Chapter Text
Colin awoke to a noise.
It was louder than the sound of a strong wind gust against the shaky window panes. It was more robust than the usual bird songs he woke too. It was wholly different from the light rumble of Penelope’s snoring (she maintained that she did not, in fact, snore, a lie which he found endlessly adorable).
“Pen,” he grumbled, screwing his eyes shut even more tightly. “What is that?”
Then another sound came. A voice. A male voice.
Colin shot up. All at once a few things came into focus. The empty spot in the bed next to him. Clothes he hadn’t donned in months strewn across the floor. A distinct murmur that sparked in his brain and sent ice coursing through his veins.
In a haste he was out of bed, hurriedly tugging on a pair of breeches to meet whatever this disruption was. Carefully, Colin opened the door and poked his head out into the hall. “Pen?”
“Brother?”
That voice. Colin shifted his gaze, following the long line of blue carpet until he met an apparition all too familiar. He was crouched down to pick up the turned over hall table near his feet, but Colin was sure it was him. He had the same cracked-leather boots, the same waistcoat littered with colorful flowers. His eyes were glassy and his hair mussed like he’d just gotten in from a long evening, but his face was the same one Colin had memorized since birth.
“Rough night?” the apparition asked with a hiccup. “You’re looking rather green.”
No. No. No no no no. It was the only word his mind could conjure, the only one that fell from his lips in a pleading whisper. Colin had the sudden urge to turn on his heel, race back into his bedchamber and pull the covers over his head. But his feet were rooted, forcing him to confront this ghost.
He closed his eyes in an attempt to bring himself back to reality, back to two minutes ago when things made sense. When Colin opened them again, the phantom of his brother was closer. Close enough for Colin to make out the concerned slope of his brows and the liquor on his breath.
“Everything all right, Col?” Benedict's hand landed on his bare shoulder, and in that touch was the same sensation Colin experienced when he met Penelope in the square on that first lonely night. Something alive, something real. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Ben?” Colin reached up to touch his brother’s cheek. It felt like skin—warm, prickly with stubble, giving under his fingers.
His hand was promptly batted away, accompanied with a look that was so unique to his brother—lip curled up, eyes dancing with amusement and affection. The familiar expression quickly burrowed into his soul, poking holes along the way, enough for something long buried to begin spilling out.
“Ben!” He grabbed his brother by the cheeks. Benedict’s wonderful face scrunched up as Colin planted a kiss on either side before gathering him up in his arms. Colin hugged him tight, the kind of embrace they hadn’t shared since their father died. When he felt Benedict’s reluctant arms wrap around him, Colin sagged into his chest, a long held weariness releasing with every moment his brother held him.
Benedict patted his back. “Are you taking the tea again, brother?”
Colin let Benedict pull away, aware that tears were beginning to prick behind his own eyes and even more aware that this was not something he would normally let his brother see. Normal. What was something he would normally say in this instance? “I…am simply happy to see you is all.” An understatement Colin couldn’t even begin to unravel.
“I suppose it is nice to see you in better spirits since last night.”
“Last night?” Last night Colin had made love to Penelope and fallen asleep in her arms. When he awoke she was nowhere to be found. “Penelope.”
“Miss Featherington most certainly did a number on you. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you quite so disgruntled following a party.”
Benedict's words didn’t resonate. Only one was illuminated in his mind, the only one that had come to matter in recent days. Colin took his brother by the shoulders. “Pen, where is she? I need to see her.”
Benedict looked at him as though he’d just spoken gibberish, brows falling into a perplexed line. “I…assume she is at Featherington House?” Right, yes. If he landed here, surely she had landed there. Colin attempted to breeze past his brother when a firm hand pressed against his chest.
“It is barely morning, Colin. Surely whatever humbling you must do to regain her favor can wait until calling hours?” He blinked at his brother, unsure of what it mattered—Penelope always rose early. Benedict lowered his voice, like he too was suddenly aware of the early hour. “And look at yourself, you’re not even clothed!”
As Colin peered down at his disheveled state, a door at the other end of the corridor swung open. “Would you two take your incessant chatter elsewhere?” a voice hissed, in a tone too loud to be a whisper, too indignant to belong to anyone but Eloise. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
With a few short strides, Colin crashed into his sister, lifting her into his arms and twirling her around until she slapped at his shoulders, demanding to be put down.
“Good God, what’s gotten into you?”
In his periphery Colin saw Benedict miming a chugging motion with his hand. He didn’t even mind the ribbing, his head swimming as it struggled to comprehend the scene in front of him, his heart expanding well beyond its borders trying to hold it all in. It was all too much, too big of a question to even try to explain.
So he simply left a kiss on his sister’s cheek. “I love you very much, Eloise. I do not say it often enough, but it is true.”
Clearly taken aback by such an open display of affection, his sister stood still and unblinking for a moment before folding her arms over her chest with a laugh. She turned to Benedict. “He is most certainly in his cups. This is your doing, then?”
“Me? Why do you assume it is me?”
“Because it is always you.”
Colin could have watched them volley back and forth like that forever, perfectly content to be in their midst for even the dullest of conversations. And he would. Later. Later, he would barge through every door in the house and embrace everyone he found inside. He would box with Gregory and fence with his brothers. He would take tea with his mother and sisters, then team up with Kate to badger Anthony about one thing or another. He would tease Eloise within an inch of his life. He would dance at a ball, drink at Will’s club and walk through every street in Mayfair letting life happen around him.
Later. Right now, he needed to find the only other person left to miss.
The square was quiet but not entirely empty, a few early risers milling about as he made his way to Featherington House. At the top of the steps, Colin reached for the door handle only to pull back on second thought and opt for a knock instead. After waiting a rather generous ten seconds, he began hammering against the wood in an endless drum.
After an eternity the door cracked open an inch and a lanky woman appeared on the other side, scowling as she looked him up and down. Colin was tempted to smooth out the wrinkles of the shirt he’d thrown on in haste. “Can I help you sir?”
“Penelope,” he said in a rush, “I need to see her.”
The woman blinked at him with a blank expression. “Miss Featherington is still in bed. As is the rest of the house.”
“I only require a moment of her time.”
Impatient, Colin tried to push his way inside, but the woman stepped in front of him. “If you wish to leave your card, I can inform the young miss that you were here. Or perhaps you may wish to come back during calling hours.”
White hot fury flooded his veins, his hands curling into fists at his sides. He could not, in good conscience, shove an old woman to the ground in order to evade her blockade, but she was leaving him with very few alternatives.
As he weighed his options, a streak of red shot down the staircase. His heart stuttered as the figure paused on the landing and the details of his beloved came into view.
“Colin?”
“Pen!” On instinct his body surged forward, pulled to her by a force stronger than either of them, but was instantly impeded by the door and its armored guard.
Penelope, a vision in her sweet little white nightgown and mess of copper curls, rushed down and across the foyer to meet him. “Colin.” This close, he could see that her eyes were brimming with tears. He longed to reach out and cup her face and kiss them away one by one.
But her housekeeper wouldn’t have it, standing squarely between them. “This is most inappropriate miss—”
“You weren’t there when I awoke, and I thought—”
“I know,” Colin said, reaching for her hand, the most they could feasibly touch. “I came as soon as I could.”
“They’re all back. It happened Colin, it truly—”
“Sir, I must ask you to leave at once, or I shall have to wake the lady of the house and—”
“No!” he and Penelope shouted in unison. The last thing they needed was to involve her mother in this nonsense. Colin hated the thought of leaving her here, especially when the edges of her eyes were pricking with tears, and cursed polite society and all its rules for making him do so. He would have to play along, at least until he could find a private moment for the two of them.
He turned to Penelope. “I shall return.”
“During calling hours,” the woman interjected. Colin bit his tongue to keep from snarling at her.
“I will return,” he reiterated, his voice resolute. The world began to right itself as Penelope nodded, a faint smile on her lips. He brought the hand still in his up to his lips, refusing to leave without kissing her somewhere, propriety be damned.
As he let go, he looked into her eyes, asking, “Promise you are well?”
“I promise. I shall see you soon.” Her last words coincided with the door being slammed in his face, but Colin found it hard to be ruffled by such blatant rudeness.
Reaching the bottom of the steps, Colin simply stood for a moment, pausing to take in the lively world around him. Morning sun painted the square in golden rays, every ambling group and creaky carriage cast in a warm glow, completely unaware of just how magical they were. Ever since he awoke his head had been too full, heavy and drowning in all the change being thrown at him. He couldn’t even begin to try and parse through it all.
It was surreal, seeing his siblings and seeing Penelope. The two had always existed amongst one another, but now they felt as though they belonged to two separate worlds. His siblings were exactly the same, but the Penelope he left and the one he returned to were wholly different.
For a brief moment before she came barreling down the stairs, Colin had the sinking worry that she might not remember, that the last several months really had been one long dream that only he had any recollection of. But one look at Penelope’s face and he knew. Everything had been real. Every moment he had experienced in their strange, empty world, she had shared too.
Lost in thought as he strolled across the square, Colin missed the shouted warning, jumping back at the last second as the carriage speeding through came clattering to a stop right in front of him.
“Watch it!” the driver hollered from his perch.
A hasty apology on the tip of his tongue, Colin lost the words as a familiar tingle spread through his chest. Deep, brown eyes stared back at him, a silent acknowledgement in them. Colin pet down the horse’s inky muzzle and the animal leaned into his affectionate touch. “Gravy,” he whispered.
The driver was still cursing at him, so Colin offered his apologies with a placating wave. Before he stepped aside, he leaned down and whispered to his friend, “You are Gravy, do not forget that.”
When Colin returned home, he followed the muffled chorus to the dining room to join his family to break their fast. For a moment he simply idled in the doorway, watching them go about their business, attempting to imprint the scene to his memory. He was strangely nervous to join them, like he was about to act in some sort of one man show, playing a version of himself he could no longer access.
He wondered if any of them would be able to see how much he had changed, if they could sense that he had lived a whole other life while they slept. But no one batted an eye at his second, third and fourth servings, nor did they comment on his relative silence throughout the meal. Each of them spoke over one another and for the first time Colin found it difficult to keep up with the conversation. He tried not to let any of these things bother him. Instead, he took their teasing in stride, artfully dodged questions about his upcoming travels or any plans for the coming weeks, and refrained from commenting on his row with Penelope until he could reasonably excuse himself.
Back in his bedchamber, after his valet had properly clothed and coiffed him for the day, Colin closed the door and took solace in a moment of relative solitude. After spending several months more or less on his own, it was a rather intense experience to have his entire family in the same room. Adding in the constant noise from the bustling square and the staff following him about, it was nearly impossible to find a moment of peace.
Colin exhaled loudly as he fell back onto his bed. He should be grateful—he was grateful—but he was finding the adjustment more challenging than he imagined it to be. Truthfully, he still couldn't quite wrap his brain around what all this meant or fully accept the permanence of it.
As he studied the familiar cracks and lines in his ceiling, Colin reached out for a hand that wasn’t there. His day felt incomplete without Penelope. Seeing her would settle this unease in his stomach and quiet the thoughts that were beginning to swirl in his mind. She would remind him that everything would be well.
Colin glanced at the clock on the mantle. Luckily for him, the hands were nudging closer toward a socially permissible hour and he could soon call on Penelope without some woman blocking his entry.
As fate would have it, a note arrived at that very moment for Colin. He accepted the card from Wickham and immediately recognized the delicate handwriting.
Colin,
I’m afraid I will not be in to receive your call this morning. My mama has insisted on my attendance for a number of errands and, well, I haven’t the heart to refuse her…I’m sure you can understand. Please, enjoy the extra time with your family and do not worry over me.
I am to assume that your mother will not allow you to evade the Fuller Ball this evening—save a dance for me?
Yours,
Penelope
His heart sank instantly. The fates were certainly up to something at this rate, using any means at their disposal to keep her from him today.
Crestfallen, Colin slumped into the chair at his desk, tossing her note onto the surface. Not only would his reunion be delayed by several hours, but now he would have to attend a ball just to speak with her. After knowing only quiet for so long, the thought of that many people and that much noise shoved into one room was almost too much to bear. Colin pushed that worry away and chose to distract himself by clearing the mess on his desk.
In the piles he found an assortment of maps, a tattered journal from his first tour abroad, a few copies of old Lady Whistledown sheets, and the last letter he’d received from Penelope. It was like a time capsule of their lives, a glimpse into the trajectory they could have followed had everything not changed.
Colin rubbed his hand over the spot in his chest that had begun to tighten. Everything had changed, but now it had all changed back. They could pick up exactly where they left off if they wanted to. He could plan and embark on an infinite number of trips while she continued her venture as the most notorious gossip columnist in London.
The plans he and Penelope made were those of two people left in a world with nothing more than each other. In a reality where more than their own desires had to be considered, would those plans be feasible? Could he afford the country estate he promised her? Would she prefer to remain in London and continue her scandal sheet? Would he want to travel again now that the option was available; would she want to join him? What if their plans no longer suited their reality, or worse, no longer suited them?
As he collected the disparate items into a clean stack and attempted to steady his breathing, a stray bit of parchment fell to the floor. When he picked it up, air rushed into his lungs.
The list. Perfectly intact as though it had not broken the laws of space and time to end up here in his hands. Littered with his handwriting and hers, little notes and comments to each other crowded the margins. It was another piece of evidence that what they experienced was real, that what they had found between them was just as real, another line in the manuscript that would make up their love story. Everything may have switched back, but the change in them was just as tangible as the paper held between his fingers.
A knock rumbled through the door, jolting Colin from his reverie. An eager Gregory awaited him on the other side, bouncing from one foot to the other.
“Can we practice boxing now?”
Colin smiled, a tranquil warmth spreading through his limbs. “Of course.”
As Gregory rushed down the hall, Colin moved to follow, then stalled in the doorway. He strode back to his desk, picking up a pen to scribble a quick item onto the list before tucking the paper into his pocket.
Later. For now, he would spar with his little brother and enjoy the moment. And later he would mark another item off the list.
___
Shrieking strings were pulled and plucked on the opposite side of the room, and yet still too close for Penelope’s liking. It was a pull she’d felt in various shades all afternoon: a deep ache in her heart tugging her toward all the things she’d missed, an overwhelming urge to hide beneath the covers dragging her back. She wasn’t quite sure how to balance the two disparate desires.
For now, Penelope settled on subtly holding a hand up to one ear to block out some of the noise while trying to enjoy the pleasant, newly dulled tones. It was better to focus on that, rather than the way her dress scratched and chaffed, or the constant hum of anxiety that grew stronger whenever the crowd around her got too dense.
Centering her thoughts on the good had helped at her lowest moments in the other world—a shift in perspective.
So Penelope recounted her morning. How she’d practically tackled her sister on sight when Prudence emerged from her bedchamber with a yawn. How Mrs. Varley’s stony face melted into a small smile when Penelope kissed her on both cheeks. How warm and safe she felt in her mother’s arms, sobbing into the fabric of her dress like she was a child again. How Genevieve winked in her direction as they left the modiste, an unspoken agreement that she would return later to collect her new dresses and discuss the next steps for their partnered businesses.
There was so much good to be had in the world, it seemed silly to worry about things such as loud noises or an influx of guests into a ballroom. Especially when there were eclairs to be had.
Penelope was eyeing the dessert table—she knew it wasn’t exactly proper for a young lady to eat at these things, but how could she be expected to resist after so long without such little luxuries?—when she was struck with another instantaneous pull in the opposite direction.
Colin stepped into the ballroom behind the rest of the Bridgertons, flashing his lopsided smile as the evening’s hosts greeted them. Penelope watched as the group turned to Colin, who was slightly hunched, as if he was imparting to them a grave secret, only for the whole bunch to erupt in laughter. Colin had always been so good with people, thriving off their energy and attention. Why would he ever want to leave that and hide away in the country with her?
They hadn’t had options before. He’d given up travel and she’d given up her career not because they particularly wanted to, but because there was no other choice. When she received her latest issue of Whistledown that morning, she felt that pull again, cringing at her bitter jabs while feeling intensely proud of her witty turns of phrase. Penelope wondered if Colin felt that same simultaneous pang of joy and dread when he looked at a map.
When she looked back in his direction, Colin swiveled his head about. Perhaps the hands of his compass were still trained to find her. She made it easy, floating without a thought through the center of the room in a straight line toward him. And when he discovered her orbit drifting towards him, he strode with purpose to meet her. Her hands itched to touch him—anywhere, everywhere. Her arms sought their rightful resting place around his shoulders.
But there were rules here. Eyes that would see and mouths that would talk and reputations that mattered, though Penelope was having trouble remembering why. That was the issue with rules—one tended to follow them even when they made little sense.
So when Colin finally got close enough to touch, Penelope ignored every bodily instinct and curtsied as a lady should. It stopped him in his tracks, his handsome face falling. Watching him school his features to hide his hurt and take an awkward bow clenched at her heart. She had always been better at adhering to propriety than he had, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“Pen—”
“Colin—”
The words crashed into each other, morphing into a pair of laughs that melted into one. Penelope smiled up at him as their giggles fizzled out. There was so much to say. She wanted to hear all about his morning, discuss how odd it was to be back, and discover if he too felt like he was bursting with equal amounts of joy and dread. She had so many questions—how his family was, what he said to Mrs. Varley this morning to make her putter around the house grumbling his name all morning, if her absence from his day had been agonizing or illuminating, if he had his own questions about where they stood with one another.
In the silence her soul struggled to understand. The easy conversations that had come to pass between them were now just messes of words, all jumbled and disjointed. She wanted to touch him, to connect again so she could get the answer to the only question that mattered.
Couples began to swarm around them, getting into position as the orchestra rearranged their sheet music. Penelope looked about, realizing they were standing in the center of the dance floor. When her eyes met Colin’s again, he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to; his hand held out to her said everything his mouth could not. She placed her gloved palm in his, sparks cascading all the way down her arm.
As they moved into place and his other hand found her waist, every nerve in her body settled into the peaceful serenity that had evaded her all morning. Around them, couples danced and guests mingled, but here they existed in their own little world. Just the two of them.
“I missed this,” Penelope murmured.
“Dancing?” he asked as he spun her.
“That, yes. But more…simply being able to touch you without feeling like I’m breaking a litany of social rules.”
“I had forgotten just how much I despised following such social niceties. Especially when they keep me from you all day.” He tugged her a bit closer than was proper and Penelope didn’t protest, leaning into his touch.
“I feel horrible for even thinking it, but—”
“I know. I miss it too.” The little trenches between his brows returned. “Being back has been remarkably strange, in ways I never even considered. I had finally begun to feel settled, to actually consider what I wanted for the future and now…” he trailed off.
Penelope finished for him. “And now it’s not what you want?”
“No! No, it is only…” Colin sighed. “I do not know if I can give you all the things I promised. The world is different now, Penelope. It is a nice dream and it was easily attainable when all we had to do was follow our desires, but now…” He blinked hard, his eyes ringed with worry when he opened them again. “And that is if you still want them at all.”
“Why would I not want them?”
“You have a thriving business, one that requires you to remain in London. You have dreams, Penelope. Big ones that are within your reach now. Perhaps you do not wish to be holed away in the country, tied down with a family just yet.”
Penelope considered his reasoning as he spun her again. The plans they made before may not as easily translate to the world they occupied now, but that did not mean they needed to throw them out altogether. Perhaps she could continue following the career she began. Or she could leave it all behind to focus on her novel. Or she could do both. Perhaps each of them could have more than they let themselves imagine.
“What if we shifted our perspective?” she asked thoughtfully.
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps it is not that we cannot have all those things we wanted in the last world. Perhaps it is an opportunity to have something completely different.” When the concerned lines creasing his forehead refused to smooth, Penelope squeezed his hand. “Colin, I love you. And those words do not feel sufficient, because they fail to capture the way my soul lights up when you are near and how your touch is the only thing that keeps me steady. They do not properly convey how I could not bear to be in this world or any other without you. So I do not care where we live or if the future looks exactly as we planned. I care about you —the rest we can figure out as we always have. Together.”
Colin brushed his knuckles softly over her cheek, their dance long forgotten. “I love you very much. You know that, right?”
Penelope smiled, wanting more than anything to kiss him but knowing it would be wildly inappropriate to do so in the middle of the dance floor. She would have to find them a hidden alcove or darkened corner later for them to reunite properly.
“I found something today,” Colin segued, a glint of a secret shining in his eyes.
“What?”
He glanced around then lowered his voice. “The list.”
“What?” she exclaimed in far too loud a voice, mouth gaping open. “How?”
“I do not know, there is no reasonable explanation I can think of. But that’s not the important bit.”
“The fact that a piece of paper that should not exist in this universe, but somehow does is not the important bit?”
“No,” he said with a grin. “Because there is still an item on there that needs to be ticked off.”
Penelope searched her mind. Before they’d been switched back it had been many weeks since they’d even touched the list. She couldn’t recall what could possibly be left.
As the dance finished and the pairs moved off the dance floor around them, she and Colin remained at the center. He fished the paper from his jacket pocket and offered it to her. Her eyes skimmed over the page, flashes of memories at each item crossed through in a line of sharp ink.
How Learn to skip stones was punctuated with a question mark, a suggestion during the early days when Penelope was still finding her footing. The back and forth Yes and No commentary she and Colin had in the margins near Sled down the stairs when Penelope wanted to be brave and only he knew how to draw it out of her. The progression of Kiss Penelope at sunset, in a church, in bed, everywhere that warmed her cheeks even now.
Then, right at the very bottom, in his sloppy swoops and swirls, was a final item she had never seen before: Marry Penelope.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Her heart leapt into her throat. The words couldn’t make it through, her airways too jammed with happiness to do anything but nod. As he took her face in his hands and kissed her soundly, that pull between joy and dread snapped, leaving her tumbling headfirst into joy without looking back.
At the first sound of a scandalized gasp, Penelope was reminded to be horrified, and pulled back immediately. “People are looking, Colin,” she said in a loud whisper.
He leaned back in, murmuring against her lips, “Let them.”
___
People often whispered about them whenever they chose to venture out into public.
“How uncouth. Do they not realize everyone can see them?”
“You know they give their staff the evening off some weekends. Can you imagine? How do they manage?”
“Bloomsbury. Why would anyone want to be that far from Mayfair?”
“They write books. Yes, both of them. Very unbecoming for a wife, but even more strange that he allows her.”
Penelope and Colin let the disparaging remarks roll off them, unfazed by how others in the ton viewed their unconventional approach to life. But they weren’t all bad. One sentiment was heard only on occasion, but they both agreed that it perfectly captured the life they chose to build together.
“Oh yes, you often see them like that. In a universe all their own. As if they are in a world where only the two of them exist."