Chapter Text
“Mum, did someone touch my new coat? I swear I left it on the chair!”
Agatha's voice echoed through the kitchen as she rummaged through the room, growing more irritated by the second. The air smelled of burnt sourdough and expensive coffee, the classic scent of a Monday morning at the Bridgertons'.
“Well, if you left it lying around,” Thomas said dryly, walking in with a coffee in hand and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, “you did choose to come home knowing George still lives here.”
“I didn’t touch her coat,” Jane added, lifting her hands in surrender with a grin. “But honestly, visiting our parents’ house doesn't get you wardrobe privileges.”
“I didn’t touch anything!” George’s offended voice came from the hallway. He appeared moments later, school uniform wrinkled, backpack hanging from one shoulder, and the unmistakable look of someone who was technically awake but not yet functioning.
“Of course you didn’t,” Agatha snorted, snapping her laptop shut on the counter. “You just inherited Dad’s talent for leaving evidence of your existence everywhere.”
“Hey!” Colin said, lowering his newspaper from where he sat at the table with a mug of tea. “That sounds like slander.”
“The kind backed by years of data,” Agatha shot back, finally finding her coat draped over the back of a chair. “Every time you ‘help tidy up,’ Dad, the living room looks like it’s survived a small war.”
Penelope entered just then, carrying a plate piled high with toast. With an apron tied around her waist and a tired but fond smile, she looked perfectly at ease in the middle of their chaos.
“Before this turns into a family tribunal,” she said, setting the plate down, “I can confirm: Colin Bridgerton does, in fact, leave trails.”
“Betrayal. In my own home,” Colin pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. “And from my own wife.”
Penelope leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the top of his head.
“We’re still a team, darling. But even the best teams have to admit when the star player leaves his boots in the middle of the pitch.”
Laughter filled the kitchen, overlapping voices, clinking mugs, the toaster popping in the background. It was the kind of noise Colin lived for, the messy, loud proof of the life they’d built.
“Well,” Agatha said, grabbing her coat and bag, “as fun as it’s been to relive my childhood bedroom for forty-eight hours, we should go.”
“Back to reality,” Thomas added, already heading for the door. “Where the fridge is emptier and no one steals your clothes.”
“Speak for yourself,” Agatha shot back. “I miss Mum’s cooking.”
Penelope smiled warmly.
“Drive safe. And text when you get there.”
Once the front door closed behind them, the house felt noticeably quieter. It was a heavy sort of silence that always followed the older two's departure, leaving the hallways feeling just a little too wide.
Jane checked the time and groaned.
“I’m late. Again. See you later!”
She grabbed her bag and was gone in a rush of footsteps and the slam of the door. George lingered just long enough to grab a piece of toast.
“I’ve a project to present at school,” he muttered, already halfway toward the stairs.
“Of course you do,” Colin said lightly.
When the house finally settled into silence, Colin watched the staircase for a moment longer than necessary. George had always been the baby of the family, the only one who had never packed bags for university (yet), never left for a shared flat with friends. Their quiet, observant kid. Easy to underestimate.
Colin folded his newspaper and stood.
“Well,” he said, stretching, “time for my daily mission: stopping the house from disappearing under abandoned clothes.”
Penelope looked at him over her teacup.
“Colin. Last time you said that, I had to reorganise the bookshelf by colour and height.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” he replied cheerfully. “It was at most two hours and fifty minutes.”
She laughed, shaking her head.
Colin started down the hallway, checking rooms out of habit. Agatha’s old room remained neat, clearly unused most days now. Thomas’s was mostly empty too, save for a forgotten jumper and a poster he still refused to take down. Jane’s room looked exactly as it always had: posters taped crookedly to the walls and books stacked in dangerously ambitious towers.
Then he reached George’s room.
“Alright,” Colin murmured, pushing the door open. “Let’s see what mess you’re hiding.”
It was tidier than he’d expected, though unmistakably the room of a fourteen-year-old: socks near the bed, snack wrappers half-hidden in the laundry basket, notebooks open to scribbles that looked nothing like maths.
He bent to pick up a hoodie from the floor when something on the desk caught his eye: a crumpled piece of paper sitting next to a heavy, professional-looking black box tucked partially under the bed.
Colin picked up the paper absently, then paused. He pushed his glasses down from where they were perched on top of his head, settling them properly on his nose before reading.
“Microphone… three hundred pounds?”
He frowned, tilting the paper slightly, as if the angle might make the number less offensive. He blinked.
“But… what?”
Three hundred pounds. Charged to his credit card. He adjusted his glasses again, lowering them just enough to peer over the frames at the receipt, disbelief written all over his face. The words stubbornly remained the same.
“Three hundred pounds,” he repeated slowly, glasses slipping further down his nose now. “On a microphone.”
For a brief moment, Colin wondered if George had decided to start a secret band. Or perhaps train as a motivational speaker. None of it made sense. George barely spoke during Bridgerton family dinners. What would he need such an expensive microphone for?
Colin closed his eyes and took a breath. “Right,” he muttered. “No conclusions without evidence. First I investigate, then I panic.”
And with the receipt in his hand, he headed downstairs, already wondering how exactly he was going to explain to Penelope that the baby of the house apparently had a very well-funded secret life.
“Penelope.”
Colin didn’t simply enter the sitting room; he stormed into it, like a man carrying the weight of a financial crisis on his shoulders.
She glanced up from her book, immediately clocking the tension in his posture. Jacket half-off, hair slightly out of place, glasses pushed up on top of his head like he’d forgotten they were there. That alone almost made her smile.
“That,” she said calmly, “is either the voice of a man who’s found another sock in an impossible location or someone who’s about to give a very passionate speech.”
“It’s worse,” Colin replied, pacing. “Much worse.”
He held the receipt out between two fingers, waving it like a declaration of war.
“Our son spent three hundred pounds.”
Penelope blinked once, leaning back against the sofa, folding one leg under herself.
“Alright,” she said lightly. “You’ll have to narrow that down. Which son, and on what?”
Colin stared at her like she’d just betrayed him emotionally.
“George,” he said. “Our adorable quiet baby George.” He thrust the paper closer. “Three hundred pounds on a microphone.”
Penelope took the receipt, eyes scanning it slowly. Her mouth twitched, not in concern, but in very obvious amusement and Colin noticed.
“Do not laugh,” he warned. “This is serious.”
“I’m not laughing,” she lied, far too easily. “I’m… processing.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, glasses sliding slightly before he pushed them back up.
“We sat them all down, Pen,” he continued, voice rising. “We explained budgets, responsibility, that money does not magically regenerate just because our surname is Bridgerton.”
“I distinctly remember you using the phrase ‘money does not grow on trees,’” she said fondly.
“Because it doesn’t,” he insisted. “And yet somehow our fourteen-year-old has decided to drop three hundred pounds like he’s a disgruntled tech billionaire.”
Penelope finally laughed, soft and warm.
“Oh, Colin…”
He stopped pacing and looked at her, clearly torn between frustration and the fact that his wife looked unfairly beautiful when she found him ridiculous.
“This isn’t funny,” he said, though his voice softened just a fraction. “What if we failed? What if he thinks this sort of spending is normal?”
Penelope set the receipt aside and reached for his hand, tugging gently until he came closer.
“First of all,” she said, “the fact that you’re this upset about it tells me we didn’t fail.”
“And secondly?” he asked, suspicious.
She tilted her head, eyes flicking over him in a way that made his stomach flip, even after twenty-one years of marriage.
“Watching you spiral over parenting ethics while wearing reading glasses is distracting.”
Colin blinked, the fire in his eyes momentarily replaced by a flustered warmth. He felt his ears turn slightly pink, a reaction he still hadn't outgrown.
“That is... wildly unhelpful feedback.”
She smiled sweetly, enjoying the effect she still had on him.
“Just giving you my honest opinion.”
He huffed, but there was a reluctant, boyish smile tugging at his mouth now. He threw himself down next to her on the sofa, and she hugged his arm affectionately, leaning her head on his shoulder.
“We need to investigate,” he said, resolute, though he was already playing with a strand of her hair. “Thoroughly. I refuse to confront him without facts.”
Penelope squeezed his hand.
“Alright, Inspector Bridgerton,” she teased. “But try not to start a household audit before bedtime.”
“No promises,” he muttered.