Romancing Mister Bridgerton (14 page)

“Colin?” she asked hesitantly, as if she'd just finally noticed that he had long since passed angry on his way to furious.

“Sit. Down.” He jerked his head toward a chair. “Now.”

“Are you all right?”

“SIT DOWN!”
he roared.

And she did. With alacrity.

“I can't remember the last time you raised your voice,” she whispered.

“I can't remember the last time I had cause to.”

“What's wrong?”

He decided he might as well just come out and say it.

“Colin?”

“I know you're Lady Whistledown.”

“Whaaaaat?”

“There's no use denying it. I've seen—”

Eloise jumped to her feet. “Except that it's not true!”

Suddenly he no longer felt quite so angry. Instead he felt tired, old. “Eloise, I've seen the proof.”

“What proof?” she asked, her voice rising with disbelief. “How can there be proof of something that isn't true?”

He grabbed one of her hands. “Look at your fingers.”

She did so. “What about them?”

“Inkstains.”

Her mouth fell open. “From
that
you've deduced that I'm Lady Whistledown?”

“Why are they there, then?”

“You've never used a quill?”

“Eloise…” There was a great deal of warning in his voice.

“I don't have to tell you why I have inkstains on my fingers.”

He said her name again.

“I don't,” she protested. “I owe you no—oh, very well, fine.” She crossed her arms mutinously. “I write letters.”

He shot her an extremely disbelieving look.

“I do!” she protested. “Every day. Sometimes two in a day when Francesca is away. I'm quite a loyal correspondent. You should know. I've written enough letters with
your
name on the envelope, although I doubt half of them ever reached you.”

“Letters?” he asked, his voice full of doubt…and derision. “For God's sake, Eloise, do you really think that will wash? Who the devil are you writing so many letters to?”

She blushed. Really, truly, deeply blushed. “It's none of your business.”

He would have been intrigued by her reaction if he still weren't so sure that she was lying about being Lady Whistledown. “For God's sake, Eloise,” he bit off, “who is going to believe that you're writing letters every day? I certainly don't.”

She glared at him, her dark gray eyes flashing with fury. “I don't care what you think,” she said in a very low voice. “No, that's not true. I am
furious
that you don't believe me.”

“You're not giving me much to believe in,” he said wearily.

She stood, walked over to him, and poked him in the chest. Hard. “You are my brother,” she spat out. “You should believe me unquestioningly. Love me unconditionally. That's what it means to be family.”

“Eloise,” he said, her name coming out really as nothing more than a sigh.

“Don't try to make excuses now.”

“I wasn't.”

“That's even worse!” She stalked to the door. “You should be on your hands and knees, begging me for forgiveness.”

He hadn't thought he had it in him to smile, but somehow that did it for him. “Now, that doesn't really seem in keeping with my character, does it?”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the sound that came out was not precisely English. All she managed was something along the lines of, “Ooooooooh,” in an extremely irate voice, and then she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

Colin slouched into a chair, wondering when she'd realize that she'd left him in her own bedchamber.

The irony was, he reflected, possibly the only bright spot in an otherwise miserable day.

I
t was, not surprisingly, the talk of the Macclesfield ball.

“Lady Whistledown has retired!”

“Can you believe it?”

“What will I read with my breakfast?”

“How will I know what happened if I miss a party?”

“We'll never find out who she is now!”

“Lady Whistledown has retired!”

One woman fainted, nearly cracking her head against the side of a table as she slumped gracelessly to the floor. Apparently, she had not read that morning's column and thus heard the news for the first time right there at the Macclesfield ball. She was revived by smelling salts but then quickly swooned again.

“She's a faker,” Hyacinth Bridgerton muttered to Felicity Featherington as they stood in a small group with the Dowager Lady Bridgerton and Penelope. Penelope was officially attending as Felicity's chaperone due to their mother's decision to remain home with an upset stomach.

“The first faint was real,” Hyacinth explained. “Anyone could tell that by the clumsy way she fell. But this…” Her hand flicked toward the lady on the floor with a gesture of disgust. “No one swoons like a ballet dancer. Not even ballet dancers.”

Penelope had overheard the entire conversation, as Hyacinth was directly to her left, and so she murmured, “Have you ever swooned?” all the while keeping her eyes on the unfortunate woman, who was now coming awake with a delicate fluttering of eyelashes as the smelling salts were once again wafted under her nose.

“Absolutely not!” Hyacinth replied, with no small measure of pride. “Swoons are for the tenderhearted and foolish,” she added. “And if Lady Whistledown were still writing, mark my words, she would say the exact same thing in her next column.”

“Alas, there are no words to mark anymore,” Felicity answered with a sad sigh.

Lady Bridgerton agreed. “It's the end of an era,” she said. “I feel quite bereft without her.”

“Well, it's not as if we've had to go more than eighteen hours without her yet,” Penelope felt compelled to point out. “We did receive a column this morning. What is there yet to feel bereft about?”

“It's the principle of it,” Lady Bridgerton said with a sigh. “If this were an ordinary Monday, I would know that I'd receive a new report on Wednesday. But now…”

Felicity actually sniffled. “Now we're lost,” she said.

Penelope turned to her sister in disbelief. “Surely you're being a little melodramatic.”

Felicity's overblown shrug was worthy of the stage. “Am I?
Am I?
”

Hyacinth gave her a sympathetic pat on the back. “I don't think you are, Felicity. I feel precisely the same way.”

“It's only a gossip column,” Penelope said, looking around for any sign of sanity in her companions. Surely they realized that the world was not drawing to a close just because Lady Whistledown had decided to end her career.

“You're right, of course,” said Lady Bridgerton, jutting her chin out and pursing her lips in a manner that was probably
supposed to convey an air of practicality. “Thank you for being the voice of reason for our little party.” But then she seemed to deflate slightly, and she said, “But I must admit, I'd grown rather used to having her around. Whoever she is.”

Penelope decided it was well past time to change the topic. “Where is Eloise this evening?”

“Ill, I'm afraid. A headache,” Lady Bridgerton said, small frowns of worry creasing her otherwise unlined face. “She hasn't been feeling the thing for almost a week now. I'm starting to grow concerned about her.”

Penelope had been staring rather aimlessly at a sconce on the wall, but her attention was immediately brought back to Lady Bridgerton. “It's nothing serious, I hope?”

“It's nothing serious,” Hyacinth answered, before her mother could even open her mouth. “Eloise never gets sick.”

“Which is precisely why I'm worried,” Lady Bridgerton said. “She hasn't been eating very well.”

“That's not true,” Hyacinth said. “Just this afternoon Wickham brought up a very heavy tray. Scones and eggs and I think I smelled gammon steak.” She gave an arch look to no one in particular. “And when Eloise left the tray out in the hall it was completely empty.”

Hyacinth Bridgerton, Penelope decided, had a surprisingly good eye for detail.

“She's been in a bad mood,” Hyacinth continued, “since she quarreled with Colin.”

“She quarreled with Colin?” Penelope asked, an awful feeling beginning to roil her stomach. “When?”

“Sometime last week,” Hyacinth said.

WHEN?
Penelope wanted to scream, but surely it would look odd if she demanded an exact day. Was it Friday? Was it?

Penelope would always remember that her first, and most probably only, kiss had occurred on a Friday.

She was strange that way. She always remembered the days of the week.

She'd met Colin on a Monday.

She'd kissed him on a Friday.

Twelve years later.

She sighed. It seemed fairly pathetic.

“Is something wrong, Penelope?” Lady Bridgerton asked.

Penelope looked at Eloise's mother. Her blue eyes were kind and filled with concern, and there was something about the way she tilted her head to the side that made Penelope want to cry.

She was getting far too emotional these days. Crying over the tilt of a head.

“I'm fine,” she said, hoping that her smile looked true. “I'm just worried about Eloise.”

Hyacinth snorted.

Penelope decided she needed to make her escape. All these Bridgertons—well, two of them, anyway—were making her think of Colin.

Which wasn't anything she hadn't been doing nearly every minute of the day for the past three days. But at least that had been in private where she could sigh and moan and grumble to her heart's content.

But this must have been her lucky night, because just then she heard Lady Danbury barking her name.

(What was her world coming to, that she considered herself lucky to be trapped in a corner with London's most acerbic tongue?)

But Lady Danbury would provide the perfect excuse to leave her current little quartet of ladies, and besides, she was coming to realize that in a very odd way, she rather liked Lady Danbury.

“Miss Featherington! Miss Featherington!”

Felicity instantly took a step away. “I think she means you,” she whispered urgently.

“Of course she means me,” Penelope said, with just a touch of hauteur. “I consider Lady Danbury a cherished friend.”

Felicity's eyes bugged out. “You do?”

“Miss Featherington!” Lady Danbury said, thumping her cane an inch away from Penelope's foot as soon as she reached her side. “Not you,” she said to Felicity, even though Felicity had done nothing more than smile politely as the countess had approached. “You,” she said to Penelope.

“Er, good evening, Lady Danbury,” Penelope said, which she considered an admirable number of words under the circumstances.

“I have been looking for you all evening,” Lady D announced.

Penelope found that a trifle surprising. “You have?”

“Yes. I want to talk with you about that Whistledown woman's last column.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you,” Lady Danbury grumbled. “I'd be happy to talk with someone else if you could find me a body with more than half a brain.”

Penelope choked on the beginnings of laughter as she motioned to her companions. “Er, I assure you that Lady Bridgerton—”

Lady Bridgerton was furiously shaking her head.

“She's too busy trying to get that oversized brood of hers married off,” Lady Danbury announced. “Can't be expected to know how to conduct a decent conversation these days.”

Penelope stole a frantic glance over at Lady Bridgerton to see if she was upset by the insult—after all, she had been trying to marry off her oversized brood for a decade now. But Lady Bridgerton didn't look the least bit upset. In fact, she appeared to be stifling laughter.

Stifling laughter and inching away, taking Hyacinth and Felicity with her.

Sneaky little traitors.

Ah, well, Penelope shouldn't complain. She'd wanted an escape from the Bridgertons, hadn't she? But she didn't particularly enjoy having Felicity and Hyacinth think they'd somehow pulled one over on her.

“They're gone now,” Lady Danbury cackled, “and a good thing it is, too. Those two gels haven't an intelligent thing to say between them.”

“Oh, now, that isn't true,” Penelope felt compelled to protest. “Felicity and Hyacinth are both very bright.”

“I never said they weren't smart,” Lady D replied acidly, “just that they haven't an intelligent thing to say. But don't worry,” she added, giving Penelope a reassuring—reassuring? whoever heard of Lady Danbury being reassuring?—pat on the arm. “It's not their fault that their conversation is useless. They'll grow out of it. People are like fine wines. If they start off good, they only get better with age.”

Penelope had actually been glancing slightly to the right of Lady Danbury's face, peering over her shoulder at a man who she thought might be Colin (but wasn't), but this brought her attention right back to where the countess wanted it.

“Fine wines?” Penelope echoed.

“Hmmph. And here I thought you weren't listening.”

“No, of course I was listening.” Penelope felt her lips tugging into something that wasn't quite a smile. “I was just…distracted.”

“Looking for that Bridgerton boy, no doubt.”

Penelope gasped.

“Oh, don't look so shocked. It's written all over your face. I'm just surprised he hasn't noticed.”

“I imagine he has,” Penelope mumbled.

“Has he? Hmmph.” Lady Danbury frowned, the corners of her mouth spilling into long vertical wrinkles on either side of her chin. “Doesn't speak well of him that he hasn't done anything about it.”

Penelope's heart ached. There was something oddly sweet
about the old lady's faith in her, as if men like Colin fell in love with women like Penelope on a regular basis. Penelope had had to beg him to kiss her, for heaven's sake. And look how that had ended up. He'd left the house in a fit of temper and they hadn't spoken for three days.

“Well, don't worry over him,” Lady Danbury said quite suddenly. “We'll find you someone else.”

Penelope delicately cleared her throat. “Lady Danbury, have you made me your
project
?”

The old lady beamed, her smile a bright and glowing streak in her wrinkled face. “Of course! I'm surprised it has taken you so long to figure it out.”

“But why?” Penelope asked, truly unable to fathom it.

Lady Danbury sighed. The sound wasn't sad—more wistful, really. “Would you mind if we sat down for a spell? These old bones aren't what they used to be.”

“Of course,” Penelope said quickly, feeling terrible that she'd never once considered Lady Danbury's age as they stood there in the stuffy ballroom. But the countess was so vibrant; it was difficult to imagine her ailing or weak.

“Here we are,” Penelope said, taking her arm and leading her to a nearby chair. Once Lady Danbury was settled, Penelope took a seat beside her. “Are you more comfortable now? Would you like something to drink?”

Lady Danbury nodded gratefully, and Penelope signaled to a footman to bring them two glasses of lemonade, since she didn't want to leave the countess while she was looking so pale.

“I'm not as young as I used to be,” Lady Danbury told her once the footman had hied off to the refreshment table.

“None of us are,” Penelope replied. It could have been a flip comment, but it was spoken with wry warmth, and somehow Penelope thought that Lady Danbury would appreciate the sentiment.