Bridgerton - Romancing Mr. Bridgerton Part 9

"Penelope," Colin said quite suddenly, "you never did finish telling us about Felicity. Is it true that she is to be engaged?"

Penelope gulped down the tea she'd been in the process of sipping. Colin had a way of looking at a person, his green eyes so focused and intent that you felt as if you must be the only two people in the universe. Unfortunately for Penelope, it also seemed to have a way of reducing her to a stammering imbecile. If they were in the midst of conversation, she could generally hold her own, but when he surprised her like that, turning his attention onto her just when she'd convinced herself she blended in perfectly with the wallpaper, she was completely and utterly lost.

"Er, yes, it is quite possible," she said. "Mr. Albansdale has been hinting at his intentions. But if he does decide to propose, I imagine he will travel to East Anglia to ask my uncle for her hand."

"Your uncle?" Kate asked.

"My uncle Geoffrey. He lives near Norwich. He's our closest male relative, although truth be told, we don't see him very often. But Mr. Albansdale is rather traditional. I don't think he would feel comfortable asking my mother."

"I hope he asks Felicity as well," Eloise said. "I've often thought it foolish that a man asks a woman's father for her hand before he asks her. The father doesn't have to live with him."

"This att.i.tude," Colin said with an amused smile that was only partly hidden by his teacup, "may explain why you are as yet unmarried."

Lady Bridgerton gave her son a stern glare and said his name disapprovingly.

"Oh, no, Mother," Eloise said, "I don't mind. I'm perfectly comfortable as an old maid." She gave Colin a rather superior look. "I'd much rather be a spinster than be married to a bore. As," she added with a flourish, "would Penelope!"

Startled by Eloise's hand waving rather suddenly in her direction, Penelope straightened her spine and said, "Er, yes. Of course."

But Penelope had a feeling she wasn't quite as firm in her convictions as her friend. Unlike Eloise, she hadn't refused six offers of marriage. She hadn't refused any; she hadn't received even a one.

She'd told herself that she wouldn't have accepted in any case, since her heart belonged to Colin. But was that really the truth, or was she just trying to make herself feel better for having been such a resounding failure on the marriage mart?

If someone asked her to marry him tomorrow-someone perfectly kind and acceptable, whom she might never love but would in all probability like very well-would she say yes?

Probably.

And this made her melancholy, because admitting this to herself meant she'd really, truly given up hope on Colin. It meant she wasn't as true to her principles as she'd hoped she was. It meant she was willing to settle on a less-than-perfect husband in order to have a home and family of her own.

It wasn't anything that hundreds of women didn't do every year, but it was something that she'd never thought she'd do herself.

"You look very serious all of a sudden," Colin said to her.

Penelope jerked out of her musings. "Me? Oh. No, no. I just lost myself in my thoughts, that's all."

Colin acknowledged her statement with a brief nod before reaching for another biscuit. "Have we anything more substantial?" he asked, wrinkling his nose.

"If I'd known you were coming," his mother said in a dry voice, "I would have doubled the food."

He stood and walked to the bellpull. "I'll ring for more."

After giving it a yank, he turned back and asked, "Did you hear about Penelope's Lady Whistledown theory?"

"No, I haven't," Lady Bridgerton replied.

"It's very clever, actually," Colin said, stopping to ask a maid for sandwiches before finis.h.i.+ng with, "She thinks it's Lady Danbury."

"Ooooh." Hyacinth was visibly impressed. "That's very cunning, Penelope."

Penelope nodded her head to the side in thanks.

"And just the sort of thing Lady Danbury would do," Hyacinth added.

"The column or the challenge?" Kate asked, catching hold of the sash on Charlotte's frock before the little girl could scramble out of reach.

"Both," Hyacinth said.

"And," Eloise put in, "Penelope told her so. Right to her face."

Hyacinth's mouth dropped open, and it was obvious to Penelope that she'd just gone up-way up-in Hyacinth's estimation.

"I should have liked to have seen that!" Lady Bridgerton said with a wide, proud smile. "Frankly, I'm surprised that didn't show up in this morning's Whistledown."

"I hardly think Lady Whistledown would comment upon individual people's theories as to her ident.i.ty," Penelope said.

"Why not?" Hyacinth asked. "It would be an excellent way for her to set out a few red herrings. For example"-she held her hand out toward her sister in a most dramatic pose- "say I thought it was Eloise."

"It is not Eloise!" Lady Bridgerton protested.

"It's not me," Eloise said with a grin.

"But say I thought it was," Hyacinth said in an extremely beleaguered voice. "And that I said so publicly."

"Which you would never do," her mother said sternly.

"Which I would never do," Hyacinth parroted. "But just to be academic, let us pretend that I did. And say that Eloise really was Lady Whistledown. Which she's not," she hastened to add before her mother could interrupt again. Lady Bridgerton held up her hands in silent defeat. "What better way to fool the ma.s.ses," Hyacinth continued, "than to make fun of me in her column?"

"Of course, if Lady Whistledown really were Eloise ..." Penelope mused.

"She's not!" Lady Bridgerton burst out. Penelope couldn't help but laugh. "But if she were ..." "You know," Eloise said, "now I really wish I were." "What a joke you'd be having on us all," Penelope continued. "Of course, then on Wednesday you couldn't run a column making fun of Hyacinth for thinking you are Lady Whistledown, because then we'd all know it had to be you." "Unless it was you." Kate laughed, looking at Penelope. "That would be a devious trick."

"Let me see if I have it straight," Eloise said with a laugh. "Penelope is Lady Whistledown, and she is going to run a column on Wednesday making fun of Hyacinth's theory that I'm Lady Whistledown just to trick you into thinking that I really am Lady Whistledown, because Hyacinth suggested that that would be a cunning ruse."

"I am utterly lost," Colin said to no one in particular. "Unless Colin were really Lady Whistledown ..." Hyacinth said with a devilish gleam in her eye. "Stop!" Lady Bridgerton said. "I beg you." By then everyone was laughing too hard for Hyacinth to continue, anyway.

"The possibilities are endless," Hyacinth said, wiping a tear from her eye.

"Perhaps we should all simply look to the left," Colin suggested as he sat back down. "Who knows, that person may very well be our infamous Lady Whistledown."

Everyone looked left, with the exception of Eloise, who looked right... right to Colin. "Were you trying to tell me something," she asked with an amused smile, "when you sat down to my right?"

"Not at all," he murmured, reaching for the biscuit plate and then stopping when he remembered it was empty.

But he didn't quite meet Eloise's eyes when he said so.

If anyone other than Penelope had noticed his evasiveness, they were unable to question him on it, because that was when the sandwiches arrived, and he was useless for conversation after that.

CHAPTER 5.

It has come to This Author's attention that Lady Blackwood turned her ankle earlier this week whilst chasing down a delivery boy for This Humble Newssheet.

One thousand pounds is certainly a great deal of money, but Lady Blackwood is hardly in need of funds, and moreover, the situation is growing absurd. Surely Londoners have better things to do with their time than chase down poor, hapless delivery boys in a fruitless attempt to uncover the ident.i.ty of This Author.

Or maybe not.

This Author has chronicled the activities of the ton for over a decade now and has found no evidence that they do indeed have anything better to do with their time.

Two days later Penelope found herself once again cutting across Berkeley Square, on her way to Number Five to see Eloise. This time, however, it was late morning, and it was sunny, and she did not b.u.mp into Colin along the way.

Penelope wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or not.

She and Eloise had made plans the week before to go shopping, but they'd decided to meet at Number Five so that they could head out together and forgo the accompaniment of their maids. It was a perfect sort of day, far more like June than April, and Penelope was looking forward to the short walk up to Oxford Street.

But when she arrived at Eloise's house, she was met with a puzzled expression on the butler's face.

"Miss Featherington," he said, blinking several times in rapid succession before locating a few more words. "I don't believe Miss Eloise is here at present."

Penelope's lips parted in surprise. "Where did she go? We made our plans over a week ago."

Wickham shook his head. "I do not know. But she departed with her mother and Miss Hyacinth two hours earlier."

"I see." Penelope frowned, trying to decide what to do. "May I wait, then? Perhaps she was merely delayed. It's not like

Eloise to forget an appointment."

He nodded graciously and showed her upstairs to the informal drawing room, promising to bring a plate of refreshments and handing her the latest edition of Whistledown to read while she bided her time.

Penelope had already read it, of course; it was delivered quite early in the morning, and she made a habit of perusing the column at breakfast. With so little to occupy her mind, she wandered over to the window and peered out over the Mayfair streetscape. But there wasn't much new to see; it was the same buildings she'd seen a thousand times before, even the same people walking along the street.

Maybe it was because she was pondering the sameness of her life that she noticed the one object new to her vista: a bound book lying open on the table. Even from several feet away she could see that it was filled not with the printed word, but rather with neat handwritten lines.

She inched toward it and glanced down without actually touching the pages. It appeared to be a journal of sorts, and in the middle of the right-hand side there was a heading that was set apart from the rest of the text by a bit of s.p.a.ce above and below: One of her hands flew to her mouth. Colin had written this! He'd said just the other day that he'd visited Cyprus instead of Greece. She had no idea that he kept a journal.

She lifted a foot to take a step back, but her body didn't budge. She shouldn't read this, she told herself. This was Colin's private journal. She really ought to move away.

"Away," she muttered, looking down at her recalcitrant feet. "Away."

Her feet didn't move.

But maybe she wasn't quite so in the wrong. After all, was she really invading his privacy if she read only what she could see without turning a page? He had left it lying open on the table, for all the world to see.

But then again, Colin had every reason to think that no one would stumble across his journal if he dashed out for a few moments. Presumably, he was aware that his mother and sisters had departed for the morning. Most guests were shown to the formal drawing room on the ground floor; as far as Penelope knew, she and Felicity were the only non-Bridgertons who were taken straight up to the informal drawing room. And since Colin wasn't expecting her (or, more likely, hadn't thought of her one way or another), he wouldn't have thought there was any danger in leaving his journal behind while he ran an errand.

On the other hand, he had left it lying open.

Open, for heaven's sake! If there were any valuable secrets in that journal, surely Colin would have taken greater care to secret it when he left the room. He wasn't stupid, after all.

Penelope leaned forward.

Oh, bother. She couldn't read the writing from that distance. The heading had been legible since it was surrounded by so much white s.p.a.ce, but the rest was a bit too close together to make out from far away.

Somehow she'd thought she wouldn't feel so guilty if she didn't have to step any closer to the book to read it. Never mind, of course, that she'd already crossed the room to get to where she was at that moment.

She tapped her finger against the side of her jaw, right near her ear. That was a good point. She had crossed the room some time ago, which surely meant that she'd already committed the biggest sin she was likely to that day. One little step was nothing compared to the length of the room.

She inched forward, decided that only counted as half a step, then inched forward again and looked down, beginning her reading right in the middle of a sentence.

in England. Here the sand ripples between tan and white, and the consistency is so fine that it slides over a bare foot like a whisper of silk. The water is a blue unimaginable in England, aquamarine with the glint of the sun, deep cobalt when the clouds take the sky. And it is warm-surprisingly, astoundingly warm, like a bath that was heated perhaps a half an hour earlier. The waves are gentle, and they lap up on the sh.o.r.e with a soft rush of foam, tickling the skin and turning the perfect sand into a squishy delight that slips and slides along the toes until another wave arrives to clean up the mess.

It is easy to see why this is said to be the birthplace of Aphrodite. With every step I almost expect to see her as

in Botticelli's painting, rising from the ocean, perfectly balanced on a giant sh.e.l.l, her long t.i.tian hair streaming around her.

If ever a perfect woman was born, surely this would be the place. I am in paradise. And yet...

And yet with every warm breeze and cloudless sky I am reminded that this is not my home, that I was born to live my life elsewhere. This does not quell the desire- no, the compulsion!-to travel, to see, to meet. But it

does feed a strange longing to touch a dew-dampened lawn, or feel a cool mist on one's face, or even to remember the joy of a perfect day after a week of rain.

The people here can't know that joy. Their days are always perfect. Can one appreciate perfection when it is

a constant in one's life?

It is remarkable that I am cold. It is, of course, February, and as an Englishman I'm quite used to a February chill (as well as that of any month with an R in its name), but I am not in England. I am in Cyprus, in the heart