
it?

Oh my god .

Was she determined to drop the ball on every aspect of her identity? How, after over a
decade, had she forgotten that everyone would tune into her blog to see her alter ego’s take
on the match? She had gone on sabbatical before, but not during such a huge Society
moment!

“Who’ya texting?”

She and Colin were back in the van, headed back to their hotel. He had admitted that he
wasn’t sure he had the stomach to be around more food. Of course, Penelope had met him, so
she’d asked Giuseppe to pack up the rest of their pizzas for them to take along.

When they’d gotten into the van, Colin had taken her left hand in his right. Not fingers laced
or anything like that, but they’d been sitting in that companionable silence, watching the
countryside roll by, holding hands.

Penelope was trying not to obsess about what it meant . Especially in light of Colin’s sexual
comment and subsequent freakout.

“Your sister,” she answered simply, then clarified, “Eloise,” because Colin had four sisters,
after all.

And his hand tightened its grip on her own slightly as he responded, “What about?”

How much to reveal to him? She supposed the straightforward (if deceptive) method was
best.

“Lady Whistledown hasn’t posted about my sister.”

“Oh? Do you think she’s on holiday?”

Deflect, Featherington, deflect!

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t notice me, but I’m surprised she didn’t speculate about where
you were going on your next trip.”

Penelope didn’t know why this comment made him drop her hand, but her palm felt chilled
and bereft in his absence. It was one step forward, three back with Colin. She’d find out what
was going on with him somehow; mark her words.

“She’s mentioned you before,” Colin yawned, turning away to the window.

Well, of course. It would have been too suspicious if Penelope had left her own family out of
the blog. Ditto the Bridgertons, who Society was very interested in. She’d hated exposing
Colin to scrutiny during the disastrous flirtation with her cousin Marina, but if she hadn’t
done it, it could have been much worse.

“Mostly to make fun of my clothes,” Penelope pointed out.

“If she’s not on holiday, maybe she’s not clever enough to guess that we’re together.”

Penelope didn’t know which impulse to address first, defending her cleverness, or pointing
out that they weren’t together together. But she couldn’t do the former and she had to admit
that the latter was the type of gossip and speculation she would have posted if the story were
about someone else and she were on her game.

She knew that Colin’s greater than average attention was a big part of throwing her off that
game. Had she ever been alone in a room with him before?

Well, there was one time.

Penelope was 15, just months before TiMER day, and she could think of nothing else but
finding her soulmate. She was at Number 5, Bruton Street, where Lady Bridgerton and her
minor children had moved after the Viscount’s wedding and the new Viscountess moved into
Bridgerton House. Not that Kate had forced Violet out. On the contrary, she and Anthony had
tried to insist that she stay, and his siblings too, but Violet insisted newlyweds needed time to
themselves without a mother getting into their business.

Since then, Lady Bridgerton had decided that they would have afternoon tea in Number 5’s
upstairs parlor, rather than in the less cozy larger downstairs hall. Penelope had initially been
surprised to receive an invitation to join them, but eventually she became comfortable turning
up most days to join them.

She was supposed to meet Eloise that day to go shopping, but when she arrived at Number 5,
she discovered Eloise and Francesca had already gone out. Their butler had seemed
befuddled, but suggested that she could wait in the upstairs parlor until they returned, if she
would like.

She must have been sitting for only ten minutes when the door opened.
“Oh, hello, Penelope. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

Colin Bridgerton had just returned from his first trip abroad, a quick jaunt in Paris. The older
boy had, for the first time, allowed his facial hair to grow in, not a substantial beard, but
enough to make him look so much more grown up, sexy, dangerous.

He had become a man, while she was still a girl.

God, what if this man was her soulmate? Was it crazy for her to wish it?

She must have been crazy, because the first words out of her mouth were, “Would you be
willing to give me my first kiss?”

Francesca, who was a year younger than Eloise, had already had hers at thirteen, for God’s
sake. Plenty of girls had. Penelope would daydream on their stories of awkward, fumbled
touches that still sounded so romantic.

Colin trained his eyes on her as if it was the first time he had really seen her. He approached
the settee where she perched nervously, cursing her foolhardiness.

He took the seat right next to her, so close that one of his knees brushed against her own.

“Oh, Pen,” he sighed, “Aren’t you and my sister getting your TiMERs soon?”

“Well, yes, but…”

He took her hands in his own, warm and strong, and gazed down into her eyes.

“I can’t do that,” he said. “Keep that for your soulmate. You would only hate me if I took that
away from the two of you.”

“But,” she stuttered, “what if I want to risk it?”

Colin had looked genuinely surprised. “Penelope Featherington, you have a genuine spark to
you. Don’t break too many hearts when you devote yourself to your soulmate.”

And he’d left her there, wondering what it had all meant.

She was still wondering what had happened to him over their table of pizza. What was it he’d
said?

“The only time you should think about your thighs having a gap is when I’m between them.”

Of course, she remembered his exact words. They were embedded in her mind, something for
her to live on when she was old and gray. That a man as delectable as Colin Bridgerton had
thought her worth flirting with, if even just for a moment.

But then, he’d run away. And she didn’t know why. He’d said he was running away from
himself, but what on earth could he have meant by that?
She wasn’t going to let him get away with it. She couldn’t, not this time. She would be
damned if she wouldn’t get his answer this time.

When the van pulled up to the front of her hotel, Penelope grabbed Colin’s hand before he
got any ideas of running off or deflecting. She steered him through the door with her like he
was a childhood wagon with a problem wheel that refused to cooperate with the others. She
marched him through the lobby, up the stairs, and down the hall, ignoring his chuckling
questions about what she was doing.

She wasn’t Penelope Featherington any more. This was Lady Whistledown, hunting out
answers from recalcitrant society members. She embodied the gossip newshound who always
got what she was searching for.

They stopped at the door and she tapped her foot impatiently as he fished out the keys.

As soon as the door was open, she seized a handful of his shirt and hauled him into the room.

“Sit down,” she ordered.

“Oh,” he purred, “I like when you tell me what to do.”

That foxlike grin was back, but Penelope wasn’t buying it. He was deflecting. She froze him
in place with her gaze and spoke her next words carefully.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Colin’s grin turned into a smirk as he leaned back on the end of the bed. His long, lean torso
stretched out before her, the position squaring his shoulders all the more prominently, his
head tilting at an angle.

“Why, Miss Featherington, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She crossed her arms, raising one eyebrow at him, and she waited. How dare he? How dare
he be so damn sexy when she was trying not to be distracted? But he had miscalculated,
because she didn’t actually believe he was trying to seduce her.

So, she stayed quiet.

“Penelope, why are you looking at me like that?” Colin asked cheekily.

She stayed quiet.

“Penelope,” he repeated, this time more of a plea, “why are you looking at me like that?”

Quiet.

Colin sat back up, looking down into his lap.

“Penelope,” he sighed, sounding resigned, “why are you looking at me like that?”
“Colin Bridgerton, if you think for a second that I’m going to let you pretend this afternoon
didn’t happen, you have another think coming! What is going on with you? What am I
supposed to think?”

He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes and looked up into her face.

“Pen, I can’t,” he pleaded. “Please, don’t ask this of me. I’ll do whatever you want, but
please, I can’t.”

This made the second time in the same day she had seen him from above, seeing what he
must have looked like as a scared little boy. His bright green eyes were duller with unshed
truths. He had never looked so small or so guilty in front of her.

Penelope wanted to leave him alone. Colin never deserved to be trapped in a corner. But
Lady Whistledown wanted to know what he was hiding, and Lady Whistledown would get
her exclusive.
 Chapter 16
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Penelope Featherington was magnificent. Radiant. Standing over him, demanding what she
wanted, she was Boudica in miniature; her streaming fiery locks escaping from their updo
imprisonment as she planned her uprising on his heart. She was striking as his Celtic Queen
and was it wrong that he was turned on in this moment?

Oh, he was definitely still nervous and scared, but…

Maybe he enjoyed being told what to do when it was his gorgeous, curvy, petite woman
telling him. Maybe he wanted her to shove him back on the bed and climb on top of him. She
would mount him and take her pleasure from him, and he would be helpless in the face of his
need, and she would call out his name, his Penelope would …

Oh, god. What the fuck is wrong with me?

He wasn’t allowed to think like this. She wasn’t his .

She could be , a rebellious voice in her head whispered.

She could be. All he needed to do was tell her. All he needed to do was tell her how he
thought of her every day and how being near her on this trip hadn’t inoculated him the way
he had hoped. He was an addict and his drug was Penelope. He had traveled far and wide in
search of adventure, and she had always been his constant, waiting for him to come home.

Come home to her?

The famous Greek playwright Aristophanes had posited that humanity had begun as two-
headed, eight-limbed, androgenous creatures who were so powerful that they had challenged
the gods. They had been split by a fearful Zeus and were forced to spend the rest of their lives
looking for their other half. Their greatest wish was to be rejoined by the mighty forge of
Hephaestus.

He had a coin of Hephaestus (or at least his Roman equivalent, Vulcan) somewhere.

No, he’d given it to Penelope to throw into the fountain.

She was still standing in front of him, waiting for him to say something. He needed to say
something.

Anything.

God, would he be this tied up about her if he’d just kissed her when he was 20, when she’d
asked him? Rather than obsessing over that decision for a decade?
“Penelope,” he began, “have you ever had a secret? One that could cause an enormous mess
if it got out?”

If anything, she appeared even more invested.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose everyone does.”

“I have several.”

“Are all of them relevant at this moment, or are you going to address one in particular?”

She was sharper, snarkier, than he’d given her credit for. God, he was half hard already.

“It might make you look at me differently.”

Though her arms had already been crossed, now they tightened protectively around her. This
had the unfortunate effect of plumping up the shelf of her breasts all the more, and Colin
didn’t know how drool wasn’t falling out of his mouth.

“Why would you care how I look at you? Plenty of people look at you.”

“I don’t really care about plenty of people.”

Colin let his head fall again, scratching the back of his neck. He just… How much was one
man supposed to bear? He wasn’t his brothers. He didn’t have a great destiny ahead of him.
No one had told him what he should do.

Well, not no one .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Colin stood up so suddenly from the bed that Penelope had to take a few steps back to avoid
taking a direct header to the chin. His smile had come out, the sun from behind the clouds.
With his re-accession of height, he regained power in their tête-à-tête and Penelope
remembered who she was when she no longer hid behind a screen. She wasn’t the Queen.
She wasn’t brave or forceful. Penelope wasn’t even as daring as her little sister had been.

“I care about your opinion!” he exclaimed.

“O-Okay…” Penelope stuttered, taken aback by his volume.

She had the urge to put more distance between them, but Colin seized her shoulders, and
Penelope was forced to endure the nearness. Not just the closeness of their bodies, but
suddenly the closeness of their faces. Dear lord, he smelled nice.

Colin was so near that she could see a couple of tiny freckles she’d never noticed on his nose
before. She suddenly became convinced that he was about to kiss her. His emerald eyes were
overjoyed, sparkling and laughing, tiny lines gathering around his eyes as the dark fringe of
lashes brushed his cheeks.
“Penelope, you’re a genius,” he whispered, and a stream of warmth spread out to the tips of
her fingers.

She glanced at his mouth, at his lips. At his lower lip, full and soft. She was sure his lips were
soft.

She bit her own lip in anticipation.

“Penelope?” he asked. “Are you listening?”

He was so close, so close. If she rose on her toes, she could claim his mouth for herself. She
could sink her hands into that thick, lovely hair and pull him down to her. His hands would
slide past her lower back and…

“Penelope!”

“Yes, Colin?” she breathed.

“Can you please start packing?”

“What?”

She was gone again, sinking into the well of her own self-inflicted despair. Penelope couldn’t
believe she had let herself think again that she could have what she couldn’t. She would have
done better selling her tongue to a sea witch.

“Your tour guide idea,” Colin said. “I want to try it out with you. Let me take you to my
favorite places in all of Italy.”

“I thought you were already doing that?” she asked, “Weren’t you?”

He chuckled, and Penelope felt weak. She needed to sit. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t,
not where he could see. Penelope pushed past him, stumbling until she reached the bed,
hauling a hip onto the mattress before letting her whole body sink, lying flat on her back.

She closed her eyes, and she wasn’t even surprised when Colin’s weight settled next to her.
She was shocked, however, when his fingers intertwined with her own. His grip was solid,
confident, engulfing.

“I’ve done something to upset you,” Colin said. “Please, tell me so I can fix it.”

What did he want her to say? “I’m disappointed because you continue to not love me like I
think you should”? Yeah, that would go over well.

“What did you have in mind?” she said. “What do you want to show me that you haven’t
already planned?”

She should just go home. Penelope didn’t know why she was such a glutton for despondency.
Why she kept giving Colin chance after chance he hadn’t even requested.
“Penelope,” Colin began.

He rolled up onto his side, and his eyes were soft, so soft.

“Penelope, can I ask a favor of you?”

His voice had returned to the sudden uncertainty of earlier.

“Er, of course,” she said.

“You’re allowed to say no.”

“Yes, Colin?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He might go to hell for this, but if he did, at least he would have tried to do something for a
change instead of simply running. Penelope had given him hope he hadn’t realized he had.
The merest glimmer of a path forward and he was just the eager corvid to hoard it, regardless
of whether he was worthy.

“Penelope.”

He swallowed the deep lump in his throat. He was going to push and shove himself through
this, even if it was akin to the greatest Sisyphean effort. His fear was a brick wall, but if he
needed a jackhammer, he was going to make an adult decision and his own anxiety be
damned.

“Penelope, will you allow me to kiss you?”

Her soulful brown eyes widened in panic, and she immediately started scuttling and backing
away from him on the mattress.

“Should I take that as a no?” he joked, but his heart was busy reaching up to choke him out.

Her chest was heaving in fear, and Colin wanted nothing more than to throw himself off the
balcony.

You’ve done it again, Bridgerton. Twice in one day. That’s really an accomplishment.

“Yes.”

Wait, what?

It had barely been a squeak, but he knew he had heard it.

“Yes?” he repeated. He wanted her, wanted her desperately, but he would take nothing less
than an unambiguous yes. He couldn’t.

Her cheeks were flushed the prettiest pink, and Colin could see the blush trickling down her
neck and diving under her clothes. Her breast was still rising and falling with some effort, but
 her eyes… Her eyes were burning into his soul, their yearning flame flaying him bare, and
Colin didn’t know how he hadn’t proposed the idea to her days ago. Months ago. Years ago.

“Colin, what are you saying? You don’t want to kiss me.”

Was she insane?

Chapter End Notes

Colin is experiencing a lot of feelings all at once, isn't he? I'll admit, we're approaching
the harder part of the story for me to write, tension and uncertainty. I'm 100% committed
to continuing and finishing this story (and I have a lot left to do), but I am finding it
more stressful to make sure I'm doing the idea justice with my words.
 Chapter 17

“Penelope…” Colin paused. “Middle Name Here Featherington…”

“It’s Ann,” Penelope offered breathlessly.

“Penelope Ann Featherington…” Colin said, accepting the information.

He lay on his side across their bed, propping his head up in his hand. Penelope was about as
far away from him as she could get, having scrambled backward at his proposition, but she
hadn’t yet left their bed. He would take the encouragement where he could get it.

Colin continued, “... if you think for one moment that I would, in fact, ask you to kiss me if I
didn’t want you to, then perhaps you’re not as smart as I’ve always given you credit for.”

She scowled and quickly tilted her body into a more neutral position, verging on combative.

Got her .

“Have you considered,” Penelope argued, “that in fact you asked to kiss me? You didn’t ask
me to kiss you .”

Colin had only recently seen this lioness come to chase away the startled deer everyone
thought Penelope was, but he loved her.

“So, what you’re saying,” he purred, “is that you’d rather kiss me ?”

He ran the fingers of his free hand over the tufted lines of the duvet. He imagined tracing the
imprint of those lines on Penelope’s skin after he drove her into the blanket.

“Well, by all means, Miss Featherington,” he chuckled.

“Colin, don’t be daft,” Penelope grumbled. “This little joke of yours isn’t funny.”

“Penelope,” he said, his face as serious as he could muster, “do you see me laughing?”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to do with that. Well, pushing onward then.

“Anyway, the tour begins tonight,” he said, not letting her see that she’d rattled him, “and
then tomorrow, Grosseto. Say goodbye to this hotel after tonight, because we’re going on the
road.”

With that, he lifted himself off the bed, pivoting to the other side of the room, heading into
the loo, and kicking the door shut behind him.

Penelope had already dumped an icy shower on his head, but he was going to hide for now.
Couldn’t let her see him as he slumped against the frosted glass stall.
So, that’s how she wanted it, hmm? Well, pursue her, he would. Penelope had been invading
his mind for ages.

Turnabout is fair play.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Colin had spoken little after their strange, uncomfortable exchange on the bed, so it surprised
Penelope when he ushered her into a black hack after insisting she dress nicely for dinner, but
dress warmly as well. She’d tried her best, considering how hastily she’d packed.

So she’d thrown on a navy cabled sweater dress with her same boots she’d worn the day
before and pulled on a pair of tights just in case they would be outside for any length of time.
Sighing at her appearance in the mirror, she left her hair down so it would cover the shoulders
her dress bared.

Was this what he’d meant? Where were they going?

Male clothing did not give enough clues to any event (not enough changes in details), though
Colin (of course) looked well-coiffed in a waistcoat and button down, with his sleeves rolled
up over his muscular forearms.

They sat at the Osteria where he’d directed the driver, and she was supposed to be
deciphering the completely Italian-written menu, but instead she was trying to decipher the
day so far and the twists and turns that had proceeded.

What even was this morning? The comment, holding hands, the loaded question about
kissing?

It was as if he was… up to something .

Penelope was in love with Colin Bridgerton and it broke her heart to say no to him, but even
if (by some gigantic leap of luck) he had finally noticed her, she refused to be just another
notch on his belt.

The past couple of days had given her a hint of what his undivided attention looked like, and
adding romance to that? Explosive. She’d never recover.

But even if it happened, their relationship would have a natural expiration date. She’d seen it
on his wrist.

“Pen, do you know what you want, or would you like me to tell you what you should want?”

“What?” she exclaimed.

Colin’s innocent waiting face might honestly be more dangerous than his flirting ones. It was
certainly the Colin she preferred. Although she was kicking herself for not at least allowing
one kiss.

She knew her heart couldn’t take it.

“The menu, Pen,” he chuckled. “Do you know what you’d like to eat?”

She hadn’t actually figured out any of it yet. Sure, she knew “carote” was probably carrots
and “calamaretti” was squid. But how was she supposed to know if she wanted to eat
“diavolollo” or “fagiano”?

“Er,” she said, “What is ‘Coda alla Vaccinara’?”

“Oh,” he said, sounding genuinely surprised, “Well, it’s actually a pretty famous dish here.
Should I order it for you?”

“If it’s weird, can I dump it on your head?” Penelope snapped in reply.

“Oxtail stew,” Colin translated quickly.

Penelope shook her head. “I’ll pass.”

“Penelope,” Colin said, “Do you trust me?”

He held out his hand, palm up, on the table. Penelope crossed her arms and shook her head
again, but with a cheeky smile this time.

“Pen,” he said, the timbre of his voice growing a touch rougher, “I know how to give you
something you’ll like, if you’ll let me.”

She rolled her eyes. She hadn’t missed the innuendo, of course, but that didn’t mean she
would acknowledge it. Not with one year left on his TiMER.

Who was this cheese ball and what had he done with her Colin? He had Colin’s smile,
Colin’s green eyes, but Colin’s genuine charm was muzzled.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Voila!” Colin exclaimed, gesturing at the building in front of them.

Penelope had loved everything he’d ordered, but her favorite had been the cacio e pepe, a
dish with simple ingredients, but hard to cook correctly.

Their after-dinner entertainment would be anything but simple.

The ancient auditorium curled away from them on either side. Spindly black crowd control
gates seemed so wrong against the travertine limestone. The full floodlights were not
brightening the night, but then again, theirs would not be an “official tour”.

He spotted his acquaintance, Lorenzo, who’d helped him set the visit up on such short notice,
gesturing to them from where he was partially hidden by a column. A skinny, rat-faced lad,
Lorenzo was one of the night security on the famous building, and he had been able to advise
on the best time to get in unnoticed.

“The Colosseum?” Penelope exclaimed. “But it’s bloody 10 at night!”

Colin made a point of taking her hand in his, pulling her over to where Lorenzo was waiting.

“Signor Bridgerton!” the man called out.

Colin pulled the black leather wallet out of his pocket and peeled off the euros he had
promised when they’d spoken early in the afternoon. £200 went into the thin, callused fingers
and Colin started to pass by when…

“Ah, Signor Bridgerton, there was a small complication. I needed to pay my boss off to
arrange this.”

Lorenzo was a greedy bastard, but Colin knew to expect this. He slid the man another £100.

“Lorenzo,” he said, “for that price, I’ll need to borrow your torch.”

“What do we need that for?” Penelope piped up.

She was so cute when she was confrontational.

With one last handshake to the security guard, Colin offered his arm to his inspirational
tourist.

“Where are we really going?”

“Have you ever seen a gladiator movie?”

“I lived in a household of five women, Colin. We all drooled over that Spartacus show.” She
paused. “Though Felicity was probably too young for that much violence.”

Penelope took his arm, and he escorted her to a lift inside the first layer of the Colosseum.

“Up?” she asked.

“Down,” he corrected.

And down they went, though with the arena floor removed, they were still under the night
sky. Penelope’s stylish boots clacked on the modern walkway that had been erected more
recently than its surroundings.

The night was the best time to visit the Colosseum. Not only could one avoid the heat of the
day (in the summer), but even during the busy season, they cleared the crowds out by then.
Their steps echoed on the limestone around them, and Colin shone the torch on the carving
over an arched stone entrance.

“The shrine on the Mount of Corruption,” he whispered into her hair as they continued,
“Imagine what it must have been like to be a fighter, a slave to this arena, and know that the
men who owned you were stories above, dining on stuffed dormice and flamingo tongues.”

“Gross.”
“They were delicacies. Remember, you’re a fighter. You’re lucky if you get to eat every day.
You’d kill a man for a flamingo tongue.”

“Colin!”

“Imagine waiting down here; the ceiling wasn’t open then. The weight of the tunnel and the
tens of thousands of people cheering for you to kill or be killed. Not that most of the fights
ended in death, but the crowds would always hope.

“Imagine the roar of any number of animals trapped below with you. Lions, wolves, wild
boar. All waiting to be forced on a wooden contraption that would lift them into the arena.”

A replica lift of modern wood stood at the end of the corridor.

“There were a couple dozen of these lifts around the arena and each required eight men to
push and shove complicated rotating parts, to wrap the ropes around gears that would raise
the beasts. Not to mention more workers to make sure the animals did not escape at any point
during this process.”

The shaft of the “lift” reached far over their heads and they were like ants in a maze.

“Wow,” Penelope breathed, and her word bounced back and forth down the tunnel beyond
them.

Her grip on his arm tightened, just slightly, and Colin grinned at his success in drawing her
in. He had never put forth much effort to impress a woman before, but she was the one who’d
thought him a future tour guide. He felt he was being given a grade in school and he wanted
to get an “A*” in his ambitions, something that was of course possible to achieve and not at
all a silly accomplishment to reach for.

He wanted to kiss her, to tilt her chin back and claim her lips with his, but he held himself
back.

Don’t move too fast, Bridgerton. You don’t want to startle her again.

Their walkway angled upward, eventually delivering them level with the floor of the arena.
There were modern signs and markers strewn about, but under the steady light of the torch, it
was easier to pretend they had traveled back in time.

Penelope pulled her arm out of his grasp and rushed forward on excited feet. She spun in
place, taking in the multiple floors of seats for the spectators.

“There’s over 4 thousand seats,” Colin called out as he caught up with her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fifth position . Bend and slide into glissade. Double pirouette. Finish in croisé devant.

Penelope let her body lead her through the familiar steps, bending and spinning as she
remembered her ballet master’s voice in her ear.
“I didn’t know you danced.” Colin’s voice replaced her ballet master.

She froze in the middle of her port de bras, her arms out in second position.

“My mother thought it would help me lose a stone or two,” she sighed, returning to neutral.

“Yes, because an hourglass figure is something to be sent away in disdain,” Colin replied
sarcastically.

Penelope turned over her shoulder, but she could barely see Colin’s face behind the light of
his torch.

“Hardly,” she scoffed, “but I suppose I should thank you for saying so.”

“Dance with me.”

“Colin,” she sneered, “don’t be ridiculous.”

The torchlight snapped off, leaving them in near-darkness.

“Pen, it’s you and me. Dance with me.”

 Chapter 18
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Visibility was low, but Colin could see the outline of a tentative Penelope in the faint glow
from the city. She hadn’t said yes, but she also hadn’t said no.

“It wouldn’t be your first time,” he teased.

He dragged his shoes lightly as he neared, making sure she could hear him coming and could
still move away if she wanted to. But she stayed put, so he lifted her small hand in his own.
Her small, soft hand that he would love to feel on his cheek.

“Shall we?”

“There’s no music.”

“Easily remedied.”

Colin fished in his pocket with his free hand, dialing up something appropriate.

“Stars shining bright above you…”

Satisfied, he slid his hand to Penelope’s ample hip, pulling her close to his chest. A flutter
rose inside him, but he took a deep breath and that chocolate hazelnut scent wafted off her
hair. He couldn’t see its bright flame, but he could feel it in his chest nonetheless.

They had danced so many times before, but always in public, in front of people. Always with
members of their community, probably assuming his mother had told him to ask her onto the
floor. Which, to be fair, had happened once or twice. But Colin never would have let
himself… have feelings while dancing with her when the entire community was watching,
judging.

Never would have let himself smell the scent of her hair, or hold her closer than was proper.

They swayed back and forth. Watching Penelope spin had been surprising, exciting, but
holding her?

Well, that was really something.

Colin and Penelope had both been dancing at balls since they were teens, so they knew how
to move together without putting much thought into it. Colin would propose the step, and
Penelope would accept it. He would spin her and her skirt would twirl prettily around her.

If only everything else could work that way. A clear yes and no, give and take. Step forward
on your left, backward on your right. Not needing to take any genuine risks because the steps
had been prescribed by history. No uncertainty.
“Pen?” Colin began.

A murmur of assent.

“I bet you’ll be happy to go home at the end of the week,” he said.

It was a statement, but it felt like a question.

“Well, I’ll be happy to see my sister, of course…”

“Felicity?”

Penelope laughed. “Do you even have to ask?”

Then she continued.

“Yes, I love Felicity. Of course. But home? Ehh…”

Colin felt her head rest on his chest, and he hoped she couldn’t feel how hard his heart began
to beat. How right it felt to have her against him.

“Home is… comfortable, I suppose. But I’m not tied to it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Penelope didn’t know how she’d been so bold as to lay her head on Colin, but once she had,
the silk of his waistcoat brushed her cheek like a dream. He was so warm, so solid, and with
the wind whistling through the columns and arches of the ancient edifice, his body heat made
him a beacon for her chilled skin. The shiver down her spine wasn’t from the tunnel of breeze
they were waltzing through.

She thought about Colin’s question as one song turned into another and they continued
dancing.

“I think,” she said, before she lost her nerve, “I’d like to see what the rest of the world is
like.”

“You would?” he asked.

Was it her imagination that he sounded hopeful? It must have been.

But then she felt his hand sliding up her back, turning their hold into an embrace. She
imagined curling together with him on a sofa back home. She felt emboldened further, taking
the hand that was on his shoulder and sliding it down to his chest.

She had never touched Colin like this before, never dreamed she’d get the chance to. He was
so solid . So warm. She imagined his chest, how she’d seen it the day before, if she had
touched him then. His arm around her was strong, like he could hold up the world after
creating it for her.
 His fingers trailed along the neckline of the back of her sweater dress, where it exposed her
shoulders to the air, and she shivered despite herself.

His voice rumbled against her. “You don’t think you’d tire of it? Want to put down roots
somewhere? Have kids?”

Penelope needed to separate herself from him, separate herself from this dream that wouldn’t
be. His heat became oppressive, too much. She used that hand on his chest to push herself
back and away quickly.

“Colin,” she said, her voice as icy as she needed her veins to be, “I won’t be having kids. Or
putting down roots. Because I don’t have a soulmate.”

“But maybe you do! Maybe your TiMER is just broken or you shouldn’t listen to it or it
doesn’t know everything! Maybe the concept of soulmates is mostly advertising. Or a self-
fulfilling prophecy!”

“That’s easy to say when you know you have a soulmate coming!” she spat, “Easy to say
when you’re a popular Bridgerton, beloved by the Ton, and swooned over by girls who would
rip their own TiMERs off if you gave them the time of day!”

Penelope had never yelled at him before in her life, but once she’d started, she didn’t intend
to finish without speaking her piece.

“You keep flirting with me lately, and of course I want to respond! I want to enjoy it! I want
to believe you could be mine, that I could keep you. But all I can think about is 13 months.
13 months. 13 months. 13 months until you find the love of your life and who cares about
Penelope Featherington then? You said it when we were kids. The idea of being with me is
RIDICULOUS!”

Colin tried to interject, tried to counter her objections, but she wasn’t done.

“And even if you were sincere, why would you make me into the ‘other woman’ when your
soulmate does show up? Colin, I won’t do that. I won’t!”

She couldn’t even look at him, couldn’t let herself look in his eyes and see… what? Guilt?
Pity?

“Take me back to the hotel, Colin,” Penelope whispered. “I’m done.”

Chapter End Notes

I'm stuck deciding between 2 possible next chapters, so it might take me slightly longer
for the next posting.
 Chapter 19

Penelope wanted to go home. Not out of any familial duty or desire to return to familiar
surroundings. No, Penelope wanted to go home because there was no reason left for her not
to. She and Colin were at a stalemate, where progress seemed impossible, and she didn’t
know why she should still play. She wasn’t hurt beyond repair yet, but she knew any move
she made could put her heart in danger.

Penelope had tried to tell Colin the part about wanting to go home, but she couldn’t explain
to him why. Her reticence had given him enough slack in the line to ask her to give him one
more day, one more destination. Would she never learn to say no to him?

That weakness in her soul had brought them through a 3.5 hour car ride (during most of
which she’d pretended to be asleep, but had been instead sitting with her thoughts), to come
face to facade with a plain, beige building that was labeled only with “1898: Funicolare” at
the crest of the only scrollwork to decorate the surface. Forest green venetian blind doors
were flung open, but Penelope couldn’t see what they revealed.

She faked a yawn.

“Colin, what is this place?”

He was the most casually attired she had seen for the entire trip. Whether that was because he
no longer saw reason to make an effort, or because he had run out of clothes, or perhaps for
another reason she hadn’t considered, she liked to see a dressed-down Colin. His mustard-
yellow t-shirt with a faded Vitruvian Man screen printed on the front looked as if it had come
to its vintage aged appearance naturally, rather than being bought that way through a grasp at
pretensions.

“Penelope, I’m sorry.”

“What?”

Colin looked down at her and his green eyes had a tinge of blue to them she didn’t remember
noticing before.

“I wanted this to be a wonderful trip for you,” he said, “a chance for you to see what I see
every day. But I worry I’ve tried to put my expectations on you that you didn’t want. I
wanted to show you some places and things I love, but instead, I… well, I made you cry.”

He looked so despondent that it was Penelope’s first instinct to comfort him, tell him that
he’d done nothing to apologize for. But hadn’t he?

Not everyone viewed flirting or romantic overtures to one not their soulmate as cheating, but
weren’t they, in a way? Sure, he didn’t know who she was going to be, but she was out there
somewhere.
She’d wanted it to be a wonderful trip, too. Penelope remembered the excitement of their
time at the Vatican, watching him come alive as he regaled her with stories of the sights they
saw. The feeling that she was seeing the real Colin, the best version of him living life to its
fullest. She got the sense he didn’t see that in himself and it put a sadness in her soul she
wished she could heal. She remembered the heat on her skin as he’d purred in her ear about
the beauty of the Greek muses. The softness with which he’d led her around the Colosseum
floor. Until he’d broken the spell by talking about her future. Her future was an endless series
of days taking care of her aging mother, sitting at the edge of parties, remembering when
she’d believed she would be the belle of the ball. Watching Colin spin across the floor with a
woman who he looked at the way he had… just briefly… looked at her.

“Let’s not talk about that now,” she said instead. “Show me whatever it is you find interesting
about this building, and let’s not talk about anything serious. I promise I’ll be a good and
attentive listener.”

He frowned at her words, but she was trying her hardest to walk the line between polite and
honest.

“Move closer,” he said, “and tell me what you see.”

So she did. She approached the building and peered through the doorway to see… straight
through to the other side. Why, the whole thing wasn’t much deeper than a car garage! And
on the other side, ascending up a hill and disappearing from view, was a set of metal tracks.

Just then, a bright red trolley car descended into view and came to a stop inside the building.
As a handful of people disembarked, her curiosity was piqued, and she needed to see where
the tracks led. After all, satisfaction brought the cat back.

The black roof of the trolley slanted upward at a roughly 30-degree angle, pointing upward
to… well, even from inside the building she couldn’t quite see it. Trees lined the path on
either side and appeared cut out of the rock as it traversed.

“This is my favorite place in all of Italy,” Colin said.

“The trolley?”

Colin laughed, and she felt briefly proud. “No, where the trolley leads.”

“Where is that?”

He smiled. “Shall we?”

Once again, she was following Colin Bridgerton into the unknown.

He bought two tickets at the nearby counter, and they entered the trolley car.

“Standing at the front or back is the best, but as you see…” he gestured.

Groups of kids had already claimed both spots, so they settled onto the slatted benches inside
the car. Colin sat across from her, slightly up the hill from the perspective of the slanted
trolley. She wondered if he was reluctant to sit next to her after the way she’d scolded him the
night before.

“The funicular runs every thirty minutes,” Colin explained from his seat. “That’s what they
call this, a funicular.”

The car creaked as they began to ascend, and Penelope wondered if it was too late to ask
Colin to hold her hand. These cables were checked regularly, weren’t they? They wouldn’t
choose today of all days to snap and send them hurtling down to their deaths, would they?

As if he knew where her mind was leaning, Colin said, “Just look out the window, Pen. See
where we’re going.”

The funicular moved surprisingly quickly, and they were soon rolling past the flowers and
trees she’d seen, and the town on top of the mountain came into view. It became the
proverbial city on the hill that could not remain hidden any longer. All the buildings she
could see were white brick with rust red shingles, as if one individual had been responsible
for the design of the entirety.

“The fortress was built to escape the swamp lands below,” Colin told her, “though now
they’ve been turned into rather nice thermal springs, so there you go.”

A clock tower and a few defensive towers were mixed in with the shorter restaurants and
outdoor seating areas. Cobblestones dominated the streets, all the way out to the walls that
(among other things) kept visitors from tumbling to the depths below them.

An elderly man stood next to one wall, holding a paint palette in his hand and daubing at an
easel in front of him. Hawkers stood outside some of the restaurants, trying to call people in
to eat.

Colin steered Penelope away from these places.

“A restaurant that has quality food doesn’t need to convince you to enter,” he said, as they
rounded a corner to a place with pale linens and wicker chairs. “They also have a short menu.
That way you know they are an expert in everything they make, instead of trying to make
many things to only below average quality.”

When they entered, the room was awash with lights hanging in mismatched jars. There were
pieces of furniture, a bookcase and radiator among others, that made the place look like a
family home that had been temporarily cleared out for customers.

A server sat them, and Penelope glanced anxiously at the menu, which was entirely in Italian.

“Would you like me to tell you what is on the menu?” Colin offered. “Perhaps we could share
some things.”

Penelope nodded, relieved. She liked all the new things she’d been trying lately, but she
didn’t like the feeling of misunderstanding she was having from never learning a second
language.
Colin ran through the antipasti, the appetizers. He’d taught her on their first night that it was
common to order multiple courses. Bruschetta, caprese salad with buffalo cheese, squid,
cured beef carpaccio…

“Prosciutto and melon?” Penelope asked. “Really?”

“Well, we will order that now,” Colin said. “And shame on me for not introducing it to you
sooner.”

The dish was exactly what the name implied, crescents of orange melon generously wrapped
with marbled, thin slices of prosciutto. When Penelope bit into it for the first time, her mouth
exploded with flavor despite the simple ingredients. The streaky fat of the meat, the salty
flavor of the cure, the bright sweetness of the fruit. She hummed deeply in her throat with the
joy of it. She immediately reached for another piece, but paused to seek Colin’s approval.

“Go ahead, Pen,” he chuckled. “If I’d realized how happy it would make you, I’d have told
you about it ages ago.”

He spoke quietly with the server, who quickly returned with a bottle of wine and two of the
bell-shaped stem glasses. They were set on the table before the melon was finished, the entire
bottle left for their perusal.

“Don’t feel forced to drink if you’d rather not,” Colin said. “It just seemed appropriate for
this lovely setting.

Penelope curled her fingers around one stem, as she’d been taught in etiquette classes since
before she was old enough to enjoy the libation. Colin smiled, pleased, and lifted the bottle to
pour the dusky red liquid into her glass. He quickly filled his own and raised it for a toast.

“To you, Pen,” he said, “for always keeping me honest, even when I don’t want to be. I
promise to try harder to do the same.”

He delivered the last part in a cheeky tone, but his eyes showed his real conviction behind the
words.

They each took a sip.

The wine was big and bright; the flavor filling all corners of her mouth at once. It wasn’t
flamboyant, trying too hard to get the drinker’s attention. Instead, it teased her with vanilla
and hints of baking spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. It was silky, with a finish like slightly
burnt caramel.

Penelope raised her glass back to Colin in delight before taking another taste. She’d thought
she didn’t like wine, but perhaps she just didn’t like the acidic, nearly sour wines her mother
preferred around the house.

Before she knew it, she was pouring herself another glass. Why wait and ask Colin each
time? He’d said this was an apology to her. Surely that meant she could help herself?
“I know we haven’t been here long,” Colin began, “but I feel you’ve noticed things about me
I didn’t see myself. Like the tour thing at the museum. I’m always keeping all these stories in
my head, and it was such a relief to share them with someone who would actually appreciate
them.”

He took a hearty bite of his wild mushroom risotto, seeming to delight in how the taste paired
with his drink.

“Pen, you need to try this,” he insisted, passing her his fork. “Anyway, all that touristy stuff?
Way better to be sharing it with someone, more exciting than the first time I saw it myself.”

Penelope couldn’t believe it. Colin Bridgerton, bottomless pit with an inexplicably flat and
well-muscled abdomen, was sharing food with her. More than once, during tea time at
Number 5, she’d seen the Bridgerton matriarch order multiple extra plates of food upon
learning Colin was joining them.

“Sure, but only if you let me share my ossobuco. The meat is literally dropping off the bone!”

She excitedly speared a bit of the meat, making sure to get some of the veg in there as well,
so he could taste all the flavors together. But the sauce was liable to drip onto the pale
tablecloth, so she put a palm under it and delivered it to him directly across the table.

His straight white teeth closed on her fork, the lips closing to bring the bite into his mouth. It
was the most sensual experience Penelope had ever been a part of up close, and she couldn’t
take her eyes off the tip of his tongue as it darted out to catch sauce on the corner of his
mouth.

His eyes were closed in delight, and she felt as if everything was in slow motion. The bob of
his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. The turn-up of the corners of his mouth. The shine as his
bright green eyes opened to meet hers. Before she could wake up and tell herself to sit down,
she placed her palm across his jaw and used her thumb to run across his bottom lip.

Those emeralds shone into her, and she lit up like a live wire. A voice was screaming in the
back of her head that she needed to sit down, but it was more muffled than usual. Whether it
was the wine, the nearness, or just the longing in the pit of her stomach, the way he looked at
her set her on fire.

He was her Colin. Hers, and she wanted nothing more than to claim him once and for all.
Shout to the world that she had him and fuck everyone who never thought she was worth their
notice.

His upper lip joined the lower and tapped the pad of her thumb with a soft kiss. Her hand
shook slightly, and she drew a breath in quickly to see how he swallowed nervously.

His eyes were hungry, penetrating, and longing all at the same time. She felt stripped naked
and realized she was still standing in the middle of a restaurant.

One busboy was staring at her, and she was frozen on the spot. Her mind was racing with a
million possibilities, and before she could talk herself out of it, she was grabbing cash from
her purse.

“Pen, I was going to pay for dinner!” Colin exclaimed. “I haven’t even gotten you dessert
yet!”

“Shut up,” she growled. “You’re coming with me right now.”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Featherington.”

She knew she was leaving an unnecessarily large tip, but she didn’t care. All she cared about
was getting Colin alone there and then. She seized him by the front of his soft t-shirt and
pulled him out of his seat.

He came willingly, and they stumbled out the door and into a narrow stone alley across the
walkway. The sky had darkened while they were in the restaurant, the lights from open
businesses casting long shadows that covered them as they sank into the tight space.

And yet, she could still see Colin’s eyes, full of questions as she pulled him along.

She slammed her own back against the brick wall and took him with her, his larger body
hovering over hers in the dim light. Their eyes locked, and she gave him the one thing he was
looking for: permission.

Permission to take her and damn the consequences.

His chest was already heaving as he tried to catch his breath, but he didn’t rush. He didn’t do
what she expected, come at her straight and fast.

His hands came up to cup her face, slowly, reverently, as if she were some soft and precious
thing. She could see his shoulders trembling, his teeth biting into the side of his full bottom
lip, the lip she had finally managed to touch just moments earlier.

This wasn’t the Colin who swaggered and smirked at Society events, flashing an amiable
smile to whoever crossed his path. This was the Colin whose head she’d held to her chest as
he crumbled on the ground near the Appian Way.

This wasn’t the Colin who was famous for bedding women in every country he visited, the
rumored lothario who “loved ‘em and left ‘em” as easily as finding a new partner for a dance.
Penelope had the feeling that this was as close to the real Colin as he’d ever let another
person see, and the enormity of that slammed into her lungs.

“Colin,” she gasped, “we can’t do this!”

“Yes, we bloody well can,” he growled, snaking an arm around her waist to push her lower
body flush with his.

Penelope could feel his need, a need she never knew he could have for her, and the reality of
it shocked her. Threw her into a tailspin where all she wanted to do was say “yes”, to moan
his name and wrap her legs around his waist.
But the edge of her TiMER scraped across a brick behind her and she realized the enormity
of it all at once.

“Colin, we have to stop. I can’t do this to your soulmate. You know you’re so close on your
TiMER! I’m not worth screwing that up!”

“Fuck the TiMER, Penelope!” Colin said, pulling back and…

…ripping his TiMER off his wrist as if it were nothing more than a bandaid…

Before she could think, his mouth crashed against hers, and she lost all sense of time and
space.
 Chapter 20
Chapter Notes

A little... spicy language in this one, but not too bad.

Colin thought that meeting Penelope was one of the most important things he could
accomplish in his life. But now he knew that to be a lie. Kissing her far surpassed everything
he had ever done. Kissing Penelope Featherington was what his body had been made for, and
he never wanted to stop.

His Penelope kissed how she spoke, slow and soft to start, but taking what she wanted once
she gained confidence. His Penelope. God, Colin loved the sound of that. His Penelope. His
Penelope.

His Penelope.

He had never so much as embraced her before this week, and to think of the years he’d
wasted! All the years he could have held her against him, all the years he could have had this
closeness. He’d never realized how much space existed in a dance until he’d experienced a
kiss .

She had her arms wrapped around his neck, her hands dug deep into his hair. One of her lush
thighs was hiked up over his hip, as if she had begun to climb him like a tree. She was so
warm, so soft, so voracious.

Colin wasn’t certain how many men she’d kissed before (he selfishly hoped the number was
0), but if she was a novice, she was a natural. He’d tried an experimental flick with the tip of
his tongue, going slow so as not to scare her off, but she’d met him with aplomb. More than
that, she’d sighed and deepened the kiss further, until he was sure he’d go mad from not
touching her everywhere.

Even though he had her pressed into the wall, should by all accounts be in control of the
situation, the way her hips were rubbing against him made him want to sink to his knees in
praise of her. And then pleasure her until she shouted his name to the heavens.

He imagined his head buried between those soft thighs, and his hard on was practically
bursting out of his jeans. He wanted to show her, feel her hand around him, but he knew that
at this moment, he couldn’t promise more than a fumbling teenage boy with his first erection.
She deserved for him to take time, to explore each and every inch of her for all the years of
touches he’d wanted to give her, but hadn’t.

He’d been such an idiot.

“Wait a minute,” Penelope said.

No, he’d spent too long waiting!

As she pulled back from him (as much as she could against a wall), his lips found themselves
grasping at air, and yet his breath was gone.

“Colin,” Penelope said, and the tremor in her voice gave him enough pause to come to his
senses.

“Yes, Pen?” he murmured, still in the throes of his bliss.

“Show me your wrist.”

“Hmm?”

But he lifted his wrist for her study. The skin was as pure and unblemished as on his non-
dominant side. And thank god for it. It was really starting to itch like crazy to keep the thing
on overnight, to sneak into bathrooms to reapply adhesive when the edges started to loosen.

“You’re not bleeding or scarred or anything. Did you have it removed?” she asked.

What?

“No, Pen. I never had a real one.”

“Excuse me?”

Clearly their first kisses were well and truly over. Not that anyone had told his dick, still
tenting his pants rather obscenely. He self-consciously adjusted and backed away a couple of
steps, trying to be respectful of her space.

He scratched the back of his neck self-consciously.

“I never went through with the implantation.”

“WHAT?”

Oh, god, how could he even begin to explain it to her? Well, he owed it to her to try.

“My parents were always huge proponents of the TiMERs. I mean, look how well it worked
for them, right? So they encouraged all of us kids to get them young, not just the girls.
Anthony already had his by the time our father died, and Benedict was planning to get his
that same year.

“But then, Dad died and Mum was near catatonic. Do you know what happens when a
TiMER wearer’s soulmate dies? The whole thing goes black and the crystal glass cracks
audibly. Mum knew the moment Dad passed on because of that damn thing. She had hope
and she didn’t even get to find out for herself, or from one of us. No, it was the TiMER that
told her that her true love was gone forever.
“Benedict’s implantation was delayed. I was 11 and Daphne was 10. Anthony took over in a
big way; he had to because Mum fell apart. He always idolized Dad and wanted to model his
life in the same way. His TiMER didn’t even display anything until he was 25, but he was
fine with that, because he was so busy with the managing of the estates that he wouldn’t have
had time for anything else.

“Ben got his a couple of years later, once Mum started falling into some semblance of her old
self. But that was fine as well, because… Well, you know he met Sophie when he was 28,
and then had to search for her for two more years, since she was too ashamed to admit her
background. My brothers were my only influences in the matter and both of them had to wait
forever. I wondered if it was even worth it to get one, if I was going to have to wait over a
decade to see it fulfilled.

“Then I went on my first trip abroad, not that long before my birthday, and I found out that so
many people in so many other countries don’t even bother with the TiMER! They think we’re
strange for doing so, for being so stiff and formal as to try to remove all chance from the
pursuit of love. And they weren’t wrong!

“It occurred to me that two people as head over heels for each other as my parents were
already in the same social circle and surely would have found each other anyway. Maybe
they wouldn’t have gotten married at only 19 and 21, but I can’t believe two people so
destined for each other wouldn’t have figured it out. Maybe they wouldn’t have had eight
kids, but I remember asking them to stop after Eloise, certain that our household couldn’t
handle that much trouble and still accept more.”

Colin felt a weight lifted when Penelope laughed. She understood! He stepped forward, intent
on going back to the delicious kissing they’d been doing just earlier, and wondering if there
was somewhere on the mountain he could rent out for them to move beyond kissing, or if
they’d need to ride back down the funicular, take advantage of the natural thermal pools
available to them.

But Penelope, his Penelope , held a hand up to stop him.

“What I don’t understand,” she began, not quite looking at him, “is why you put on a fake
TiMER. Where do you even get something like that? Why not just not wear one, like so
many men who don’t want to quit sowing their wild oats?”

Okay, she had more questions. He could get through this. No problem.

“First of all, Pen,” he explained, “you can find anything on the internet, so remember that.
And as to the other question…”

This part doesn’t make me look great .

“Yeah, I could have refused one, for a time, but you know the pressure Mum puts on. She
was so happy with my Dad that her greatest wish is for all of us to know that kind of
happiness. She might have let me delay for a couple of years, but the meddling insistence
would have been relentless. I knew that, given enough time, she would eventually wear me
down, and I’d get a TiMER just to get her to leave me alone and focus on the others.
“So, I told my family I was more comfortable getting one on my own, without their eyes on
me. I told them I’d made an appointment to get it implanted privately. Then it was just a
matter of making sure I had the fake on any time I was in town and not by myself. Actually,
that’s part of what drove me to start traveling more, that I could go weeks at a time without
anyone focused on some bullshit attached to my wrist.”

Penelope frowned at that, but Colin was too focused on info-dumping, relieved to finally
have someone to tell all of this to, someone who actually knew his family and knew the
pressure he faced.

“It helped when the ambitious matchmaking mothers with young daughters with blank
TiMERs would approach men without them, trying to bully them into implantations with
promises that their daughters were already waiting for them to find out they were a match.
More than one schoolmate of my acquaintance would form a dalliance with a young lady,
only for her parents to drive him straight to the closest implantation office before they’d
consent to letting him continue to see their daughter.

“The mothers would leave me alone because as far as they knew, I already had a TiMER and
it wasn’t for their daughters. And in turn, I left alone the daughters who were still looking for
their soulmates. If I wanted to fool around, I did it out of the country with women who didn’t
expect anything of me that I didn’t want to give…”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Colin had been wrapped up in his story and hadn’t realized Penelope was getting more
agitated with every second. He saw now that she was fuming, her expression gone icy.
Something he’d gained with her, some closeness, she’d taken it back.

He studied her face, his mind racing to find what he’d done wrong, what he could do to
reverse it, to take them back to happiness. But he knew Penelope well enough to see that she
was fuming.

“So, what you’re telling me,” she began, clearly struggling not to yell, “is that because you
were too scared to be honest with your mother , some woman out there is living life with a
blank TiMER, thinking no one could ever love her, when it was supposed to be you all
along?”

She must have decided to stop couching her words, because her volume rose with nearly
every word.

“Do you know how much it sucks to think no one wants you? DO YOU, COLIN? Because I
do! IT FUCKING SUCKS, OKAY?”

“I want you,” Colin insisted, but he knew it was futile now.

“Do you? Do you really? Because you have to have known how miserable I was, thinking I
would never find my true love, and you decide to tell me this story where you purposely
deprived yours? SO YOU COULD TRAVEL AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FOREIGN
PUSSY?”
Colin had never heard Penelope curse so much in their entire shared acquaintance. Or so
brazenly. If it hadn’t been directed at him, he would have egged her on. Would have asked
her to use more of those words with him, intimately .

“How did you expect me to react to this information?”

Penelope was fuming and Colin didn’t know if there was anything he could do to prevent the
next boil-over.

“Did you think,” she continued, “that I would laugh and say, ‘Oh, Colin, how clever of you.
Kiss me!’? That I wouldn’t take your choices personally?”

She was silent and Colin realized she was actually waiting for him to answer this time. Only
he was scared to. He had messed this up so badly and he feared every word out of his mouth
was another shovelful deeper being taken out of the grave of fury Penelope was set to bury
him in. Typical Colin Bridgerton, ruining everything all over again. Maybe he’d been right
earlier. Maybe he should have never let a hint of himself that wasn’t “Public Colin” out
where she could see.

“I,” he whispered, struggling to force honesty when it was the last thing he wanted in the
moment, “I suppose I never planned to tell you. Because before this week, I always thought
I’d just admire you from afar.”

“How romantic,” she spat sarcastically. “You felt fine lying to me because you were trying to
hide how embarrassed you were to be attracted to a girl who looks like me.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed!” Colin insisted quickly. “I didn’t think I was good enough.”

Penelope scoffed, and Colin knew it was all over. He’d lost her before he’d even gotten to
celebrate having her.

“Not good enough,” Penelope repeated. “Okay. Sure. Well, Colin, it’s interesting you say
that. Because I’m starting to realize that the pedestal I’ve put you on for basically my entire
life was made of nothing more than girlish dreams and fairy tales.”

By now tears were streaming down her cheeks and Colin knew he would look the same if he
hadn’t become so accustomed to holding back his emotions until he could experience them
where no one else would see him.

“Pen…” he began.

But what could he say? What could he do to salvage this cesspool he had created out of
hiding his love for her?

Because that was what he had never allowed himself to admit. That he loved Penelope
Featherington. That he’d loved her for years, maybe even since the moment he’d met her,
shortly after he’d nearly broken his arm falling off that damn skittish horse! Why did he have
to realize this now, when he’d lost her once and for all?
When Penelope realized he had nothing more to say, she nodded, trying her best to wipe her
tears away with the heel of her hand.

“Colin, I am going down this mountain. I will ride on the front of the trolley by myself,
because I deserve to see those damned city lights at night. And then, when I get to the
bottom, I will be booking myself the first passage back home I can find, whether by train or
plane. You can descend with me or not. I don’t really care.”

“Pen, please, at least let me take care of your passage. It’s not cheap to get something done
that quickly.”

For a night full of surprises, Colin definitely didn’t expect the next one.

“Colin, I don’t need your money. I’m Lady motherfucking Whistledown, for fuck’s sake!”
 Chapter 21

Penelope stood at the end of the funicular, her fingers white-knuckled from gripping on the
wrought-iron railing that separated her from a long-distance tumble. Below her, past the
floodlights of the track, the oblong constellation of Montecatini spread out before her. But she
couldn’t see a single star for what it was, the edges melting into one another with the tracks
of her tears as they streaked down her cheeks, dripping one after another onto the ground
beneath the trolley.

As they descended, she left each tear behind her as a breadcrumb for a path of sorrow she
would never follow back to where it led.

Penelope was aware, as much as she didn’t want to be, that Colin was sitting on one of the
benches behind her, though he’d been mannered enough to take a seat that did not face her
direction. He was her joy and her despair in one evening, the reflection of a hope, finally
extinguished with her express consent.

Whoever said it was better to love and have lost than having never loved at all was a fool.
Before tonight, Penelope had held wishes of Colin, fantasies of his touch. Now, she knew
exactly how his lips felt on her, the ways his hands would hold her. And she knew she would
never have them again.

The Colin she’d imagined was a fiction, that much was clear. The Colin she thought should
have been her soulmate would never have… would never have…

She dissolved into tears once again, and she hoped he couldn’t hear her whimpering through
the plexiglass windows.

But then again, why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he hear exactly how weak he’d made her?
Not having Colin had been a kind of armor, and he’d made his way through the chinks in the
armor, straight to the soft, squishy center of her body.

She’d even let him try to explain, hoping he would say something that would make it all
magically better. The Colin she fell in love with half her lifetime ago would have been able to
sweep in and save the damsel, fight the dragon. But she supposed that presumed a world in
which he hadn’t put the dragon in the tower in the first place.

Penelope hadn’t seen Colin Bridgerton in two weeks.

When she’d arrived home, she’d taken to her bed, taken to sleeping through most daylight
hours, only emerging from her room to steal the occasional comfort food from the pantry.
The first couple of days, she’d seen texts and calls from Eloise on her phone, but she couldn’t
bear to speak to her best friend, who would only remind her of…

Eventually, Eloise had stopped trying to contact her, but she’d still sent one last insistent
text.
ok, pen, will back off. but when u feel better, let me no who to kill

But how could she even begin to explain? Eloise didn’t even know that she had been in love
with…

“Penelope, I need to speak to you.”

Her little sister, Felicity, had intruded into the sanctuary of her darkness. The light outside the
door sliced through the shadows of her room like butter, a clear affront to her in the moment.

But Felicity didn’t notice. No, instead she proceeded into the room, past the foot of
Penelope’s bed, and took it upon herself to fling open the drapes.

The afternoon sun through the west-facing window was so strong that Penelope moaned and
dove deep under her duvet.

“How long are you planning to let yourself rot like this?”

Penelope scrunched her face, even if she was the only one who could perceive it. What gave
Lissy the right?

She called out from her cocoon of covers. “Shouldn’t you be busy hanging out with
Geoffrey?”

If her sister noticed a note of spite in the words, she’d clearly decided to ignore them.

“Jesus, Pen. We basically just met. Plus, I’m 16. Even though I like him, I’m not exactly
going to be moving right into his flat overnight. He shares with four other law students, and
I’m sorry, but even smart boys have flats that smell like arse.”

Okay, it had been a little funny. But only a little.

“Anyway,” Felicity continued, “it’s what… two? two and a half weeks until Christmas?”

November had become December, and Penelope hadn’t noticed.

“You haven’t done a single Christmas activity with me. I had to talk Prudence into watching
the Great Christmas Pudding Race with me. She wouldn’t stop complaining about the
‘tackiness’ of some of the costumes.”

Penelope snorted. She could just hear their eldest sister, how Lissy described her. The
Pudding Race was a Covent Garden tradition each year, where people from all over dressed
up in silly costumes (everything from Santa Claus to Oompa Loompas to silly Christmas
jumpers) to compete in an obstacle course. They would need to run and duck, bob and weave,
all while balancing a Christmas pudding on a tray.

She and Felicity had been cheering the racers on since they’d been old enough to be trusted
on their own. Sometimes they brought other friends with them, but she and her sister had
stayed consistent supporters. She had actually brought Colin once, a few years before, when
he’d been in town at the right time for a change.
Colin.

“Felicity, can I talk to you about something?”

And Felicity Featherington, talk of the Ton, snuggled under the covers with her like they
were both small children again. It was the first time Penelope had smiled in two weeks. And
she spilled the entire story (plus or minus a couple of salacious details).

To her credit, her sister listened thoughtfully, asking few questions until it was clear Penelope
was finished. She’d snorted a little when Penelope had “revealed” her crush on Colin, which
Penelope didn’t really appreciate, sass-wise, but it was to be expected. She reacted at all the
right moments, gasping when Penelope got to the part about pulling off a fake TiMER,
frowning at the fight that had followed.

When Penelope finished, stating merely that she had left (because her status as LW was not
Lissy’s business and not really important), she paused, not sure where to go next.

Luckily, her sister did not have that hang-up.

“So, is he your soulmate or not?” she nearly shouted when it appeared that Penelope wasn’t
going to supply this crucial detail.

“Does it even matter?”

Felicity displayed the incredulity of the only sane member on the Enterprise.

“Of course it bloody well matters!”

Penelope sighed, letting her head fall on her little sister’s shoulder.

“I don’t know.”

Sensing that Felicity wouldn’t let her get away that easily, she tried her best to quickly
organize her thoughts.

“Here’s the thing, Lissy. Even if by some coincidence he were supposed to be my soulmate,
that we were supposed to have found each other when I was 16 and he was 21, that’s not
what happened. Let’s say he is. Do I want a soulmate who isn’t interested in finding me?

“And what’s more, let’s say he isn’t. What would finding out solve? He said he wanted to
stop himself from caring about me. If he’s not my soulmate, we’re not together, and that’s
what’s meant to be. If he is my soulmate, we’re not together, and he gets what he wants, not
to be with me.”

Felicity’s expression was thunderous.

“For a really smart person, that’s some of the dumbest shit you’ve ever said.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Colin didn’t know if absolution could be found at the bottom of a whiskey tumbler, but he
was doing his damndest to find out. Or at least that would have been his plan, had his eleven
nieces and nephews not descended upon Bridgerton House for the “family meeting” his
eldest brother had called.

Well, perhaps that wasn’t fair. Baby Charles certainly wasn’t raising hell with his cousins. He
was too busy curled up to sleep on Benedict’s chest.

Meanwhile, Caroline had just bonked Miles over the head with a hobbyhorse, the latter of
whom’s tears were already threatening to spill. Was it strange Colin was jealous the boy had
such an easily fixed problem to complain about?

Probably, but sensible, not-drunk Uncle Colin was two glasses ago, and he was currently
staring down his third generous pour of Anthony’s Henry Mckenna. He’d much rather be
wallowing at his flat in Bloomsbury, but here he was, slumped in one of the stiff chairs some
earlier Viscount had thought were fitting for the “majesty” of Bridgerton House.

He blew out a breath and considered the amber liquid in his glass. He was about to throw it
back when Anthony strode into the room without preamble and said:

“Eloise is missing.”

The entire family erupted in immediate questions, baby Charles waking from his nap to add
his angry squall to the din.

“How do you know?” Sophie called out, rushing to her husband to help soothe their unhappy
infant.

“Violet asked us if we’d seen her. She hasn’t been around Number 5 in a few days,” Kate
explained, moving to stand next to her husband. “I thought it was best to find Eloise, or at
least find out if she’s in danger, before we worry Violet too much.”

“But she…” Gregory began.

“She’s a grown woman,” Hyacinth interjected. “Certainly better able to handle herself than a
schoolboy not yet out of Oxford.”

“You’re younger than me!” Gregory exclaimed, reigniting an old argument.

As their youngest two erupted into a full-blown squabble, Colin felt a tap on his shoulder. He
twisted his head up to see Daphne standing behind him, staring at him.

He had always been closest to Daphne out of all of his siblings; they had been born less than
a year apart. So when she appeared to be summoning him out into the hall, he figured she
was worth hearing out.

The Duchess of Hastings had all the poise and discernment of one who had taken to her role
well in the years since her marriage. Her daughter’s early hitting of her cousin was not
indicative of Daphne’s overall household.
“Colin,” she intoned quietly.

“Yes, Daph? Do you have information to share with the class?”

“Colin,” Daphne said again, “You know who would be more likely to know where Eloise is
than anyone else?”

It was a rhetorical question. Of course, he knew who that person would be.

“Sure,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Were you planning to text Penelope, then?”

He had to force himself to even say her name out loud, but his whiskey-soaked brain was
pretty sure his sister couldn’t tell.

Then she raised an eyebrow, and he had to reconsider that knowledge.

“What?”

Daphne was nothing if not the soul of discretion. She kept her voice low as she said, “Colin, I
think you and I both know that you should be the one to text her. Or call her.”

“Oh, no, Daph. Nope. Bad idea. We want her to actually answer.”

She frowned. “Did something happen between you? She hasn’t been around much lately. I
can’t remember the last time I saw her, actually.”

Her eyes widened.

“Do you think she’s with Eloise?”

“No!” Colin quickly checked himself. “I mean, no, I’m pretty sure she’s at home.”

“Colin…”

“Yes, Daph?”

“Just because you’ve been in self-denial for years doesn’t mean I don’t know Penelope is
head over heels in love with you.”

Ohhh, he really should be sober for this conversation… But that ship had sailed. He sank
down, holding his temples in his hands and taking inordinate focus on the floor. His sister’s
shoes echoed on the marble until he could see the toes of two powder blue ballet flats in his
periphery, even from his obscure position.

“Colin,” Daphne began, “I don’t know what you did. And you don’t have to tell me… Unless
you want to. But either way. If Eloise is in trouble, Penelope is our best chance of finding her
and we can’t not use that resource. Despite what you think, I am certain that Penelope
Featherington would do anything for you if you honestly asked her nicely.”

She probably would. That was the problem.

She didn’t want to hear from him. He knew that. Hadn’t he started hundreds of messages,
only to erase them instead of releasing his inadequacy into the world? At least her phone
wouldn’t alert her to his cowardice, as long as she wasn’t actually looking at their text
conversation.

Which she would have no reason to.

But what if Eloise actually was in trouble?

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“Yes, I rather thought you would see it my way. I’ll leave you to it.”

He didn’t want to do it. God, he didn’t want to give her another reason to curse her name. He
wouldn’t call; he thought hearing her voice telling him to piss off would surely kill him.

That’s how he wound up in the coat closet.

He’d crawled into the coat closet many times as a small child, usually to hide from one
sibling or another, when he didn’t want them to see him cry and tease him for it. These days,
he was quite a bit larger, so it wasn’t a room as much as it was barely a box that could contain
him.

The extra coats of the extra Bridgertons didn’t help. In an effort to pull his long legs in so he
could actually close the door, he managed to land in a surprisingly cold, wet puddle left
behind by David’s wellies being knocked aside.

So, now his arse was cold, he was basically shutting himself in a coffin, and worst of all, he
had to subject himself to certain dismissal by the woman he was still in love with.

Because of course he was. He’d thought about staying abroad, or going to another country
that had never had Penelope in it, but he knew he would only see her in all the places she
wasn’t. He would only imagine the places he would like to take her, the meals they were
supposed to share, the walks they should be taking, hand in hand.

No, instead he was hiding in the dark, using his phone as a torch.

After many false starts, he decided simple was best, most likely to be read.

Do you know where El is? No one’s seen her in days.

 Chapter 22
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“Hi, Penelope!” a cheerful voice chirped through the phone.

Penelope noted the false note of panic in her best friend’s voice.

Oh my god, Eloise. What have you gotten yourself into this time?

“I’m so glad to hear from you!” Eloise continued. “How have you been?”

Penelope would not take the bait. Clearly El was trying to distract her, but considering her
best friend’s actions caused her to have to hear from him , she was going to get answers.

Okay, so she’d just read the text preview on her screen, but it still counted.

“El,” she began, carefully, “where are you right now?”

“Oh! I’m at the library, Pen! How are you?”

“Eloise…”

“What?”

“Your whole family is demanding answers from me as to where you have been. I know you
haven’t been at the library for four days.”

At first, the only sound on the other end of the line was an aggravated sigh. She could picture
El, wherever she was, rolling her eyes like a petulant teenager. But Penelope had decades of
experience waiting her friend out. A lot of practice getting out of her the information she
wanted.

“Pen…”

“Yes?”

“Cone of silence?”

Cone of silence was something they’d invented when they were nine years old. It was a pact
that they would be radically honest with each other, but that nothing they said would leave
the cone of the moment. The first time they’d ever invoked it had been when Penelope had
accidentally ruined Lady Bridgerton’s favorite lily plant. Eloise had taken the blame for her
and had been grounded for three days (a lifetime at age nine), and the cone of silence was
born.

“Fine, cone of silence,” Penelope sighed.

“I’m in the country.”

“The country is worth cone of silence? Come on, El. I’m going to need more than that.”

Another sigh.

“I found my soulmate.”

That wasn’t possible. Penelope knew for a fact that her best friend’s TiMER still had about
six years left on it. It had dismayed her at the time, realizing her friend wouldn’t have much
time to have children if she wanted them.

Luckily, Eloise didn’t need continued prompting, because the rest of the story spilled out with
the strength of a dam breaking.

“You know the website PREarrange? The one where people post live countdowns of their
TiMERs so they can try to find their other half?”

Of course Penelope had heard of PREarrange. The service had evolved out of dating services
and matrimonial matchmakers when their jobs were threatened by the certainty of the
TiMER. In the internet age, they’d moved online. In PREarrange’s current form, the website
attempted to connect soulmates ahead of time so they could get to know each other before
they officially “met”.

Some people thought it took the pressure off. Others just didn’t want to wait. But usually they
didn’t meet in person. That was a step too far, to circumvent fate.

Although differently than her older brother had…

But Penelope shook her head, realizing she’d lost focus on her friend’s story.

“So then Phillip invited me out to his country home to see if we actually suited each other.”

“Wait, what? I missed all of that, sorry. Who is this catfish luring you out into the country?”

“Jesus, Pen. What’s up with you lately?” Eloise scolded. “I didn’t question you about where
you disappeared to for a long weekend last month.”

“And I appreciated that ,” Penelope emphasized, “but my family didn’t question you as to
where I was.”

“I left them a note!”

“Which I can only assume none of them found.”

“That’s not my fault.”

Penelope loved Eloise like a sister. But sometimes sisters wanted to slap each other.

“Eloise, who even is this Phillip person?”

“He’s a botanist and a widower. He lives with his twins and these massive greenhouses!”

“Wait, he has kids? Why do you think he’s your soulmate if he was clearly already married?”

“Pen, you’re legally allowed to marry someone even if technology says they’re not your
soulmate. I mean, it didn’t work out for them, but it’s allowed .”

“But El, why did you even do this?”

Penelope was getting moderately tired of her friend’s indulgent sighs. She sounded happy,
which would normally be great, but Penelope wasn’t comfortable with this vast cavern of
secrets that’d sunk between them.

“I didn’t like the idea of all eyes on me when I met my Society-approved mate, so we could
have our Society-approved home and our Society-approved babies,” Eloise admitted.

“But you still met Phillip?”

“Yeah, Pen,” Eloise snarked. “I hate expectations, not love! Things are going well so far, but
if I don’t end up wanting to be with Phillip, I can have the operation to remove my TiMER
and go on with my life as a happy spinster! I can date or not and have the life I choose .”

“Your mum’s going to kill you for taking that moment away from her.”

“I know, Pen. But at some point, we have to stop living for what other people want and figure
out what we want.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the time his phone chimed with an answer, Colin was busy raiding Anthony’s larder. His
arms piled with cold cuts, cheeses, and condiments, he staggered over to the counter where
his plate was waiting.

He jumped when he heard the buzz of the text vibration, a wedge of Wensleydale sliding to
the floor in his haste.

He snatched up the white cheese and then the phone.

Eloise is fine. She’s with a friend. She says she left a note?

Well, that was fine then. He quickly forwarded the info to Kate before eyeing his phone
nervously.

Should he respond? Technically, Penelope had finished her text with a question mark, which
implied looking for a reply. But it was clearly not a real question so much as it was a
statement with confusion tacked onto the end.

Her house wasn’t that far from Anthony’s. What if he just walked there and showed up at the
door? Would he be turned away?
Could he make her talk to him?

No, that would be wrong.

Right?

Right.

He wiped the mustard off his knife and picked up his sandwich, but he paused before it hit his
mouth.

He could text her back, though. Just to say thank you? That would only be polite.

Thank you, Penelope.

Good. Good. Direct and polite.

But he couldn’t help himself.

Can we please talk?

The reply came faster than he expected.

No.

That was it? That was all she was going to give him after the time they’d shared? After
leaving him in silence for weeks?

He… he couldn’t accept that.

He understood on some level why she was upset. Kind of… Maybe…

But…

But Colin still loved Penelope and felt as if his heart had been cut out when she had separated
herself from him.

He kept replaying what his sister had said earlier that day…

Penelope is head over heels in love with you.

Penelope is head over heels in love with you.

Maybe she was. Maybe she had been before he’d opened his stupid goddamned mouth.

Maybe she still could be, if he could figure out what to say to her.

This was a time where he wished he could access the perceived charm of Public Colin. Public
Colin would know exactly what to say to get Penelope back at his side.

Who was he kidding? Public Colin was just his useless self with a mask on.
 It had to be him.

And it had to be good.

Chapter End Notes

Honestly, I'd love it if someone wrote the story of Eloise and Phillip in this AU. I would
100% read that.
 Chapter 23

Dearest Pen,

Please indulge me as I tell you of my travels in the most verdant and glorious land I have
ever seen, cherishing you.

I began gently, whiling away my time under the warmth of your smile. When aimed in my
direction, I became insatiably drawn to experience this phenomenon again and again,
convinced I would never have my fill. It is my intention to spend my entire life in pursuit of
that bliss, that which stoked the fallen flickers of flame in my heart.

To you, my adventure was a mistake, a foolish escapade in which I made a farce of the
charming country that allowed my patronage. But if so, this journey has drawn me,
relentlessly, persistently, until my entire being was consumed by the need to be by your side,
in whatever capacity you would have me.

For a time, I was running, certain I would never discover a home to welcome me. What I’ve
realized, dearest Pen, is that the location doesn’t matter, that my heart will never be settled
because I have already given it to you.

You have no reason to believe in me, and I can’t begin to imagine how I will make myself
worthy of your trust again someday. But please hear me when I say that I will do whatever it
takes to have you in my arms once again, to kiss you, whether under the Tuscan sun or the
bioluminescence of the most secluded cave in the South Pacific.

There is no woman who can even begin to compare to you. I was scared. That’s the truth, as
shameful as it is. I was terrified that you would see the mess I am inside and you would hate
me. I have only sustained my hope on the knowledge that you are far too strong to be easily
swayed, that your heart is as steadfast and true as the bristlecone pines of the White
Mountains. Did you know they can persist for over five millennia?

Penelope, I would not blame you if you deleted this declaration without reading my words,
but just in case there is still hope for us, in case you have persisted this far and I still have a
chance to win a place in your heart, I have made an appointment with the TiMER office for
Boxing Day, at noon.

If you need me to prove how perfect we are for each other, that we were created to be the
other half of each other’s souls, then so be it.

Love (oh, how giddy I feel to finally express it to you),

Your Colin, Always

 Chapter 24
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“When the party is over, the night’s just begun. I promise the best part is yet to come. Slow
dance together, two become one. That’s what we’ve waited all day for.”

“Alexa, stop,” Colin commanded wearily.

The tech home assistant ceased playback of Christmas songs, and the room was plunged into
silence. The Bridgerton family festivities had wrapped up with dinner of an enormous turkey
with the trimmings, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, everything Colin had grown up
eating since he was a child, multiplied by all the extra family members who had been born
since.

Colin had lingered long enough to get a second meal out of what was left, piling a plate high
with any pigs in blankets and mince pies that had escaped the notice of his nieces and
nephews, preoccupied comparing their new gifts. He’d gamely endured pulling a few
Christmas crackers before begging off staying longer.

Gregory had tried to convince him to stick around and watch the footy, but Colin was tired of
pretending that it was an ordinary holiday season, with no major anxieties and no obligations
to follow. He had told no one in his family about his appointment the next day. For that, he
would have had to admit to his fake TiMER in the first place, and honestly he just saw little
point under the circumstances. Sufficiently long-sleeved sweaters did the job well enough
until he was able to depart.

His mother had been too busy with her many grandchildren to protest, especially with the
new guests Eloise had brought home, and had barely blinked when Colin had made his exit.
Daphne had forced a plate of additional leftovers into his arms, which of course he had
appreciated, but Colin couldn’t keep up his carefree facade a moment longer.

That’s why he was alone in his flat in Bloomsbury, sprawled across his sofa and
contemplating just turning in early. He couldn’t hold himself from checking his phone for
perhaps the 200th time that day, hoping against hope that Penelope would finally respond to
his email somehow, reach out through some means. But no. Generic messages of Christmas
cheer still trickled in occasionally from distant acquaintances, but he had heard nothing from
the woman who had vacated the spacious room in his heart.

It had been a fortnight. He knew she had read the email, because he had sent it with a read
receipt (he didn’t trust technology quite enough to do otherwise).

He was a fool, and he recognized it. He was grasping at straws, thinking of all the other
things he could have also said, but couldn’t because he didn’t want to chase her away all the
more.
There was a knock at his door, and Colin briefly considered ignoring it. He wasn’t the source
of the too-loud music (that was next door), nor the dog barking (upstairs), so he couldn’t
imagine what any of his neighbors might want from him.

But then the knock redoubled, an insistent rap that was impossible to pretend he hadn’t heard.

Colin hauled himself off the couch, running a half-hearted hand through his mussed hair. He
had already shed his nice Christmas sweater and pressed trousers for a pullover jumper and
joggers, comfort over style for sure.

He dragged his feet getting to the door, only to be chastised by the rap of a third knock just as
his hand reached the handle. Without bothering to peer out his spyhole, he flung the door
open, ready to get rid of whatever well-meaning hallway carol singer would grace the other
side.

“Hello, Colin,” Penelope whispered.

Colin couldn’t believe his eyes at the vision on his welcome mat, the woman of his dreams,
wrapped in a stylish trench coat, her shapely legs ending in a pair of burgundy heels that
raised her from her usual to-his-shoulder height to where he could comfortably have rested
his cheek over her soft hair without having to hunch himself to do so.

“May I come in?”

“Oh!” Colin started, still struggling to believe she was really there. “Of course! Please.”

Penelope brushed past him, her normal nutella-rich scent somewhat augmented by… was that
peppermint?

Colin reached out automatically to help her remove her coat, but as the buttery-soft fabric fell
from her shoulders, he lost his breath.

She was in an exquisitely well-cut dress in the same burgundy of her shoes, nipped in at the
waist and flaring out over her hips to skim just below her knees. But what had stolen Colin’s
focus was the top of the dress, a wrapped v-neck that revealed an absolutely devastating
amount of cleavage.

He felt the sudden urge to sit down, but he strained to remember his manners, inviting her
further into the flat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Penelope could feel her pumps sinking into the plush carpet of Colin’s flat as she followed
him down the hall to his sitting room. She had never been there before and had never
expected to see the inside. Though she had imagined.

Colin kept glancing back over his shoulder at her, looking as nervous as she felt, though she
couldn’t know what he was thinking, why he thought she was there. He was more lived-in
and cozy-looking than she had ever seen him, and the thought pushed the Christmas chill out
of her fingertips.
His public space was dominated by a modular sofa in British racing green and a large
television mounted to the wall.

“Please, sit,” Colin said shakily. “Can I make you some tea? I think I have some custard
creams… somewhere…”

Penelope nodded, perching uneasily on the near end of the sofa. She smoothed her skirt down
over her thighs, struggling to steady her shaking hands. Maybe if she kept her hands in her
lap, then she could control them? At least a little?

Colin’s back was turned to her as he busied himself at his flat’s kitchenette. It was for the
best; it gave her more time to find her resolve before his eyes were on her and he asked her
the inevitable question…

Penelope, what are you doing here?

The seconds ticked by in her heartbeats: thump, thump, thump. Are you sure? Are you ready?
Are you sure? Are you ready?

It’s too late to be anything but sure.

She could see he had an electric kettle, so she had maybe ten minutes if he waited until her
cup was finished. Tops.

Colin’s squared-off shoulders were evident even through his jumper, and his pajama bottoms
hung low on his hips. God, she was still so attracted to him. It was unfair, really.

While he was occupied, she let her eyes wander around his place, searching for the little
touches he’d left behind of his daily life. A single worn trainer hung off the handle of his
linen closet, its laces dangling below. A leather copy of Rebecca , the binding cracked with
use, sat on the side table, a torn envelope acting as a bookmark.

A darkened doorway led off to what could only be his bedroom, the space that was most truly
for his eyes only. Though perhaps he’d had… guests… in there at some point. Penelope’s
pulse was thrumming behind her ears again, and she reached up to massage the spot, hoping
in vain that it would be enough to get her body under control.

“I… I didn’t know how you took it,” Colin stammered, carrying a tray with milk, sugar, and
honey.

Was it odd that his waver made her feel better? That it helped to know he was as nervous as
she was?

“How was your Christmas?” he asked.

Was that actually what Colin cared about? Seriously?

“It was fine. Could have been better, I guess. Could have been worse.”

God, this is awkward .

It wasn’t the first moment they’d been alone in a room simultaneously, but it was the
strangest. Colin sat sideways on the couch so his body was facing her completely, his emerald
eyes darting everywhere, as if he was afraid to let his attention land too long.

“Did you have…”

“Colin, I’m not here to talk about what my mother served for pudding!”

Colin adjusted in his seat, sat up straighter now that Penelope had ended the charade that this
was a simple social call.

It’s now or never. Push the boat out and see if it floats.

“Colin, I’ve been here fifteen minutes, and you haven’t noticed.”

“What haven’t I noticed?”

His eyes trained more intently on her.

“You haven’t cut your hair, I don’t think. You’re a total knockout in that dress, but that can’t
be what you mean.”

Penelope blushed. She’d worn the red dress on purpose, a type of flirty lure, but it was nice to
hear it acknowledged nonetheless.

“What is it, Penelope? What is it I’m missing?”

She swallowed hard, willing herself into that final push of bravery.

“Well, I’m hoping you still believe you’re missing me.”

And with that, she lifted her hands out of her lap, flourishing them like a magician would.
She ran her right hand over her left wrist and the bandage wrapped there.

Colin’s eyes darted from her wrist to her face and back again. Penelope could almost see
equations running behind his mind.

“But why?” he exhaled, as if he’d been holding his breath.

“What do you mean, why?”

“I… I…” He shifted closer to her, his lip quivering as he couldn’t stop glancing at her wrist.

“Can you take the bandage off?” he asked finally.

Penelope carefully picked at the adhesive edge, seizing the gauze and unwinding it. The pale
underside of her arm came into view, a rather gnarly set of two puncture wounds dotting her
wrist.

“The doctor said if I keep it clean and use the antiseptic, it should heal up in a week or two.”
She glanced up to meet his eyes. “Though I might always have a scar, of course.”
 “But I…”

“I know, you were going to get a TiMER tomorrow. And I should have talked to you earlier.
But not many doctors work on Christmas Eve.”

“You spent your Christmas Eve…”

The removal had been more intense than the implantation, an outpatient procedure that had
lasted about six hours. She had been awake for the entire time, though the numbing
medication they’d used at the hospital had made her wish to sleep more than once.

With the softness of handling the most fragile things, Colin took her wrist in his hand. He
began delicately re-bandaging her arm. When he placed the finished edge, he pressed a
feather-light kiss to her wrist.

His questioning green eyes looked up at her, leaning his face into her hand. His jaw was
freshly shaven, and his skin was surprisingly soft.

“Would it be too presumptuous of me to ask what this means?” he asked.

Penelope slid her hand along his jaw, stroking his cheekbone with her thumb. Colin closed
his eyes and let out a deep, shuddered breath. He lay his hand over hers on his face, as if
trying to hold down a fleeting dream.

Chapter End Notes

Getting close to the end now. Not sure exactly how many chapters left, but not many.
 Chapter 25
Chapter Notes

You might have noticed I changed the rating of this fic, even though it's been pretty tame
so far. You'll see...

Colin’s heart had never beat so fast and so slow in the same moment. He peered at Penelope
(his Penelope?) and could only sit, frozen, as the hopeful rabbit of his heart shook with
nerves.

“I don’t know,” Penelope admitted, “what this means… for us… or what our future might
hold.”

Our future?

“But,” she continued, “I made a decision regarding myself. And if you are on board with that
decision, we have more to discuss.”

“Tell me all about it,” Colin pleaded.

He took both her hands inside his own, aware he had slid forward on his sofa cushion far
enough that he’d unconsciously trapped both of her knees between his own. He saw she
wasn’t unaffected by his touch; her chest rose and fell with a rhythm that reminded him of an
old Regency romance of Francesca’s he’d been bored enough to read once. “Heaving
bosoms”, he believed, was how the author had described it.

But as aware as his body was of hers, he was hanging on her every word. He knew that, as
much as he wanted her, as much as he felt tenderness for her, it meant nothing if she didn’t
want those desires to be fulfilled by him.

“I have lived my entire life according to what other people told me I should want,” Penelope
explained. “Even the TiMER was a system through which our society treated me as if I
shouldn’t crave love, because ‘science’ instructed me I didn’t deserve it.”

Colin wanted so much to interrupt, to tell her she deserved love more than so many people
who didn’t regret their TiMER.

“I spent my time examining the successes of others, mocking the failures of those whose
manufactured ‘destiny’ disappointed them. I acted as if I was above them, but my entire
online reputation was based on their lives.” Penelope sighed. “I was trying to distract myself
from facing the reality that I had no plan for my own future.”
She had delivered this monologue to their joined hands, but with these last words, Penelope
met his gaze.

“I can’t make promises about forever,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s really supposed to
mean. But…”

But? But?

“... but even before everything happened, I knew I wanted… well, you.”

Colin’s chest swelled with joy. He felt the urge to leap up, punch his fist into the air, shout
with delight. He wished he’d learned how to turn cartwheels.

He rose, saying, “Penelope, I…”

“Colin, I’m not finished.”

And he collapsed back onto the sofa.

“I don’t like that you lied to me,” Penelope said. “But I realize we weren’t that close, and
later enough time had passed that it was awkward. But I can’t have that going forward.”

“Going forward?”

Penelope smiled prettily, and that flush he’d seen so many times dusted her cheeks.

“I think it’s worth a shot,” she said. “But I won’t be sitting at home. If you’re traveling the
world, I’m going with you. Is that alright with you?”

Alright with him? Colin thought he might fly if he could just jump high enough first.

Now or never, Bridgerton .

“Penelope, you are the most beautiful, intelligent, gorgeous woman in the whole world, and I
can’t wait to show you all of it to prove it to you.”

“Beautiful and gorgeous are synonyms,” Penelope giggled.

“Then it bears repeating,” he said. “Have I mentioned how incredibly stunning you look right
now?”

And the blush continued to spread.

“You… did…” she began haltingly.

“Well, get used to hearing it, Penelope Featherington, because if you let me, I intend to tell
you how wonderful you are day and night.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Day and night. Night. Night. Night.

Penelope discovered with some degree of astonishment (would she always feel like this?)
that Colin’s eyes weren’t just appreciative, as they had been since she’d arrived. No, now his
eyes held something else… something primal. As if he could… could see something inside
her that she never had. It made her feel warm, so warm that she had to fight the instinct to
gather her hair and lift it off the back of her neck.

He wanted her. And what was more important, she wanted him too. Penelope had never felt
wanted before, but more than that, she realized she could… actually have what she wanted.

Penelope couldn’t have said afterward which of them had initiated the kiss, only that they
crashed together with the power of a fault line, her slipping into his lap and seizing his thick,
auburn hair. Her fingers tangled into the silky locks as if they would never be extracted, while
Colin’s hands slipped one to the back of her neck, the other to the swell of her hip. The
firmness of his grip! It was almost painful, but ahh, what an exquisite pain it was!

“Penelope,” he gasped when their lips parted, “I love you.”

She responded by seizing the hem of his jumper and, with his help, yanking it off over his
head. Standing to complete the motion, she threw the jumper to the side, stopping to marvel
at his lean, well-muscled chest. She’d seen it before, the time their air conditioner had broken
in Rome, but tonight she could take her time and look. Now he was bare for her benefit, and
benefit she would.

Penelope couldn’t stop herself from licking her lips.

Colin sprawled half on his back, pressed against the sofa.

“Pen?” he croaked.

She could touch him. She could run her hands anywhere she wanted, and he’d beg her for
more. The powerful sensation was almost too much to be believed. Penelope had never felt a
man in that way, the way she’d always dreamed she’d touch Colin if only he looked her way.

“Penelope, is something wrong?” Colin asked, genuine concern in his voice.

Penelope kicked her heels off, barely caring where they thumped to a halt. Her hips swayed
as she took small, teasing steps back toward him. Leaning toward Colin, she straddled him on
the sofa, running a hand down the ripples of his torso. His skin was warm, and she wondered
if all men ran at a higher temperature, or if there was something about Colin Bridgerton that
made him a human space heater.

She could feel Colin’s rock-hard length already reaching toward her of its own accord.
Penelope ground her hips down onto Colin’s, brushing herself on him at her most tender and
yearning spot.

Penelope had touched herself a time or two, and it wasn’t awful. Fun, actually. But this was
something else, because this wasn’t just physical gratification. This wasn’t just getting herself
off so she could focus and concentrate on something else. This was Colin .
She rocked her hips back and forth experimentally, beyond grateful that the only barrier
between them was a couple of layers of cotton. She had seen rubber approximations of the
male member before and had expected the real thing to be more springy, but Colin felt like a
steel rod, an internal length of rigidity that she wanted nothing more than to take in her hand.

“Pen!” Colin nearly whined.

Penelope froze, scared she had done something wrong. Or hurt him. His eyes were pinched
like he was in pain.

“Oh god,” he gasped, “I don’t want you to stop, but if you do, I’m going to come in my pants
and it’ll be over before I get to touch you in all the ways I’ve imagined.”

Penelope did not know what to do with that information. Had he been pondering this moment
for as long as she had? What had he imagined?

As if Colin was reading her mind, he said, “If you’re open to it, I’d like to take you to my
bedroom, where we’ll have more space to move.”

And before she could comment either way (though her answer was an enthusiastic yes),
Colin swept her up in his bare arms as easily as if she were the size of a newborn babe. He
staggered with his balance, just for a second, and then nodded in a self-satisfied manner as he
carried her off to the darkened doorway she’d observed earlier.

He laid her down gently on a quilt of blue tartan (perhaps from a trip to visit Francesca?)
before stepping back a couple of paces.

Colin had crossed his arms in such a manner that the muscles of his arms, shoulders, and
chest stood to attention, and Penelope almost missed his next words:

“It seems to me this is a very unfair balance.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, startled.

“You have entirely too much clothing on,” he chuckled, his tone low, his gaze dipping slowly
down her body.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t get me wrong; your breasts look fantastic in that dress.
But I think we can acknowledge you’ve seen rather a lot more of me than I have of you.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Um, I… I…”

Her hands started to fight with the belt at her waist, but her hands were so shaky, she couldn’t
seem to manage it.

Before she knew it, Colin had laid his hands over her own. She glanced up into his face,
wondering if she’d committed some faux pas and he’d wanted to do the job himself.

“Pen,” he said softly, soothingly, “Please relax. This is not an exam you’re going to be graded
on. It’s just you and me. I’m ecstatic just to be in this room with you, and whatever you feel
comfortable with is my lucky bonus.”

He raised a hand to cup her cheek.

“Listen,” he said. “If you’re not ready, or if you’re having second thoughts, we can stop right
now. We can go bundle up in massive blankets and watch cartoons if you’d like. We can toss
jelly babies in the air and try to catch them in our mouths. I don’t care what we do; I just
want to be with you. You don’t owe me any specific thing; my love for you is not fragile.”

How? How had this man, who seemed to know exactly what she wanted, no, needed to hear,
come to coincide with her Colin? Had she gone too far the other way in the intervening
weeks, expected too little of him?

“Sit down,” she commanded.

“What, on the floor?” Colin asked.

Penelope rolled her eyes, but she was grinning, too.

“You come sit on the bed. Yes, you are right. You showed me yours. Now I want to show you
mine.”
 Chapter 26
Chapter Notes

This is pretty much unmitigated smut and I'm not even sorry.

Colin leaned back on his elbows, unable to believe the lucky hand he’d been dealt. Standing
before him was his Penelope, his love, about to unwrap herself from her clothes like the
greatest Christmas present he’d ever received.

She freed the garnet ribbon from around her waist, letting the fabric flutter slowly to the
floor. Colin couldn’t take his eyes from her hands as they traced their way down the neckline
of her dress, stopping at the apex of her cleavage.

He sucked in a sharp breath, and he knew Penelope heard it, because her grin got… cheeky.

“So, you want to see, yeah?” she whispered.

Colin groaned. “Penelope, what are you doing to me?”

“Payback.”

“For what?!”

“Years of lusting after you.”

Penelope’s fingers pinched the fabric, pulling the two sides of her wrap dress open to
reveal…

For a moment, he’d thought she was completely naked under her dress, but he quickly
realized she was wearing some kind of nude-colored shapewear. He didn’t know what it was
called, those things girls wore because they thought it improved on their natural bodies.

Colin generally had to disagree, but on Penelope…

The high-waisted briefs elongated her legs, with the sexiest little straps that connected them
to the underside of her overflowing bra. She was a pinup girl. She was some time traveler’s
wet dream, the kind of vision men would take with them into war to give them courage to
come home to her.

“God, I want so badly to touch you,” Colin said, the words escaping his lips, her body luring
them out.
She giggled, and she became Penelope again, became the woman he knew. But he would
never stop wanting her.

“Come here.”

And she came, bouncing on the edge of the bed as she climbed. On her hands and knees, her
breasts threatened to fall out of her top at any moment. Colin was transfixed. She leaned into
him and pressed her lips to his.

Colin couldn’t hold himself back. He leaned in and grabbed Penelope by the shoulders,
flipping her onto her back on his bed. Penelope on his bed, something he’d only ever
fantasized about before this moment.

Her breath became shallow and panting as he hovered over her, leaning in to press a soft kiss
to her collarbone. Then, before she could react, he reached over to nip her earlobe, which he
was very gratified to hear elicited a gasp.

Oh, his Penelope. That wasn’t the only gasp she’d give him that night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Penelope couldn’t help herself from squirming when Colin’s deft hands snapped the hooks
that connected the two pieces of her shapewear. She wanted, needed him to touch her in all
the places no man’s hands had ever touched her before, but he was frustratingly, endearingly
thorough in his attentions to her body.

She nearly jumped from excitement when his palm finally caressed the swell of her breast.
Colin kissed her soundly, flicking the tip of his tongue lightly into her mouth as he teased her
nipple out of the cup of her bra. He circled the tip with his thumb, and the sensation sent a
lightning bolt between her thighs.

“Oh, Colin,” she sighed. “Please… more…”

The throaty chuckle that came from him was quite possibly the sexiest sound she’d ever
heard.

“My Penelope,” he purred. “Where do you want me to touch you?”

“I… I…”

How in the hell was she supposed to put that into words? He was far more experienced than
she was. Surely he had a better idea than she did as to what the best things to do were.

“Penelope,” he said again, lightly, teasingly, “do you know how much it turns me on to see
you enjoying yourself? I want you to own your pleasure.”

“I… I don’t know… Lower?”

“Lower,” he repeated. “Here?”

He kissed a trail down to her breasts, finally giving attention to the one that he’d neglected up
to that point. When his lips closed around her nipple and sucked lightly, she couldn’t stop her
hips from bucking off the bed.

“Colin, oh my god, that is so lovely. Please…”

“Lower?” he mimicked, clearly having a jolly old time with her.

His featherlight fingers ran from her knees up the inside of her thighs, stopping just before he
crossed the line of what would be considered “leg”. His reaction at her disappointed groan
was mildly infuriating.

Colin’s warm breath coasted over her thighs as he teased her. “Penelope, I’m waiting. Where
do you want to be touched?”

Okay, not mildly infuriating. Incredibly frustrating!

“Colin,” she whined.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, clearly indicating with his voice how well he knew she
wanted nothing of the sort.

He was massaging her thighs with his hands, pulling closer and closer, always backing away
before he touched her where she wanted.

“God, Penelope,” he breathed. “From this angle, I can see exactly how wet you are. How
ready you are for me? Did you know I’ve dreamed of tasting you, wondering if you were as
delectable as you looked?”

Jesus, fuck! That was it; she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Colin, please. That’s exactly what I want. Please?”

“Your wish is my command,” he whispered, finally running a finger under the edge of her
knickers. “Do you want to take these off for me?”

Of course she did! Penelope quickly wiggled the shapewear knickers down her stomach,
shoving them over the swell of her hips, bringing her knees to her chest to yank them off her
feet and throwing them across the room.

Colin laughed. Laughed!

“I love you,” he chuckled. “You’re amazing.”

“Colin,” Penelope admonished, lost in the need she had for him to keep touching her.

And finally, finally , he let his fingers dip toward her womanhood.

“Colin,” she said again, though this was more of a moan.

He kissed the insides of her thighs, and Penelope reflected that she’d never realized how
attractive a man’s shoulders could be. How the muscles looked as they moved and flexed.
She supposed she hadn’t had many opportunities to view them from above like this.

Then he put his mouth on her, and every thought slipped out of her head.

“Oh my god, Pen,” his muffled voice came from between her thighs, “How do you taste so
good ?”

Surely this was too much for her poor heart to bear! As Colin attended to her with the fervor
of a man who had been starving in the desert, she could feel her hips rocking entirely on their
own, seeking their pleasure in his touch.

Penelope couldn’t stop herself. As Colin continued his attentions, little grunts and moans
escaping his throat as he enthusiastically pleasured her, her thighs squeezing together on
either side of his face. She reached down, intending to tap him and warn him, but instead she
wrapped her fingers in his dark locks and pulled , holding him firm and steady as a
shockwave began to spread out from her center.

“Oh, Colin!” she gasped. “Oh!”

That was when she lost her mind entirely. She lost her grip on his hair as her extremities
slammed back onto the mattress. Her head rocked from side to side in bursts, her voice
completely trapped in her throat as she shuddered and twisted her way through the most
astounding sensation she’d ever felt in her life.

It went on for what felt like days (but surely could have only been a few, intense, perfect
seconds) and as she rode the wave, she could dimly feel Colin gripping tightly to her hips,
continuing to take her through her orgasm, to prolong it as long as he could.

Penelope wanted to live in this moment, in this feeling, forever.

When her limbs finally went limp, the last gasps of pleasure ebbing out of her, she could only
sigh, a breathy exhalation that ran through several notes before fading.

“Oh my god, Penelope,” Colin laughed.

Oh, no! Had she embarrassed herself? She went from the highest high to the sharpest concern
immediately.

“Can I just live here in this bed with you and eat you out several times a day?” he continued.

Her skin flushed like it always did, which struck her as the silliest reaction under the
circumstances. How could she still react like this after that?

Colin quickly made his way up to lie beside her. His eyes were on fire, dancing with the
excitement he found in her.

“Did you… was that good?” he asked.

Was it possible he was… self-conscious?

“Couldn’t you tell?” she responded, a tad shocked.

He chuckled, but she could hear the edge in it, the uncertainty.

“It was amazing, Colin,” she assured him. “The best thing that’s ever happened to me. But if
I had to ask for just one thing…”

“Yes?” he asked eagerly.

“I want to feel you inside me, Colin.”

 Chapter 27

“It was amazing, Colin,” she assured him. “The best thing that’s ever happened to me. But if
I had to ask for just one thing…”

“Yes?” he asked eagerly.

“I want to feel you inside me, Colin.”

God, she made him hard as a rock, and he was certain the fact was very clear through the
fabric of his jogger bottoms. With the taste of her fresh on his tongue, his Penelope laid out
beside him was his Erato, Muse of erotic poetry. Or perhaps Calliope, for theirs was a story
that had stretched out so long before that moment.

Pen would like that; Calliope was the wisest.

“Pen, are you sure?” he asked. He leaned down and kissed her gently. “We don’t have to do
anything you’re not ready for. I’m not going anywhere as long as you want me by your side.”

“Colin,” she whispered, “I’ve never been surer of anything, but if you’d rather wait…”

Terpsichore, mother of the Sirens. No doubt.

“Penelope,” he laughed, “Do you want me to show you just how ready I am?”

Her eyes widened in curiosity, and it was all the encouragement he needed. Colin hooked a
thumb in his joggers and started yanking his waistband down. He was so preoccupied with
trying to shed his clothes one-handed that he barely noticed when his dick popped out into
open air and bounced momentarily off his stomach.

When he’d finally managed to wriggle out of his joggers, he kicked them off his bed with a
grunt of annoyance and finally turned back to see Penelope…

…staring in unabashed fascination at his dick.

Her lips parted slightly and barely above an audible whisper, she breathed, “I don’t know
how that’s going to work.”

He grinned. “Trust me, Pen. It works.”

She giggled. Colin was so pleased they were still able to laugh with each other. He’d always
known Penelope to be sharp with a joke or barb, and when she laughed at his jokes, it felt
like a special badge of honor.

“No,” she laughed. “What I meant was, I’m not sure how that will fit.”

Colin immediately shifted into consent-mode, which had been drilled into his head by his
mother for decades .
“I just want to reiterate again that we don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”

“Can I touch it?”

“OhmygodIwouldlikenothingmorethanforyoutodothatrightnow,” he stuttered rapidly, his

excitement rising once again.

Once again, Penelope was staring at his dick, contemplative. Colin didn’t know what she was
thinking, but if they sat there long enough, he was bound to go soft right in front of her.
Which he would probably find a little embarrassing. He was, as they say, “a grower, not a
shower”.

“You still want to?” Penelope asked.

“Only if you do,” he responded cautiously.

“Kiss me.”

As Colin embraced her, he felt bubbles of anxiety he hadn’t even known he was carrying
blow away on the breeze. He took a deep breath, taking in the scent of her. His Penelope.

He brushed his lips against hers and absorbed the feeling of her peaked nipples brushing his
chest. Penelope deepened the kiss, throwing a leg over his hip so they were nose to nose,
pelvis to pelvis.

Okay, he was ready again.

“Do you have something?” she asked.

“I do!”

Colin leaned over Penelope to his bedside table. Sliding open the top drawer, he pulled out a
condom and a container of lubricant he hoped wouldn’t intimidate her.

Seeing her questioning look, he explained. “Even with how wet you are, if we want this to go
as well as possible, stack the deck in our favor, lube can help with that.”

Once he was properly protected, he squeezed some lube out onto his hand, stroking it onto
his dick to make it nice and slick for her. The fact that it was pleasant for him, that some day
he’d like to show her how he touched himself, was a definite bonus.

“Can I…”

Colin waited, but Penelope seemed stuck, having trouble saying the words.

He was about to say something, anything, to save her from needing to speak, when she
continued.

“Can I be on top?” she asked finally.

Colin took her beautiful face in his hands, so open, warmth in her eyes, and said, “Penelope,
that might have been the sexiest thing you could have asked me.”

He leaned back, patting his lap cheekily as if to say, “Your seat is ready for you.”

Colin thought he was prepared. He was not prepared for how it would feel when the creamy,
soft skin of Penelope’s thighs brushed across him, the heat and wetness of her as she settled
onto him. She was holding herself away slightly, as if she was worried she might break him if
she gave him her full pressure.

“How do I…” she started, clearly apprehensive. “How do I put it in? Like, what’s the best
way?”

Colin felt his words leave him. A deceptively simple question, but he’d never guided a
woman in how to have sex with him before. Every experience he’d had was with a woman
who already knew what to expect.

“You just sort of guide me in?” he said. “Or I could?”

He found it difficult to be teacher and lover at the same time, concerned with giving her the
best experience, but he wasn’t a machine. He worried he wouldn’t be able to remain
“engaged” in the situation long enough when her hand circled his erect dick.

Then Colin wasn’t worried anymore. Instead, he was all feeling, his eyes locked on
Penelope’s as she brushed him against herself, until she found the place he belonged.

It was like hitting a brick wall.

Penelope emitted a slight whine from the back of her throat. “Colin, I don’t know what I’m
doing. I don’t know if I can do this.”

Tears had started to form in the corners of her eyes. She yanked her hand back from him and
the tears flowed more freely.

“Penelope,” Colin whispered softly. “Come here.”

She collapsed on his chest and he wrapped his arms around her shaking shoulders, making
soft shushing sounds as Penelope gasped for breath.

“I can do this,” she sobbed. “Just give me a minute. I can do this!”

“Pen,” Colin said, “Please breathe. You’re having an anxiety attack. Deep breaths. You’re not
in any danger.”

Penelope rolled off, sinking to his side on the bed. Colin quickly wrapped himself around her,
yanking the duvet off the floor to cover them both. He didn’t know what the best action for
him to take would be, but at least he could keep her warm and let her feel held. She was still
sobbing and gasping, and Colin felt powerless to help her.
What was wrong with him? Penelope had talked him out of a panic attack with no notice and
he couldn’t even use his own experience to help her? He had finally gotten the love of his life
and he was already failing her?

No, he couldn’t fall apart. He couldn’t make her worry about him. He would be what she
needed, or he might as well give up then and there.

Colin reached up tentatively and stroked her hair, running his fingers through to gently
scratch her scalp. He started to hum, some wordless lullaby he’d heard once upon a time,
hoping he could at least slow her down.

“I wanted this to be so perfect,” Penelope wailed.

“It was perfect!” Colin reassured her. “You’re wonderful and I love you and there’s nowhere
else I’d rather be.”

“But… but… you didn’t get anything out of it!”

“Penelope,” Colin chided, “look at me.”

Though her eyes were still wet, at least Penelope’s gasping had slowed down. She peered
over her shoulder at him and quickly started trying to rub her eyes clear.

“Pen,” Colin said, “how can you think I have gotten nothing out of tonight?”

He kissed her forehead.

“You removed your TiMER for me,” he reminded her. “Do you not realize how big that is?
You think I’m going to go into a strop because you’re nervous about your first time?”

“Mmhmm,” Penelope groaned, noncommittal.

“Pen,” Colin said, stroking the hair out of her eyes, “I’m all in here. I want to be here with
you . I’m not just trying to have sex with whoever, wherever. I cut that shite out a couple of
years ago.”

“You did?” she sniffed.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “It wasn’t fun anymore. Call me barmy if you like, but I thought it would
be nice if the person could remember my name the next day.”

Colin sensed that this explanation was getting away from him, so he refocused his attention
on the woman next to him.

“Of course,” he said, “it didn’t help that there was a girl back home I was completely gone
over.”

“Me?” Penelope whispered, like she was afraid of the answer.

“Yes, you!” Colin chided. “Isn’t that obvious by now?”

“I just wanted to double check,” she admitted quietly.

“Listen,” he said, trying his best to make sure she wouldn’t miss the intention behind his
words, “I’m taking sex off the table for tonight. It’s not on the menu. You and I are just going
to spend time together, get to know each other in this new way, now that our feelings are out
in the open.”

“That sounds nice,” Penelope yawned. “But I do want to have sex with you soon.”

“Hey, no argument here. But we’re going to take our time. Because as far as I’m concerned,
we have the rest of our lives.”
 Chapter 28
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Four months later…

“Victorian women stirred the pollen from this flower into their tea as an especially innovative
way of getting high on their local supply,” Colin explained, quickly reaching over to deliver a
punitive hand slap. “I said not to touch it. A couple dozen people each year pass out just from
breathing in this garden.”

Geoffrey Albansdale shook the sting out of his hand as he offered up a sheepish shrug.
“Sorry, mate. I forgot.”

Keeping his own limbs well away from the trumpet-shaped yellow flower, one of the many
bursting from the large bush, Colin shook his head.

“You can’t forget yourself again,” he warned. “At minimum, brushing that petal would have
given you an instant skin reaction. In large enough doses? Heart attack, memory loss, and
death.”

Penelope couldn’t help but giggle watching this exchange. Her sister’s charming beau looked
so bewildered under the chastising gaze of her best friend and first (only!) love.

“So, you weren’t exaggerating earlier?” Geoff asked.

Colin had cautioned them all at the entrance to Alnwick Gardens to keep their hands, mouths,
and noses to themselves as best as possible. As they’d passed the black ironwork gates, the
sign emblazoned on the front had seemed dramatic: “These plants can kill” with skulls and
crossbones staring out at them.

Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, had met them at the entrance to the gardens to let
them in for a special tour. Colin had met Percy and her husband, the Duke, on a trip to
Cordoba a couple of years back, and they’d extracted a promise from him to visit their
ancestral lands someday.

With Albansdale and the two Featherington sisters accompanying, they had been asked to
sign safety waivers. None of their group had especially sensitive lungs (as far as they knew),
but as Geoffrey had just demonstrated, people made mistakes.

Felicity stepped up and put her hand on Geoff’s arm, gently pulling him back out of harm’s
way. To the man’s credit, he did look genuinely remorseful. Both of them were still so young,
and contrary to Portia Featherington’s ambitions, they had no desire to make excessively
adult decisions, to make quick commitments. Geoff leaned to kiss the top of Felicity’s head
with a soft fondness that Penelope had enjoyed watching grow over the time since they’d
met.
 Trying to move the conversation forward, Penelope moved into step with Colin, pointing out
the laurel hedges on the edge of the path. “Are those just for decoration? My mother has this
in her own garden, and I’d guess your mother does too.”

“You’d think that,” Colin answered with a smile, grateful to move past the awkwardness,
“but I’d hope their gardeners had never loaded the cut branches into their vehicles to take
them away. The fumes would probably knock them out at the wheel.”

He had felt reluctant when Penelope had suggested reaching out to Geoff for help funding his
touring business. Penelope suspected he would have an easier time here than trying to
approach his brother or sister in the same way, which is where the idea had come from. But
Colin was struggling with the idea of asking anyone for financial help.

After the younger couple departed, leaving for a romantic lunch plan Felicity had made,
Colin and Penelope found themselves in a little circular shed offshoot of the garden’s
Treehouse. Sitting at a small reclaimed-wood table, they consulted their food options to grab
a quick bite.

Munching on ciabatta, roasted veg and goat’s cheese (her) and steak and cheddar (him), they
quietly surveyed the stained glass and potting shed decor around them.

“So, I think that went well,” Penelope offered after a swallow of sandwich.

“I can’t believe I slapped him,” Colin moaned, talking around his own mouthful.

Penelope reached out a hand to lay over her boyfriend’s own. “He probably would prefer that
to making himself ill. I think it was fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Penelope smiled, a slow, small thing that curled one corner of her mouth. “Colin, you and I
both know nothing in this world is certain. But I also know that your passion and your
knowledge pull people in, sparking interest in subjects they’d never spent a moment on
before. Our lives will never be 100% settled because circumstances always change, but this is
worth the effort. You are worth the effort.”

“Only if you’re there with me.”

Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should
be taken kneeling, and Domine, non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of
those who receive it. - Oscar Wilde

Chapter End Notes

Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this story, and thank you for your
lovely comments along the way. I hope you liked my version of Polin's HEA. I have
been thinking about little one-shots here and there revolving around this version of the
characters, so I might be linking them to this as a series eventually, but for now, the
curtain comes to a close.
Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!