Chapter Text
Colin Bridgerton had never considered himself particularly slow on the uptake. He may not have had Anthony’s financial savvy or Benedict’s artistic skill but he was perfectly intelligent. Two As and one A* and offers of a place from both Manchester and Bristol was nothing to sneeze at, thank you very much. Sure, it wasn’t Oxbridge but red brick universities were the backbone of British education, so he’d said to Anthony at any rate, and had he chosen actually to go to uni instead of heading off on gap year travels that stretched from one year to two, then three, then four, then five, well. He was sure he’d’ve done perfectly well there.
So when his return to England brought with it the abrupt, astounding, smack-upside-the-head realisation that he was in love with his best friend and probably had been for some time, he was understandably annoyed with himself. Perhaps if there had been a university course on the subject of How To Recognise What Love Looks Like When It’s Been Staring You Right In Your Stupid Face For The Past Decade And A Half, You Moron then he would have registered straight away. He’d have attended every lecture, every seminar, written every paper well in advance of the deadline. Anything to spare himself the discomfort and discomfiture, the sheer humiliation of finding himself lovestruck and struck dumb in the presence of the one person in his whole life he’d always been able to talk to.
“Colin?” Pen’s eyebrow rose quizzically. He hadn’t known her eyebrow could do that. Which struck him as a fairly significant thing not to have known. What more had he failed to notice about her?
Because here was the thing: Penelope was beautiful. Which of course didn’t matter, obviously it didn’t matter, he had treasured Penelope since he’d been too young to notice girls as girls and continued to treasure her throughout the awkward adolescent years when her hair had frizzed around a freckled face that sometimes seemed comprised entirely of glasses and orthodontics. Her looks hadn’t mattered to him then and they didn’t matter to him now except that now Penelope was beautiful and Colin felt like the worst kind of cad for finally noticing it on the same thought wave as the realisation that she was the love of his life.
What kind of absolute arsehole did that? This kind, apparently.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her over the past five years. There had been numerous FaceTime calls with Eloise when she had been there, grinning at him from over El’s shoulder and always sparing a few minutes for him at the end of the call to tell him about her studies and London and later her studies and Scotland—she and Eloise had both attended Edinburgh University—and to ask him to tell her a special story from his travels, one for her alone. He always had. He’d always made a point of saving the best stories just for her.
He was sure he had noticed, somewhere in the back of his mind, when her hair smoothed out and her freckles faded, when her glasses and her braces disappeared. He must have done, it wasn’t possible that he could be entirely clueless. But there had been so many women in his orbit back then, sultry ones cloaked in the allure of foreign climes, while Pen had just been Pen, his best and oldest friend, comfortable as a favourite jumper and very, very far away.
Only now she wasn’t. Now she was standing in front of him at his welcome-home party wearing a tea dress the colour of the Aegean Sea, her perfectly-arched eyebrows slowly ascending her forehead as his dumbfounded silence stretched out far beyond the point where he might gracefully recover from it. Had, his dazed brain wondered, her eyes always been that blue? Or her skin, was it always that delicately smooth and porcelain-pale, near translucent? Had her breasts always—but no, no, no. Colin scrambled to corral his wayward thoughts. If he followed that particular one to its logical conclusion he was going to embarrass himself even more abominably than he was already doing.
Penelope’s brow was furrowed now. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “You look like you’ve been smacked in the face by a rogue herring.”
This startled him into a laugh and gave him time to pull himself together. “I’m fine,” he said. “Sorry, don’t know what came over me. It’s great to see you, Pen.”
“You too.” She pulled him into a hug, no different from any other of the hundreds, thousands of hugs they’d shared throughout their lives. The hug was no different but Colin surely was, because now he was painfully aware of every inch of his body where it came into contact with hers, of her softness and warmth, fragrant with the floral scent of her shampoo. His eyes fell shut as he breathed in deeply and laid his cheek on the top of her head.
“I missed you,” she murmured against his chest. “Don’t ever stay away so long again.”
“I won’t.”
His hand came up to stroke her hair before he could stop it. He had no wish to stop it, obviously, he urged it on in fact, but barely had it brushed the silky curls when Eloise appeared at his side and thoroughly spoilt the moment by punching him in the arm.
Possibly that was for the best.
“Ow!” he yelped, for Eloise’s punches always packed a wallop. “Bloody hell, Eloise.”
She grinned at him. “I’ve missed doing that.”
Penelope pulled out of his embrace with a laugh. “Don’t beat him senseless quite yet, El, he’s only just got home.”
“Beginning as I mean to go on,” Eloise retorted. “Can’t have him thinking a suntan and a haircut will shield him from my vengeance.”
“What have you got to avenge?” grumbled Colin.
“My closest brother abandoned me,” said Eloise, deadpan. “For five years.”
“I brought you presents, though,” Colin pointed out.
“Allegedly,” she sniffed. “I’ve yet to actually see them, though, so.” She turned to Penelope. “He’s not even living at home anymore. He’s got his own flat now.”
“Well I brought your presents with me today so why don’t we go inside and you can inspect your bounty?” He held out his arm, crooked at the elbow, and she looped hers through it. “Pen?” Colin said, proffering the other, “you coming?”
“Only if there’s a present for me too,” she teased.
There were… so many presents for her. Easily twice the number he’d brought back for everybody else. Every place he’d gone he’d found a thing he knew she’d love and every time he’d excitedly bought it for her without a second thought and why was he only now realising what that meant?
Fuck, but he was a fool.
He put on his best sad puppy face. “I’m wounded you could even think there wouldn’t be,” he said.
If she only knew.
“Well in that case.” Penelope accepted his arm and exchanged a grin with Eloise. “Lead on.”
“So what’s Pen up to these days?” Colin asked Eloise some time later, as casually as he could manage. The party was over and all the guests had left. Colin knew he should go too, back to his newly acquired flat, but instead he was slouched on the sitting room sofa with El, brooding.
“Don’t you know?” she replied. “You wrote to her more than you did to any of us.”
“Well, yes. Obviously I know her novel’s being published and she’s been working on promotion and—whatever else you need to do when you have a novel being published. But that’s not what I meant. What’s she been up to?”
Eloise fixed him with her probing look, the one that missed no detail, however small. “So you’ve stopped being an idiot, then,” she said. “It’s about bloody time.”
Colin attempted to scoff. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Penelope. That’s what we’re both talking about. You’re trying, very unsubtly I might add, to mine me for details about her personal life whilst I am remarking on the fact that you have, at long, long last, realised that you’re in love with her and have been for a truly embarrassing length of time.”
“I never said—”
Eloise waved his protest away. “It’s a tremendous relief to me that you’ve finally managed to dislodge your head from your arse,” she informed him. “The secret was really weighing on me.”
“What secret?”
“Your feelings. They were so secret even you didn’t know. Fortunately, nothing gets by me. But I had begun to think I was going to have to break the news to you myself. Thank you for sparing me that burden, at least.”
“You’re always such a comfort in trying times, El,” said Colin drily. “So warm and sympathetic.”
“Listen, if you want warmth and sympathy go to Daph. Or better yet, go to Pen.” She looked at him sharply. “You are going to go to her, right? I mean, you’re going to tell her?”
Even the notion. Colin could feel the blood drain from his face just contemplating it. This vascular exodus left him light-headed. His chest felt as though an elephant had mistaken it for an armchair. “Of—course I am,” he wheezed. “Just—not yet.” Eloise tsk-tsked disapprovingly. “Might need a bit of time to—get my head straight, is all.”
She shook her head in a pitying sort of way, eyes narrowed and appraising. “Don’t wait too long,” she said, ominously he couldn’t help but think. “Penelope’s not an awkward child any longer. I’m sure you’ve noticed she’s looking pretty bloody hot these days.”
“I have,” said Colin hoarsely. “I have indeed noticed that.”
“Well.” The corners of Eloise’s mouth twitched. “You certainly wouldn’t be the only one.”
“Colin!”
Mrs Featherington greeted him at her customary ear-splitting volume. She leaned in to engulf him in a hug and press an effusive kiss to his cheek from which he did not flinch away, though neither did he respond in kind. It wasn’t that he disliked Penelope’s mother, not precisely, but he knew how difficult she had made Pen’s life at times and even without that she wasn’t the easiest woman to warm to. There always seemed to be something calculating in her manner and her excessive familiarity with his family—based solely on Pen’s friendship with himself and with Eloise—made him vaguely uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, he smiled at her and said warmly, “Mrs Featherington, so good to see you. Is Penelope in?”
“She is, but I’m afraid she won’t be for much longer. She’s just going out.”
“Oh,” Colin began, when over Mrs Featherington’s shoulder he caught sight of Penelope herself descending the stairs and his capacity for coherent speech abandoned him. She was dressed in flowy, wide-legged trousers and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to just below her elbows. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in deep auburn waves and a large pair of sunglasses was perched on her head. She looked like a femme fatale from a 30s noir and he was transfixed.
Mrs Featherington followed the trajectory of his gaze and called out, “Ah, Penelope! Colin’s here to see you. I told him you were just going out.”
“I am.” Pen smiled at him as she took the sunglasses from her head and slipped them over her eyes. Colin mourned the loss of their depthless blue. “I’m meeting my agent for lunch I’m afraid, but you could walk with me if you wanted?”
“I do like to walk.” He removed himself from the doorway so she could come through it, then fell into step with her. “Where are we headed?”
“The Ritz.”
He blinked in surprise. “Swank lunch meeting.”
“Agents, what can I say?” she replied with a shrug and a laugh. “I think he’s trying to impress me, like I don’t know he just expense-accounts it.”
“He,” Colin muttered under his breath. Eloise’s warning from Sunday evening rang in his head.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Listen, would it be unforgivably rude of me to invite myself along to this lunch? My treat?”
“Oh, I couldn’t—”
“‘Course you could. Save your agent’s expense account unnecessary strain. I promise I’ll be duly silent when you’re talking business.” He deployed puppy-dog eyes with steely intent. “C’mon Pen, you know how I’m always starving and the Ritz is my favourite.”
“The same Ritz you once called ‘turgid and overrated’?”
“That was the old me. I’m a changed man now. Struggle has changed me.”
“You’ve never struggled a day in your life,” she retorted, then rolled her eyes. “Fine. If you insist.”
“I do.” Pleased with himself, he took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. “Then afterwards we can go have a browse in Hatchard’s. What do you say?”
“I say,” said Penelope, “that that is a brilliant idea, Mr Bridgerton.”
Colin felt like he’d just hung the moon.
It took Colin all of zero point zero two seconds to clock that Penelope’s agent was indeed trying to impress her and that his intentions in doing so went far beyond the merely professional. The man could literally not be more obvious.
The way his eyes lit when he saw her. The way he held her hand—not shook it, no, held it and bowed over it like something out of a medieval courtly romance. The way his eyes shot absolute daggers at Colin when Pen introduced him as her ‘dearest friend who thought he’d tag along and buy us lunch.’ Those daggers told Colin he was decidedly surplus to requirements and he could not be less sorry to hear it.
“I’ve only made reservations for two,” agent-man said coolly.
“No worries,” Colin replied cheerily. “I don’t mind pulling up a chair.”
This he proceeded to do—or rather, the waiter proceeded to do it, with a bow and an “Allow me, sir,” that fell just this side of obsequious. There were times, reflected Colin as he graciously accepted a menu, when having an unmistakably Bridgerton face was bloody convenient. Situations requiring mildly boorish behaviour in posh hotel restaurants prominent among them. He hadn’t even had to tell the man his name.
“I assume we’re all doing the three course taster?” he said. “No point in coming here otherwise, am I right?”
Agent-man—Ravi as Penelope called him—gave a tight-lipped smile. “Fine by me.”
“I should hope so,” said Colin, “the duck liver tartlets look amazing. Those for all of us, I think. What’ll you go for, Pen?”
“I like the look of the chicken and white asparagus,” she said. “Ooh and the sour cherry soufflé for dessert.”
“I’ll have the same, I think.”
They placed their order for food and wine plus a bottle of champagne at Ravi’s request. When it arrived, he held up his glass for a toast.
“To my newest star author,” he said grandly, “warm congratulations on her first publication of many.” He tapped Penelope’s flute with his, then drank.
He did not tap Colin’s.
Penelope flushed. Colin could recall the days when a blush of Pen’s had produced florid, rash-like blotches all over her face and neck but it seemed that like her hair and her freckles and her glasses this too had changed. Now the apples of her cheeks turned an enchanting rose-pink and he felt like he’d been struck by an articulated lorry in the small of the back.
“The book hasn’t even come out yet,” she murmured. “You can’t be certain it’ll be a hit.”
“Oh, but I can.” Ravi’s smile was warmer now, much warmer. Far, far too warm, as was his blasted gaze on Pen’s flushed face. He tapped the side of his nose, knowingly, and Colin barely suppressed the urge to rugby-tackle him to the ground. “I know a bestseller when I read one, love. Trust me.”
That ‘love’ on the man’s lips had Colin’s blood boiling. His hackles, a thing he’d not known he possessed until that moment, rose. Only by great good fortune was he spared the lengthy prison sentence from which not even his name could save him—not if he were to murder a man in the Ritz restaurant in broad daylight—when the waiter arrived with a tray of amuses-bouches. One simply did not commit bloody murder in the presence of waitstaff. Not if one had been raised right, as Colin had.
By the time their bouches had been thoroughly amused, Colin’s ire had cooled sufficiently that murder was no longer imminent. Pen and Ravi began to discuss the details of her book launch and so, true to his word, he sipped his champagne and kept his mouth shut. He listened though. And he observed.
She laughed at his jokes. That was the first thing Colin noticed. Bright, genuine-seeming laughter though they weren’t remotely funny. She tilted her head down so she could look up at him through her lashes, smiling softly, and when she spoke she brushed her fingertips along her collarbone. If he didn’t know better, Colin would almost believe she was… she was…
A realisation struck him. A terrible, awful realisation.
Penelope had learnt to flirt.
How? When? Who had taught her? And why was she doing it with this fucking guy?
Colin nearly choked on his own intake of breath.
Was it… was it possible that Pen liked agent-man? In a way that went far beyond the merely professional? And in that dread circumstance what was he, Colin Bridgerton, to do about it?
Colin had never had much of what his brother Anthony sternly termed a direction in life. ‘Feckless’ was a word some might use to describe him, if they were being unpleasant about it, or ‘charmingly carefree’ if they were being kind. He’d always been more or less content to drift along to wherever the wind may take him, exploring places and meeting people and just generally enjoying his sojourn in the realm of Earthly existence.
But here, now, in this place and at this moment—half past one on a sunny Tuesday in the heart of Piccadilly, to be precise—Colin Bridgerton discovered his Life’s Purpose: to win Penelope Featherington’s heart. He would accomplish this sacred mission or die in the attempt, and if he had to take agent-man Ravi down in the process then so much the better. Colin wasn’t averse to a spot of collateral damage.
His eyes narrowed, his smile sharpened. He steepled his fingers beneath his chin like a Bond villain and observed the byplay across the table. He was glad Penelope could flirt now, and pretty skilfully at that. Good. He hoped she’d learnt some other things too. She would need every feminine wile in the book if she were to grapple with him.
Colin looked forward to the challenge.