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Eloise can count, on one hand, the number of times she has seen Penelope cry.
In fact, she can truly only remember one time in great detail, though she’s sure there were times when they were younger. But she recalls Penelope in the garden outside Bridgerton House, still in her bedclothes, and the way her face had crumpled the moment she had seen Eloise. Eloise could not have known then - or, with the benefit of hindsight, could not have even begun to guess - what had her best friend in such a state, but it had been nothing more than instinct that had forced her feet to move, to catch Penelope as she sobbed, to stroke her hair and calm her the way she had.
That same instinct spurs her into action now, when Eloise finds Penelope in the foyer of Featherington House in the moments after the Queen has taken her leave. Eloise had followed Colin and Penelope out of the breakfast room with the intention to try and seek understanding of what was to happen next - Penlope was, after all, a Bridgerton now, and were her secret to be discovered, it would have disastrous consequences for the whole family - but instead, she watches as Penelope steps forward and says, “Colin, it is our wedding night,” softly, like she is pleading.
Eloise watches as Colin’s gaze roams his wife’s face, and then he swallows. “I will go call for the carriage,” he says stonily, before he takes his leave.
Penelope stands there, struck, for a moment, and then turns. Her face betrays no surprise when she sees Eloise, merely a kind of heartache that Eloise is sure she has never experienced, and Eloise has spent the entire year being angry at Penelope for so many things, but in that moment, it all goes away.
She steps off the staircase and rushes forward, wrapping her arms around Penelope and crushing her close. The satin of her wedding gown crunches under Eloise’s grip, and she closes her eyes and holds tighter as Penelope breathes in shakily before she starts to sob. Indeed, for those few moments, it is like they are little girls again, gripping tight to each other as the world spins on around them.
Once Penelope has calmed enough to speak, she trips her way through an explanation of Colin’s anger - how he can barely stand to look at her, how he accused her of entrapment, how he found her coming home from Madame Delacroix’s last night and demanded an explanation. How she is sure he will never forgive her, will never love her the way he once did.
“Of course he will,” Eloise says with feeling. She is gripping Pen’s gloved hands in her own, bent at the neck to hold her gaze. “He is angry now, but he has married you - he would not have done so if he did not love you. I know he will find it in himself to forgive you.”
Penelope stares down at their entwined hands. “You have not forgiven me,” she whispers. She looks up, appearing stricken, and adds, “not that I expect you to yet, I know I have acted most foolishly, but…” She trails off as more tears spill over her lashes and she looks back down.
She is, Eloise realizes, ashamed of her vulnerability.
It is a strange thing, Eloise thinks, to have been so angry for so long, and now to have none of it left in her heart. She thinks of Benedict at the wedding breakfast, merely a half hour ago, and the way he had said, “love is not finite.” She had thought him a little melancholy for some reason, a little absurd maybe, but now she sees it for what he was truly saying: love is not a singular thing, meant to encompass one and not another. Eloise has spent so long trying to understand how Penelope could hurt her in such a way, how she could embarrass her publicly in front of the ton so horrendously. But love is not finite - Penelope and Lady Whistledown are not two different people. They are one and the same, and Eloise has been so desperate to love one and hate the other that she has ignored that completely, and has hurt her best friend in the process.
She squeezes Penelope’s hands, gently enough that Pen looks up. When their gazes meet, Eloise smiles softly. “I have forgiven you,” she murmurs. “I - I think that I forgave you months ago, because I know you were only trying to protect me. You must simply give Colin the grace you’ve shown me to work it out for himself.”
Penelope blinks for a long moment, and then her lower lip quivers again, and this time Eloise has to laugh as she gathers her up in her arms again and hugs her. It is like something has thawed around her heart, some part of her shaking loose at the knowledge that Pen still needs her as much as she needs Pen.
It is how Colin finds them when he returns from calling the carriage. Eloise hears the click of his heels across the foyer, and she opens her eyes over Penelope’s shoulder and stares at him. He is watching the two of them from the doorway, as his wife breaks down in her best friend’s arms, and something in Eloise twists at the look of flayed-open devastation on his face. Eloise feels for her brother, truly she does, but right now she cares only for the sobbing bride in her arms, and so she sharpens her gaze when Colin’s eyes flicker up from Penelope to meet her. He holds her gaze for another moment, neither of them seemingly willing to back down, and then he swallows roughly and looks away.
“Penelope,” he calls. He does not move into the foyer. “The carriage is ready.”
Penelope stiffens in Eloise’s arms, for just a heartbeat, before she relaxes and steps back. “Oh goodness,” she breathes, reaching up with one gloved hand to rub at the collar of Eloise’s dress. “I am sorry for damaging your dress.”
Eloise laughs again, and Pen cracks a reluctant smile. “It is alright,” Eloise promises, because it is. What does she care for a watermark on her dress, when Penelope is still willing to be her friend, to trust her with the broken shards of herself, even after all the cruelty Eloise has levied in her direction? She reaches up and thumbs away another tear before it slips down Penelope’s cheek. “It will be alright,” she says again, emphasizing her words carefully. Penelope blinks at her and then nods and steps back further.
“Thank you, El,” she says quietly as she rests one hand over her own heart. Eloise mimics the movement, and Pen smiles oh so gently before she turns and faces Colin. She draws her shoulders back, giving the distinct impression of shouldering armor. “I am ready.”
Eloise cannot see her face any longer, but she can see Colin’s, and he looks devastated. “Pen,” he starts, his voice cracked and raw, but Penelope merely shakes her head.
“Let us go,” she says softly. She does not wait for Colin to extend his hand, or to even indicate that he is with her - instead, she merely steps around him and disappears out of the front door.
Colin looks so stricken that Eloise wonders if he is going to chase after her, maybe attempt to rectify his attitude and sharpened words, but she also thinks he could not move even if he wanted to. Eloise wants to reach for him - to touch his elbow, maybe, or to fold him in the way she held Penelope. Instead, they merely stand there in the foyer of a home Eloise has known since she was a girl, but one that now feels irrevocably different.
“You must still love her,” she says when she no longer feels as though she can bite it back. Colin whirls around, as if he’d forgotten she were there at all.
“Excuse me?”
She takes a tentative step forward. “You must still love her,” she repeats. “Or you would not have married her. I saw your face as she was walking down the aisle today - you looked as though you had been bowled over with love. So why are you so adamant on letting something like Lady Whistledown stand between you?”
“In case you had not noticed, Eloise,” he says tersely, “the Queen is after Lady Whistledown. It is no small thing, what Penelope has hidden.” He straightens, suddenly, and something cold and sharpened takes over his features. “Besides,” he continues. “I do not expect you to understand, given that you have never been in love.”
It hits her like a blow, and she has great satisfaction in watching shame roll over Colin’s face, like he knows that was a cruel thing to say for no good reason at all. They are both silent for a moment, and then Eloise says quietly, “I may not have been in love, but I know that I would never treat someone I chose to marry with as much rancor as you are treating your wife. ”
That shame on Colin’s face disappears in an instant. “Why are you so determined for me to forgive her?” He demands. “Was it not you who was so angry with her, mere weeks ago, or am I simply misremembering the way you have behaved throughout the entire season thus far?”
Eloise scoffs. “That is hardly the same thing, given that I did not marry her. If it is such a sticking point for you, you should not have married her! If you do not love her, you should not–!”
“Of course I love her!” Colin interrupts loudly. Eloise draws back, startled at the tenor of his voice, but now that he’s started, it seems like he cannot stop. “My God, Eloise, it is because I love her that I am so angry with her. It is because I do not understand how she can put herself in such danger, and be so callous about drawing the ire of the Queen, and yet not seem to care about her own safety.” He runs a hand through his hair, looking agitated and cagey. “I have never known love in the way that I feel it for her, but I cannot protect her because she will not let me, and what kind of husband does that make me?”
His declaration seems to linger in the air between them, a real, living thing. For maybe the first time in her life, Eloise feels as though she is truly seeing her big brother: the goodheartedness of him, the desperate search for meaning, the longing and the heartache that has marred his whole life. Anthony had once, in a vitriolic fight the origins of which Eloise can barely remember now, called him the spare to the spare . For the first time in her life, she is seeing her brother as someone who loves through protection, because that is all he has ever known, the only way he has ever found purpose, and who is watching his new wife - someone who, by all accounts, he absolutely adores - put herself in constant danger without thought to herself or to their marriage.
Eloise just doesn’t know how to tell him that he’s going about it all wrong, in being angry with her.
“You must tell her that, Colin,” she implores him softly. “You must tell her of your concern and your troubles. She does not wish to hurt you, of course she doesn’t, so if you’ll just tell her –.”
He had been staring at her with wide, watery eyes, but quite suddenly, that same shuttered thing closes across his face, and any vulnerability is gone in a flash. “Thank you for coming,” he interrupts. “And for your counsel on how best to proceed with my own marriage.” It is said sharply enough for Eloise to understand that the conversation is over. Something regretful passes over his face, but instead of apologizing, Colin steps forward, presses a kiss to her forehead, and then is gone.
The front door slams shut behind him, sealing Eloise in the quiet of the Featherington House foyer. “Drat it all,” she hisses, and then she turns to go find Mama. Or a glass of champagne.
–
The carriage ride to their new home is deathly silent.
Penelope is still in her wedding gown, and it is tucked neatly around her ankles so Colin can’t trip over it. She had been settled in the carriage when he clambered in - had offered him a sad, tear-soaked smile, and then turned to face the window while he sat down on the bench opposite her.
She has not said a word since.
Colin finds, as terrified and anxious and unsure for their future as he is, that he cannot take his eyes off her. She is beautiful, incandescent, in a way he had not known was possible until the curtains had been drawn back in the church and she had been revealed. His breath had caught in his lungs at the way she had glimmered and shone - at the way, too, her eyes had swept across all those who had risen for her, and yet it had been his gaze that she had sought out. It had been him that she had waited for, his nod, his decision that he would go through with this. Come hell or high water, he was going to marry her, because he knew, even then, that he could not envision a world in which she was not his wife.
And now, she is Penelope Bridgerton, and she cannot stand the sight of him.
She is the most beautiful woman he has ever dared to lay eyes on, and he thinks that nothing will change that. Even with her cheeks flushed from tears, her hands folded neatly in her lap, her piercingly blue eyes diverted to stare out the carriage window, he knows that he will never see a more beautiful sight. He is so in love with her, despite the knotted mess of emotion in his chest, that he thinks he may just crack open with it.
“You are staring,” she notes abruptly, without pulling her gaze away from the window. Her voice is hoarse and tight.
He debates, for a moment, making up an excuse about why he cannot seem to look away, but then he thinks: it is our wedding day, and if I cannot be honest with my wife now, I cannot be honest with her ever. So he says, “you are beautiful,” softly, and she turns to blink at him with a look of stunned surprise. It makes something ache in him, that she still does not understand how truly enamored he is with her, how seeing her in this wedding gown for the first time felt like the first breath of air he had been allowed to inhale in months. “You are,” he repeats, with a little more vehemence. “You are the most stunning bride, and it pains me to think that you do not believe it.”
Penelope blinks rapidly, eyes filling quickly with tears, before she averts her gaze back to the window. “Thank you,” she whispers, hands twisting anxiously in her lap, and the rest of the ride passes in silence.
When they arrive at Bloomsbury, Colin emerges first and then turns to help Penelope down from the carriage. She hesitates, for just a moment, before she slides her hand into his, and that singular touch is enough to have him breathing in sharply, enough to set his heart to racing. Her skin is so soft, and she smells so sweet, and he is a weak, weak man who wants her so badly that his teeth ache with it. When she relinquishes her grip on his hand, he feels as though he’s been carved out with a paring knife.
The servants and maids have been hard at work turning the house into a home for them - airing out the stuffy rooms, cleaning drapes and dusting mantle pieces - but as the door swings shut behind them, sealing them into the silence of the entryway, Colin realizes he has made a grand error.
“I, uh,” he starts, somewhat sheepishly. Penelope turns to look at him through dull eyes. “I dismissed the staff, for the remainder of the day. They should have left food for us, but I had assumed…” he trails off, feeling like the worst kind of rake. It is evident that there will be no typical wedding night celebration, not when his own anger and bitterness is twisting up his insides, but in the way he so often does, he had gotten ahead of himself.
Penelope stares at him for a long, unending moment. “Right,” she finally murmurs, before she turns sharply on her heel and walks off towards where she knows the bedchamber to be. After a moment, he follows her. She reaches the bedchamber before he does, slipping inside and sealing herself off from him before he can say a word.
He has already sworn himself to a wedding night on the settee, but the first time he lays eyes on that godforsaken thing, mocking him from its place in the antechamber before their bedchamber, his heart clenches painfully in his chest. He is so angry - at Penelope, for willingly putting herself in danger; at himself, for not being enough for her; at Lady Whistledown, for standing between them.
But he is so heart-achingly in love with his wife, and he does not know how to reconcile the two.
As he stands there, staring at the settee, there’s a muffled thud from the bedchamber, followed by a hissed curse. His feet move without his permission, and he raps his knuckles gently on the closed door of their - their, God, even the word sends a thrill through his blood - bedchamber. “Pen?” He calls. “Are you well?”
For the space of a moment where she does not answer, Colin’s heart attempts to clamber out of his chest altogether. Eventually, though, she calls back, “I am fine!” in a falsely cheered voice that tells him she is not .
He hesitates for a moment, warring with himself, before he slowly twists the handle and pushes the door open.
Their bedchamber is bathed in a soft, glowing warmth from the fading sunlight outside and the lit fireplace, painting the walls a glimmering orange. Penelope - beautiful, wonderful Penelope, his bride, his wife - is stood in the center, in front of the mirror that the servants must have brought in, hands twisted behind herself to reach for her dress, hair tucked over one shoulder and face streaked with tears. She meets his gaze through the mirror, finds him where he’s frozen in place. Her veil has been discarded on their bed.
“I cannot unlace myself,” she croaks, and Colin is sure that his traitorous little heart has broken free of his ribcage entirely and is now dragging itself, bedraggled and bruised as it is, across the carpeted floor to try and get to her.
He steps toward her, a force of habit, but stills when she flinches. She winces as soon as she’s done it, but the damage is done - she is afraid of him. In this moment, in their bedchamber, she is frightened of him.
It cuts down to the core of him, steals his breath right out of his lungs, but he works to school his features into something that does not show it. “If you would like,” he offers softly. “I will do it for you.”
She blinks at him for a moment. “I do not know how good of a ladies’ maid you will be,” she jokes weakly, and he smiles in response as he moves forward again. She watches him warily through the mirror, but she does not flinch away.
“It would astound you,” he tells her, “the things one can learn when one has four sisters.” He had been the more diligent learner amongst his brothers - Anthony certainly never cared about what his sisters wore, only what kind of dent it would put in the family coffers, and Benedict has always proclaimed, lewdly, that he’s better at unlacing them. But Colin always found it rhythmic, as a young boy, to watch his mother ready herself for the day, always marveled at the way her maids tittered around her as they laced her into her gowns.
He moves slowly as he lifts his hands, unbuttoning the dress with cautious, practiced care. She has her hands pressed to the front of it, keeping it in place, but when he murmurs, “let it go, Pen,” she drops her hands to her sides and lets her wedding gown crumple in a heap at her feet. Underneath her dress, she is wearing only a tightly-laced corset, and he forces himself to swallow the urge to run his fingertips along the creamy skin he’s exposed. When he moves to unlace the ribbon of her corset, he realizes his hands are shaking.
Christ, he feels like a green boy, desperate to touch a woman for the first time. But this is different , because this is Penelope. This is different, because this is his wife , and it is his own confusion and anger that is preventing him from touching her the way he so desperately wants to.
He manages, despite the tremble of his hands, to unlace the bow at the base of her corset, working diligently from there to loosen it entirely. When she inhales, the ribcage of the corset expands under his fingertips, and he eases the ribbon out. Much like her dress, the only thing that’s holding the corset up is her grip on the front to keep it pressed to her chest. But he does not tell her to let it drop - he thinks if he speaks, his voice will come out hoarse and embarrassingly raw. Instead, he takes gentle hold of the boning of the corset and slides the back of it open, revealing the soft skin of her back to his hungry gaze. He looks his fill, touching gentled fingertips to the ridges of her spine, the soft curves of her hips, the nape of her neck that she’s exposed with her tilted head. He loses himself in the feel of his wife, for long enough that when he returns to himself, she is shaking.
“Colin,” she breathes, and he snaps his head up to meet her wide-eyed stare through the mirror. The corset is still pressed to her chest, waves of red hair tumbling over one shoulder, and her mouth slick and bitten red. Her features are bathed in warm candlelight, and even with the flush of tears down her cheeks, he is so enamored with her.
He bends, just so, to place a kiss at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. She inhales roughly. “I love you,” he murmurs into the skin under his mouth. She tilts her head to give him better access. “It was the greatest honor of my life, to stand at the top of the aisle today and watch you walk towards me. Like something out of a dream.”
She trembles through an inhale, her ribcage expanding under his hands. He kisses her again, tasting the bitterness of her skin, and has to grit his teeth against the urge to set his teeth into her throat, as if to stake a claim. “Do not sleep on the settee,” she pleads softly, and when he does not respond, “ please .”
He wants to give in - it is their wedding night, and he is in love with her, and he wants her more than he has ever wanted anything in his life. But then he thinks of finding her outside the print shop, of stumbling into her coming home from the modiste last night. Of the queen, at their wedding breakfast, demanding knowledge of his wife, and his own inability to protect the woman he loves. If he cannot do that - cannot protect her, cannot offer her this singular thing in recompense for all the years that he did not see her - then what right does he have to their marital bed? What right does he have to her at all?
“I…” he starts. He allows himself one more inhale, committing to memory the sweet smell of rosehip and lavender, before he retracts his hands from her waist and straightens, stepping back. “I cannot,” he replies, even as the words carve him up from the inside out. He cannot give himself to her in the way they both so desperately want him to, because it would not be fair. He loves her too much to simply cave to the pressure of her beauty and the expectation of a wedding night. She deserves so much better than that.
Penelope nods. “I understand,” she whispers. She turns abruptly away from the mirror, though she does not move any further than that. “I will finish undressing,” she continues. “Thank you for your assistance.”
It is a clear dismissal, and he nods his acquiescence before turning to leave. He hesitates, though, at the door. When he looks over his shoulder, she is watching him through dull, tear-hazed eyes. “I love you,” he says again, because he thinks she deserves to hear it, as tenuous as their marriage may be right now. “Lady Whistledown has not changed that.”
He slips out of the room before he can hear if she utters a response, closing the door behind him silently. As soon as he does it, he presses his weight up against the wood, trying to quiet the devastation that’s suddenly clamoring through his body. Tears slip, silent and steady, down his cheeks, the first ones that he’s allowed himself to cry since he found her outside the print shop.
From inside their bedchamber, a soft wail echoes, and his heart calls for her, aches for her, wants for her, even though he remains resolutely on the other side of the door. He is no man worthy of her, of her love, when he cannot even protect her from himself. She sobs again, and his legs give out beneath him until he ends up as a crumpled heap outside their bedchamber door, still in his wedding finery, desperate for even the echo of closeness to her. He wonders, as he sits there and lets tears soak his lapels, if she is doing the same - if she is sat in a similar position, her back to the door, waiting for him to come to her. If she is waiting for the brave, kind man that she married.
He wonders if that man even exists any longer, if he ever did in the first place, or if he has simply been playing a part the entire time. He does not know which is worse.