“. . . and I am certainly not going to marry Penelope Featherington!”
“Oh!” The word slipped over her lips before she could even think, the squeal of it piercing the air like an off-key whistle.
The three Bridgerton men turned to face her with identical horrified faces, and Penelope knew that she had just entered into what would certainly be the most awful five minutes of her life.
She said nothing for what seemed like an eternity, and then, finally, with a dignity she never dreamed she possessed, she looked straight at Colin and said, “I never asked you to marry me.”
THE VISCOUNT WHO LOVED ME
“I have rarely known Lady Whistledown to be incorrect,” Kate said.
Penelope just shrugged and then looked down at her gown with disgust. “She certainly is never incorrect about me.”
* * *
“Of course most of us still never lack for a dance partner,” Cressida said, “but I do feel for poor Penelope when I see her sitting with the dowagers.”
“The dowagers,” Penelope ground out, “are often the only people in the room with a modicum of intelligence.”
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
“If you want a new direction for your life,” Penelope said, “then for heaven’s sake, just pick something out and do it. The world is your oyster, Colin. You’re young, wealthy, and you’re a man.” Penelope’s voice turned bitter, resentful. “You can do anything you want.”
He scowled, which didn’t surprise her. When people were convinced they had problems, the last thing they wanted to hear was a simple, straightforward solution.
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“It’s exactly that simple.”
She stood, smoothing out her skirts in an awkward, defensive gesture. “Next time you want to complain about the trials and tribulations of universal adoration, try being an on-the-shelf spinster for a day. See how that feels and then let me know what you want to complain about.”
And then, while Colin was still sprawled on the sofa, gaping at her as if she were some bizarre creature with three heads, twelve fingers, and a tail, she swept out of the room.
It was, she thought as she descended the outer steps to Bruton Street, quite the most splendid exit of her existence.
Unrequited love was never easy, but at least Penelope Featherington was used to it.
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
“Happy endings are all I can do,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t know how to write anything else.”
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON
“Isn’t it nice,” Lady Danbury said, leaning in so that only Penelope could hear her words, “to discover that we’re not exactly what we thought we were?”
And then she walked away, leaving Penelope wondering if maybe she wasn’t quite what she’d thought she was.
Maybe—just maybe—she was something a little bit more.
* * *
“There’s more to me than you think, Colin,” she said. And then, in a quieter tone of voice, she added, “There’s more to me than I used to think.”
* * *
She always remembered the days of the week.
She’d met Colin on a Monday.
She’d kissed him on a Friday.
Twelve years later.
She sighed. It seemed fairly pathetic.
* * *
“Suppose I told everyone that I had seduced you.”
Penelope grew very, very still.
“You would be ruined forever,” Colin continued, crouching down near the edge of the sofa so that they were more on the same level. “It wouldn’t matter that we had never even kissed. That, my dear Penelope, is the power of the word.”
* * *
There are moments in a woman’s life when her heart flips in her chest, when the world suddenly seems uncommonly pink and perfect, when a symphony can be heard in the tinkle of a doorbell.
* * *
It was the sort of kiss that enveloped her, from her head to her toes, from the way his teeth nibbled her lips, to his hands, squeezing her bottom and sliding across her back. It was the sort of kiss that could easily have turned her knees to water and led her to swoon on the sofa and allow him to do anything to her, the more wicked the better, even though they were mere yards away from over five hundred members of the ton, except—
“Colin!” she exclaimed, somehow breaking her mouth free of his.
“Shush.”
“Colin, you have to stop!”
He looked like a lost puppy. “Must I?”
“Yes, you must.”
“I suppose you’re going to say it’s because of all the people just next door.”
“No, although that’s a very good reason to consider restraint.”
“To consider and then reject, perhaps?” he asked hopefully.
* * *
She had been born for this man, and she’d spent so many years trying to accept the fact that he had been born for someone else.
To be proven wrong was the most exquisite pleasure imaginable.
* * *
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Lady Danbury said. “Heh heh heh. All these fools, trying to figure out what you did to get Colin Bridgerton to marry you, when all you really did was be yourself.”
PENELOPE, ACCORDING TO HER FAMIILY . . .
“Penelope never forgets a face.”
ELOISE, An Offer From a Gentleman
“I’ve always liked her. More brains than the rest of her family put together.”
LADY DANBURY, Romancing Mister Bridgerton
“There is no one I’d rather have as a sister. Well, aside from the ones I already have, of course.”
ELOISE, Romancing Mister Bridgerton
“I know that many of you were surprised when I asked Penelope Featherington to be my wife. I was surprised myself.”
A few unkind titters wafted through the air, but Penelope held herself perfectly still, completely proud. Colin would say the right thing. She knew he would. Colin always said the right thing.
“I wasn’t surprised that I had fallen in love with her,” he said pointedly, giving the crowd a look that dared them to comment, “but rather that it had taken so long.
“I’ve known her for so many years, you see,” he continued, his voice softening, “and somehow I’d never taken the time to look inside, to see the beautiful, brilliant, witty woman she’d become.”
Romancing Mister Bridgerton
6
Daphne
Marriage, it seems, has not changed everything about the former Miss Daphne Bridgerton. While she has deftly transitioned from debutante to duchess, she is still a lady who grew up with four brothers, three of them her elder (and by next year, This Author is sure, all four of them taller). While the duchess, a former diamond of the first water, is all amiability and grace, there is much to her comportment that can only be explained by having grown up in a household so heavily populated by the males of our species. Consider the following: