Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,111

“But that’ll take months.”

“And who’s saying it won’t?” old Campbell said, with the barest trace of belligerence. “The Sassenach is here to see Scotland. Are you telling me he can say he’s done that if all he’s done is taken a straight line from here to Perthshire?”

I found myself smiling, and made my decision on the spot. I would follow his exact route, and when I returned to London, I would know in my heart that I knew Scotland.

Colin watched Penelope as she read. Every now and then she would smile, and his heart would leap, and then suddenly he realized that her smile had become permanent, and her lips were puckering as if she were suppressing a laugh.

Colin realized he was smiling, too.

He’d been so surprised by her reaction the first time she’d read his writing; her response had been so passionate, and yet she’d been so analytical and precise when she spoke to him about it. It all made sense now, of course. She was a writer, too, probably a better one than he, and of all the things she understood in this world, she understood words.

It was hard to believe it had taken him this long to ask for her advice. Fear, he supposed, had stopped him. Fear and worry and all those stupid emotions he’d pretended were beneath him.

Who would have guessed that one woman’s opinion would become so important to him? He’d worked on his journals for years, carefully recording his travels, trying to capture more than what he saw and did, trying to capture what he felt. And he’d never once showed them to anyone.

Until now.

There had been no one he’d wanted to show them to. No, that wasn’t true. Deep down, he’d wanted to show them to a number of people, but the time had never seemed right, or he thought they would lie and say something was good when it wasn’t, just to spare his feelings.

But Penelope was different. She was a writer. She was a damned good one, too. And if she said his journal entries were good, he could almost believe that it was true.

She pursed her lips slightly as she turned a page, then frowned as her fingers couldn’t find purchase. After licking her middle finger, she caught hold of the errant page and began to read again.

And smiled again.

Colin let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

Finally, she laid the book down in her lap, leaving it open to the section she’d been reading. Looking up, she said, “I assume you wanted me to stop at the end of the entry?”

It wasn’t quite what he’d expected her to say, and that befuddled him. “Er, if you want to,” he stammered. “If you want to read more, that would be fine, I guess.”

It was as if the sun had suddenly taken up residence in her smile. “Of course I want to read more,” she gushed. “I can’t wait to see what happened when you went to Kintyre and Mull and”—frowning, she checked the open book—“and Skye and Ullapool and Culloden and Grampian”—she glanced back down at the book again—“oh, yes, and Blair Castle, of course, if you ever made it. I assume you were planning to visit friends.”

He nodded. “Murray,” he said, referring to a school chum whose brother was the Duke of Atholl. “But I should tell you, I didn’t end up following the exact route prescribed by old Angus Campbell. For one thing, I didn’t even find roads connecting half the places he mentioned.”

“Maybe,” she said, her eyes growing dreamy, “that is where we ought to go for our honeymoon trip.”

“Scotland?” he asked, thoroughly surprised. “Don’t you want to travel someplace warm and exotic?”

“To one who has never traveled more than one hundred miles from London,” she said pertly, “Scotland is exotic.”

“I can assure you,” he said with a smile as he walked across the room and perched on the edge of the bed, “that Italy is more exotic. And more romantic.”

She blushed, which delighted him. “Oh,” she said, looking vaguely embarrassed. (He wondered how long he’d be able to embarrass her with talk of romance and love and all the splendid activities that went with them.)

“We’ll go to Scotland another time,” he assured her. “I usually find myself heading north every few years or so to visit Francesca, anyway.”

“I was surprised that you asked for my opinion,” Penelope said after a short silence.

“Who else would I ask?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, suddenly very interested