Chapter Two: Consequences

Colin walked quietly but swiftly inside Aubrey Hall and then up the entrance hall stairs, turning left at the top of them, passing through the corridors leading towards the family wing and the family library where he was sure he had seen the lit candle. He was still debating whether to tell Mother about this in the morning – if it had been a candle left accidentally by a servant, surely no harm was meant, and any chastisement could be avoided. If it was Anthony or another family member up late, well – that would be the simplest and most agreeable outcome.

As he grew nearer, he slowed down his pace a little when he passed the chambers assigned to the Featheringtons and the Sharmas, not wanting to disturb anyone or rouse anyone from bed. Passing the Featherington chambers, he couldn't help but think of Penelope, recalling Lady Crane's final words to him earlier that evening before he'd departed. She had told him his future was not to be found in the past with her – that there were people in his life he already made happy – namely his family, and then she had also named Penelope.

Pen was his friend, that was true, the only one who had truly engaged in a proper correspondence with him while he had been away in Greece. While he had often wondered if others were feigning interest in his observations and recounting of his travels and adventures, he always got the impression that she was genuinely interested, and genuinely cared, to listen to him. Certainly, she had written thoughtful and amusing letters back to him, with questions prompting him just so along a new line of thought he wouldn't have considered before, as well as providing ample news and information about happenings back home while he was away. He truly appreciated that, more than he could probably ever express to her.

And, he supposed, it was true that both he and Eloise represented a large… or well, to be more realistic, the entire percentage of her close acquaintance circle. Colin had lost track of the number of balls and events in the last few years where, while idly scanning the room, his line of sight would light upon Penelope, standing stoically in the shadows on the edges of the room, in garishly bright yellow or orange or pink gowns that clashed awfully with the vivid red of her hair. She was almost always standing alone, fiddling with the dance card on her left wrist, which was also almost always empty. He had known her for years, of course, through the family connection and her friendship with Eloise, although he had really only gotten to know her better in the last few years after she had come out into society. Perhaps it had been a sort of pity, at least at first, which drove him to seek her out and speak to her, driving him to rescue her from the ire of simpering bullies like Cressida Cowper and her ilk. Certainly his mother had also gently pushed him to show kindness to a girl that did not receive much of it from society.

But then he'd been surprised time and time again by a dryly amusing barb or quip she'd murmured to him, and when he partnered her on the dance floor, at least she did not step on his toes or chatter incessantly or drop heavy hints about his eligibility as a bachelor, like others in her peerage. If he was quiet in his own thoughts, she was respectfully quiet, and if he felt like speaking, she was ready and able to converse on most topics. It became a habit to seek her out, indeed it became a pleasant break in the monotony of society events, and after a while he found himself actively searching for her in the room each time, and seeking her out as one of his friends.

He knew she was generally ill at ease in public and in company. He'd seen often enough in contrast the engaging way she conversed with Eloise when she visited the Bridgerton residence, smiling, and laughing, when she felt comfortable in private to relax and be herself, and he liked to see her in that state, when she was free and open.

Lady Crane may not have been too far off then in her assessment that perhaps he could focus in future on other people in his life, like Penelope, that he could make life easier for, and help in some way perhaps, as his path forward. It certainly did no harm to her reputation for the ton to see her friendship with him, although unfortunately all members of the Featherington family seemed to be quite unable to escape the derision of Lady Whistledown. He knew it bothered her, to be commented upon so publicly, so regularly, and frankly if Colin ever found out the identity of the mysterious author, he would have some choice words to say in defence of his friend (alongside of course a defence of that writer's pointed comments about his own family members and other society friends).

There was much to muse upon – but bringing himself back to the present, as he reached the corridor leading to the family library, he reminded himself there would be ample time for that, and for now, he just needed to reach his destination and investigate this blasted candle situation. Approaching the library door, he considered knocking but decided against it – what if it echoed loud enough to rouse someone? Better then to open the door and stick his head in to assess the situation. He took hold of the door handle, cautiously pushed, and slowly opened the door, stepping carefully through the threshold, looking around.

No one.

It was, as he thought, nearly completely dark in the library apart from the lone candle burning on the desk near the window. He gingerly closed the door behind him and approached the desk, squinting through the darkness at the shelves around him, trying to see if he could discern anyone present.

"Hello?" He murmured, stopping stock still, waiting.

Silence.

He breathed out, oddly relieved. He was alone in the room. He got to the desk and could see with an idle glance a recently used quill lying askew, with the usual neat pile of blank writing papers that sat beside it clearly disturbed as well. Perhaps it had been Anthony attending to paperwork after all, and he'd forgotten to extinguish the candle? He had certainly been incredibly out of sorts lately with this courting business with Miss Edwina, and by the looks of it, the candle had been burning for a while.

With a mental shrug, he reached forward to pinch out the candlelight, intending to leave it at that and make his way to sleep. That was what he intended, but right at that moment as he leaned forward and his hand reached out to the candle, he heard a soft noise to his right, halfway between a squeak and a gasp.

He froze, gaze snapping upwards to the tall ornate cabinet near the desk where his mother stored some of the spare tea sets. He would swear the sound had come from that direction, and in the resulting silence, he thought he could hear the faint but unmistakable sound of soft, harried breaths.

He straightened, more annoyed than suspicious, now thinking someone, possibly a younger sibling, was just playing a prank on him. "Who goes there?" he demanded. "I know you're there. Is that you Gregory?"

There was a few beats of silence, and to his surprise, a diminutive figure slowly emerged from behind the cabinet, but it wasn't his youngest brother that emerged, blinking, into the pool of candlelight around the desk.

It was Penelope.

Peeking from around the cabinet near the desk, Penelope had watched Colin enter the room, and her heart stood still.

She watched him approach the desk, call out to the silence, examine the quill and paper and ink, and it was the most curious sensation – her mind was both racing wildly, and also completely and utterly empty. The darkness of the room appeared to be working in concealing her from his sight. A horrid chill ran through her, as she looked at the desk and realised that the draft was gone; it must've fallen off the desk, and with all of her, she prayed that it had landed far enough underneath to be concealed, as she couldn't spy it from her hiding position.

Of all the people to have come upon her in the library… She had supposed he'd returned earlier in the day from his visit to Marina, but he must have stayed there later than she'd thought, and her stomach felt like it dropped through to her feet all over again, the implications rushing up on her. Why was he returning so late? And why, she cursed herself, hadn't she heard the carriage pull up? Writing had a way of mentally sealing her off from the world; when she was in that state of total engrossment with her words, she paid little heed to anything around herself, and what a fool she had been to not pay attention. Perhaps, if the fates were kind, he would simply leave, and she could retrieve her draft and slip out shortly afterwards without further incident.

In her distracted moments of mental panic, she watched almost absent-mindedly as Colin leaned forward, his hand reaching towards the candle, and it slipped out before she could stop herself – a half gasp, a squeak, a suppressed instinct to call out to him to watch out, be careful, not to burn his beautiful large hands on the flame, acting on a protective reflex that came from within.

She watched him freeze, his eyes snapping towards her location, and cursed herself a second time for being a fool. He called out again, and she knew defeat – there could be no further hiding. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out from behind the cabinet, moving forward into the flickering light supplied by the candle on the desk, watching his face as she did so, struggling against her instinct to scan the floor for the draft – she didn't want to draw his attention down there.

His eyebrows shot up, his jaw dropping open in a comical, perfect 'O' of surprise. "Penelope?!" he exclaimed, a little too loudly. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Hush!" she hissed, eyes darting nervously to the closed library door.

"Sorry," he apologised, a touch more quietly. His eyes moved, taking her in – her hair worn down for sleep and tumbling down her back, in her embarrassingly bright orange dressing robe of all things, oh how her cheeks were burning – and he repeated more softly, "What on earth are you doing here?"

"I…" Penelope decided spontaneously that a version of the truth might be her safest bet. "I couldn't sleep. Eloise told me I always welcome to use the library whenever I wanted, and I thought to read for a while quietly, in private, to hasten sleep." She paused, watching him frown, and barrelled on. "I lost track of the time I suppose, I was just so engrossed with the story, and didn't even realise how late it was until just now." She laughed weakly. "Perhaps I have been spending too much time with Eloise! We both love a good book, as you know, and more than once she has enjoined me to stay up late to finish a chapter so we can discuss the writing the next day."

She hated his silence, his stare, which wasn't hostile but more curious, interested, with his brows raised. She really didn't want to be the only one talking anymore.

"What are you doing coming back so late?" she blurted, in a tone far more accusatory than she'd intended. "I thought you would have returned hours ago."

Colin blinked, and something in his expression shuttered closed as he looked away from her, towards the window. "Sir Crane invited me to stay on for supper, to further discuss my travels and the flora I encountered," he stated calmly. Feeling her questioning gaze on him, he looked back at her and clarified. "He… likes plants."

"Oh." It was hard to know what to say to that. "I see." A beat of silence, and it burst from her before she could stop herself. "How was…how was seeing Marina?"

She'd known and loved this man for years and had spent ball after ball studying his every move and gesture, but even she couldn't quite interpret his reaction; the slight hunching in his shoulders was all that gave him away as he replied, a trifle testily, "Lady Crane is doing quite well. And…" he trailed off, and finished lamely, "…and she sends you her regards."

"Her regards?" Now her curiosity was piqued, in a kind of dreading, kicked-in-the-stomach way. Something had happened between them, she was sure of it. "The two of you didn't have any… deeper conversation in all that time?"

It was a mark of their long acquaintance and friendship that he didn't chastise her for her impropriety. He paused, clearly deciding how much to tell her. "We… discussed our past, yes," he admitted. "Indeed, I was pleased to find her seemingly content in her situation. She has two beautiful children." A flash of a past pain flickered across his face and was gone again. "I told her I forgave her, and I apologised to her, and she…"

"You apologised to her?" Penelope interrupted incredulously, her voice raising in spite of herself. Taking a moment to compose herself, she tried again. "It was kind of you to offer forgiveness, but you hardly have anything to apologise to her for, Colin. She tried to entrap you. She could've ruined your life. Her reasons were her own, but one could hardly credit her as the victim."

He sighed, scuffing the toe of his boot on the heavy carpet in what she had to appreciate as an adorably boyish gesture. "Even so, I felt it the right thing to do. For everything that had happened, and the things I had said, and she had said - I wanted to make sure all matters were settled between us, with the air clear, to move forward."

She rather dreaded the answer but had to ask. "And?" She cleared her throat against the sudden tightness there. "Do you feel…the matter is settled? To move forward?"

He smiled, not the wide, devastating grin that she knew him capable of, but a smile of quiet resignation, of…peace? "Indeed. I am quite prepared and resolved to reconcile myself to the past, instead of living in it."

"That's…that's wonderful, Colin," Penelope smiled, a whoosh of relief rushing through her, so strong she felt close to staggering. He smiled tentatively back, and she hadn't truly appreciated until that moment how much she'd feared him to be still hung up on Marina. But he seemed almost a different person right now compared to the nervous and defensive manner he'd had earlier that day, before he'd left to visit the Cranes. Perhaps he truly had gotten over Marina, or at least, he appeared to be well on his way to it.

They stood for a moment in amiable silence, and then Colin focused his gaze back onto Penelope, eyes darting from her face to her hair and her dressing robe. He then cleared his throat, averting his gaze away from her suddenly, politely, and remarked, "I'm sure Eloise meant only to be a kind friend with her invitation to the library, but I don't imagine she quite meant it to extend so to the small hours of the night."

Just as suddenly Penelope was keenly conscious once more of her lack of appropriate attire, and the vulnerability and positive indecency of standing here with her hair down and unstyled in front of him. In any other world, a gentleman and a lady alone together in a dark library in the middle of the night, especially with that lady in a state of undress, would be that lady's ruin.

But this was Colin Bridgerton, popular and admired charmer, and this was Penelope Featherington, known wallflower and society laughingstock. Any idea of anything untoward happening between them was preposterous. She knew that.

"Perhaps it's best if we both retire to bed," he suggested.

There was a part of her that knew that later, she would close her eyes and replay his words in her head, and she could already imagine the scenario that would play out then, where they went not to their separate bedchambers, but to one, shared together. There were marvellous perks, it transpired, in having a vivid imagination.

"Yes," she said quickly, closing her eyes with a sigh. "I think you're right."

He smiled slightly and looked down, perhaps intending to execute the elegant farewell bow he had so perfected, and as he did so, something caught his eye. There, under the desk, halfway sticking out, was a sheet of paper. In the light of the candle, he couldn't fully make out the words written there, but he could see very clearly his own name written on the page.

"What is that?"

His curious tone made her eyes snap open, and he was staring not at her, but eyes downward, trained on the ground, looking straight at…

Oh.

"Nothing," she said quickly, too quickly, too squeakily, stooping swiftly to seize the paper, in a flash before he'd had time to react. Straightening, she tried for a careless laugh, but the faux social graces required by society had never been her strong point, and it came out odd and stilted. "It is nothing."

He cocked his head to the side, apparently studying her. "It does not sound like nothing." He glanced beside him to the desk, where the untidy papers, quill and inkpot seemed to scream volumes about their recent use. "Were you writing something? You said you were just in the library for reading, but I did think that quill looked used." He turned back towards her, a faint, half-quizzical smile on his face. "What were you writing? I saw my name on it."

It was futile to deny the evidence literally right in front of them, so with her mind in full panic, another half-truth seemed best. "It's…private," she attempted, compulsively clutching the paper. "I'd rather not say."

Now his head cocked to the other side, and to her dismay, she could see the pleasant, teasing mirth dancing on his face, as in many other times when they had exchanged a laugh or a smile over some comment they'd made to each other at a society event, and with dread, she realised he was taking this as an amusing challenge, and not as the cataclysmic event that could ruin her entire life.

"Come now," he wheedled, smiling, "Pen, we are friends, and I know it has something to do with me. Will you not tell me?"

Even his casual use of the nickname, which always set her heart fluttering, couldn't hold back the rising wave of panic and nausea in her. Oh, her heart was indeed fluttering, but for the wrong reasons.

"I was…writing a diary entry," she tried, her breath sending her chest heaving, hoping that if she appeared visibly upset and mortified enough (which should not be difficult), he might drop the subject. "My real diary I left behind at home, and I did start out my time in the library reading, but I wanted to set some thoughts down before bed."

Colin was a gentleman, and he liked to think that he would never wilfully upset a lady, but he was a curious gentleman, and he loved a mystery, and her evasiveness was only adding fuel to the fire – he had to know what she had written about him. He watched her searching his eyes, clearly breathless to see what he would say, and he wondered at this fierce reaction, all to protect a diary entry. Perhaps if he had stopped and thought about it, he could've admitted to himself that he too would have just as fiercely protected his travel writings from anyone else's gaze and been similarly mortified to show anyone. But in that moment, he was like a hunter on the scent, sighting the quarry tantalisingly close through the trees, setting himself up for the final blow, blind to all else.

He decided some elements of truth might work best here. "Why Pen, I applaud diary keepers. I myself dabbled in the practice during my travels, and I intend to do so again. It is a noble past time, to record one's experiences, and set out one's thoughts on paper in self-reflection. I promise, if you show me but a little part of it, I shan't tell a soul about it." He smiled, and this was the full force, full blast powerful charm of his wide Bridgerton smile, with a record of devastating all ladies young and old.

Penelope, being both a lady and a lady who happened to be in love with the man in front of her, caught the full brunt of that smile, and in its wake, she hesitated, she weakened, and her grip on the paper loosened slightly in the hand dangling at her side. He knew he would have one chance only, and before she could blink or react, he moved. With the swift and agile reflexes born of years of fencing training, he darted forward, hand snatching out to seize the paper from her grasp, and it was enough that she relinquished it, and in the space of seconds, he was standing in front of her, the paper clutched triumphantly in his hands.

"Colin!" Penelope cried, trying in vain to snatch the sheet back. "Give it back!" But he was much taller than her, and he danced out of reach, laughing, darting around and moving so the desk now stood between them, his prize held aloft. She could only watch in horror as he looked down to the paper, his eyes dancing in mirth, under the clear impression he was about to read a silly and nonsense diary entry, thinking it was all just an amusing joke between them.

The sheer devastation, then, to watch as his face changed while his eyes skimmed the paper. The smile that lit up his whole handsome face faded, his brow drawing down, his hands more tightly clutching the page as he read. She stood completely still, frozen in dismay, watching as the emotions chased each other across his face – shock, denial, incredulity.

He seemed to freeze, and she knew he had reached the end of the sheet, had read the whole draft, and had now arrived at the final line, the final damning signature.

"Lady Whistledown," he whispered, his voice sounding hollow. He raised his gaze from the paper to hers, and the stormy dark blue ocean of his eyes crashed into her where she stood. There was no sound for a few moments, a few awful beats of silence, cut only by their distraught breaths.

"Pen," and her heart clenched at the plaintive tone, the plea, begging her to tell him it was all a joke, that it wasn't true. "What is this? Are you… Lady Whistledown?"

Penelope thought wildly of the line she'd written only just a short time before when sitting at the desk between them, although it felt now like a lifetime ago.

One might even venture, it's time to reckon with the consequences of their actions.

Shaking, she raised her chin, standing with as much dignity as her breaking heart could muster, and met his gaze as boldly she could.

"I am Lady Whistledown."