A/N:
Thank you to LadyKateTheGreat for letting me infodump about this and providing guidance! Okay, I'm trash for soulmate aus, so I had to write one. Highly recommend LightLeadingMe's Would I Lie To You? (also Polin) and True Love by platonic_boner (a Merthur fic) both are incredible.
Prologue:
Penelope is in love with Colin. This isn't anything new. She's been in love with the man since the day she met him. There is a dearth of men who are kind, and nice and lack the ambition to yell at her. (One could argue that before she met Colin, men weren't the only ones that fit the antonyms of his qualities. Her mother and sisters had them in spades.)
Unfortunately, Colin doesn't return her feelings. In fact, during her first season, he is more interested in her cousin and not her.
There is little she can do. Marina is beautiful. She draws all the eyes of the ton's men. Unfortunately for Penelope, Marina has set her sights on Colin.
Now, if Marina had loved Colin and he loved her, she would probably just let sleeping dogs lie (even if it felt like a vicious snarling attack dog instead).
But after overhearing her mother, Penelope learns that Marina not only doesn't love Colin. She is pregnant with another man's heir.
Penelope tries to tell Colin the truth. But he is always swept away before the words can leave her lips. She's always told him the truth, and the one time she needs him to hear it, fate is against them.
It's gotten so bad.
Marina has a bag packed. Her eyes have become increasingly shifty in recent days. There isn't much time.
Penelope is backed into a corner. With seemingly no other options, she picks up her pen. Penelope writes.
(She may later come to regret her method, but at the moment, she feels justified and nothing can stop her.)
After Phillip and Marina leave, Penelope knows that she doesn't have a chance with Colin. If his preferred woman is like Marina, Penelope will never measure up.
That doesn't mean that she can't dream. In her wildest fantasies, she imagines that they are even soulmates. It leads her to be honest with him as much as possible. If she never lies to him, she'll never know for sure. Then her dream can still live. She likes her dreams. In them, Colin is hers and she is his.
Penelope gets her hands on as many stories of soulmates as she can. She talks of it constantly.
A/N: This was an itch that I had to scratch. This story is complete and there will be three chapters not including the prologue. Though you may not like the fade to black at the end, I would consider it a HEA. Have a happy Turkey Day!
