Chapter Text
Colin Bridgerton turns out to be worth the wait, in the end.
He kisses her in front of the bathroom mirror until her lips are tingly, swollen with the toothpaste and the pressure of his mouth. He kisses her and kisses her, hands grazing her throat and arms and thighs. Kisses her both hungrily and preciously, murmuring I love yous and you’re so beautifuls between their mouths. It is so sweet that Penelope feels like her brain is leaking out of her ears, her hands fisting into his rumpled, slept-in shirt to keep herself upright.
Penelope believed the anticipation of love was the same as the real thing; that the moment before was equal to the moment of – but Colin proves her wrong.
It ought to be impossible. Thirty plus years of expectation, of fantasy and reality battling out in her mind. Thirty years of first loving him childishly, alone (painful); then finding ways not to love him (equally painful but necessary); and now loving him again (painful but in a good way, like the sting of his teeth on the back of her neck when he’d fucked her that morning at the vineyard. A little painful but a lot sweet). Thirty years stacked up in the accounts – how could he possibly measure up? He is just a man, after all.
It is just like Colin Bridgerton to take thirty years of love and in a single morning in a French vegetable garden, match it.
He said rest of our lives. He said husband. Totally bonkers, of course, and she is still worried about him, about the tangle of his heart and head. He has work to do, she knows. But as he bends to kiss her in that little bathroom, all those pearlescent gossamer strands, the golden web that joined their bodies in the Doria Pamphilj, weaves tighter and tighter and she feels certain that nothing can tear it. How can you rip something that is made of light? Perhaps it has been there all along, and even when she tried to blanket it in darkness, to sever ties, it only reformed itself the moment she was in Colin’s light once more.
A romantic thought – a silly one – but Penelope wonders if it is okay to let the fantasy seep in just a little. She trusts herself enough not to let it take over. Trusts herself to see it for what it is, and enjoy it anyway.
It burns slowly. He is hungry but the kisses don’t go anywhere, as if he is kissing her just for the sake of it. He cups her cheeks and runs his hands along the tops of her thighs where the hem of her T-shirt falls but he doesn’t shove it up or let his hands crawl higher. Just kisses her for the sheer pleasure of it, like he is relearning her mouth. In the garden he said the rest of our lives and here in the bathroom, when he touches her like this, she believes him.
But the prolonged sweetness of his touch starts to tip over, the feral animal of Penelope’s desire prowling in her chest. It tips over the edge into something sharper, meaner, the need for more making her limbs throb and her nerve endings burn and her cunt clench almost painfully around nothing.
Sometimes Penelope wonders if she feels desire like other people – or, she should say, other women (is this how men feel?). She knows she cannot be alone in this rough, ragged feeling, both savage and skittering – like a spooked horse cut loose or maybe the beast chasing it, stalking and bounding. The snake raising its lazy, hungry head, fangs dripping. It used to scare her when she was younger because no-one ever spoke about it. She wondered if there was something wrong with her, something broken in how badly she needed Colin, how sharp the fangs of her desire were. Other girls seemed too dainty and fragile to contain such savagery (she knows now this is probably nonsense – they were just told not to talk about it). It felt like another way Penelope was too much for the fantasy in her head. Another part to be stifled, suffocated, pillow over the face.
It scared her then and it does a little now, too. How with just a few kisses she is mindless and useless, whining into his mouth. Because if her desire for him then was large it feels impossible to contain now, and she wonders how such wildness can sit alongside all the other ways she loves him, the sweeter ways. She wants to bite and run and scream. She wants to never stop kissing him. She wants to sit and listen to him tell all of his stories. She wants him to fuck her.
Eventually she can bear it no longer; she drags her lips away from his with a whine, bracing her hands upon the sink counter and pushing her hips back needily, wordlessly.
He moves behind her. His hands settle on her hips, warm and bracketing, like he holds the world between his hands. “Yeah?” he asks, responding to the silent question of her body. His eyes find hers in the mirror. As she meets all his lovely blue with hers, she knows he will accept all of it, all the strange and ugly ways she wants him, all the odd parts of her that don’t fit.
They do not fit the moulds but they do fit together, she thinks.
“Yeah,” she rasps, and he nods.
Then Colin curls himself behind her and presses close, bent practically in half so he can wrap around her fully. She feels totally held, as if he holds her entire being between the hands roaming carefully over her body.
His cock presses against her lower back, hardening and warm against her spine. She likes the weight of it – likes the weight of him, half-holding and half-trapping her against the sink. She whimpers as he noses through her hair, lips pressing to that sweet spot behind her ear. His eyes turn practically black in the mirror as he skims one hand under her T-shirt, palming over her belly until he can cup her tit. Lifts and squeezes, as though he is reacquainting himself with its precise weight and shape. Rubs his thumb over her nipple in rough circles. She feels insane watching his big hand moving under the faded cotton. Insaner still when he uses the other hand to curl lightly around her throat, thumb stroking back and forth over her pulse. She pushes back against him, hiccoughing in air, and he meets her roll with his own.
“Look,” he hushes in her ear. Goosebumps shiver on her neck where his breath hits her, his voice already wrecked and ragged. She had not even realised her eyes were closed. “Look how you’re mine. Do you see how beautiful you are, Pen?”
Her eyes flutter open and she sees it – he is massive and perfect curled around her, their bodies slotting together like puzzle pieces (they fit together).
And her lips form “I love you” at the sight of them, the words rushing forth helplessly. All of her feels helpless, lust rolling off her skin in dizzy waves. That makes him groan and his hips slam against her arse, pushing her thighs hard into the counter and his cock harder against her lower back. Under her shirt he tugs on her nipple in the way he has learned she likes, in the way that makes her suck in a shaky sob, and she thinks how it is funny after just one week of fucking he seems to know her body so well.
“I love you,” he rasps in her ear, and his hand leaves her throat so he can ruck up her T-shirt. He cups her cunt possessively as he keeps plucking at her nipple. He fondles her over the damp cotton of her knickers, massaging her mound with the heel of his palm like he wants to feel all of her at once. He whines in her ear whilst he palms her and she wonders then if the desire in her body might have its twin in his.
“Beautiful,” he breathes, teeth nipping at her earlobe. “Can’t believe I get to – God –” he uses the flat pads of all four of his fingers to rub over her cunt, pressing the wet fabric against her. It is sticky and clinging and rough on her sensitive clit; she wriggles at the intensity of sensation, gripping his forearm and whining. “Tell me what you need, baby, come on –”
She finds her words then. Or one, at least.
“Inside,” she begs, her nails clawing into his forearm.
She meant his cock. She meant for him to fuck her properly, stretch her aching cunt and fill her up like she so desperately needs – but she supposes she should have found more words, or better ones, because Colin lays a wet kiss on her cheek and presses on her lower back until she’s flat against the porcelain counter. With one hand firmly on her back he drags up her T-shirt and drags down her ruined knickers and without further ceremony, thrusts two fingers inside of her.
The wet squelch of his fingers in her dripping cunt is just about drowned out by the raw groan she lets out when he starts to fuck into her with them.
“Oh God,” he groans as he moves slowly in and out, his thick fingers pressing deep. “How are you always so wet? You make me fucking crazy, Pen.” And he sounds it, too. “Can’t believe you let me touch you like this. So hot and wet and –”
“Yours,” she gasps.
Penelope has never belonged to anyone before. She is her own keeper; has held her life in her hands for forty years with little help. How good it feels to set it in Colin’s hold – just for now. Just for a moment, let him take the weight of it, trust him not to spill. After all, she thinks, his hands are so much bigger, as he stuffs one of them inside of her throbbing cunt. She grips the edge of the counter, rests her cheek upon the cold tile, and lets go.
She loses a little time like that, all spread out on his fingers. She doesn’t come but hovers maddeningly on the edge, fluttering on the needle-tip of pleasure that isn’t quite an orgasm but isn’t not one, either. She thinks she might squirt; feels something drip down her inner thigh and hears Colin let out a noise that sounds genuinely distressed, as though she is causing him physical and bodily harm by drenching his hand. At some point – Penelope has no idea when – Colin drops to his knees on the bathroom floor and he has his hot cheek pressed to her arse, presumably so he can better watch how his fingers split and stretch her flushed pussy, so he can see them glisten with her cum. Every now and then he will press his tongue around his finger, soft licks that make her whole body quiver in those rippling not-orgasms.
“Colin,” she pants when even she can take no more, raising her head from the counter. “Enough – I can’t –” She catches sight of her reflection and she is an utter wreck – cheeks blotchy, lower lip red and swollen from how she’s been biting it. She has never seen herself like this and yet there is recognition, familiarity. Oh, it is you, she thinks, and she has a strange urge to kiss the mirror.
“Sorry,” he says guiltily, pausing his movements. She sees his head poke up behind her like some adorable fucked-out gopher and she would laugh if she didn’t need to come so badly. “I got a bit lost.”
“No, no,” she breathes. “I need to come.”
His eyes darken in the mirror. “Baby,” he croons and somehow she finds herself being dragged to her knees. Colin is flat on his back on the bathroom floor and he’s guiding her to sit on his open mouth.
She blinks down at him, hazy and uncertain. “We can – the bed is just there – you don’t have to –”
But his eyes are closed and his hands are large and firm on her hips, dragging her down. “Sit down, Featherington,” he grunts, and, as if he cannot wait another moment, he pulls her onto his face.
It is clumsy and messy and she has to hold onto the towel rack for dear life as he eats her sweetly, purposefully, digs his fingers into her hips so she can drag herself back and forth over his tongue. At a certain point his mouth becomes somewhat irrelevant as she literally just rubs herself all over his stupidly handsome face, and she would worry about suffocating him (perhaps drowning is more accurate) if there were not so many signs of life. Moans and whimpers and his hands biting into flesh, bruising. Desperate licks as though he wants any taste of her he can steal. She comes hard with her hands flat on the tiles above his head, humping herself against his face like when she was a teenager and used to stuff a pillow between her thighs to get off – except Colin feels much, much better than any pillow she ever fucked.
She slides off him and for a moment they both just lie there breathing hard. Colin props himself up on his arms. He looks completely debauched — lips swollen and cheeks red and eyes glassy, his entire face practically shining with her slick. It takes every inch of her self-control not to launch herself at him and press her tongue to his mouth and cheeks, clean up the mess she made of him.
His tongue darts out to slide over his lower lip in a way that makes her belly feel molten. “That was so fucking hot. You’re so hot,” he groans, voice thick.
She watches him swallow and there is something in the downward turn of his mouth and the shade of his eyes, something that tugs on her belly. “Pen, is this real?” he croaks, his brow furrowed.
“Colin,” she gasps, and decides there is not a single good reason for her not to fling herself at him, actually. He makes a hmph noise as she hurls herself at his chest, pushing him back onto his elbows, and begins to kiss all over his pretty, pussy-wet face, and she thinks, actually, that the other Penelopes couldn’t even have conceived of anything precisely this perfect, this romantic. Half-crushing the lungs of her forty-five year old boyfriend (boyfriend! Absurd. They will have to workshop a better term) whilst she kisses her own cum off his three-day stubble. This is much, much better than any fantasy her younger selves might have concocted.
“Yes, it’s real,” she murmurs, nuzzling against his cheek. It feels strange to be reassuring him when she can’t quite believe it herself.
“Good,” he says firmly, and sits up so he can wrap his arms around her properly. “Because I’m not letting go of you now.” He murmurs it into her hair and she turns to kiss his cheek again, pressing little kisses to the shell of his ear which make him shiver.
Then he says, musingly: “Never done that before.”
Penelope blinks up at him, hazy. “Really?”
He shrugs, his cheeks turning a bit pinker. “Rina wasn’t into it. Always wanted to, though.”
Penelope tries to hide her fond smile. “Did you like it?”
He nods vehemently and she cannot help the smile then. “So much. I liked how thick and soft your thighs felt around my head. And I liked the weight of you – how surrounded I felt. I’ve seen videos and stuff but I didn’t think it would be so –” He cuts off, wrinkling up his nose in apparent embarrassment. “Sorry.”
Penelope snickers. “Forty-five-year-old man watches porn. Breaking news.”
He scowls at her but there is rueful amusement there. “God, you little –” And he buries his face into her neck, biting and kissing so she wriggles and squeals.
They stay like that for a while, cuddling on the bathroom floor, until Colin’s erection gets too urgent and he suggests they go to the bedroom. They help each other up, both of them groaning slightly, and shed their clothes as they make their way towards the bed. Penelope gets herself settled on the edge of her bed on her knees, arse in the air with a pillow under her belly and her face on her hands. She likes this position best – he feels deepest and she can touch her clit whilst he fucks her.
He moans when he sees her bent, his hands stroking over her cheeks in soft worship whilst he murmurs over and over how beautiful she is, how perfect. There is something so sweet about how he says it – not as if he thinks she needs to hear it but because he cannot stop his mouth making the words. Like he cannot quite believe he has her like this, spread and eager.
Hands turn hard, groping. Kneading and palming over her as he steps between her thighs. He leans against her and away again, letting her feel his hard, urgent cock against her pussy for just a moment before he pulls back. As he grinds against her she moans into her palms, pushing her hips back needily as though she might get him inside of her that way.
“Feel how hard you’ve made me,” he groans, sliding himself over her wet, throbbing cunt. “You’re so beautiful.”
It slips out before she can stop herself. “I know,” she breathes.
Somehow that makes him moan louder and he presses himself inside of her all at once. She stuffs the white cotton bedsheet into her mouth to stifle the noise that burns from her throat at the sudden stretch (her room is a good distance from the rest of the house but it is not that far). It is odd how already he feels familiar to her, the particular drag of his cock almost comforting in its Colin-ness. Same with how he holds her hips, grabbing at her and pulling her back on to him, holding her apart so he can watch her body swallow his cock. Greedy and awed all at once; thinking about her pleasure but equally lost in his own. She slips one hand between her thighs as he rocks into her, her face smearing against both her knuckles and the bedsheets with each thrust, mouth against cotton.
But just as she is starting to feel the stirrings of her second orgasm, stroking pleasure softly into her clit, Colin stops with a hiss and sort of collapses over her, one knee on the bed and his chest flush against her back.
“Fuck,” he curses – but it is not the achy groany fucks she has drunk down thirstily. He sounds as if he is actually in pain. She reaches her arm behind her blindly to stroke his face.
“You okay?”
“No,” he says miserably. “Everything hurts. That fucking wooden chair –” He turns his cheek and groans into her searching palm. “Fuck, baby. I don’t think I can –”
“It’s okay,” she says, because it is (she often has sex with women; penetration isn’t everything). Twists underneath him; heaves and drags until they are lying on their sides (on Penelope’s good hip, of course), face-to-face on the bed. She hitches her thigh over his waist and arches her back so her tits are in his face; he latches on and starts sucking as he strokes his cock.
“Better?” she asks and Colin does not speak, his lashes fluttering against his cheek as his teeth worry her nipple. He lets out a huffed moan, hot breath against her tit and she gasps as he bites down just a little, enough to make her press her fingers back to her clit.
“That-that feels so good,” she shivers and Colin murmurs into her skin, his hand moving faster against his cock. She feels so close to him like this – somehow closer than when he was inside her, something deeply intimate about being tangled and hot and rubbing desperate pleasure into themselves as best as their fucked-up, middle-aged bodies will let them. And as she rubs her clit she lets herself imagine how the rest of their lives will be: when they know each other’s bodies so well they can touch lazily, comfortably; or desperately, hungrily; where they can take their time picking each other apart or hurry to the finish like they are now. How well she already knows him; how much better she will know him one day. She supposes there are whole worlds inside of him yet to discover and she yearns for them, a pitching drag in her belly that makes her hips buck against her hand.
Like this – she did not know, precisely, that sucking her tits would get him so mindless and whimpering, his cheeks (so nicely tanned from the Italian sun) reddening prettily with the pleasure. He fucks his fist and chews on her nipple, sending a bright singing pain through her that makes her whimper too. Her whole body feel slick and shivery – she rubs herself harder, harder – Colin, I’m going to come – his guttural, ragged whine in response, something hot and wet splashing over her hand and belly, practically half her tit sucked into his needy mouth as he spills over her. Pleasure shocks through her and she comes, moaning into his curls and grinding hard on her own fingers.
Afterwards they cuddle on the bed, Colin’s cum drying stickily on Penelope’s belly. Colin offers to go get her a damp cloth and she says no, she wants to keep it a little while longer and his eyes go really big and round at that, his cheeks turning pink.
Penelope wonders aloud if Sophie and Ben and the kids might be wondering where they are and Colin says he doesn’t give a shit. Then he digs his phone out of the pocket of his shorts and makes her look through every photo he has taken of her during the trip, sitting up against the headboard with her between his legs, her back flush to his front.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her ear.
“Yeah. I see why you love me.”
She feels him laugh behind her. He is so large and warm that she wants to lean back and back and back until she melts into his chest entirely. “Impossible not to, really.”
“I knew you couldn’t do casual sex. You’re too romantic,” she says, lips pursed around a smile.
“Well. You’re right about a lot of stuff,” he allows easily, zooming in on a picture of the back of her head he took at the Doria Pamphilj.
“I didn’t even know you took that one. Stalker.”
“Well, yes.”
She snuggles into him, enjoying the stickiness of their sex-soaked bodies. He smells unbelievably good to her – like her cum and his, like sweat and musk and his fancy shampoo. “I suppose I couldn’t really do casual either. Not with you, anyway.” Something occurs to her — she tries to lean forward on the bed to grab her laptop but he grips her tightly around the waist so she can’t move.
“Colin.”
“Nope. I told you – I’m not letting go.”
“I want to show you something I wrote.”
He hums. “Fine,” he grumbles, and lets her reach forward to grab her MacBook. Then she settles back in his arms with the laptop propped on her knees. The doc she has been working on is still open — she only managed a couple of pages last night but it’s enough to show him.
He goes quiet as he reads, his cheek pressed against her temple. She hears his breathing catch; feels something wet on her face — he is crying.
“It’s us,” he chokes. He’s right. It’s them. Them at eight and thirteen, when Colin had scooped Penelope up and brought her into that warm kitchen full of kindness. When she first knew with certainty that she loved him and none other. It is the book she has been too afraid to start; started.
“This is so good, Pen,” he says thickly. “Some of the best you’ve written.”
She pauses, lets his words seep into her skin. “I think that’s because of you.”
“God,” he says fiercely. “I have to kiss you. We can talk more after but I need to kiss you first.” His large hand cradles her jaw, tilts her face back and up so he can twist and kiss her. It’s not the best angle and his lips are wet with his own tears but she really likes it anyway.
Then he pulls away and she settles back down into him. His arms wrap around her, fingers ghosting over hers where she has them rested on the laptop keys. He traces soft, swirling patterns with his fingertips, his chin on her shoulder as he re-reads what she wrote.
“You know I think about that day all the time,” he says softly. “I found the notebook when I was clearing out the shed. I’ll show it to you when we get home.”
She winces. “God. It doesn’t say Mrs Colin Bridgerton anywhere on it, does it?”
“I don’t think so. I would have noticed, probably.”
She twists and presses a kiss into his arm. “Good.”
He goes quiet then, and she can hear him thinking. “What if - what if I’d realised then? Or not then but – sooner. Before… what if we were meant to be —” he stutters over the words, his body stiffening behind hers and she hears it in his voice, hears the thousands of what ifs, the other choices and other paths crowding him, suffocating.
No. A dark road she does not want to go down. She knows where it leads – she lived there for a really long time.
“We weren’t ready yet,” she says, simply and firmly, leaning her head against his shoulder as if she might provide some ballast; might stop him drifting into the maddening chaos of the many lives they might have led. If things had been different. If he had seen her sooner. If she had said something. “Now we are.”
He takes a shuddery breath, and his body relaxes back against the headboard. “Yeah. Yes.” He kisses her head. “Now we are,” he repeats, softly, like a mantra. “Now we are.”
Penelope does not know how long they stay like that. They don’t talk, even though she knows they have a lot to talk about. Years to sift through, rocks to turn over. Bones to shake up in their cupped hands and toss down, see if they can see their future in how they land. But they’ll have forever for that, she thinks. Nothing but time. The thought settles over her like a blanket, warm and peaceful.
Eventually her fingers begin to drift over the keys, words slipping out of her slowly, haltingly. Colin slides his hands to her waist and hips and belly, rubbing soft, soothing circles into her skin as she writes. She writes and he holds her and she considers the fact that she did not know it was actually possible to be this happy. Did not realise life had these sorts of moments yet to offer her, fat and shiny and warm as pearls in her palm. Maybe, she thinks, she didn’t have things quite as figured out as she had realised.
For possibly the first time in her life, Penelope is happy to be wrong.
They are interrupted by the sound of tires on the gravel. Colin leans forward to squint at the time in the corner of her laptop screen and then hisses: “Shit.” He scrambles, trying to untangle his limbs from Penelope’s like some panicked sweaty octopus; almost trips over as he gets out of the bed.
“They’re here,” he explains, both excited and nervous. Penelope blinks at him for a moment and realises – oh – the twins have arrived, along with Daphne and Simon and Kate and Anthony and all of their various children, not to mention Violet (the Elder), who all got the same flight out of London early this morning (she feels a pang of sympathy for the rest of the airline passengers).
“World’s fastest shower?” she suggests as Colin walks back and forth, naked and frantic, trying to gather up his clothes. He bends to pick up his shorts and she yelps, covering her eyes at the startling view of his arsehole.
“Fuck – God – sorry –” he stutters, crimson, whilst Penelope laughs hysterically for five minutes, belly aching, until he tells her they are wasting time and drags her into the shower with him. It is hard not to get distracted – Colin soaping the cum off her belly and her gently scrubbing where she’d rubbed her pussy all over his face – but they manage it in record time. Penelope tugs her hair into something resembling a bun and pulls on her black and white gingham dress whilst Colin puts on yesterday’s clothes with a grimace. Later, he tells her, dropping a quick kiss to her forehead as they slip on their shoes, he will find some time to move his stuff into her room.
As they march across the gravel towards the parked cars, Penelope feels a flutter of uncertainty, her belly twisting as they approach the chaos of the arrival. She hangs back a little, watching them all laugh and greet and yell across the driveway, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. Daphne is kissing Sophie whilst Simon drags many pale-pink Samsonite suitcases out of the boot of their hire car, one of the girl’s Coach bags over his shoulder. Anthony fusses over Amelia, Belinda and Caroline (he has two sons and always dotes ridiculously upon his nieces, just as he always has Hyacinth) whilst Kate helps Violet out of the back of the third car. The third car; which Amanda and Oliver are emerging from, stretching and shaking off the drive.
Penelope freezes, the amorphous uncertainty wobbling in her chest like a jellyfish. She knows Colin told Amanda about her – about them – and she supposes Amanda was fine with it, but they haven’t had time to discuss how they are going to proceed and her body shimmers and wavers in doubt, fighting the overwhelming desire to run back to her room.
Except Colin realises she is not at his side; turns back and grabs her hand; tugs her forward and slings an arm over her shoulder in a way that is intimate and proprietary and declaratory all at once. She is his, and he is hers. He is not hiding it. She feels the eyes of the rest of the family on them but in an uncharacteristic display of restraint, they give Colin and Penelope some space as they approach the twins.
Colin only lets Penelope go when Amanda and Oliver are standing in front of them, tall and lovely and grinning, and Colin is so busy kissing Oliver’s cheeks and hugging him that it takes him a moment to clock that Amanda has shaved her head. She is the spit of Marina, but she has Colin’s smile and his height and his ears (which are now very visible with her shorn buzz-cut). Colin blinks at her with something like dismay on his face, his arms still around Oliver.
“You shaved your –” he mumbles, his mouth gaping like a baffled goldfish. Amanda frowns, defensive, and there is a sticky moment where none of them speak. Penelope feels something about to tip over into a fight, into disappointment and danger —
“It looks gorgeous,” she says quickly and decisively. “You’ve got the face for it. I love it.”
Amanda smiles at her, both satisfied and grateful. “Thank you, Penelope” – and she bends to hug her. She smells like natural deodorant and Lush products and the hug is properly warm, appreciative in a way that makes Penelope’s throat feel a bit thick (it has been a big morning).
Colin falters, looking between Penelope and Amanda, then his expression reforms and settles into a smile. He nods and pulls Amanda into a hug and the bad moment dissolves as he kisses her cheeks and presses her close.
“Gorgeous. Yes. Yes.” He runs his hand back and forth over the fuzz. “You didn’t want to tell me on the phone?” he asks faintly, as Penelope gives Oliver a hug.
Penelope expects Amanda to shove Colin away but she allows herself to be petted. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” she says; Colin tips his head back and gives a barking sort of laugh.
“Mission accomplished. What did Grandma say?” he asks.
“She kept saying how unique it was,” Oliver chips in ruefully. “Said we look even more like twins now.” Amanda wrinkles up her nose to express the dubious pleasure of this compliment.
“She’ll come around,” Colin says firmly. He keeps an arm slung around Amanda, then grabs Oliver and does the same to him, pinning them to his sides. He looks deliriously happy in a way that makes Penelope’s heart sing. He really is such a good dad, she thinks. “It went really well with Pen, by the way,” he says to Amanda conspiratorially, as if Penelope is not standing right there. “I think she’s agreed to be my girlfriend.” And then he winks at Penelope.
Amanda and Penelope both roll their eyes at the same time, while Oliver squeezes him back. “I’m really pleased for you, Dad,” he says earnestly.
“You’re so embarrassing,” Amanda says. “There’s still time to change your mind, Penelope.” Penelope laughs (because of course there is not time – they are about thirty years too late for that).
Colin ignores Amanda. “Me too, sweetheart,” he addresses Oliver, and then he takes a big breath, looking between the twins. “We’re going to say hi to your horde of cousins and aunties and uncles and then I’m taking you two on a walk, okay? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
And the three of them set off to where the rest of the family is standing around making no effort not to gawp at them. Penelope walks slightly separately until Amanda hooks her arm under hers and scoops her up with them. This pleases Penelope so much that she can’t really speak as she greets the rest of the family. Her eyes water when Violet hugs her — because as she closes her eyes and cuddles her back, the woman’s familiar lilac scent filling her nose and mouth, Penelope is at once a child again. She might be at Aubrey Hall, arriving for her summer holidays and for nights put to bed before the sun has gone down, her and Eloise moaning that it is not right that they should be in bed whilst it is still light out (even though it is past their usual bedtimes, the long June days meddling with their childhood senses of justice). She hugs Violet and her childhood surrounds her all at once, soft and light and perfect.
Penelope is a child and she is also an adult, because here is Colin doing his sheepdog impression, circling her and touching her and making sure that everyone sees they are together, stroking her waist and hair and even kissing her temple whilst she says hello to Daphne (who gives them both a very wide-eyed look and then cannot contain a small squeal of delight). She is a child and she is an adult and here is the man she loves, just as much now as she did then, his fingers winding into hers.
And then it is a chaos of kisses and catching up and voices layered over each other, Sophie and Ben emerging with lemonade and champagne and adult children being prodded into helping, and they all drift to the patio, extra chairs and tables ferried outside by the nephews and Amanda. It would be overwhelming if Penelope did not love it so, if she had not grown up with this unfolding, comforting pandemonium swirling around her.
“Hyacinth’s second trimester is going well –”
“She’s annoyed at Lucy for stealing her thunder, though. She says they have enough kids already and should have waited until after her first was born.”
“Hyacinth.”
“Mum, she’s not here to hear you scold her, you know.”
“So Uncle Colin and Penelope are –?”
“Aunt Penelope, now.”
“I love the new do, Mandy – very cool.” (Only Anthony can get away with calling her Mandy – he is Amanda’s favourite uncle).
“Maman, I wish to shave my head comme ma cousine.”
“Ah – perhaps after the wedding, we shall discuss, chou-chou.”
And then Hyacinth and Gareth and Greg and Lucy arrive with the toddlers and there is more chaos, cooing over swollen bellies and chasing after baby Richard and Hermione. Greg brandishes a bottle of suncream and their hats whilst the children evade his grasp and run about in the sun. Hyacinth does indeed keep shooting Lucy irked looks and when Penelope asks her how pregnancy is going, she scowls and says “I fucking hate it. Don’t know how Mum did it so many times. Psychotic, frankly.” Violet tuts and pats her daughter’s arm, unoffended. Then everyone sits around wondering aloud where Fran and Michaela have gotten to until Benedict says: “They probably stopped for a shag” and everyone yells at him. The two women arrive about an hour later in a very swish cherry-red convertible car that Alex and Miles and Anthony spend a long time admiring while Michaela leans on the hood, grinning smugly. “Renting that thing was the worst idea she’s ever had,” Fran says, rolling her eyes affectionately at her wife as she kisses Colin’s cheeks. “It hardly fits our bags.”
As each new Bridgerton arrives, Penelope feels as though the cup of joy in her heart fills up a little bit more. There are so many types of love, she thinks, and she lets them pour into her chest like the sun warms her skin: Gareth letting Hyacinth rest her sore feet in his lap; Kate making sure Violet is properly in the shade; Amelia looking for a hair tie and Simon handing her the one perennially on his wrist (he is, Penelope thinks, the platonic ideal of a Girl Dad). And Colin – Colin bringing Penelope a lemonade and Colin in a huddle with Anthony, Greg and Fran, his eyes sliding to Penelope with the world’s dopiest grin on his face as his siblings grill him on what happened the past two weeks. Colin wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her head. Colin bending to whisper I love you when everyone’s attention is on Richie and the worm he is determined to eat (Oliver manages to pull it out of his grasp just in time). Colin, the boy for whom Penelope invented the word love; Colin, who seems to hold within him every type of love she has encountered and so many more she has not (yet).
Finally Eloise and Phil arrive – they drove all the way from London because Phil hates flying and it’s marginally better for the environment. Phil is clutching a cactus in their hand as they get out of the car (“like Bella Swan,” Amanda says – only Hyacinth laughs) and they have to put a protective hand around the little plant as they are swarmed in hugs and kisses. Eloise pushes her family off and goes straight to Penelope. She pulls her into a tight hug and they stay that way for a long while, Colin hovering nearby anxiously. “I don’t think Pen can breathe,” he mutters, but Eloise ignores him.
“I’ve got so much to tell you,” Penelope muffles into Eloise’s neck. She wants to cry again, in a good way.
“Yeah, babe, no shit,” Eloise laughs.
Sophie takes charge then – tells Colin to take the twins on their walk whilst the rest of them find their rooms (or the bell tents in the back field for the nieces and nephews) and have a little quiet time. Eloise and Penelope, she announces, will help her pick some things from the vegetable garden for dinner tonight. Vi (the Younger) insists on joining them too, despite her mother’s not so subtle suggestion that she might prefer to escape the heat and take a nap.
“Non, non,” Vi says, shaking her dark head. “I wish to hear how Uncle Colin fixed things.”
“Me too,” Eloise agrees, taking the woven basket from Sophie.
It feels like a dream, Penelope thinks, adjusting the very ugly gardening hat Sophie insisted both she and Eloise wear. The basket is full of giant tomatoes and long red peppers and a handful of courgettes and their flowers (for stuffing, Sophie explains). The day has grown violently bright, the air shimmering with heat, and the women move slowly, deliberately, so as not to exhaust themselves.
“It feels like a dream,” she says aloud. Eloise straightens, a cucumber in her hand.
“What does? All of this or…Colin?”
Penelope shrugs. She told Eloise all about the trip, leaving certain details out, of course (given her audience was made up of Colin’s sister and seventeen-year-old niece). “Both. Last time we were here you were shouting at me about forced marriages,” she reminds her, grinning. “Now look at us.”
“I’m married and you’re…” Eloise does not finish, a question in her eyes. Penelope smiles, her cheeks turning red. What is she? In love, she supposes.
“Will you and Uncle Colin get married?” Vi asks, popping up from behind the runner beans.
“Bloody hell, Vi,” Eloise says, clutching her chest. “You scared me.”
“I don’t know if we’ll get married,” Penelope says, but she’s grinning, which is so stupid. She remembers how he said husband this morning – in fact she can see the spot where he said it.
Eloise pulls a face. “Can one of us please remain strong? Does everyone in this family have to marry?” She throws a despairing look at Sophie.
Sophie laughs. “Sorry, ma petite.”
“Is it weird that it’s your brother?” Penelope says, crouching and twisting a pepper off the vine.
Eloise pauses, sniffing one of the tomatoes she has just picked. “Yes and no. Mostly I’m happy for you.” Penelope swallows down the urge to throw herself into Eloise’s arm. Eloise turns to Vi with a wicked look in her eye. “Did you know Auntie Pen was in love with Colin when she was a kid? She’s had a crush on him since before she was your age.”
Penelope wrinkles her nose up. “Not the whole time,” she mutters.
Vi’s eyes widen. “That’s so romantic.” She tips her head to the side, considering. “And a little sad.”
Penelope nods. “Yeah. I suppose it is.”
Two hours later Penelope wakes up from her nap to Colin crawling into her bed with her, fitting his sun-warm body around hers. She raises her head blearily, her hand sliding over his tanned forearm.
“I fell asleep,” she murmurs, still thick with her nap.
He buries his face into the back of her neck and tugs her body close to his. “You did. Were you writing?” he guesses, from the laptop she’s curled around. He smells amazing — like sun and suncream and sweat.
“Mhm.” She twists in his hold so she can examine his face, blinking the sleep from her eyes. “How did it go?”
“Good, I think.” His forehead is a little pink from the sun and his eyes are slightly puffy, red-rimmed. He’s been crying, she realises. “They’re such fucking good kids, Pen —“ his voice chokes and he buries his head into her hair, his arm winding more tightly around her waist.
Penelope hums and rearranges them so he can rest his head on her chest, her hands threading through his curls. “They’ve got a really good dad.”
He inhales shakily, pressing a kiss to the neckline of her sundress. “I spoke to Rina.”
“Oh.”
“It went okay.”
“Yeah?”
She feels him swallow against her. “She said she wasn’t…. surprised, exactly.”
“Hm.” That makes Penelope feel strange, hot and sort of embarrassed. Had Marina guessed Penelope’s feelings?
“She said she wasn’t exactly happy for me but — but she wanted to be. That she could imagine being happy for me.”
Penelope holds Colin closer to her, feels his heartbeat settle in time with hers. “That’s — well. Generous of her.”
Colin nods, his fingers fiddling with the smocking on the waist of her dress. “I thought so too. Was El okay?”
Penelope nods. “She was. You should probably talk to her too.” Colin hums against her breast, his mouth finding the skin of her chest. “Baby Vi did kind of insinuate I was a loser for being in love with you for so long.” It sticks on her tongue a little still – love. It feels utterly extravagant that she gets to say it to him.
“Teenage girls can be very cruel,” he croons sympathetically. “Accurate, but —”
She hits his shoulder lightly but he just snickers and presses more kisses over her chest, his fingers sliding up to cup her. She settles back with a sigh and enjoys the sensation of his mouth and hands; enjoys it even more when he says “Can I?” and tugs her dress down.
He seems content to kiss her, rubbing his lips over and around her nipple. Soft, careful presses to her sleep-hot flesh, not going any further until Penelope gets too squirmy and drags his hand away from her tit, rucks up her dress and presses his fingers where she needs them. Even that feels slow, unhurried, fingering her lazily while he sucks on her nipple. She lets herself melt into the crisp cotton sheets, sunlight pouring in bars through the blue shutters, while Colin takes his time dismantling her. Eventually he crawls between her thighs, pushing up her dress further.
“Will we be late for dinner?” she asks, as he starts to kiss up all the wetness he’s left on her thighs from how he’s been touching her.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” he murmurs, holding her open so he can lick at the same careful pace. One hand holds her cunt apart whilst the other finds her hips, tracing his fingers over the bruises he left there last week.
She drifts as he methodically eats her out, dreamily fading in and out as he licks in slow swirls. Eventually she comes but even that feels slow, tendrils of pleasure threading through her veins, fingers and toes tingling as it drips through her. He doesn’t stop afterwards, licking around her clit so the pleasure doesn’t turn sharp. She is not quite certain she’s fully awake after that — she can’t be, because she wakes up and he’s still licking, pretty blue eyes creasing at the edges as he smiles around her cunt.
This feels like a dream.
“There she is,” he murmurs softly. She stretches, her body shuddering. “You want another, baby?”
Penelope considers the delicious sweetness in her bloodstream, the delicate way she feels, and she shakes her head. “I feel too perfect.”
Colin presses a kiss to her pubic hair, nuzzling for a second. “Okay, beautiful.” He shuffles his way up her body and she drags him in for a kiss, wondering if she might get addicted to the way she tastes on his mouth. “I really like doing that,” he hums, and settles back around her.
Penelope makes a little noise, a strangled sort of whimper — and then she starts laughing — because perhaps she is still dreaming — she must be — the man she has loved on and off for thirty years is in her bed telling her how much he likes eating her pussy — it cannot be real —
She laughs and laughs until her belly aches, until tears are streaming down her face and actually she is just crying — sobbing really — and Colin holds her to his chest and croons softly and kisses her cheeks like he did in Procida outside his hotel room door. He holds her and she cries it out into the soft cotton of his shirt. Cries for herself and for him, for the romance and sadness of it (teenage Vi is very observant, actually). Cries with happiness, too.
Eventually she is done. “Sorry,” she sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“It’s okay,” he says softly, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I did the same on my walk with the kids.” He squeezes her tight to his chest. “Oh — I need the lemon in your suitcase.”
Penelope lifts her head to look at him. “Why?”
He gives a large sigh and adopts the expression Penelope has seen Violet make from time to time when she is being extra patient with her children. “I am going to make everyone the lemon salad,” he pronounces, like some benevolent god handing down a miracle.
Penelope gasps. “You’re going to share your lemons?”
He nods sagely, piously. “I am feeling very generous for some reason. Even though they don’t deserve it.”
Penelope cranes up to give him a kiss. “You are a very good man, Mr Bridgerton,” she says. “I love you.”
Love — and the word on her tongue feels sweet as Midori and frascati and Aperol — sharp as the lemons of Procida and comforting as farinata or the pasta al forno in Matera (she tastes it now, rich and warm and savoury). Tastes like lilacs and lavender and grapes on the vine. Tastes like him.
Colin makes the lemon salad and produces a bottle of chinotto from his bag (Penelope had no idea he had even stashed it) so they can try it with the red wine (Sophie rolls her eyes and scoffs loudly at such a contamination but after she tries it she reluctantly agrees it’s rather nice). They drag tables into the garden and cram around them in beautiful chaos. Penelope sits beside Michaela; Miles sits on her other side until Colin glares at him and he moves.
Sophie describes her wedding dress to Daphne and Amelia, and Violet holds baby Hermione on her knee and Fran punches Benedict on the arm for something disgusting he must have said. Vi and Caroline listen, enrapt, as Amanda tells them all about her life in Brighton (as the oldest of the grandchildren Amanda is the object of much admiration and worship), while Phil sits in serious conversation with Will about farming. Eloise and Hyacinth are arguing with Anthony about something whilst Kate tries to pacify (except she is laughing too much to do a very good job). Penelope’s chest pangs and she grabs her phone to text her mum and her sisters that she misses them, which is true (because this is her family but she has another, too — she is, she thinks, astoundingly lucky to have so many types of love in her life).
And as they sit and eat the lemon salad and Sophie’s risotto, Colin’s thighs lined with hers on the wooden bench they are squashed on (leaning against her so insistently that Michaela has to elbow her politely to stop Penelope from crowding her), Penelope wonders how more is possible.
Because today is the day before the wedding — tonight they are suspended in the moment before happiness, their feet dancing in the air, waiting for the definite joy of tomorrow — and yet it is both the moment before and the moment of all at once, and she supposes this is how her days with Colin will be from now on: happiness and the anticipation of happiness all at once, each day to be savoured as it is given to them and yet always, always, excitement for the hours still to come.
🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅