Romancing Mister Bridgerton

  But she'd done it anyway.

  She knew he thought she was making a mistake, but she simply could not allow Cressida Twombley to take the credit for her life's work. But was it so much to ask that Colin at least make the attempt to see it all from her point of view? It would have been hard enough allowing anyone to pretend to be Lady Whistledown, but Cressida was unbearable. Penelope had worked too hard and endured too much at Cressida's hands.

  Plus, she knew that Colin would never jilt her once their engagement became public. That was part of the reason she'd specifically instructed her publisher to have the papers delivered on Monday to the Mottram ball. Well, that and the fact

  that it seemed terribly wrong to do it at her own engagement ball, especially when Colin was so opposed to the idea.

  Damn Mr. Lacey! He'd surely done this to maximize circulation and exposure. He knew enough about society from reading Whistledown to know that a Bridgerton engagement ball would be the most coveted invitation of the season. Why this should matter, she didn't know, since increasing interest in Whistledown would not lead to more money in his pocket; Whistledown was well and truly through, and neither Penelope nor Mr. Lacey would receive another pound from its publication.

  Unless...

  Penelope frowned and sighed. Mr. Lacey must be hoping that she would change her mind.

  Colin's hand tightened at her waist, and she looked back up. His eyes were on hers, startlingly green even in the candlelight. Or maybe it was just that she knew they were so green. She probably would have thought them emerald in the dark.

  He nodded toward the other dancers on the floor, which was now crowded with revelers. 'Time to make our escape," he said.

  She returned his nod with one of her own. They had already told his family that she wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home, so no one would think overmuch of their departure. And if it wasn't quite de rigeur for them to be alone in his carriage, well, sometimes rules were stretched for affianced couples, especially on such romantic evenings.

  A bubble of ridiculous, panicky laughter escaped her lips. The night was turning out to be the least romantic of her life.

  Colin looked at her sharply, one arrogant brow raised in question.

  "It's nothing," Penelope said.

  He squeezed her hand, although not terribly affectionately. "I want to know," he said.

  She shrugged fatalistically. She couldn't imagine what she could do or say to make the night any worse than it already was. "I was just thinking about how this evening was supposed to be romantic."

  "It could have been," he said cruelly.

  His hand slipped from its position at her waist, but he held on to her other hand, grasping her fingers lightly to weave her through the crowd until they stepped through the French doors out onto the terrace.

  "Not here," Penelope whispered, glancing anxiously back toward the ballroom.

  He didn't even dignify her comment with a reply, instead pulling her farther into the inky night, drifting around a corner until they were quite alone.

  But they didn't stop there. With a quick glance to make sure that no one was about, Colin pushed open a small, unobtrusive side door.

  "What's this?" Penelope asked.

  His answer was a little shove at the small of her back, until she was fully inside the dark hallway.

  "Up," he said, motioning to the steps.

  Penelope didn't know whether to be scared or thrilled, but she climbed the stairs anyway, ever aware of Colin's hot presence, right at her back.

  After they'd climbed several flights, Colin stepped ahead of her and pushed open a door, peeking out into the hall. It was empty, so he stepped out, pulling her along with him, dashing quietly through the hall (which Penelope now recognized as the family's private chambers) until they reached a room she had never before entered.

  Colin's room. She'd always known where it was. Through all her years of coming here to visit with Eloise, she'd never once done more than trail her fingers along the heavy wood of the door. It had been years since he'd lived here at Number Five on a permanent basis, but his mother had insisted upon maintaining his room for him. One never knew when he might need it, she'd said, and she'd been proven right earlier that season when Colin had returned from Cyprus without a house under lease.

  He pushed open the door and pulled her inside after him. But the room was dark, and she was stumbling, and when she stopped moving it was because his body was right there in front of hers.

  He touched her arms to steady her, but then he didn't let go, just held her there in the dark. It wasn't an embrace, not really, but the length of her body was touching the length of his. She couldn't see anything, but she could feel him, and she could smell him, and she could hear his breathing, swirling through the night air, gently caressing her cheek.

  It was agony.

  It was ecstasy.

  His hands slid slowly down her bare arms, torturing her every nerve, and then, abruptly, he stepped away.

  Followed by—silence.

  Penelope wasn't sure what she had expected. He would yell at her, he would berate her, he would order her to explain herself.

  But he was doing none of those things. He was just standing there in the dark, forcing the issue, forcing her to say something.

  "Could you ... could you light a candle?" she finally asked.

  "You don't like the dark?" he drawled.

  "Not now. Not like this."

  "I see," he murmured. "So you're saying you might like it like this?" His fingers were suddenly on her skin, trailing along the edge of her bodice.

  And then they were gone.

  "Don't," she said, her voice shaking.

  "Don't touch you?" His voice grew mocking, and Penelope was glad that she couldn't see his face. "But you're mine; aren't you?"

  "Not yet," she warned him.

  "Oh, but you are. You saw to that. It was rather clever timing, actually, waiting until our engagement ball to make your final announcement. You knew I didn't want you to publish that last column. I forbade it! We agreed—"

  "We never agreed!"

  He ignored her outburst. "You waited until—"

  "We never agreed," Penelope cried out again, needing to make it clear that she had not broken her word. Whatever else she had done, she had not bed to him. Well, aside from keeping Whistledown a secret for nearly a dozen years, but he certainly hadn't been alone in that deception. "And yes," she admitted, because it didn't seem right to start lying now, "I knew you wouldn't jilt me. But I hoped—"

  Her voice broke, and she was unable to finish.

  "You hoped what?" Colin asked after an interminable silence.

  "I hoped that you would forgive me," she whispered. "Or at least that you would understand. I always thought you were the sort of man who..."

  "What sort of man?" he asked, this time after the barest hint of a pause.

  "It's my fault, really," she said, sounding tired and sad. "I've put you on a pedestal. You've been so nice all these years.

  I suppose I thought you were incapable of anything else."

  "What the hell have I done that hasn't been nice?" he demanded. "I've protected you, I've offered for you, I've—"

  "You haven't tried to see this from my point of view," she interrupted.

  "Because you're acting like an idiot!" he nearly roared.

  There was silence after that, the kind of silence that grates at ears, gnaws at souls.

  "I can't imagine what else there is to say," Penelope finally said.

  Colin looked away. He didn't know why he did so; it wasn't as if he could see her in the dark, anyway. But there was something about the tone of her voice that made him uneasy. She sounded vulnerable, tired. Wishful and heartbroken. She made him want to understand her, or at least to try, even though he knew she had made a terrible mistake. Every little catch in her voice put a damper on his fury. He was still angry, but somehow he'd lost the will to display it.

  "You are going to be
found out, you know," he said, his voice low and controlled. "You have humiliated Cressida; she will be beyond furious, and she's not going to rest until she unearths the real Lady Whistledown."

  Penelope moved away; he could hear her skirts rustling. "Cressida isn't bright enough to figure me out, and besides, I'm not going to write any more columns, so there will be no opportunity for me to slip up and reveal something." There was a beat of silence, and then she added, "You have my promise on that."

  "It's too late," he said.

  "It's not too late," she protested. "No one knows! No one knows but you, and you're so ashamed of me, I can't bear it."

  "Oh, for the love of God, Penelope," he snapped, "I'm not ashamed of you."

  "Would you please light a candle?" she wailed.

  Colin crossed the room and fumbled in a drawer for a candle and the means with which to light it. "I'm not ashamed of you," he reiterated, "but I do think you're acting foolishly."

  "You may be correct," she said, "but I have to do what I think is right."

  "You're not thinking," he said dismissively, turning and looking at her face as he sparked a flame. "Forget, if you will—although I cannot—what will happen to your reputation if people find out who you really are. Forget that people will cut you, that they will talk about you behind your back."

  "Those people aren't worth worrying about," she said, her back ramrod straight.

  "Perhaps not," he agreed, crossing his arms and staring at her. Hard. "But it will hurt. You will not like it, Penelope. And I won't like it."

  She swallowed convulsively. Good. Maybe he was getting through to her.

  "But forget all of that," he continued. "You have spent the last decade insulting people. Offending them."

  "I have said lots of very nice things as well," she protested, her dark eyes glistening with unshed tears.

  "Of course you have, but those aren't the people you are going to have to worry about. I'm talking about the angry ones, the insulted ones." He strode forward and grabbed her by her upper arms. "Penelope," he said urgently, "there will be people who want to hurt you."

  His words had been meant for her, but they turned around and pierced his own heart.

  He tried to picture a life without Penelope. It was impossible.

  Just weeks ago she'd been... He stopped, thought. What had she been? A friend? An acquaintance? Someone he saw and never really noticed?

  And now she was his fiancee, soon to be his bride. And maybe ... maybe she was something more than that. Something deeper. Something even more precious.

  "What I want to know," he asked, deliberately forcing the conversation back on topic so his mind wouldn't wander down such dangerous roads, "is why you're not jumping on the perfect alibi if the point is to remain anonymous."

  "Because remaining anonymous isn't the point!" she fairly yelled.

  "You want to be found out?" he asked, gaping at her in the candlelight.

  "No, of course not," she replied. "But this is my work. This is my life's work. This is all I have to show for my life, and if I can't take the credit for it, I'll be damned if someone else will."

  Colin opened his mouth to offer a retort, but to his surprise, he had nothing to say. Life's work. Penelope had a life's work.

  He did not.

  She might not be able to put her name on her work, but when she was alone in her room, she could look at her back issues, and point to them, and say to herself, This is it. This is what my life has been about.

  "Colin?" she whispered, clearly startled by his silence.

  She was amazing. He didn't know how he hadn't realized it before, when he'd already known that she was smart and lovely and witty and resourceful. But all those adjectives, and a whole host more he hadn't yet thought of, did not add up to the true measure of her.

  She was amazing.

  And he was ... Dear God above, he was jealous of her.

  "I'll go," she said softly, turning and walking toward the door.

  For a moment he didn't react. His mind was still frozen, reeling with revelations. But when he saw her hand on the doorknob, he knew he could not let her go. Not this night, not ever.

  "No," he said hoarsely, closing the distance between them in three long strides. "No," he said again, "I want you to stay."

  She looked up at him, her eyes two pools of confusion. "But you said—"

  He cupped her face tenderly with his hands. "Forget what I said."

  And that was when he realized that Daphne had been right. His love hadn't been a thunderbolt from the sky. It had started with a smile, a word, a teasing glance. Every second he had spent in her presence it had grown, until he'd reached this moment, and he suddenly knew.

  He loved her.

  He was still furious with her for publishing that last column, and he was bloody ashamed of himself that he was actually jealous of her for having found a life's work and purpose, but even with all that, he loved her.

  And if he let her walk out the door right now, he would never forgive himself.

  Maybe this, then, was the definition of love. When you wanted someone, needed her, adored her still, even when you were utterly furious and quite ready to tie her to the bed just to keep her from going out and making more trouble.

  This was the night. This was the moment. He was brimming with emotion, and he had to tell her. He had to show her.

  "Stay," he whispered, and he pulled her to him, roughly, hungrily, without apology or explanation.

  "Stay," he said again, leading her to his bed. And when she didn't say anything, he said it for a third time. "Stay." She nodded.

  He took her into his arms. This was Penelope, and this was love.

  CHAPTER 18

  The moment Penelope nodded—the moment before she nodded, really—she knew that she had agreed to more than a kiss. She wasn't sure what had made Colin change his mind, why he had been so angry one minute and then so loving and tender the next.

  She wasn't sure, but the truth was—she didn't care.

  One thing she knew—he wasn't doing this, kissing her so sweetly, to punish her. Some men might use desire as a weapon, temptation as revenge, but Colin wasn't one of them.

  It just wasn't in him.

  He was, for all his rakish and mischievous ways, for all his jokes and teasing and sly humor, a good and noble man. And he would be a good and noble husband.

  She knew this as well as she knew herself.

  And if he was kissing her passionately, lowering her to his bed, covering her body with his own, then it was because he

  wanted her, cared enough to overcome his anger.

  Cared for her.

  Penelope kissed him back with every ounce of her emotion, every last corner of her soul. She had years and years of love for this man, and what she lacked in technique, she made up in fervor. She clutched at his hair, writhed beneath him, unmindful of her own appearance.

  They weren't in a carriage or his mother's drawing room this time. There was no fear of discovery, no need to make sure that she looked presentable in ten minutes.

  This was the night she could show him everything she felt for him. She would answer his desire with her own, and silently make her vows of love and fidelity and devotion.

  When the night was through, he would know that she loved him. She might not say the words—she might not even whisper them—but he would know.

  Or maybe he already knew. It was funny; it had been so easy to hide her secret life as Lady Whistledown, but so unbelievably hard to keep her heart from her eyes every time she looked at him.

  "When did I start needing you so much?" he whispered, raising his head very slightly from hers until the tips of their noses touched and she could see his eyes, dark and colorless in the dim candlelight, but so very green in her mind, focusing on hers. His breath was hot, and his gaze was hot, and he was making her feel hot in areas of her body she never even allowed herself to think about.

  His fingers moved to the back of her gown, movin
g expertly along the buttons until she felt the fabric loosening, first around her breasts, then around her ribs, then around her waist.

  And then it wasn't even there at all.

  "My God," he said, his voice a mere shadow louder than breath, "you're so beautiful."

  And for the first time in her life, Penelope truly believed that it might be true.

  There was something very wicked and titillating about being so intimately bared before another human being, but she didn't feel shame. Colin was looking at her so warmly, touching her so reverently, that she could feel nothing but an overwhelming sense of destiny.

  His fingers skimmed along the sensitive skin at the outside edge of her breast, first teasing her with his fingernails, then

  stroking her more gently as his fingertips returned to their original position near her collarbone.

  Something tightened within her. She didn't know if it was his touch or the way he was looking at her, but something was making her change.

  She felt strange, odd.

  Wonderful.

  He was kneeling on the bed beside her, still fully clothed, gazing down at her with a sense of pride, of desire, of ownership. "I never dreamed you would look like this," he whispered, moving his hand until his palm was lightly grazing her nipple. "I never dreamed I would want you this way."

  Penelope sucked in her breath as a spasm of sensation shot through her. But something in his words was unsettling, and he must have seen her reaction in her eyes, because he asked, "What is it? What is wrong?"

  "Nothing," she started to say, then checked herself. Their marriage ought to be based on honesty, and she did neither of them a service by withholding her true feelings.

  "What did you think I would look like?" she asked quietly.

  He just stared at her, clearly confused by her question.

  "You said you never dreamed I would look this way," she explained. "What did you think I would look like?"

  "I don't know," he admitted. "Until the last few weeks, honestly I don't think I thought about it."