Work Text:
Colin is not sure he has ever seen so much yellow in his life.
The walls of Featherington Castle are made of stone as much as any other royal residence he has been in, but they are covered in thick tapestries, yellow of every shade imaginable and several more besides. The cushions on which they sit are regal purple with yellow embroidery and tassels. Even the altar-cloth at the abbey was pale yellow with darker embroidery.
His bride is not quite an exception. Her gown is a rich blue but cut away to reveal an underskirt of cloth-of-gold, and a gold girdle belt at her waist is studded with pearls and garnets. The cuffs of her gown are lined with ermine. Her red hair is loose in curls down her back, two small braids woven through with seed pearls holding it off her face. She is beautiful, in every sense of the word, and he has no idea what to say to her.
Lord Colin of Aubrey, of the Bridgerton royal line, is married to the Lady Penelope of Mayfair. And they barely know each other.
“You’re to be married,” Anthony said.
Colin gave a sigh of relief. The contracts had been in negotiations for nearly a month now, and he knew Marina was becoming impatient. “Oh, good, her father came through.”
“Ah,” said Anthony. “So. She didn’t tell you, then.”
“Tell me what?”
His oldest brother sighed and leaned forward on his steepled hands. “I wish she had told you,” he muttered, and then in a clearer voice, “Colin, Mistress Thompson requested that the contract negotiations be stopped, and both Lord Thompson and I complied. She is to be married to Sir George Crane.”
“You’re lying,” Colin shot back, but his voice shook.
“I wish I was,” Anthony said. Colin was relieved to hear his brother’s voice carry sorrow. “But she insisted. She is with child, and it is his. He was fighting in the border skirmishes and was reported killed, but he’s alive. And so she is to marry him. He’s a small landowner, of little standing, but he is fond of her and she of him, and it is only right that she marry the father of her child.”
For several long minutes, he sat in the study in stunned silence. The large fireplace, with the Bridgerton crest carved in stone on the mantel-piece, crackled away. Above it was the portrait of their late father. King Edmund had been lucky enough to find a wife when he was twenty, before he had been locked into a dynastic betrothal, and he had romanced the daughter of the ennobled Ledger family and married her before anyone could protest otherwise. It had been a sublimely happy marriage for the eighteen years they received, and their large brood of children a blessing to a crown that had often been plagued by questions of inheritance.
“So who am I to marry,” Colin said dully, remembering why his brother had called him in here.
Instead of answering, Anthony slid forward a letter from their ambassador to Mayfair. His Grace the King wishes to proceed with the marriage he proposed last year, Dunwoody wrote. It would be a good alliance between our two kingdoms, and if the marriage contract between Your Grace’s second brother and Mistress Thompson should fall through, King Archibald would be eager to start negotiations between my Lord Colin and the Lady Penelope.
“Penelope of Mayfair?” he said. “But—I met her, when she was a little girl. The summer when I was ten, and Father took us all on progress with him and Mother. We met with the Mayfair royal family at the border. She could not have been more than Hyacinth’s age now.”
“It won’t be for five more years,” Anthony reassured him. “She is the same age as Eloise, so they wish to wait until she reaches maturity. A wise choice, considering their queen.”
He shuddered. He had been required, as a boy, to learn the histories of all of Aubrey’s neighboring kingdoms and principalities and duchies, Mayfair among them. Queen Portia had been wed at the same age as her third daughter was now, to a man twice her age, and brought to bed of a child just under a year later. The child — a boy — had not survived. There were four daughters who followed, though none of them were permitted by the laws of that land to rule alone. Thus, Colin.
Who would wed the third daughter in an illustrious dynastic marriage, and one day, upon her father’s death, succeed with her to the throne of Mayfair.
“And I must live there?” he said. “Now?”
“No, not now,” Anthony said, attempting to give a reassuring smile. It came out nervous instead. “You’ll move there a year before the wedding. Not to the castle, mind you, I’ve negotiated that. No need for you to be under their queen’s thumb before you’re even wed to her daughter. And thank God there is no language barrier. But you will want to learn their customs. It is not an easy thing to be a stranger ruling over a strange people. So you shall learn.”
In the five years since his marriage had been so abruptly decided for him, Colin had indeed learned. Anthony had engaged tutors for him, to teach him about Mayfair’s government and economy and culture. The two kingdoms were not so different — they shared a border, after all, and a language; they had similar geographic features and most of the same allies and enemies — except when looked at closely, when a million tiny differences spilled over. He had lectures from Mayfair’s ambassador to Aubrey (a dullard interested in aquatic creatures and little else) and began a lengthy correspondence with Dunwoody, Aubrey’s longtime ambassador to Mayfair (a most delightful fellow who in between explanations of court protocol snuck him court gossip and tidbits about his betrothed: Lady Penelope is exceptionally well-read, she treasures few things more than a book and the two elder sisters are half-wits at best, but the youngest is a sweet girl the same age as my lord’s sister Lady Hyacinth ).
And he began to write letters to his intended.
They were stilted, formal things, not meant to bare one’s soul so much as to be gentle introductions. He told her that he was fond of fencing and reading in turn; that he liked the bustle of his large family in court life but sometimes needed breaks. That he had always felt the urge to travel, and was acting as his brother’s emissary on a few diplomatic missions before their marriage to see some new places.
In return, he learned a few things. She liked to read, as Dunwoody had said, and she craved the quiet more than he, although she had grown used to it. Her favorite flowers were yellow roses even though she loathed the color yellow, and she had been carrying on a correspondence with his sister Eloise for many years, since they were children.
(“Of course I know Penelope,” she had said bossily when he confronted her over a game of draughts, leapfrogging his pieces across the board. “She is exceedingly clever and should you harm one hair upon her head, you will have to answer to me.”)
And then nearly a year ago, he had moved to lodgings within the walls of the city, a short walk from the castle, and had begun absorbing the life and times of the inhabitants of Mayfair. How they interacted and spoke with one another, the little ways in which religion differed, the superstitions and unspoken customs.
During that time, he had been allowed a handful of closely chaperoned meetings with Lady Penelope. She was pretty, he had realized at that first meeting with startling clarity and a little embarrassment, for it mattered not if she was pretty: he was bound to marry her even if he found her displeasing. But he did not. She was quite pretty, and although a bit shy, not so reticent as to be frustrating. They carried on superficial conversations, about the weather and their families and the marriage plans neither of them had much say in, listened to closely by Lady Penelope’s maid, who walked only a few steps behind them at all times but seemed kind nonetheless.
And now they are here. His things were moved up to Featherington Castle yesterday, into apartments he would share with hers. Two bedrooms, he had been assured, so they might each have their space. Dunwoody told him the current decor was unsightly beyond belief, but there is a little money earmarked to change the space to be more to their liking — his and Penelope’s.
The wedding banquet is winding down now. Most of his family are here: his mother, who said she would not miss the wedding of one of her children for all the gold in the world. Benedict, serving as his supporter, who tried to get him properly soused at one of the city’s alehouses last night, and flirted a little with Lady Penelope before their mother told him to stop his nonsense. All his younger siblings save Daphne, who remains in Hastings with her duke. Even now, Eloise has drawn a stool close to Penelope’s chair, and is chattering away to her about the writings of an anchoress she admires.
“Eloise, dearest, it is time to withdraw,” his mother says from behind them, and Eloise whispers some confidence to her friend before sulking off in a manner wholly unbefitting her grown-up age. Colin snickers quietly before he is silenced by his mother’s glare and his new bride’s questioning look.
Heavens, she is an enigma, this girl. For she is barely more than a girl. He is unsure how apt the metaphor is — unsure, really, of Lady Penelope’s personality, of her strength, of anything of substance about her.
The last of the revelers depart the banquet hall, and before he understands exactly what is happening, his brother has shepherded him off with a band of merry gentlemen who make ribald comments from the corridor as he changes from his festive garb into a plain linen nightshirt, and then enters his new bedchamber.
His new bedchamber with a wildly nervous Penelope, who has already been tucked into the vast tester bed. The tops of her shoulders are not bare, so they have spared her that indignity, but the poor girl is shaking like a leaf under the eiderdown. There are an alarming number of people in the room: the King and Queen, his mother, Benedict, and countless other courtiers and dignitaries he does not recognize.
Colin climbs under the blankets and gulps a little when he sees the thin nightdress they have put his new bride in, scandalously diaphanous and trimmed with lace.
The archbishop steps forward from amongst the small crowd and begins to pray, murmuring a blessing over them for domestic felicity (he thinks he hears a giggle from next to him in the bed) and fruitfulness. And then the two queens step forward and pull the curtains closed on either side of the bed, and the king pulls the curtains together at the foot.
There are low voices and muffled footsteps, and one by one the three doors that lead into the bedchamber all close with heavy, final thuds.
He feels at an utter loss. All his life, Colin has wanted nothing more than a marriage of affection, such as that of his parents, or what he has seen Anthony and Daphne find with their respective spouses in the last few years. And he knew that there was always a possibility of that within the arrangement that he found himself in. He liked Penelope, after all, found her intriguing and lovely; that was more than many noble marriages had. And there were other examples. The Bridgerton children had grown up hearing the stories about the marriage between their grandfather and a foreign princess; they had met only on their wedding day, and spoke no language in common except barely passable Latin. But the young king had fallen madly in love with his Alexandra, and their marriage was the pinnacle on which his parents, his brother, his sister, all his aunts and uncles had modeled their own upon.
We can do this , he tries to convince himself, and he turns towards her.
Penelope is staring at him and squeaks when he moves, trying to hide away.
“It is all right that you look,” he says, reaching for her hand. The quiet of the room, the darkness of this space enclosed in a darkened room in the dead of night with the heavy curtains pulled around them, casts an almost funeral pall over what lies before them. “We have barely seen one another before today.” He pauses, hesitant. “I have been curious about you, too.”
“I am glad I am not the only one,” she says, and every time she speaks he finds himself taken aback by the melody of her voice, like the lightest of church bells. “Although it is not as though we do not know each other at all.”
He smiles. “My grandparents were like that.”
“Yes, I know,” she says; she seems more resolute as she goes on. “Once the contracts were in place, I was taught about your family. And you. Your mother and father’s love story — and that of your grandparents — they are both quite remarkable.”
“And intimidating,” he says, hazarding a guess that she feels as he does.
“Yes. Their legacy is vast,” says Penelope, and looks down at the eiderdown, playing with its edges. “My lord. . .”
“Colin,” he says firmly. “Please. At least when we are alone. I do not want there to be such formality between us.”
“Colin,” she repeats, less tentative than he might expect. “I—I know we have to consummate the marriage—”
“Did your mother tell you what would happen?” he interrupts her. He speaks softly and yet it feels as though his voice echoes throughout this cavernous bed.
“A little,” she says hesitantly. “She was rather…vague. Which is most unlike her. She said I must let you do as you will, and that it may be unpleasant or uncomfortable, but that it was our duty.”
His heart breaks for her. To be told such things by her mother. Colin knows too well that to be royal is to be lonely, for one can never be sure of another’s loyalty or sincerity. Even when he loathes them, or feels misunderstood, he has never felt entirely alone, for he has his brothers and sisters all in the same position as him; their father, when he was alive, always busy but giving every moment to them as he could; and their mother, a comforting presence through all their lives: a stalwart when one can rely on no one.
“It may be that way in some marriages,” Colin whispers fiercely, feeling suddenly young and scared to bear all the strength in this part of their marriage. “But not ours. Never in ours. I could not bear to hurt you.”
There is hardly any light, but his eyes have adjusted, and he can see Penelope tracing his face with his eyes, her face reflecting a curious mix of heartbreak and hope.
“We do not have to do anything tonight,” he adds, and scoots a little closer to her. “We can simply talk until we tire. No one need know otherwise.”
“You won’t say anything?”
He fists the hand not entwined with hers in the sheets, restraining the urge to be even closer, to pull her against him and kiss the top of her head and promise to protect her from anyone who has ever caused her the slightest harm.
But it is too early for such thoughts. They barely know each other. And he wants to know her, her favorite fruits in summer and the little habits of others that irritate her, prized memories of a lonely childhood and the inner workings of her mind. He wants to know her and still want to learn more, still be delighted to learn something new. He wants her to tell him everything from the story of the tiny scar he saw today on her hand when he slipped a ring onto her finger to what she envisions for the future of this kingdom they shall rule together.
They have time, though, for all of that. So he leans his forehead towards hers and says “No,” in as steady a voice as he can muster, trying to convey his truthfulness, that she can learn to trust him.
“Colin,” she whispers, “will you kiss me? Nothing more. Not yet. But…I want you to kiss me.”
And his last thought, before their first kiss — the kiss that changes everything, the kiss that changes him , that sends lightning shooting throughout his body and soothes every mental ache he has carried for years, gives him energy enough to part seas and raise mountains, causes colors to change and enrich before his eyes, makes him believe he could love Lady Penelope of Mayfair, his bride, his wife , more than he has ever loved anyone before — is how beautiful she looks against the yellow of the bedsheets, and that he could grow used to so much yellow just to see that alone for the rest of his life.