Quinn, Julia - Romancing Mister Bridgerton With 2nd Epilogue

Well, now she had to answer, didn’t she? “Er, it’s nothing,” she said, hoping the evasion would reduce his attention on the rest of her reply. “Just that I’m not allowed to go out by myself.”

“I am aware of that,” he bit off. “There’s a damned good reason for it, too.”

“So if I wanted to go out by myself,” she continued, choosing to ignore the second part of his reply, “I couldn’t very well use one of our carriages. None of our drivers would agree to take me here.”

“Your drivers,” he snapped, “are clearly men of impeccable wisdom and sense.”

Penelope said nothing.

“Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?” he demanded, his sharp mask of control beginning to crack.

“Er, very little, actually,” she said, gulping on the sentence. “I’ve come here before, and—”

“What?” His hand closed over her upper arm with painful force. “What did you just say?”

Repeating it seemed almost dangerous to her health, so Penelope just stared at him, hoping that maybe she could break through the wild anger in his eyes and find the man she knew and loved so dearly.

“It’s only when I need to leave an urgent message for my publisher,” she explained. “I send a coded message, then he knows to pick up my note here.”

“And speaking of which,” Colin said roughly, snatching the folded paper back from her hands, “what the hell is this?”

Penelope stared at him in confusion. “I would have thought it was obvious. I’m—”

“Yes, of course, you’re bloody Lady Whistledown, and you’ve probably been laughing at me for weeks as I insisted it was Eloise.” His face twisted as he spoke, nearly breaking her heart.

“No!” she cried out. “No, Colin, never. I would never laugh at you!”

But his face told her clearly that he did not believe her. There was humiliation in his emerald eyes, something she’d never seen there, something she’d never expected to see. He was a Bridgerton. He was popular, confident, self-possessed. Nothing could embarrass him. No one could humiliate him.

Except, apparently, her.

“I couldn’t tell you,” she whispered, desperately trying to make that awful look in his eyes go away. “Surely you knew I couldn’t tell you.”

He was silent for an agonizingly long moment, and then, as if she’d never spoken, never tried to explain herself, he lifted the incriminating sheet of paper into the air and shook it, completely disregarding her impassioned outcry. “This is stupidity,” he said. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You had a perfectly good escape, just waiting for you. Cressida Twombley was willing to take the blame for you.”

And then suddenly his hands were on her shoulders, and he was holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.

“Why couldn’t you just let it die, Penelope?” His voice was urgent, his eyes blazing. It was the most feeling she’d ever seen in him, and it broke her heart that it was directed toward her in anger. And in shame.

“I couldn’t let her do it,” she whispered. “I couldn’t let her be me.”

Chapter 13

“W hy the hell not?”

Penelope could do nothing but stare for several seconds. “Because . . . because . . .” she flailed, wondering how she was supposed to explain this. Her heart was breaking, her most terrifying—and exhilarating—secret had been shattered, and he thought she had the presence of mind to explain herself?

“I realize she’s quite possibly the biggest bitch . . .”

Penelope gasped.

“. . . that England has produced in this generation at least, but for God’s sake, Penelope”—he raked his hand through his hair, then fixed a hard stare on her face—“she was going to take the blame—”

“The credit,” Penelope interrupted testily.

“The blame,” he continued. “Do you have any idea what will happen to you if people find out who you really are?”

The corners of her lips tightened with impatience . . . and irritation at being so obviously condescended to. “I’ve had over a decade to ruminate the possibility.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“Not at all,” she shot back. “Do you really think I haven’t spent a good portion of the last ten years of my life contemplating what would happen if I were found out? I’d be a blind idiot if I hadn’t.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, holding tight even as the carriage bumped over uneven cobbles. “You will be ruined, Penelope. Ruined! Do you understand what I am saying?”

“If I did not,” she replied, “I assure you I would now, after your lengthy dissertations on the subject when you were accusing Eloise of being Lady Whistledown.”

He scowled, obviously annoyed at having his errors thrown in his face. “People will stop talking to you,” he continued. “They will cut you dead—”

“People never talked to me,” she snapped. “Half the time they didn’t even know I was there. How do you think I was able to keep up the ruse for so long in the first place? I was invisible, Colin. No one saw me, no one talked to me. I just stood and listened, and no one noticed .”

“That’s not true.” But his eyes slid from hers as he said it.

“Oh, it is true, and you know it. You only deny it,” she said, jabbing him in the arm, “because you feel guilty.”

“I do not!”

“Oh, please ,” she scoffed. “Everything you do, you do out of guilt.”

“Pen—”

“That involves me, at least,” she corrected. Her breath was rushing through her throat, and her skin was pricking with heat, and for once, her soul was on fire. “Do you think I don’t know how your family pities me? Do you think it escapes my notice that anytime you or your brothers happen to be at the same party as me, you ask me to dance?”

“We’re polite,” he ground out, “and we like you.”

“ And you feel sorry for me. You like Felicity but I don’t see you dancing with her every time your paths cross.”

He let go of her quite suddenly and crossed his arms. “Well, I don’t like her as well as I do you.”

She blinked, knocked rather neatly off her verbal stride. Trust him to go and compliment her in the middle of an argument. Nothing could have disarmed her more.

“And,” he continued with a rather arch and superior lifting of his chin, “you have not addressed my original point.”

“Which was?”

“That Lady Whistledown will ruin you!”

“For God’s sake,” she muttered, “you talk as if she were a separate person.”

“Well, excuse me if I still have difficulty reconciling the woman in front of me with the harridan writing the column.”

“Colin!”

“Insulted?” he mocked.

“Yes! I’ve worked very hard on that column.” She clenched her fists around the thin fabric of her mint-green morning dress, oblivious to the wrinkled spirals she was creating. She had to do something with her hands or she’d quite possibly explode with the nervous energy and anger coursing through her veins. Her only other option seemed to be crossing her arms, and she refused to give in to such an obvious show of petulance. Besides, he was crossing his arms, and one of them needed to act older than six.

“I wouldn’t dream of denigrating what you’ve done,” he said condescendingly.

“Of course you would,” she interrupted.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Then what do you think you’re doing?”

“Being an adult!” he answered, his voice growing loud and impatient. “One of us has to be.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me of adult behavior!” she exploded. “You, who run at the very hint of responsibility.”