Quinn, Julia - Romancing Mister Bridgerton With 2nd Epilogue

“She called me an overripe citrus fruit,” Penelope said, attempting levity.

He stopped his pacing for just long enough to shoot her an annoyed look. “Were you laughing at me the whole time I was moaning about how the only way I would be remembered by future generations was in Whistledown columns?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “I would hope you know me better than that.”

He shook his head in a disbelieving manner. “I can’t believe I sat there, complaining to you that I had no accomplishments, when you had all of Whistledown .”

She got off the bed and stood. It was impossible just to sit there while he was pacing like a caged tiger. “Colin, you couldn’t have known.”

“Still.” He let out a disgusted exhale. “The irony would be beautiful, if it weren’t directed at me.”

Penelope parted her lips to speak, but she didn’t know how to say everything that was in her heart. Colin had so many achievements, she couldn’t even begin to count them all. They weren’t something you could pick up, like an edition of Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers , but they were just as special.

Perhaps even more so.

Penelope remembered all the moments he had made people smile, all the times he had walked past all of the popular girls at balls and asked a wallflower to dance. She thought of the strong, almost magical bond he shared with his siblings. If those weren’t achievements, she didn’t know what was.

But she knew that those weren’t the sorts of milestones he was talking about. She knew what he needed: a purpose, a calling.

Something to show the world that he was more than they thought he was.

“Publish your travel memoirs,” she said.

“I’m not—”

“Publish them,” she said again. “Take a chance and see if you soar.”

His eyes met hers for a moment, then they slid back down to his journal, still clutched in her hands. “They need editing,” he mumbled.

Penelope laughed, because she knew she had won. And he had won, too. He didn’t know it yet, but he had.

“Everyone needs editing,” she said, her smile broadening with each word. “Well, except me, I guess,” she teased. “Or maybe I did need it,” she added with a shrug. “We’ll never know, because I had no one to edit me.”

He looked up quite suddenly. “How did you do it?”

“How did I do what?”

His lips pursed impatiently. “You know what I mean. How did you do the column? There was more to it than the writing. You had to print and distribute. Someone had to have known who you were.”

She let out a long breath. She’d held these secrets so long it felt strange to share them, even with her husband. “It’s a long story,” she told him. “Perhaps we should sit.”

He led her back to the bed, and they both made themselves comfortable, propped up against the pillows, their legs stretched out before them.

“I was very young when it started,” Penelope began. “Only seventeen. And it happened quite by accident.”

He smiled. “How does something like that happen by accident?”

“I wrote it as a joke. I was so miserable that first season.” She looked up at him earnestly. “I don’t know if you recall, but I weighed over a stone more back then, and it’s not as if I’m fashionably slender now.”

“I think you’re perfect,” he said loyally.

Which was, Penelope thought, part of the reason she thought he was perfect as well.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I wasn’t terribly happy, and so I wrote a rather scathing report of the party I’d been to the night before. And then I did another, and another. I didn’t sign them Lady Whistledown; I just wrote them for fun and hid them in my desk. Except one day, I forgot to hide them.”

He leaned forward, utterly rapt. “What happened?”

“My family were all out, and I knew they’d be gone for some time, because that was when Mama still thought she could turn Prudence into a diamond of the first water, and their shopping trips took all day.”

Colin rolled his hand through the air, signaling that she should get to the point.

“Anyway,” Penelope continued, “I decided to work in the drawing room because my room was damp and musty because someone—well, I suppose it was me—left the window open during a rainstorm. But then I had to . . . well, you know.”

“No,” Colin said abruptly. “I don’t know.”

“Attend to my business,” Penelope whispered, blushing.

“Oh. Right,” he said dismissively, clearly not interested in that part of the story, either. “Go on.”

“When I got back, my father’s solicitor was there. And he was reading what I wrote. I was horrified!”

“What happened?”

“I couldn’t even speak for the first minute. But then I realized he was laughing, and it wasn’t because he thought I was foolish, it was because he thought I was good.”

“Well, you are good.”

“I know that now,” she said with a wry smile, “but you have to remember, I was seventeen. And I’d said some pretty horrid things in there.”

“About horrid people, I’m sure,” he said.

“Well, yes, but still . . .” She closed her eyes as all the memories swam through her head. “They were popular people. Influential people. People who didn’t like me very much. It didn’t really matter that they were horrid if what I said got out. In fact, it would have been worse because they were horrid. I would have been ruined, and I would have ruined my entire family along with me.”

“What happened then? I assume it was his idea to publish.”

Penelope nodded. “Yes. He made all the arrangements with the printer, who in turn found the boys to deliver. And it was his idea to give it away for free for the first two weeks. He said we needed to addict the ton .”

“I was out of the country when the column began,” Colin said, “but I remember my mother and sisters telling me all about it.”

“People grumbled when the newsboys demanded payment after two weeks for free,” Penelope said. “But they all paid.”

“A bright idea on the part of your solicitor,” Colin murmured.

“Yes, he was quite savvy.”

He picked up on her use of the past tense. “Was?”

She nodded sadly. “He passed on a few years ago. But he knew he was ill and so before he died he asked me if I wanted to continue. I suppose I could have stopped then, but I had nothing else in my life, and certainly no marriage prospects.” She looked up quickly. “I don’t mean to—That is to say—”

His lips curved into a self-deprecating smile. “You may scold me all you wish for not having proposed years ago.”

Penelope returned his smile with one of her own. Was it any wonder she loved this man?

“But,” he said rather firmly, “only if you finish the story.”

“Right,” she said, forcing her mind back to the matter at hand. “After Mr—” She looked up hesitantly. “I’m not certain I should say his name.”

Colin knew she was torn between her love and trust for him, and her loyalty to a man who had, in all probability, been a father to her once her own had departed this earth. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “He’s gone. His name doesn’t matter.”

She let out a soft breath. “Thank you,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I—”

“I know,” he said reassuringly, squeezing her fingers with his. “If you want to tell me later, that’s fine. And if you don’t, that will be fine as well.”

She nodded, her lips tight at the corners, in that strained expression people get when they are trying hard not to cry. “After he died, I worked directly with the publisher. We set up a system for delivery of the columns, and the payments continued the way they had always been made—into a discreet account in my name.”