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The ache in Colin’s neck had begun as a whisper, a stiffness he blamed on long nights pacing the nursery floor, cradling a restless Thomas. But over time, the discomfort had grown, curling down into his back.
Naturally, he ignored it.
It was simply the weight of fatherhood, he reasoned. Of responsibility. Of age, perhaps—though Anthony would surely scoff at that suggestion, being years ahead and still managing to ride and fence without a wince.
But his wife knew better.
Penelope watched him when he thought she wasn’t looking, noting the way he rolled his shoulders at breakfast, the stiffness with which he bent to pick up a dropped rattle. And after one particularly sleepless night, in which even the warmth of her hand on his back could not soothe the tension, she’d set down her teacup and said firmly:
"Colin. You are calling Doctor Ashcroft. Today."
And, like all things Penelope put her mind to, it was settled.
Doctor Ashcroft arrived precisely on the quarter-hour, punctual as ever and smelling faintly of pipe tobacco. He was a tall man with a nose that had clearly once met a wall, and carried his leather bag like a priest might his Bible, with a certain solemnity that suggested he rather enjoyed being taken seriously.
“Mr Bridgerton,” he said with a brisk nod.
Colin, wedged into an armchair like a sulking cat, grunted something that may have resembled a greeting.
Ashcroft set about his examination, tilting Colin’s chin this way and that, pressing at the base of his neck, tracing fingers down his spine. He tapped, prodded, frowned, and once made a noise like a pigeon being stepped on.
“Hmm,” the doctor muttered finally, stepping back with a thoughtful look. “No swelling. No redness. No sign of inflammation or muscular tear.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Colin asked hopefully.
“It is most likely a strain, Mr Bridgerton. Repetitive movement. Something you’re doing too frequently, perhaps with improper posture. Have you taken on any new physical tasks lately?”
Colin blinked. “I'm a father.”
Ashcroft gave a vague, sympathetic nod. “Ah, yes, the baby,” He made a little scribble in his notebook that Colin suspected was just for effect. “My recommendation, Mr Bridgerton, is that you avoid lifting the child. For a time, at least. Let your back rest. See if it makes a difference.”
There was a beat of stunned silence.
“I beg your pardon?” Colin said flatly.
“Try not to pick up the baby.”
Colin sat upright so fast his spine cracked audibly. “Not hold my child? My boy? With all due respect, Doctor, I have scaled the cliffs of Santorini, ridden camels across burning sands, and you’re telling me I cannot lift a small human?”
“It’s hardly about strength, Mr Bridgerton—”
“I’ve weathered a storm, Doctor.”
“Yes, I’ve read your travel memoirs. A delightful read, to be sure,” the doctor said dryly, and Colin muttered his stubborn thanks. “Nonetheless, your spine is telling a different tale.”
“Well, my spine is very dramatic,” Colin snapped.
Ashcroft folded his arms. “Then perhaps it takes after its owner.”
Colin gaped at him. “You are banning me from my own child.”
“I am merely suggesting a brief holiday from carrying them, not acknowledging their existence,” Ashcroft adjusted his spectacles, adding helpfully, “Perhaps you could...sit with them?”
Colin looked as though someone had told him to parent via semaphore from another room. “Sit. With the baby.”
Ashcroft packed up his bag. “Yes. Supervise. Engage. Without lifting.”
Colin groaned theatrically. “What’s next, a cane? Shall I just start reminiscing about my youth and fall asleep by the fire with a shawl?”
“Actually, a shawl might help the neck tension," Ashcroft said cheerfully, already heading to the door. “I’ll check back in ten days. No lifting. No straining. No heroics.”
The door shut behind him with a quiet finality.
***
The house was quiet, save for the steady, escalating cries of baby Thomas echoing from the nursery.
Colin stood just outside the doorway, arms folded tightly across his chest, doing his best not to pace. His neck still ached, dull, nagging, but right now the pain he felt most acutely was the one twisting somewhere between his chest and throat as his son’s wail sharpened.
He glanced toward the crib. Thomas’s face was red, his little fists curled, eyes squeezed shut in a cry that was less rage and more why aren’t you picking me up, Papa?
Colin exhaled through his nose.
“Right,” he said aloud to no one, rubbing the back of his neck. “Doctor’s orders. No lifting. Let the muscles rest. Be...clever about it.”
He crouched, slowly, stiffly, by the edge of the crib and reached a hand through the bars, offering his finger to Thomas. The baby grabbed it immediately, but it did nothing to calm him. The cries continued. Louder, now. Wetter.
Colin winced. “I apologise, Tommy,” he murmured. “I already told you, Papa isn’t feeling very well—”
Thomas kicked his blanket off.
Colin retrieved it clumsily and tucked it back around him, brushing his tiny head gently. “We agreed,” he muttered, half to himself, “we weren’t going to lift you today. Doctor’s orders. Your mother would be very cross with me.”
Thomas kept crying.
Colin sat down on the floor beside the crib, stretching out his legs with a quiet groan, and rested his head against the side of the cot. “I am sitting. I am not lifting…”
Another wail.
He shut his eyes. “This is ridiculous.”
With a long, reluctant sigh, Colin got to his feet and leaned over, just enough to slide one hand under Thomas’s back and another beneath his legs.
He paused. And then, slowly, guiltily, with the care of a man caught between medical advice and paternal instinct, he picked up his son.
The crying stopped almost instantly.
Colin held him close and closed his eyes as the warm weight settled against his chest.
“This can be our little secret,” he whispered. “Don’t tell Doctor Ashcroft.”
Thomas gave a tiny hiccup and went quiet again.
“And definitely don’t tell your mother.”
Later that evening, after Thomas had been put to bed, Colin found himself lying face down on the bed, shirt off, the low flicker of candlelight casting soft shadows across the room. His gorgeous wife straddled his hips, her hands warm as they moved gently across his back, kneading the tightness from his shoulders with slow, practiced strokes. God, I love my life.
He groaned quietly into the pillow. “You know,” he mumbled, “this is the only thing keeping me from writing a furious letter to Doctor Ashcroft. Possibly with a sketch of a donkey—”
Penelope laughed softly. “A donkey?”
“I once lifted one in Spain. The poor thing had fallen in a ditch. Thomas weighs nothing in comparison.”
She pressed her thumbs gently into the base of his neck. He let out a soft moan.
“Mmm. Yes, well,” she murmured, “perhaps your Spanish donkey didn’t demand to be held sixteen times a day, only to immediately try and climb up your face.”
“She did try to eat my coat.”
Penelope smiled, leaning down to kiss his shoulder. “Colin, I know you’ve carried heavier things, but maybe that’s not the point.”
He turned his head slightly toward her, his voice muffled. “It feels ridiculous. He’s so small,” He was quiet for a moment, her hands still moving over his back in steady rhythm. Then, in a low, slightly stubborn voice: “I hate not picking him up when he’s crying.”
“I know you do,” she said. “And he loves when you do. But just...try, Colin. Ten days. Give your body a chance. If it’s still sore, we’ll reassess.”
He shifted slightly beneath her, sighing into the pillow. “Ten days is an awfully long time to disappoint one’s child.”
Penelope chuckled, her fingers sweeping down his spine with a tenderness that said she saw right through him. “You’re not disappointing him. You’re setting an excellent example of not being an idiot.”
He turned his head again, catching her gaze, his expression softened by exhaustion and candlelight. “You’re very convincing when you’re warm and soft and half-draped over me, you know,” he said with a lazy grin. “I feel compelled to obey you and fall in love with you all over again.”
She leaned down, resting her chin gently on his shoulder. “Ten days,” she whispered.
He turned his head, brushing his lips against hers, and murmured, “God, I wish you were easier to say no to.”
She laughed softly, pressing a tender kiss to his lips.
***
Colin was a shell of a man.
He sat slumped at the breakfast table like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Penelope poured tea without comment. She had learned not to laugh. Out loud.
“I haven’t held Thomas in ten days,” Colin muttered into his toast. “Ten days. Do you know what that does to a man?”
“You held him emotionally,” Penelope offered gently.
“While lying on the floor and singing ‘Greensleeves’ with my neck at a ninety-degree angle,” Colin corrected bleakly.
Penelope took a sip of her tea and reached across the table, squeezing his hand. “You’ve done well, my love.”
“I’m a broken man with a broken back who hasn’t cuddled his son in over a week.”
“You’ll get your cuddle,” she said, smiling. “Ashcroft’s coming this afternoon. If the pain’s still there, we’ll try something else.”
Doctor Ashcroft arrived as punctual and dry as ever, carrying his leather bag and the air of someone about to recommend something wildly inconvenient.
“Right,” he said briskly, after assessing Colin’s back, neck, posture, and pain with a series of pokes and knowing frowns. “Still no improvement?”
Colin, lying on his stomach again, sighed. “None. If anything, it’s worse.”
“Hm,” Ashcroft murmured. “Then it likely isn’t strain from lifting.”
Colin sat up too fast and immediately winced. “You’re saying I emotionally neglected my child for no reason?”
Ashcroft didn’t look up as he opened his bag and pulled out his slim, leather-bound notebook with distressing calm. “I know you are an author,” he said, almost conversationally. “How long have you been writing in that chair by the window?”
Colin blinked. “The writing chair?”
“The one with the charming carved back and absolutely no lumbar support.”
“I bought that in Florence,” Colin said, frowning. “It was hand-painted by a monk.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure he was celibate, but not an expert in vertebrae,” Ashcroft pulled out a short, rolled diagram of the spine and began gesturing. “I suspect your writing posture, slumped forward, shoulder twisted, likely favouring one side, may have created a pattern of strain. For your back to heal, perhaps you should change where and how you write.”
Colin looked truly offended. “I sit perfectly well. At my desk. Across from my wife—”
Ashcroft, deadpan: “In a chair carved for aesthetics by a monk with no medical training.”
“It’s hand-painted!”
“It’s poorly supported.”
“I can’t just abandon the ritual. We face each other!”
“You can face her from a better chair, Mr Bridgerton.”
“I’d have to get a different height of chair. If I sit higher than her, I’ll look domineering. If I sit lower, I’ll look like a supplicant.”
“You’ll look like a man with functioning vertebrae,” Ashcroft closed his notebook. “I’ll return in a week. In the meantime, chair, posture, warm compresses. And perhaps less melodrama.”
Colin flopped backward with a dramatic exhale.
***
“Colin, dearest,” Violet Bridgerton said with the long-suffering patience of a mother who had raised multiple children, “you don’t have to hold him through the entire meal.”
“I absolutely do, mother,” Colin replied, bouncing baby Thomas gently on his hip. He was a round, golden creature of maybe ten months, all soft rolls and riotous gingery curls. Colin, as ever, was helpless to resist. “He’s spent ten days thinking I didn’t love him. We are rebuilding trust.”
Gregory leaned across the table, squinting at the baby. “He looks like he’s trying to climb your face.”
“Affectionately,” Colin said.
Thomas let out a small, burbling squeal, the sound oddly triumphant, and jammed his fist into Colin’s mouth with the conviction of a chubby-cheeked monarch bestowing a gift.
Eloise smirked. “Touching.”
“Two days ago he was lying on the floor whispering, ‘I’m a ghost in his life’,” Benedict said, buttering a scone.
“I was in mourning,” Colin muttered.
Penelope, seated beside him, simply patted Colin’s knee under the table and passed him another tiny spoon of mashed carrot. “Open wide, dearest,” she said sweetly.
Colin blinked. “For me or him?”
She grinned. "I did not think mashed carrots were to your taste.”
“Everything is to his taste,” Hyacinth teased.
Thomas wriggled, dropping a rattle directly into Colin’s teacup. It splashed with a tragic little plop.
Anthony arched an eyebrow. “I hope that wasn’t mine.”
Thomas gurgled and gnawed on Colin’s collar.
Violet leaned in. “Are you certain this isn’t bad for your back?”
Anthony leaned back in his chair, eyeing Colin over the rim of his teacup. “Ah, yes, tell us. Has the great chair search concluded? Or are you still interviewing them one by one?”
“I am narrowing it down,” Colin said stiffly, adjusting Thomas on his lap as the baby continued to chew his collar. “It’s a serious matter. I spend hours at that desk.”
“Oh absolutely,” Benedict chimed in, mock-sincere. “We must preserve your delicate constitution.”
“I just think—” Colin began, defensively.
“What about this chair?” Eloise cut in sweetly. “Is it soft enough for your fragile elderly bones?”
Gregory leaned in. “Do you want us to knit you a shawl for your shoulders too? Franny would gladly sew your initials.”
Penelope, still sipping tea, raised an eyebrow. “You all mock, but an authors’ study is an important thing.”
Benedict smirked. “Honestly, Pen, you enable him.”
“I love him,” she corrected, with mock gravity. “Which includes letting him audition chairs like they’re suitors.”
Thomas let out a hiccup, then promptly spit up directly onto Colin’s waistcoat.
There was a long pause.
“I deserve this,” Colin said calmly, reaching for a napkin.
Penelope took Thomas from his arms with the smooth precision of a mother who had absolutely predicted this exact outcome, and Colin sighed, smiling as she tucked the baby against her shoulder, cooing at him softly. He watched the two of them—his wife, his son, his messy life—and leaned back just slightly, only wincing a little.
Anthony reached for another sandwich. “Well. At least you’re not a ghost anymore.”
“I still might haunt that monk who made my chair,” Colin muttered.
The house was silent once they’d returned home, the kind of rare hush that only came when the baby was asleep and no one dared jinx it.
“Tommy went to sleep within seconds tonight,” Penelope said, upon entering their room. “I think he’s very glad to have his father back.”
She stood by the vanity in her nightgown, brushing out her ginger hair, watching the soft glow of the candlelight flicker across the mirror. Behind her, Colin lounged shirtless in their bed, his hair mussed, a lazy smirk on his face, and absolutely no shame in how openly he was watching her.
“You know,” she said mildly, “you’re staring.”
“I’m admiring,” he murmured. “Very different.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “And what, exactly, are you admiring?”
“My gorgeous wife, of course,” he said, sitting up slightly. “And that robe. And the way your hair looks down, like that. And how, at any moment, you might come over here and kiss me until I forget my own name.”
Penelope turned, one brow arched. “You’re shameless.”
With a soft laugh, she crossed the room and climbed onto the bed, straddling his thighs and easing him back into the pillows. His hands came to her hips instinctively, warm and wanting.
Their lips met, slow at first, then hungry. It had been too long. Too many nights of exhaustion or worry over the baby. Too many evenings of teasing touches and no time to follow through.
Penelope kissed him like she missed him, and Colin’s hands slid up her sides, fingers skating over thin cotton, then under it. He groaned softly against her mouth as he felt how warm and plush she was.
“I believe,” he whispered, lips against her neck, “that this is the part where you forget your name, too.”
She laughed softly, fingers teasing at the edge of his hairline. “You always think you're the one doing the ravishing.”
He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes, dark, glinting with mischief. “Aren’t I?”
Penelope smirked. “Darling, you’re trying. I’ll let you know when you succeed.”
He let out a mock-offended gasp, even as his mouth trailed hotly along her collarbone. “You wound me—”
And then he actually yelped. “Ow.”
She pulled back. “What?”
He winced. “My back. It’s—just—one of those twinges, it’ll pass—OW, no, it’s staging a coup—”
Penelope immediately rolled off him, clutching her robe to her chest, eyes wide. “Absolutely not.”
He reached for her again. “Pen—”
“No. I am not risking you throwing your back out because you were trying to seduce me with your shirt halfway open and your heroic lean—”
“I wasn’t even leaning heroically yet.”
“You made a sound like an old gate.”
Colin collapsed against the pillows, groaning. “First I was deprived of my son, and now my wife—”
Penelope, still laughing softly, leaned over and gently massaged his shoulder. “We have years ahead of us, my love. I am not about to become a widow because my husband injured himself during foreplay.”
He folded his arms in protest, which was impressive, considering he was half-naked and still trying to appear wounded and noble. His pout was dangerously close to charming.
Penelope tilted her head, amused. “You’re throwing a tantrum.”
“I am sulking, there's a difference.”
She moved closer, pulling one leg over his lap with slow, feline grace, her thigh around his waist, her hands braced on either side of his shoulders. Her robe slipped a little down one shoulder.
Colin stopped sulking. Instantly.
“Tell you what,” she purred, voice low and silken as she drew slow circles at his neck, trailing kisses along his cheek. “Why don’t I massage your back...and, then, if you’re good...”
His breath caught.
“...we can try a position that involves very little movement on your part.”
Colin stared up at her, reverent. “I was not aware I had married a temptress—”
“Shut up and let me oil your back,” she said, voice low as she pushed him gently onto his stomach, straddling him with wicked intent. Colin let out a low, strangled moan of agony and anticipation.
Her nightgown, some silky, pale blue thing with a scandalously low neckline, had slipped off one shoulder, baring the soft curve of her collarbone and just enough skin to make him forget his own name.
But it was her expression that finished him: that confident little smirk she wore when she knew exactly how undone she was making him.
“Penelope,” he breathed, eyes sweeping down the line of her throat, the soft swell of her breasts just visible through the sheer fabric, the way her thick thighs straddled his hips. “You’re trying to kill me.”
She tilted her head, lashes low, and gave him a smile that was one part saint, three parts sin. “I suggest you stay very still, Mr Bridgerton.”
He let out a strangled sound somewhere between a groan and a prayer. “I love you.”
She leaned down, her breath warm against his ear. “I know,” she whispered, smiling wickedly as she reached for the oil on their bed-stand. “How could you not?” How could he not?
He let out an honest-to-God growl.
***
The new chair arrived just as the morning sun spilled gold through the windows. It was, well, functional. Sturdy.
As Colin sat and tested the soft weight of it, all he could think about was the night before.
How Penelope had taken full, unapologetic advantage of having him completely at her mercy. The way she’d tasted him—wet, open-mouthed kisses on his cock—before riding him with a fierce, fiery confidence that left him breathless and completely undone.
He could still feel the heat of her smile as she’d whispered wicked things, claiming every inch of him.
She loves this, he thought, smirking despite his submission. Having me exactly where she wants.
But then reality crashed back with the faint but persistent throb in his spine.
It had been a week now. The chair, supposedly the solution, had made no difference. Neither had his best efforts to refrain from writing, from sitting, from lifting their darling Thomas (which, of course, was impossible).
Colin found himself again sat stiffly in his study, trying to ignore the dull ache that appeared to have settled stubbornly in his neck and upper-back.
Doctor Ashcroft frowned. “Mr Bridgerton,” he said finally, “I must confess, I am rather perplexed. There are no visible injuries, no signs of strain that would explain such persistent pain. It is...quite unusual.”
Colin groaned softly. “So I’m just...old? Deteriorating? Dying—?”
The doctor sighed. “Nothing will fix it, it seems. At least, nothing obvious.”
Just then, the door opened quietly, and Penelope stepped inside carrying a small tray with two cups of tea and some biscuits.
Colin’s face softened; his stubborn wife must’ve taken the tray from a maid so she could check on him. He rose carefully and leaned down to kiss her, a brief, tender press of lips. Penelope was petite, markedly shorter than Colin, but there was an effortless grace in how she held herself, both gentle and fiercely intelligent.
As Colin straightened, he noticed Doctor Ashcroft’s gaze fixed on them, eyes wide and eyebrows raised in unmistakable surprise.
“This is your...wife, Mr Bridgerton?” the doctor asked, almost incredulous.
Colin smiled, a little sheepishly. “Yes. The most stubborn, wonderful woman in my life.”
Penelope gave a small, amused smile. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Doctor.”
Doctor Ashcroft shook his head slightly, still studying her.
Colin couldn’t help but wonder why the man was staring at his wife so intently; he was vaguely jealous and immediately protective.
Then Ashcroft cleared his throat, startling Colin out of his thoughts.
“Pardon my forwardness,” the doctor said, cheeks faintly pink, “but do you...kiss often?”
Colin blinked. “Excuse me?”
Penelope choked delicately on her sip of tea.
Ashcroft cleared his throat. “Only—I mean, precisely as you did just now. That lean. That...angle.”
Colin glanced at his wife, then back at the doctor, thoroughly bewildered. “Are you asking how frequently I kiss my wife? Because I must say, that’s a new line of medical inquiry.”
Penelope, always more amused than affronted, gave the doctor an arch look over the rim of her teacup.
Ashcroft pressed his fingertips together and began to pace slowly. “You see, Mr Bridgerton, your back pain, its nature, its location, the absence of any acute strain, it doesn’t quite behave like a typical injury. And I’ve been trying to understand the repeated, low-level stress that could cause this.”
Colin squinted at him. “You think I kissed myself into injury.”
“Not the act,” Ashcroft said hastily. “But the posture.”
Penelope let out a soft “oh,” and set down her tea.
Ashcroft gestured vaguely to Colin’s tall frame. “Your wife is, if I may…very petite. And you are rather tall. If you’re regularly leaning down, multiple times a day, often without bracing your core or supporting your weight properly—”
“I do brace—”
“Emotionally, perhaps.”
Colin frowned. “I’ve lifted horses, Ashcroft. I’ve hauled luggage across the Alps. I’ve carried both Hyacinth and Gregory on my back at some point—”
“And yet,” the doctor said gently, “none of those involved repeatedly folding your spine in a shallow curve to reach a woman nearly a foot shorter than you.”
Penelope bit her lip, and Colin didn’t have to look at her to know she was positively vibrating with the effort of not laughing.
“I am not nearly a foot shorter,” she said, cheeks pink.
Colin gave her a look. “Darling. I rest my chin on your head.”
Ashcroft held up a placating hand. “This isn’t to insult anyone’s proportions. But the cumulative effect of that movement, particularly if you do it dozens of times a day, can certainly lead to chronic strain.”
Colin stared at him. “Are you telling me I threw my back out from love?”
Ashcroft gave a small, apologetic smile.
There was a long beat. Then Penelope: “It certainly sounds like you.”
Colin groaned. “I’m going to have to live with this for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”
***
The next morning, Colin found a wooden footstool by the drawing room settee.
It had not been there the day before.
It was small, polished, and inscribed—he squinted—"For Your Spinal Safety and Marital Bliss." In black paint. Benedict’s handwriting. He made a sound like a dying goat.
“Did you tell them?” he hissed at Penelope, who was calmly buttering toast at the breakfast table.
“I might have....maybe, mentioned something to your mother,” she said breezily.
That afternoon, a second footstool appeared by the nursery rocking chair, adorned with tiny painted daisies and the words “Kiss-Friendly Zone.” Gregory’s handiwork. Colin swore vengeance.
By dinner, Francesca had had a carpenter deliver a “bespoke affection platform” for the parlour.
“Don’t look so tortured,” Penelope whispered, hiding a smile as Colin scowled at the carved handles. “They’re doing it out of love.”
“They love this,” he muttered under his breath. “They absolutely live for it.”
That night, Penelope was stood before their bedroom mirror, arms folded gently under her chest, the soft candlelight catching in the strands of her red-gold hair. She looked beautiful in that quiet, devastating way she always did when she wasn't trying. Her dressing gown was loosely belted, the neckline slipping just enough to show the delicate curve of her collarbone and the top of her breasts.
Colin came up behind her, already leaning down to kiss her—
And she placed one flat palm on his chest.
“Nuh uh,” she said firmly, cocking a brow.
He blinked. “What?”
She tipped her head toward the footstool nearby, positioned precisely where it always seemed to reappear no matter how often he tried to ‘accidentally’ misplace it.
Colin stared at it like it had personally offended him. “Penelope, you can’t be serious.”
She folded her arms, lips twitching. “Your back,” she said primly.
He threw his hands up. “Oh, come on. I’m not using my family’s little comedy prop every time I want to kiss my wife. It’s undignified.”
Her smile curved slowly, lazy, wicked, knowing. She stepped closer, close enough that her rosewater perfume wrapped around him like a net, fingertips dragging lightly up his chest. “Tell you what, my love…”
He swallowed hard.
“If we use the stool…”—her fingers toyed with the top button of his waistcoat, voice low and silken—“I’ll make it worth your while.”
His resolve crumbled instantly, eyes darkening.
“Oh for the love of—” he sighed, already reaching for the stool. “Fine.”
She smirked as she stepped up, now level with him, their eyes perfectly aligned.
“That’s better,” she whispered, fingers sliding up his chest.
“But I want it on the record that I’m only doing this because I am very, very in love with you and also find you very hard to say no to.”
She beamed as their lips met, warm, familiar, delicious. Penelope sighed contentedly into the kiss.
As Colin pulled back, he muttered, “Which sibling crafted this one, again?”
Penelope grinned down at him, brushing a thumb along the lapel of his dressing gown. “I believe it was Hyacinth?”
Colin made a thoughtful sound. “That’s alright then. As long as it’s not one of my more vexsome siblings. We had Eloise’s moved to the basement, right?”
Penelope snorted. “Ah yes. The one that said ‘Pucker Up, Papa.’”
He groaned. “Why must they brand my humiliation in paint?”
But as he looked down at his wife, laughing, glowing, still perched lightly on the stool, something shifted. The room suddenly felt warmer. Or smaller. Or maybe it was just her, the way her mouth curved, the way her robe dipped, the soft flush in her cheeks.
And he—
Well.
Colin Bridgerton had never been particularly skilled at resisting his wife.
He stepped forward, and her eyes widened just a fraction, reading the look in his.
“Colin?” she said, lips already curling into a knowing smile.
“Don’t ‘Colin’ me now,” he murmured, sliding his hands along her waist. “I’ve been good. I’ve used the stool. I’ve kissed responsibly.”
The stool wobbled as he gripped her hips, and before she could respond, he lifted her clean off it, with a low, hungry groan—
“Colin!”
The stool clattered to the floor with a wooden thud, but neither of them cared. Her arms wrapped instinctively around his neck as he pulled her against him, her legs curling around his waist like it was instinct. Her breath hitched against his cheek as he crossed the room in a few fast strides, his mouth hot at her neck, her shoulder, the little place just behind her ear that always made her tremble.
“You’ll ruin your back,” she whispered, even as her fingers tangled in his hair.
“I’ll die happy,” he muttered against her throat.
He dropped her onto the mattress, not roughly, and she bounced slightly on the sheets, laughing breathlessly as he hovered above her, bracing his weight on his forearms.
“You are so impatient,” she said, voice low now, smoky with anticipation.
“And you are so tempting,” he growled, kissing a path down to the hollow of her throat. “Though I can always stop if you’d prefer—”
Penelope arched under him and gasped softly as his lips met her collarbone, fingers gripping his shoulders. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered against his mouth.
He cut her off with a kiss, deep and hot and possessive.
By the end of the week, Penelope had gotten him a specially padded writing chair, a new quill holder so he didn’t have to lean forward at his desk, and a collapsible stool she kept in her handbag “just in case.”
“Just in case what?” he asked one afternoon as she pulled it out like some smug conjuring trick while they stood in the garden.
“In case you get the urge to kiss me outside the house,” she replied sweetly, unfolding it with a flourish. “Public affection doesn’t have to mean public injury.”
Colin stared at the absurd little stool, then at her. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”
She grinned at that.
He narrowed his eyes. “You know, I could simply lift you instead.”
“You could,” Penelope said, smoothing her skirts and stepping primly onto the stool. “But I rather like being taller than you.”
“I married a monster,” Colin muttered, just before she pulled him by the collar and kissed him senseless.
A few feet away, a footman discreetly averted his eyes and continued dusting the sconces.
Everyone in the Bridgerton-Featherington household knew: if the stool was out, best look away.
And maybe fetch some tea for afterward.