Chapter Text
For the first time, this isn't painful
I feel like an angel, in white sheets
– Nessa Barrett, Love looks pretty on you
Putting down the parchment as soon as the fourth and final remedy listed deemed not so effective in her predicament, Penelope fell back in her mattress with a groan. Well, a groan and a half, considering even a mild movement caused a blunt but all-encompassing throb of pain south her belly.
She despised her courses. Abhorred, really. It does not always bring pain in her stomach, but it brought pain altogether—if not in her middle section, it would be in her head, or her limbs, or her lower back. Sometimes only one part of her would hurt, a few, scarce times in the past, everything all at once.
However, Penelope seemed to hit the quadfecta tonight as everything.just.seem.to.hurt.
Perhaps it was divine punishment of the last few days' happenings. She dared to embolden herself (dress like how they do in Paris? What utter bollocks!), dared to place herself outside the box her mama, her sisters, the ton caged her in, dared to dream of a future where she was no longer a wallflower clinging at the edges of balls, and entice a decent man who would be merciful enough to pluck her out of her childhood home, throw her into a life of complacency in the country, and perhaps grant her the chance to become a wife and a mother.
Perhaps this was a cosmic punishment for her for dreaming too much, and acting on it.
Her first impression for a gentleman kind enough to speak to her had been ruined, her so-called Parisian frock being stepped on and ruined as well by her biggest bully, should have been her first previews of this punishment.
Not mentioning the man she had promised to let go of after clinging unto any shred of perfunctory affection and twisting it into something else, had just returned to torment her even further, crowd her need for solitude without a care for her honor and dignity, as he'd always deem to do.
Perhaps we can find somewhere else more private. She knew he was embarrassed to be seen by her, of course. She knew that now, but must he say it out in the open? Must he say it with the passerby near earshot, giving them strange looks already?
Looking devastatingly handsome as ever, all smiles and maddeningly platonic charms thrown her way and telling her that she fared well in her new dress, while he stood there, looking as if the months he had been away were dedicated to chisel himself into even more of a perfection she would never reach. Her months of heartbreak and solitude, nursing the pain without her best companion, and here was Colin Bridgerton, gone and used those same months to look handsome, happy, dignified, and worldly, more so than ever.
It was almost insulting in its own right.
Which prompted her to give him the cut direct, the strongest she felt herself to be in the last few months, leaving him astounded and loss for words, probably for the first time in his life. The ever-the-charmer darling of the ton, weaving his way through the sea of debutantes and mamas trailing after his dust, left to nary a word by the plump wallflower no one would ever thought would speak more than three words.
It was almost vindicating.
Until the same infernal man had apparently followed her that same night as she delivered her latest Whistledown column, waiting like the most handsome, angry, and dark phantom just beside her rented carriage before she can even step back into the night.
Until he sat across her in the bench, silent and deadly, no words coming out of him but he might as well shout and break her heart, it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
"You are her…Lady Whistledown."
She could do nothing but give him the affirmative in the silence, at that moment she could hear the shattering of her heart from a distance, her vision blurring with unshed tears as she looked away and out the window as the carriage swayed them back to Mayfair.
Colin Bridgerton now knew her deepest, darkest secret. Yet he brought her back to her home with nary a word to say, only the blasted coldness and anger teeming off of him he refused to let out, when she achingly preferred he'd just say everything already and then they can finally move forward their separate lives.
Colin's silence and followed indifference days after wasn't just the punishment she was granted, for days later, she felt it in the cramping of her stomach and the blood in her sheets. And the vexing set of bodily pain it brought as always.
Perhaps the Bridgertons were really God's favorite. Why else would she be punished like this if she had not made the gravest mistakes on them? Why had she played God in their lives? Even when it was rooted from the genuine care she felt for them that she did so. Or if she had not dared to speak so cuttingly with the man she had loved even when it was him that humiliated her so publicly months ago?
Nonetheless, she had accepted her lot and if this truly was her damnation for being Whistledown and hurting the people she cared for, what could she do but accept it with open arms and hurting body?
Penelope was ready to sleep all of these pain in nonexistence, having done everything she can to follow the remedies Genevieve had listed her save for the last one she could not, in good conscience and gentle upbringing, do, just so she could escape all of the pain for a while, when she heard it.
A rattling of something by her window. Like a twig of a branch by the tree just right outside her bedchamber, except that there were no breeze that passed, in fact, her windows' curtains were perfectly still.
Her mind was going a mile a second. It could be nothing, could it not? Perhaps a squirrel or some bird? But no one really talked about how your senses are heightened when you courses come, and that just escalated what could probably be really nothing outside her window tapping intentionally.
There had been no reported burglars in Mayfair, of course, there was not. That was just a ridiculous thought, is it not?
Or is it?
Penelope scrambled to blow the candle out on her bedside console and flung herself at the side of her bed, obscuring herself with shaking hands from the possibility of an intruder scaling her home's walls and entering through her window. Why, oh, why did she leave it open!
Oh, dear Lord, was she really, actually being punished? Was she going to be abducted?
Her chest was beating like she had just been on a horse ride from Mayfair to Kent, clutching the duvet up to her chin in an attempt to shrink herself from being seen when a loud whisper echoed from the dreaded windowsill.
"Pen!"
That voice…what? Was she dreaming?
"COLIN?"
Her heartbeat shifted to a different kind of stutter as she rose from her position hiding beside her bed.
And there he was, lifting his leg to find footing in her bed chamber's floor, his body dangling from the window as he successfully—albeit, ungraciously—entered her room, rolling on the floor in a tumble for imbalance. He picked himself up in a huff of breath, dusting himself for twigs and dried leaves, a chuckle leaving his lips as he turned to her finally.
She must be dreaming still, or it might have been hallucinations caused by her course pains, for Colin Bridgerton was standing proud and tall in her bed chamber in the middle of the night, moonlight shining on his face like a beam from Heaven above.
"That wasn't so graceful of me, was it?"
Penelope gaped for a few moments, still could not fully comprehend this turn of events in an otherwise arbitrary pick of a night, when she finally got a hold of her speaking faculties that got momentarily frozen when he arrived.
"What—what are you doing here!"
His carefree, boyish smile fades, the one that got her hooked to what it was that made her fall under his spell the first moment she had set her eyes on him those many years ago. The amusement and triumph in his face morphed into something serious and thoughtful, his dark blue eyes shining like overhead glass of a greenhouse under the moonlight.
"I-I came to see you, Pen. To talk. There is so much we—" He was fumbling with his speech, gone was the easy charm from seconds ago, which was rather unlikely for a man that could easily conjure so many tales in the middle of fluttering fans and coquettish smiles. And adding to what seem like impossible nervousness, he wrung his wrists and shifted on his boots. Why was he being nervous? Wasn't Penelope the one that offended him, the one that sinned against him and his family? What was happening? "We haven't —Whistledown—Penelope, I'm—"
She winced and there it was again, the distant shattering of her heart. Haven't he punished her enough? Was her pulverized heart still not yet of sand-like quality he has to come here and break her some more?
A distant laughter and nearby chatter pierced in the air from outside, prompting Penelope to peer and saw a few drunken gentleman on the street just below her window sill. "Oh, good Lord—"
Before sense came into her, she was pulling Colin in by his arm out of the window's view, surprisingly letting himself be dragged, and shut the drapes quickly.
"Have you gone mad! You were almost seen!" She shrieked breathlessly, her heartbeat pounding on her chest.
Colin winced, guilt crossing his features. "Well, I—"
"Colin, what on God's green earth have you climbed my window for?" Penelope crossed her arms in her chest in a huff of frustration. "What do you need still? I believe you have known everything there is to learn about me."
But instead of responding, the infernal man just stared at her with his eyes round as a saucer and his mouth hanging open. And before she could ask what was the matter, she saw his dark blue eyes follow a trail from her face, down to her very open neckline, and settling in on her bosom. She was wearing her sheer night rail with nary a something underneath but her very bare body!
She hastily snatched the blanket sheet from her bed and draped herself all over with it, as if it will wipe out the crimson blush that was now overflowing all over the places his eyes had laid upon. It did not help that it took him a couple more seconds to recover, not until she had fully covered herself (what the tiny blanket could cover of her anyway) and stepped further back into the room. It was not lost to her how his pointed ears colored flush under the dim light of her room. What was that about?
Colin seemed to have snapped back to his earthly senses and cleared his throat, shifting his body on the side away from her, his large, veiny hands gripping his tapered hips. It had only occurred to her then that her intruder was not wearing any cravat or waist coat, only a billowy inner dress shirt popped open down to his chest, sleeves rolled midway his sculpted and muscled forearms, seams tucked hastily in his breeches as if he did not bother calling for a valet and just flew right in under her window and climbed up. His chestnut brown curls haphazardly arranged atop his head as if he had been carding it again and again with precision of a man so incredibly frustrated.
What is going on!
"Um, well, you haven't been seen in Society for days now. And I was…Eloise wouldn't tell me anything. But now I'm guessing the reason for your row is Whistledown. I also approached Lady Featherington and even your sisters to inquire of you—"
"You cannot be here, Mr Bridgerton." Only remembering her bed chamber's door, Penelope rushed to lock it shut. "If we were found, we are doomed to a future you most definitely would not want."
He looked mildly confused but recovered just as swiftly. "Pen, please. I just…I needed to see you." He turned to face her and she could feel the heat of his body as he stepped forward, the plea and desperation in his countenance was nearly enough to tumble her over and award him the attention and time he so desperately sought. Nearly enough but not quite. I will not be that googly eyed, plump yellow shadow of his anymore. "I needed to apologize. The last time we spoke—"
"The last time we spoke, Mr Bridgerton, I thought I made myself perfectly clear. And the last time we have been in each other's presence, you have known my true identity." Penelope lifted her chin in defiance, but deep inside of her, she crumpled some more. How much more of this could she take?
She needed to give her final peace so they can move on with their lives, maybe that's what he came for. An apology. Of course. Perhaps this was an opportunity to apologize, to finally end this chapter of her life, a chapter with no more Bridgerton in it, no matter how grim of that future she saw herself with, without her dearest friend who might never find it in herself to ever forgive her, without the family that cared for her and she considered her own....without the man that her heart have longed for almost all her life. This was the only way to go.
"If you sought my person for apologies you are due, I do owe you that." She breathed, the pain briefly subsiding as she prepared to say her final words to him. "I'm a truly sorry, Mr Bridgerton." For what might be the final time she could gaze directly to his dark blue eyes, she braved herself for it. "It wasn't my intention to hurt you or Eloise. It wasn't my intention to play God on your lives, I never wanted to do that. But I...I had no choice. I couldn't let the Queen accuse her of being Whistledown and punish her and your family for the things I wrote and did. And I couldn't let you get trapped into a fraud of a marriage when I know I could do something about it. I just couldn't. You might not believe this after everything but…you—" She bit her cheek from telling more of her feelings than she was willing to divulge. He need not know the intensity of it or just how deeply it run for her. Ran. Past tense. "your family, Eloise, are so very dear to me. Still is."
She had not noticed she hadn't been looking up at him as she delivered her words, and when she looked back up, she was surprised to see the absence of anger or hostility in his expression, or any emotions she most certainly deserved.
There was only melancholy and pensiveness, and if she wasn't fighting the bout of the background pain of her courses, there was regret and understanding in it, too, something that she had never thought he would direct towards her when this was concerned.
"I truly am sorry, Colin." She whispered, unsure if he'd heard it but it seemed that he did, for she saw his shoulders drop, a faint exhale he released.
He scanned her for something, running his eyes all over her face with an expression she was not familiar with, searching for something she could not know what was.
She readied herself for the shouting, for the yelling, for the rage directed at her she so rightly deserved. She searched for a hint of anger, for despondence, even a smidgen of distraught to emanate from him towards her but she could not find any. She could not understand him at all. But had she known him truly? The events of months past proved to her that she, in fact, did not.
After what felt like a very long time holding her breath for the anger that didn't came, Colin broke the suffocating silence between them with the words she had never expected he'd utter after.
"I forgive you. I…"
Penelope felt the vise in her heart unclasp, the breath she had been holding break free.
"Thank you." She found herself eventually whispering, after the shock of how easily he'd given her his forgiveness wore off her. She did not deserve his grace, even when she knew that if given the same situation, she would not hesitate to do it over and over again if it meant saving him from himself and from the fate he did not deserve. The faint smile he gave and the hint of renewed adoration flashing before his eyes was too painful to see. He might forgiven her but she didn't deserve any whiff of kindness for it. The hope was a fickle thing and she didn't want to drown in it before it was too late to pull herself out.
She cut that hope immediately from ever springing, the reality of it all looming ever so present. "But you need to leave now, Mr Bridgerton. You are still in my very bedroom and it is highly improper. Before anyone is the wiser."
There was even more confusion in his expression and suddenly, she could feel the indignation was rolling off of him in waves. It stoked her ire once again. What was he indignant for? Didn't he already said he forgave her? Not that she is most ungrateful for it, because she truly was, but what was there more to talk about? Certainly not in her bed chamber in the middle of the night? And most certainly not when there was pain crawling all over her belly and her back and her whole blasted body?
He shut his eyes in a pained expression but made no move to leave, raking his hair in what she could surmise was a show of frustration and patience running out. Somehow, driving Colin Bridgerton to vexation was something she found she enjoyed, even when she didn't know what could she have done this time when he already forgave her for Whistledown as he have said. Though it also irritated her a little that he looked much more handsome and pleasantly dignified when his forehead was knotted and a serious glint paraded his eyes.
"Will you stop calling me that? I have always been and will always be Colin to you."
She couldn't help but snort. The unladylike one. If her mama knew, her head would roll. "That was before…everything that had happened."
She couldn't say 'before she thought he was her friend, before he disparaged her honor in front of the many gentlemen of his acquaintance.' Because what even was their footing now? She had hurt him, and he had hurt her, and there was just too much of everything that had happened, and even when she had said her apologies and he had forgiven her, where were they now?
Colin Bridgerton was still a stranger to her and after what he'd learned, even when he said his forgiveness, she was now a stranger to him, was she not?
He was still the man that proclaimed he would never court her and broke her heart and she was still the woman that interfered with his and his sister's life. They could never come back from it, from all these.
"There is just…there is nothing between us anymore, Mr Bridgerton. Forgive me, there never was." Because of course, there never was, he made that perfectly clear. "The friendship we once had was peculiar and not done to begin with. I don't believe we should be familiar with each other any longer."
His frustration morphed into a pained one, his voice soft and broken. He was panting, she noted, a sort of desperation evident in the twitching of his hand and the knot in his forehead.
"Pen…"
He moved to reach for her, his face struck with the most devastated crumpling she had ever seen him be, like he was in the verge of truly crying, his eyes rimmed red and his forehead knotted so deeply, painfully. She looked away, it was too much to bear.
There was a muffled shuffling of feet from outside her door, and suddenly, her heart was racing for a different reason, making her rush into him, covering his mouth with her hand.
"Penelope? What is that noise in there all about?" Came the voice from the other side of her door. Her mama! Oh, Lord…
"Nothing, mama!" She squeaked and cringed on how high pitched she sounded. "It's, uh, just a very compelling book I have been reading!"
Colin squirmed from under her hold, his eyes shifting from the earlier pensiveness to barely concealed mirth, she pressed his hand tighter to prevent his chuckle from getting out. This frustrating man would get them caught!
"It is of a playwright! And I am enacting scenes…" To her credit, it was not actually a far off excuse, Eloise and her had enacted scenes from books they had read before. Before.
There was a pause outside her door, for a frightening moment there Penelope thought her mama would see through her lies. She thought wrong. "Well, it is the middle of the night, you are waking up the entire house." She could practically see her rolling her perfectly rouged eyes.
"I am sorry, mama. It will not happen again."
"And I have been relentless about you putting down those godawful books. You will not entice a potential husband that way!"
Of course. Now she was rolling her eyes. It was better to agree and say no more. "You are right, mama." She said flatly.
"Go to sleep. I will be expecting you up and about tomorrow. Have your courses passed?"
"Um..no-not yet."
"Good heavens!" Her mama groaned loudly she could feel her usual brand of frustration directed at her roll off her person and seep into the gap in her door. "Why haven't you passed your courses yet?"
What could she say to that? It's as if she knew the inner workings of her own body down to the minutiae of it. She wasn't a physician. But somehow, Penelope already got a feeling that it was rhetorical, and an even much cutting insult draped in concern would follow, like how it always does with her mother.
"It is because you have been tad heavier than last month, I tell you! You are too much a stone heavier than your sisters that is why they pass it far more quick than you!"
There it was.
"Pen…" Colin whispered and took her hand from his mouth and dropping it on his side, holding it ever so tightly and looking at her with an expression she could not parse. Regret? More indignation? Pity?
"What would I do with this child…" Portia mumbled from the other side of the door, exasperation and irritation dripping in her voice. Nothing that she had never been a recipient of before. Only that she could feel Colin's intense stare and the regular humiliating occurrence in her life had never been more humiliating than ever. Must he be here to witness this?
She blinked the impending tears to the back of her already warm eyes, it would not do her well to show weakness in front of Colin blasted Bridgerton right now. She doesn't want to be that girl anymore, someone that needed saving, lest it be from this man she promised she would distance her self off starting now.
"Go rest. I shall see you tomorrow. You will attend Society again, regardless. You could at least be more present instead if we can't…change how you look."
And just like that, like a hurricane in the night, Portia Featherington swirled and caused devastation, leaving her to mend the pieces of her soul and sanity, as she always does.
And somehow having Colin Bridgerton bear witness of it, of her, in her most distressed, sweaty and paling state was the cherry on top of it all. Suddenly she was just so tired, and in pain, and dizzy and could readily collapse any second more.
"Pen…" He called for her softly, so achingly soft and careful and it made all the pain worsen.
"It is alright." She left his vicinity and moved towards her bed to sit, slowly when the pain in her limbs had made it impossibly so, but not too painful that she could not hide it from him and restore a little bit of her dignity upfront. "It's nothing that I haven't heard before." If he had seen how she winced when her bottom pressed into the mattress, the flush of painful, uncomfortable warmth made itself known down there, he had not said anything.
"She is a horrible woman." She could hear the anger in his stern voice and if she wasn't feeling like she was dying over and over again, it would have made her laugh to know he had been indignant for her.
"She is my mother. And she is right." It was an automatic response bore from years of being with someone like Portia Featherington as one's mother.
"Penelope, whatever blasted thing that has ever been said from her mouth about you is utter nonsense!"
Now that just got to her immediately. She snapped her head at him. "Really, Colin?" There was confusion in his countenance she very much like to wipe off. "There was a time that you would have thought the same. Enough to tell every gentleman in the vicinity who has an ear to hear."
He stepped back like he had been slapped, immediate regret crossing his features. "Penelope—"
She was now very, very tired. She could no longer take more of this back and forth. So with the sternest voice and coldest tone she could muster, "Colin, you need to leave. Now. You cannot be here."
And apparently, Penelope had garnered all her strength for it that the immediate nausea floored her over, the ever so present pain throbbing a little more harder on her stomach this time, making her eyes blur and her head ache.
"Pen?"
Before she knew it, or make stock of her surroundings really, Colin was already by her side, kneeling in front of her and clutching her arms delicately. "Are you well?" The worry and concern on his voice and his darling face made her breath stutter and her heart beat race that had nothing to do with her period pains. The man didn't care for it, or seen it, for he was already feeling her arms up, propriety forgotten, his hands all over her forehead and cheeks, neck and everywhere she was exposed and not covered by her mere night rail and the blanket she fashioned as a shawl which was nowhere to be found now. "You are cold everywhere but warm in your forehead, you are most definitely not well."
Colin moved to grab the thicker blanket from her bed beside her before she could stop him, revealing the ugly splotches of dried and, God, wet crimson left by her in the center of her mattress. She was too weak to stop him, too weak for embarrassment with such an unbecoming sight not meant for a gentleman to see, too tired for humiliation with all of these inappropriateness flying between and around them just this one single night. It was no matter, Penelope thought with a pounding head and stuttering breath, it was helpful for her even actually, if not utterly and completely mortifying. If Colin needed more reason to distance himself from the likes of her, this would be it: a gentle lady in the middle of her debasing bouts of courses nobody has to see, let alone an unmarried gentleman alone with the said lady in her bed chamber. If he was like any other, which she hurt to know that he was after that night in her mama's ball, Colin would be flying off her window sill in record time.
"You're…oh, Pen." She had no energy left to parse and decipher his tone, or even looked up to him to see his face.
"Yes. Now you have your answer, can you just leave me be? This is highly inappropriate and I am tired and very much want to rest." With all the remaining energy left of her, Penelope crawled up to the north of her bed and clutched the sheet from his grasp, still not looking at his face, afraid and embarrassed to see the look of disgust he most surely exhibited.
"Pen…"
If she had more earthly senses left, she would look up at him to see the last time she would ever see his face, because she was sure as the sun rises east and the water devoid of true color that she would never see him again, or that he would find himself in her vicinity ever again.
But she was just so exhausted and heart broken and defeated, so she clutched the duvet up to her neck, finding solace in the small comfort it brought and shifted herself facing away from the window side of her room where she knew he was standing. Away from him, closing her eyes and welcoming the pain all over her numbing body. Hopefully he'd show himself out safely, he knew not to be caught climbing out a maiden's bed chamber, much more if it was her. Colin would rather be caught dead than be tied to her for his and her honor just for a misunderstanding. She knew that from day one.
Penelope tried to calm the beating of her heart with everything that transpired, ease herself to sleep despite her body roaring for so many reasons she'd rather not disentangle in her thoughts, waited for him to leave her be.
It might have took a while, with no word coming from him anymore even when she was fully aware he was still standing stock a distance from her bed, that she eventually heard the faint rustling of his boots and his clothes against the wooden panels of her window, and the one final, heavy sigh emanating from him as he clambered out of her room and finally, her life.
She eventually fell into slumber with a defeated body and an even defeated heart.
It was to a gentle, but evident pressure, a different, pleasing and warm sensation pressing on her stomach and the warm damp dabbing on her arms that Penelope found herself awaken slightly from her restless sleep.
She had not expected for the pain to go away after resting, it never did anyway, every time her courses came but she had learned to live with it. However, she was a little surprised to note that the new pleasing warmth in her belly and her skin had somehow cured half of it. She slowly opened her eyes with a pleased groan, only to see the same infernal, frustrating, eternally beautiful man with a serious frown and concern on his face, dabbing a wet towel all over her sweating arms, her forehead, while holding a warm pad of towel firm but gentle on her stomach.
"Colin?" He might have not seen her wake, as a surprised look graced his eyes briefly when finally sought hers. "What are you…"
"It is alright, Pen, you will be alright." His soft, fond smile shot right through her tired, aching heart.
Unable to make sense of what was happening and overcome by the pleasing feeling his ministrations had brought to her body, Penelope took stock of the little display that appeared at her bedside table: a steaming chamomile tea by the aroma of it, a few menthol smelling leaves that already made its way to her nose, calming her senses down, and what seemed to be eclairs and chocolates wrapped haphazardly in pale yellow handkerchief she was certain she does not own.
Did he…did Colin brought all of these for her? For her?
Before she could stop herself, her raw emotions took over and Penelope was already sobbing, crumpled, wet face buried on her palms, the distress of the night from the impromptu visit of her mother, from this man climbing her walls to seek her presence even after everything that transpired, from the distress of the recent weeks, months really, tumbling her down and reducing her into a crying mess in the middle of the night, and in the presence of the only man she had ever and could ever love, no less.
Who now also cared for her like no one else ever did. Even when she had hurt him, and he had hurt her. Even when she told him to leave, even when she told him that there was no longer anything between them and there could never be anything anymore in the future.
Who scrambled to her side as soon as she begin to cry her heart out, crawling to her bed and pulling her to his side, tucking her to his chest and enveloping her into an embrace so careful and gentle and full of softness and warmth that she could do nothing else but wail even more and let herself be soothed, let him run his hand on her back and her hair the way no one ever did.
"Shh, darling, all will be well." Colin cooed and whispered to her ear as he nuzzled his nose to her hair and forehead, leaving tiny, feather-light kisses on her skin that made her heart float even further. "I will take care of you, Pen." He pulled her body tighter to his, flush and warm, but with utmost care, and let her weight press against his hard planes. "Always."
For the first time ever since she had even began with her courses, someone had cared for her. Truly. Someone had not left her alone to stew and let the pain pass, someone actually cared enough to help her through the pain.
And it was Colin Bridgerton.
Before whatever wrinkle in time caused this turn of events into realization, puff this back into nonexistence, Penelope succumbed to his embrace and let herself finally be cared for.