Bridgerton - Romancing Mr. Bridgerton Part 34

"I don't think anyone is going to listen to Anthony's toast now," Violet said, glancing about the room. The buzz of activity was relentless. Errant newssheets still floated in the air, and all about them, people were slipping on the ones that had already landed on the floor. The hum of the whispers was constant and almost grating, and Colin felt like the top of his skull was going to blow off.

He had to get away. Now. Or at least as soon as possible.

His head was screaming and he felt too hot in his own skin. It was almost like pa.s.sion, except this wasn't pa.s.sion, it was fury, and it was outrage, and it was this awful, black feeling that he'd been betrayed by the one person who should have stood by him without question.

It was strange. He knew that Penelope was the one with the secret, the one with the most to lose. This was about her, not him; he knew that, intellectually, at least. But somehow that had ceased to matter. They were a team now, and she had acted without him.

She had no right to put herself in such a precarious position without consulting him first. He was her husband, or would be, and it was his G.o.d-given duty to protect her whether she desired it or not.

"Colin?" his mother was saying. "Are you well? You look a bit odd."

"Make the toast," he said, turning to Anthony. "Penelope isn't feeling well, and I need to take her home."

"You're not feeling well?" Eloise asked Penelope. "What's wrong? You didn't say anything."

To Penelope's credit, she managed a rather credible, "A bit of a headache, I'm afraid."

"Yes, yes, Anthony," Violet said, "do go ahead and make the toast now so that Colin and Penelope may have their dance.

She really can't leave until you do."

Anthony nodded his agreement, then motioned for Colin and Penelope to follow him to the front of the ballroom. A trumpeter let out a loud squawk on his horn, signaling the partygoers to be quiet. They all obeyed, probably because they a.s.sumed the ensuing announcement would be about Lady Whistledown.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Anthony said loudly, accepting a flute of champagne from a footman. "I know that you are all intrigued by Lady Whistledown's recent intrusion into our party, but I must entreat you all to remember our purpose for gathering here tonight."

It should have been a perfect moment, Colin thought dispa.s.sionately. It was to have been Penelope's night of triumph, her night to shine, to show the world how beautiful and lovely and smart she really was.

It was his night to make his intentions well and truly public, to make sure that everyone knew that he had chosen her, and just as importantly, that she had chosen him.

And all he wanted to do was take her by the shoulders and shake her until he ran out of strength. She was jeopardizing everything. She was putting her very future at risk.

"As the head of the Bridgerton family," Anthony continued, "it gives me great joy whenever one of my siblings chooses a bride. Or groom," he added with a smile, nodding toward Daphne and Simon.

Colin looked down at Penelope. She was standing very straight and very still in her dress of ice-blue satin. She wasn't smiling, which must have looked odd to the hundreds of people staring at her. But maybe they would just think she was nervous. There were hundreds of people staring at her, after all. Anyone would be nervous.

Although if one was standing right next to her, as Colin was, one could see the panic in her eyes, the rapid rise and fall of her chest as her breathing grew faster and more erratic.

She was scared.

Good. She should be scared. Scared of what could happen to her if her secret came out. Scared of what would happen to her once they had a chance to talk.

"Therefore," Anthony concluded, "it gives me great pleasure to lift my gla.s.s in a toast to my brother Colin, and his soon-to-be bride, Penelope Featherington. To Colin and Penelope!"

Colin looked down at his hand and realized that someone had placed a gla.s.s of champagne in it. He lifted his gla.s.s, started to raise it to his lips, then thought the better of it and touched it to Penelope's mouth instead. The crowd cheered wildly, and he watched as she took a sip, and then another and another, forced to keep drinking until he removed the gla.s.s, which he did not do until she was finished.

Then he realized that his childish display of power had left him without a drink, which he badly needed, so he plucked Penelope's gla.s.s from her hand and downed it in a single gulp.

The crowd cheered even harder.

He leaned down and whispered in her ear, "We're going to dance now. We're going to dance until the rest of the party joins us and we're no longer the center of attention. And then you and I will slip outside. And then we will talk."

Her chin moved in a barely perceptible nod.

He took her hand and led her onto the dance floor, placing his other hand at her waist as the orchestra began the first strains of a waltz.

"Colin," she whispered, "I didn't mean for this to happen."

He affixed a smile on his face. This was supposed to be bis first official dance with his intended, after all. "Not now," he ordered.

"But-"

"In ten minutes, I will have a great deal to say to you, but for right now, we are simply going to dance."

"I just wanted to say-"

His hand tightened around hers in a gesture of unmistakable warning. She pursed her lips and looked at his face for the briefest of moments, then looked away.

"I should be smiling," she whispered, still not looking at him.

"Then smile."

"You should be smiling."

"You're right," he said. "I should."

But he didn't.

Penelope felt like frowning. She felt like crying, in all honesty, but somehow she managed to nudge her lips up at the corners. The entire world was watching her-her entire world, at least-and she knew they were examining her every move, cataloguing each expression that crossed her face.

Years she'd spent, feeling like she was invisible and hating it. And now she'd have given anything for a few brief moments of anonymity again.

No, not anything. She wouldn't have given up Colin. If having him meant that she would spend the rest of her life under close scrutiny from the ton, it would be worth it. And if having to endure his anger and disdain at a time like this was to be a part of marriage as well, then that would be worth it, too.

She'd known that he would be furious with her for publishing one last column. Her hands had been shaking as she'd rewritten the words, and she'd been terrified the entire time she'd been at St. Bride's Church (as well as the ride to and from), sure that he was going to jump out at her at any moment, calling off the wedding because he couldn't bear to be married to Lady Whistledown.

But she'd done it anyway.

She knew he thought she was making a mistake, but she simply could not allow Cressida Twombley to take the credit for her life's work. But was it so much to ask that Colin at least make the attempt to see it all from her point of view? It would have been hard enough allowing anyone to pretend to be Lady Whistledown, but Cressida was unbearable. Penelope had worked too hard and endured too much at Cressida's hands.

Plus, she knew that Colin would never jilt her once then-engagement became public. That was part of the reason she'd specifically instructed her publisher to have the papers delivered on Monday to the Mottram ball. Well, that and the fact that it seemed terribly wrong to do it at her own engagement ball, especially when Colin was so opposed to the idea.

d.a.m.n Mr. Lacey! He'd surely done this to maximize circulation and exposure. He knew enough about society from reading Whistledown to know that a Bridgerton engagement ball would be the most coveted invitation of the season. Why this should matter, she didn't know, since increasing interest in Whistledown would not lead to more money in his pocket; Whistledown was well and truly through, and neither Penelope nor Mr. Lacey would receive another pound from its publication.

Unless...

Penelope frowned and sighed. Mr. Lacey must be hoping that she would change her mind.

Colin's hand tightened at her waist, and she looked back up. His eyes were on hers, startlingly green even in the candlelight.

Or maybe it was just that she knew they were so green. She probably would have thought them emerald in the dark.

He nodded toward the other dancers on the floor, which was now crowded with revelers. 'Time to make our escape," he said.

She returned his nod with one of her own. They had already told his family that she wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home, so no one would think overmuch of their departure. And if it wasn't quite de rigeur for them to be alone in his carriage, well, sometimes rules were stretched for affianced couples, especially on such romantic evenings.

A bubble of ridiculous, panicky laughter escaped her lips. The night was turning out to be the least romantic of her life.

Colin looked at her sharply, one arrogant brow raised in question.

"It's nothing," Penelope said.

He squeezed her hand, although not terribly affectionately. "I want to know," he said.

She shrugged fatalistically. She couldn't imagine what she could do or say to make the night any worse than it already was.

"I was just thinking about how this evening was supposed to be romantic."

"It could have been," he said cruelly.

His hand slipped from its position at her waist, but he held on to her other hand, grasping her fingers lightly to weave her through the crowd until they stepped through the French doors out onto the terrace.

"Not here," Penelope whispered, glancing anxiously back toward the ballroom.

He didn't even dignify her comment with a reply, instead pulling her farther into the inky night, drifting around a corner until they were quite alone.

But they didn't stop there. With a quick glance to make sure that no one was about, Colin pushed open a small, un.o.btrusive side door.

"What's this?" Penelope asked.

His answer was a little shove at the small of her back, until she was fully inside the dark hallway.

"Up," he said, motioning to the steps.

Penelope didn't know whether to be scared or thrilled, but she climbed the stairs anyway, ever aware of Colin's hot presence, right at her back.

After they'd climbed several flights, Colin stepped ahead of her and pushed open a door, peeking out into the hall. It was empty, so he stepped out, pulling her along with him, dashing quietly through the hall (which Penelope now recognized as the family's private chambers) until they reached a room she had never before entered.

Colin's room. She'd always known where it was. Through all her years of coming here to visit with Eloise, she'd never once done more than trail her fingers along the heavy wood of the door. It had been years since he'd lived here at Number Five on a permanent basis, but his mother had insisted upon maintaining his room for him. One never knew when he might need it, she'd said, and she'd been proven right earlier that season when Colin had returned from Cyprus without a house under lease.

He pushed open the door and pulled her inside after him. But the room was dark, and she was stumbling, and when she stopped moving it was because his body was right there in front of hers.

He touched her arms to steady her, but then he didn't let go, just held her there in the dark. It wasn't an embrace, not really, but the length of her body was touching the length of his. She couldn't see anything, but she could feel him, and she could smell him, and she could hear his breathing, swirling through the night air, gently caressing her cheek.

It was agony.

It was ecstasy.

His hands slid slowly down her bare arms, torturing her every nerve, and then, abruptly, he stepped away.

Followed by-silence.

Penelope wasn't sure what she had expected. He would yell at her, he would berate her, he would order her to explain herself.

But he was doing none of those things. He was just standing there in the dark, forcing the issue, forcing her to say something.

"Could you ... could you light a candle?" she finally asked.

"You don't like the dark?" he drawled.

"Not now. Not like this."

"I see," he murmured. "So you're saying you might like it like this?" His fingers were suddenly on her skin, trailing along the edge of her bodice.

And then they were gone.

"Don't," she said, her voice shaking.

"Don't touch you?" His voice grew mocking, and Penelope was glad that she couldn't see his face. "But you're mine; aren't you?"

"Not yet," she warned him.

"Oh, but you are. You saw to that. It was rather clever timing, actually, waiting until our engagement ball to make your final announcement. You knew I didn't want you to publish that last column. I forbade it! We agreed-"

"We never agreed!"

He ignored her outburst. "You waited until-"

"We never agreed," Penelope cried out again, needing to make it clear that she had not broken her word. Whatever else she had done, she had not bed to him. Well, aside from keeping Whistledown a secret for nearly a dozen years, but he certainly hadn't been alone in that deception. "And yes," she admitted, because it didn't seem right to start lying now, "I knew you wouldn't jilt me. But I hoped-"

Her voice broke, and she was unable to finish.

"You hoped what?" Colin asked after an interminable silence.

"I hoped that you would forgive me," she whispered. "Or at least that you would understand. I always thought you were the sort of man who ..."

"What sort of man?" he asked, this time after the barest hint of a pause.

"It's my fault, really," she said, sounding tired and sad. "I've put you on a pedestal. You've been so nice all these years.

I suppose I thought you were incapable of anything else."

"What the h.e.l.l have I done that hasn't been nice?" he demanded. "I've protected you, I've offered for you, I've-"

"You haven't tried to see this from my point of view," she interrupted.

"Because you're acting like an idiot!" he nearly roared.

There was silence after that, the kind of silence that grates at ears, gnaws at souls.