“I always think of food,” Colin replied, his eyes searching the table until he located the butter. “What else is there?”
“Your wife,” Benedict drawled.
“Ah, yes, my wife,” Colin said with a nod. He turned to Phillip, leveled a hard stare at him, and said, “Just so that you are aware, I would have rather spent the night with my wife.”
Phillip couldn’t think of a reply that might not hint at insult to the absent Mrs. Bridgerton, so he just nodded and buttered a roll of his own.
Colin took a huge bite, then spoke with his mouth full, the etiquette breach a clear insult to his host. “We’ve only been married a few weeks.”
Phillip raised one of his brows in question.
“Still newlyweds.”
Phillip nodded, since some sort of response seemed to be required.
Colin leaned forward. “I really did not want to leave my wife.”
“I see,” Phillip murmured, since truly, what else could he have said?
“Do you understand what he’s saying?” Gregory demanded.
Colin turned and sent a chilling look at his brother, who was clearly too young to have mastered the fine art of nuance and circumspect speech. Phillip waited until Colin had turned back to the table, offered him a plate of asparagus (which he took), then said, “I gather you miss your wife.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Colin said, after sending one last disdainful glance at his brother, “Indeed.”
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
“I love you with everything I am, everything I’ve been, and everything I hope to be. I love you with my past, and I love you for my future. I love you for the children we’ll have and for the years we’ll have together. I love you for every one of my smiles and even more, for every one of your smiles.”
COLIN, ACCORDING TO HIS FAMILY . . .
“Colin is your favorite brother?”
SIMON, The Duke and I
When Phillip smiled . . . Eloise suddenly understood what all those young ladies were talking about when they’d waxed rhapsodic over her brother Colin’s smile (which Eloise found rather ordinary; it was Colin, after all).
To Sir Phillip, With Love
Even Colin—the golden boy, the man with the easy smile and devilish humor—had raw spots of his own. He was haunted by unfulfilled dreams and secret insecurities. How unfair she had been when she’d pondered his life, not to allow him his weaknesses.
PENELOPE, Romancing Mister Bridgerton
“Shall we return to the dining room?” Anthony queried. “I imagine you’re hungry, and if we tarry much longer, Colin is sure to have eaten our host out of house and home.”
To Sir Phillip, With Love
5
Penelope
Miss Penelope Featherington was spotted in Mayfair with Lady Louisa McCann and quite possibly the fattest dog This Author has ever seen. But the news to report of Miss Featherington is neither the company of the Duke of Fenniwick’s daughter nor her utter chunk of a canine. (Lady Louisa’s, that is; Miss Featherington does own a dog, but it is of quite normal girth.)
No, the grand news of the day was the astonishingly palatable color of her day dress—not a single yellow thread to be seen. While it is true that Miss Featherington’s attire has consisted of cooler tones these past few years, it is impossible to excise from one’s memory the lemons and oranges of the lady’s inauspicious debut. Some may have judged it cruel to have compared Miss Featherington to an “overripe citrus fruit,” but This Author maintains that the color of sunshine is deeply unflattering to many complexions. Indeed, even the esteemed Lady Bridgerton was (back when she was merely Miss Sheffield) likened to a “singed daffodil.”
But alas, has this change of wardrobe come too late for Miss Featherington? Is the lady—now firmly on the darker side of twenty-five—on the shelf? Some would say yes. In fact, most would say yes. But if she were to find herself on the receiving end of a suitor’s pursuit, she would not be the first spinster to surprise the ton. After all, Miss Eloise Bridgerton is almost precisely the same age as Miss Penelope Featherington, and she has received two marriage proposals in the past two years.
Perhaps Penelope will yet surprise us all . . .
Or perhaps not.
LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 1822
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.
* * *
On the sixth of April, in the year 1812—precisely two days before her sixteenth birthday—Penelope Featherington fell in love.
It was, in a word, thrilling. The world shook. Her heart leaped. The moment was breathtaking. And, she was able to tell herself with some satisfaction, the man in question—one Colin Bridgerton—felt precisely the same way.
Oh, not the love part. He certainly didn’t fall in love with her in 1812 (and not in 1813, 1814, 1815, or—oh blast, not in all the years 1816–1822, either, and certainly not in 1823, when he was out of the country the whole time, anyway). But his earth shook, his heart leaped, and Penelope knew without a shadow of a doubt that his breath was taken away as well. For a good ten seconds.
Falling off a horse tended to do that to a man.
* * *
LA, BUT such excitement yesterday on the front steps of Lady Bridgerton’s residence on Bruton Street!
First, Penelope Featherington was seen in the company of not one, not two, but THREE Bridgerton brothers, surely a heretofore impossible feat for the poor girl, who is rather infamous for her wallflower ways. Sadly (but perhaps predictably) for Miss Featherington, when she finally departed, it was on the arm of the viscount, the only married man in the bunch.
If Miss Featherington were to somehow manage to drag a Bridgerton brother to the altar, it would surely mean the end of the world as we know it, and This Author, who freely admits she would not know heads from tails in such a world, would be forced to resign her post on the spot.
LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS
13 JUNE 1817
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
Yellow, Mrs. Featherington declared, was a happy color and a happy girl would snare a husband.
Penelope decided then and there that it was best not to try to understand the workings of her mother’s mind.
* * *
“I’ve spent my life forgetting things, not saying them, never telling anyone what I really want.”
* * *
It was the three elder Bridgerton brothers: Anthony, Benedict, and Colin. They were having one of those conversations that men have, the kind in which they grumble a lot and poke fun at each other. Penelope had always liked to watch the Bridgertons interact in this manner; they were such a family.
Penelope could see them through the open front door, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying until she’d reached the threshold. And in a testament to the bad timing that had plagued her throughout her life, the first voice she heard was Colin’s, and the words were not kind.