Chapter Text
It isn’t until Kate points it out that Colin finally realizes it. And then when it hits him, it's all at one once.
The world seems to stop. The members of the ton move at a languid pace around the glittery ballroom of the Hastings as his heart thuds rapidly and somewhere deep deep inside his gut twists. Almost instantly he turns, searching for a familiar face with bright cheeks and flaming hair - now seemingly tamed and smoother - but he’ll always remember the tight ringlets that refused to behave.
Penelope stands a few paces away, smiling and chatting with an extremely awkward Sir Phillip. He’s doing his best to accustom to London society, and Penelope deems it her responsibility to make him comfortable - he’s her best friend's husband after all. He can almost tell when she feels his eyes on her, turning to catch his gaze and smile softly. With a tilt of her head she beckons him over, wanting to do her part in ensuring Sir Phillip doesn’t resolutely refuse to bring Eloise back to London.
As he stands next to his wife of almost two years now, Colin holds a firm hand by her waist, restless to see for himself, to understand - to truly believe he has to read the book himself.
Again.
Not as her husband, but as a reader. And then maybe, just maybe Kate could be wrong. And then this innate pain in his chest could vanish.
Hours later Colin finds himself sitting in their dark corner nursing his glass as he reads the words over and over again. What once were tragically beautiful words written by his one and only, now mock him, wound him. He reads the name Regina - of pale brown hair and no remarkable beauty - but he sees Penelope.
The book he realizes, holds up a mirror and Colin isn’t certain he likes what he sees.
“Colin. Colin, where are you?”
He hears her soft voice but doesn’t respond. She’ll find him, she always does.
Eventually, Penelope makes it into their study and catches sight of her husband with his coat and cravat off, only in his shirtdress, dishevelled and slightly off balance - courtesy the alcohol. He’d make for a tantalizing image if it wasn’t his tight body language, his head held tightly in between his hands. The warm smile working its way onto her face fades, to be replaced with a frown.
“There you are Colin.” She remarks, cautiously stepping into the room and lighting a candle. “Is something amiss? You’ve…,” She hesitates at his lack of response to her. In their short courtship and then two years of marriage he’s never once not acknowledged her presence with his trademark winning smile. Even when Eloise had up and left to marry her Sir Phillip and he’d been terrified for his litter sister he’d had a generous smile to throw Penelope’s way, if only to calm her nerves.
“You’ve been acting strangely since we left Daphne’s,” She finishes moving closer to run her fingers through his hair, “What has happened?”
His only response is a long sigh, then a grunt and Penelope feels panics rising in her chest. Finally when she’s had just about enough Colin raises his head, and if she wasn’t so panicked she’d have gasped. She’s seen Colin in many states in the past two years, many emotions and many dispositions. But she’s never seen him in pain.
“Colin..”
“Is it us?” His words come out gruff and unruly, and he looks at her like his very sanity depends on her response.
“Is it?” Colin all but barks when she simply widens her eyes and shakes her head in confusion. She hasn’t a clue of what he speaks.
“What is us?” She starts, trying to lean down to hold his face but he grips her shoulders tightly, “Colin I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Is it about us,” He spits out venomously, his hand landing harshly on the table sending a book flying to the floor. With a small yelp Penelope steps back. If Colin in pain was new, an angry Colin was uncharted waters. It takes her a minute to understand his anguish isn’t directed at her, his battle was with himself. She picks the book off her feet and flips it over.
“My book,” her brow furrows in perplexion, running her hand over the embossed poppy flower on the cover of “The Wallflower.”
“Are they us, Pen?” Colin asks finally, wrenching the book from her hands and bringing her closer to him, “Your book is it about us Penelope? You must tell me the truth.”
“I.. I,” She stutters, no one has asked her this before. The title made it quite clear she would pick from her life, a life-long wallflower, she was deemed to be one until the day the world tilted on its axis and Colin Bridgerton fell in love with her. But was the book about them? She’d added elements of all women who weren’t deemed the diamond of the first water in her book; Kate, Eloise and so many others.
“Your Regina and Marcus,” Colin asserted, “Are they you and I Pen. Are they?”
“Colin, it’s a book. You and I are you and I, and these are characters. Now will you please tell me what the matter is?” Penelope implored, pushing closer to her husband and cupping his cheek.
With a soft scoff, Colin moves away from her, flitting through the book until he finds what he was looking for.
“Then tell me this,” He walks back to her, turning the book to her and points at a page, his eyes stormier than she’d ever seen as a dark smile graces his face, “Did you feel this way? Before us, did you… did you think this way?”
And suddenly, Penelope knows. A sharp intake of breath does nothing to hide her realization as Colin catches it and moves back in disbelief. Muttering something about not wanting to believe Kate, he growls low and deep and runs his hands through his hair. Laughter, dripping with self-loathing, unlike anything Penelope had seen from Colin emerges from him as he steps further away. As if he's afraid to be near her.
And she stands, statuesque unable to move, unable to speak, unable to understand how to make him understand. It wasn’t him, it was never him. It was her. It was always about her.
Her fears.
Her insecurities.
Her self-loathing.
But he’s done what she should have known he would - wonderful, bright, beautiful without a shred of malice in his heart Colin has taken all her words and slashed himself open with them.
“Colin, no. I love you.” Is all she gets out.
He’s cried in front of her before, that one bleak thursday morning when they woke up to bloody sheets the night after they wondered if they were to go to three from two. But his tears now dismantle her, making her wish she’d never put ink to paper.
“Did I make you feel that way.?” He asks finally, his voice making it clear he doesn’t need to hear her answer. He’s already decided for himself.
She spurs into action. Grabbing the front of his shirtsleeves in three short strides, pulling him towards her as she pours every ounce of the love she feels for him as she says, “It is a book Colin. Just a book, just words. I love you, you have never done anything to hurt me.”
“I love you too Penelope. So much that I am maddened by it.” He smiles and grasps her small face in his hands, and for a second all is right in the world. Until he shatters it with his words, “And I hurt you more than anyone ever has.”
With that morose statement, he dis-entangles himself from his wife and leaves. Vaguely, he hears Penelope's sob and scream of frustration and the sound of tearing paper. She could burn the page, the whole book, every edition of the book that existed, and he’d never forget the words.
They would be seared into his brain until the day he died.
The Wallflower
By Penelope Bridgerton
Regina Livingston stood to the side of the ballroom, melding into the wallpaper as she observed the ton around her. Her dance-card lay wasteful on her wrist - with the exception of the one and only Marcus Winterbourne, no one had asked her to dance. And no one would. She was firmly on the shelf, or in the words of her tormentor - she’d been on the shelf from her first season itself.
Plain, dry, dull, without any remarkable features and shyness to rival a country lass, Regina had nothing to offer in the marriage mart. A wallflower through and through - at five and twenty. A situation she had well accepted, if only her traitorous heart would follow suit with her brain. Oh how she cursed that futile organ.
Even now, a full ten minutes after finishing her dance with Marcus that fickle heart of hers thud against her chest. She’d always feign the need for fresh air after every dance with him to collect herself. It was customary, at every function he attended that he’d ask her to dance. Mostly because he was polite, kind and everything wonderful in this world. But mostly because his elder brother and head of his family for almost 10 years politely suggested he dance with his wife's friend.
Regina watched from the shadows as Marcus led one of the latest debutantes onto the dancefloor, a diamond of the first water - blonde, blue-eyed and radiating. A classic british rose. Everything she was not. It had been exactly eight years since Regina had been trying to find the words for the ache she felt in her chest. At the worst moments, it felt like a hand had a vice like grip on her heart, squeezing little by little until she eventually faded away.
Pain was too simple to describe what she felt. She’d felt pain when she was 8, falling into the ravine and twisting her ankle. At sixteen she’d fallen head over heels in love with Marcus, and at eighteen she had despaired at the fact that he’d never see her as anything more than his sister-in-law's friend, and only paid her enough attention for a polite dance at society events. Affliction, suffering, torture, torment, none of them fit. None of them encompassed the true magnitude of what she felt.
This year, where Regina was finally coming into her own - accepting what she was and what she wasn’t and loving herself for her faults she found the perfect word.
It was her curse.
Because, for eight gloriously torturous years Regina Livingston was certain she was put on this earth to love this man. She was made for him; with every inch of her body and every corner of her soul she loved him. Even things she didn’t like about him, she loved. She was his from the moment he’d smiled at her when everyone else had scoffed. Every beat of her heart and every breath she took, she loved him.
Hopelessly.
Relentlessly.
Pointlessly.
For it was her curse to know, finitely, that while she was born for him, he was born for another. That Marcus’ heart would beat for another, that he’d love another like she loved him. Until the day she ceased to exist it would be her burden.
Her curse to carry.