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‘I am a man of honour. And we were… intimate. Perhaps, that was another part of your planned entrapment.’
There was silence at that. It went on and on, and finally Colin could no longer bear it. He turned his head to the side slightly, just enough to look at Penelope from the corner of his eye.
Penelope was pale, and her face was… empty. There were no emotions showing, good or bad — no tears, no angry frown, no demandingly raised brows. It looked as if her features were devoid of any feeling whatsoever, like a marble statue one can find in a garden. Then, with her expression remaining the same, she finally spoke:
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
And before Colin could catch her hand, she fled, out of the room, through the corridor to her bedchamber. After the hesitation two heartbeats long, he followed, calling after her, only to have the door slammed in his face.
‘Please go, I can’t… I can’t,’ he heard through it. He hesitated again, holding the knob, his fingers slick with cold sweat, not sure whether to knock, go in or leave.
‘What happened?’ the worried tone of his mother’s voice brought him back, followed by Lady Featherington’s high-pitched ‘what’s wrong?’
‘Can you check on Penelope, please? I think there is something… I think she might be ill,’ he forced the words out, moving to the side so that Penelope’s mother can enter the room and close the door again behind her.
He caught the gaze of his mother then, studying his face closely, her own expression a mixture of worry and suspicion. He couldn’t deal with it at that moment. He felt too much at once, and if he were to start to differentiate between everything that was going on inside his head and soul, he believed he could quite literally go mad. But his mother was a woman of great intuition, and she probably had already made her own conclusions out of this situation — and Colin was sure he didn’t want to know what those were.
‘What?’ he said, doing his best to keep the irritation out of his voice (and probably failing miserably).
‘What happened?’ she repeated, watching him closely.
‘I’m not sure,’ he sighed, which was true. There were a lot of reasons for Penelope to be upset — he just hoped that she wasn’t really ill.
His mother was silent for a moment, clearly trying to find the right words. He mentally prepared for the interrogation, so before she started, he asked quietly: ‘Could we discuss it once I know that Penelope is feeling better?’
Violet’s face softened.
‘Let’s go home,’ she said gently, lightly touching his arm, ‘I will ask Portia to let us know about Penelope’s state, and you will visit her once she is ready.’
In the farther part of his brain, not consumed by his concern for the situation with Penelope, Colin wondered when his mother and Lady Featherington moved to a first-name basis. That was probably the wedding preparations, he guessed — two women as different as his mother and Portia Featherington still had quite a lot in common, and their need to participate in their children’s marriages was definitely one of those things.
He reluctantly followed his mother back to the Bridgerton House, trying to think about anything other than Penelope’s hollow expression before she ran to her room. His mother surprisingly didn’t ask any more question and was not trying to have a conversation at all — she just sat him in the drawing room and rang for tea, probably to occupy his hands with something.
But merely half an hour later, a note came from Penelope. Colin stood near the window and opened it carefully. He read it, and then read it again and again, the desolation inside him quickly giving way to horror and burning rage. It felt as if it took him just a few strides to reach the Featherington House.
‘She is in her room, mister Bridgerton,’ her mother said in a sweet voice, ‘I believe she is not feeling good.’
‘I understand that,’ Colin said with difficulty, ‘I just wanted to check up on her.’
‘Sure, that is very kind of you to do,’ she smiled, ‘but I am afraid Penelope is not fit to come downstairs now.’
‘Can I go to her room?’
‘Mister Bridgerton,’ she gasped, ‘I am sure you know that I can’t—‘
‘Only for five minutes,’ Colin said, making his lips to form a smile. ‘I will keep the door open, of course. I just want to make sure that my future wife is all right.’
Lady Featherington sighed, clearly struggling between standing for propriety and wanting to please her future son-in-law.
‘Please, Lady Featherington,’ Colin pleaded, lacing his words with all the charm he could master, ‘this is not some ploy to stay alone with your daughter. We are to be married soon, so can we forget about the rules for just one moment? I simply want to hold my fiancée’s hand.’
‘All right, all right,’ Portia threw up her hands, visibly pleased at Colin’s begging expression, ‘you may come upstairs, but please make it quick.’
‘Thank you so much, Lady Featherington,’ he bowed. As soon as he turned away, his smile faded, replaced by furrowed brow. He swiftly made his way up the stairs, taking two at a time, and within seconds he was standing in front of Penelope’s closed door for the second time in one day.
He knocked.
‘Come in’, her voice came from the other side. He pushed the door open and closed it firmly behind him, not planning on honouring his promise to keep it open.
Penelope’s face grew shocked at the sight of him. She was lying in bed, still as pale as when he saw her last in the morning.
‘What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed, sitting up and looking at him as if he grew two heads.
‘What is this?’ he asked, fully ignoring her question. He pulled out the note he received from the front pocket of his coat and held it out to her.
‘That is a note,’ she answered, lifting her chin.
‘Don’t get sarcastic. I can see that it is a note.’
‘Then I don’t know what you want me to say.’
Colin breathed out noisily, forbearing pinching the bridge of his nose.
‘I’m asking you about the contents of the note,’ he said steadily, lifting the said note and reading it aloud. ‘Dear Colin,’ his voice became slightly higher, ‘I have decided to call off our upcoming wedding. Please let me know once you choose how you wish to proceed with the announcement of the news,’ he crumpled up the sheet in one hand, meeting Penelope’s unreadable gaze.
‘Well, I asked because I didn’t want to let anyone know before you tell me how you want to play it out,’ she said, her hands nervously tugging on the edge of the covers. He noticed that the ring was still there, and the relief that washed over him almost made him sag to the floor. ‘If you want, we can tell everyone that it was me, I changed my mind or something, although I will need some time to think of some convincing reason. And if you do not want to be the rejected party, I am okay with you declaring that you broke off the engagement, and you can choose any reason you want, I do not really care, just please don’t make it something scandalous, at least for the sake of my family.’
‘Penelope, have you lost your mind? Do you really want to call off the wedding? Why?’ he knew that his voice was trembling, but he couldn’t find it in him to care.
‘Well, although you may think that I tried to entrap you, I assure you I did not. I do not want to go through with this farce if the only reason for this wedding is that we were… intimate,’ she still blushed just a bit at the word.
‘But we were,’ Colin managed to articulate, unsure of what else to say.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she shook her head, making his blood pound at his temples. ‘I am not planning on marrying anyone else any time soon, I believe I am quite done with the idea. So if you are worried that I am to deceive someone who would want to take me as his wife, don’t be.’
‘Penelope, I am not worried about some other guy’s feelings,’ he hissed, tasting acid at a mere suggestion of what another man had to do to Penelope to find out that she was not a virgin anymore.
‘Well, whatever responsibility you believe you have, I release you from it,’ she continued her speech as if nothing happened. ‘Since you know now that I am Lady Whistledown, you certainly see that I can take care of myself financially, so the husband is not a necessity. I will be just fine, and we can move on and live our lives separately.’
‘Pen, this is ridiculous,’ Colin said weakly, searching her face for any sign that she wasn’t resolve in her decision. ‘You can’t do this, it is… This is… You can’t do this!’
‘Colin,’ Penelope said quietly but with much strength in her voice, ‘I would rather die alone shivering in a ditch than have you marry me out of obligation.’
‘Penelope—‘
‘Do you have the slightest idea how that makes me feel?’ she bit off, not letting him finish the sentence. ‘The thought of you making me your wife because you have no other choice literally makes me want to throw up. To know that you would resent me for the rest of your life for making you go through with it, to know that I will be the one that you are stuck with when you don’t want to, to know that I condemned you to a loveless marriage…’
‘Pen—‘
‘I will not marry you because you think you have to!’
‘I will marry you because I want it, damn it!’ he shouted, making her flinch. ‘It is not because I have to, although I definitely have to, but because I want to! That is why I proposed and that is why I don’t want to call it off and that is why I am here in your room begging—‘
‘You are not begging,’ she murmured.
‘Well, I am about to start. Penelope,’ he sighed, desperately trying to find the right words to make all of this mess go away. At least this particular mess, with Penelope deciding that she no longer wants him because he no longer wants her. That was outright absurdity, and he surely would have laughed if he didn’t feel like his whole world was about to end. ‘Please, please don’t call off our wedding. I am really, really sorry for what I said. I was hurting and I saw you for the first time since I found out that you are… you know, and I said stupid things that are not true and that I didn’t even think for a moment were true. And it was vile, and I shouldn’t have said it at all, or at the very least I should have taken it back and apologised. Sooner. Or right away. So please, don’t call off the wedding because I said one imbecilic thing in anger,‘ he paused, and then added, ‘I beg you.’
The corners of her lips twitched — not even remotely a smile, but still a colossal change from her previous morbid expression, and Colin felt that at least half of the enormous weight he felt was lifted from his shoulders.
But she still had that look in her eyes, the one that made him feel like his stomach was in knots, like he was about to drown with no drop of water in sight.
‘Colin, maybe it is still a right decision,’ Penelope said, sounding so very… tired. It hurt, but perhaps it was not surprising at all — he still loved her, no less than yesterday, or a week before that, so it was only natural that her injured expression made something ache in his chest. ‘I am still Lady Whistledown, and you are still angry with me, and there are too many… complications,’ her voice became quieter and quieter with every word she spoke. Colin cautiously lowered himself to the edge of her bed, taking her hand in his. It was cold to the touch, and he hated himself so much for making her go through all of this.
‘I am still angry at you, and I will be for some time,’ he nodded, ‘and I don’t know yet how we will figure all of this out. But it doesn’t change the fact that I want to marry you. It doesn’t change the fact that I love you.’
Penelope looked at him then, really looked, her eyes sparkling with tears.
‘I love you too. You know that, right?’ she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
‘Of course I do,’ it didn’t even take him a second to answer, ‘let us get through this wedding, and then we will decide what this marriage will be.’
It sounded like a promise, not like a threat, and Penelope finally smiled.