Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,132

frantically.

Colin tossed his hat on a chair with a clever little twist of his wrist, one corner of his mouth lifting in a satisfied smile as it spun through the air on a perfect horizontal axis. “Not yet,” he replied.

So she hadn’t eloped. But she had run away. And she’d done it in secret. Eloise, who was Penelope’s closest friend. Eloise, who told Penelope everything. Eloise, who apparently didn’t tell Penelope everything, had run off to the home of a man none of them knew, leaving a note assuring her family that all would be well and not to worry.

Not to worry????

Good heavens, one would think Eloise Bridgerton knew her family better than that. They had been frantic, every last one of them. Penelope had stayed with her new mother-in-law while the men were searching for Eloise. Violet Bridgerton had put up a good front, but her skin was positively ashen, and Penelope could not help but notice the way her hands shook with every movement.

And now Colin was back, acting as if nothing was amiss, answering none of her questions to her satisfaction, and beyond all that—

“How could you not have told her?” she said again, dogging his heels.

He sprawled into a chair and shrugged. “There really wasn’t an appropriate time.”

“You were gone five days!”

“Yes, well, not all of them were with Eloise. A day’s travel on either end, after all.”

“But—but—”

Colin summoned just enough energy to glance about the room. “Don’t suppose you ordered tea?”

“Yes, of course,” Penelope said reflexively, since it had not taken more than a week of marriage to learn that when it came to her new husband, it was best to always have food at the ready. “But Colin—”

“I did hurry back, you know.”

“I can see that,” she said, taking in his dampened, windblown hair. “Did you ride?”

He nodded.

“From Gloucestershire?”

“Wiltshire, actually. We retired to Benedict’s.”

“But—”

He smiled disarmingly. “I missed you.”

And Penelope was not so accustomed to his affection that she did not blush. “I missed you, too, but—”

“Come sit with me.”

Where? Penelope almost demanded. Because the only flat surface was his lap.

His smile, which had been charm personified, grew more heated. “I’m missing you right now,” he murmured.

Much to her extreme embarrassment, her gaze moved instantly to the front of his breeches. Colin let out a bark of laughter, and Penelope crossed her arms. “Don’t, Colin,” she warned.

“Don’t what?” he asked, all innocence.

“Even if we weren’t in the sitting room, and even if the draperies weren’t open—”

“An easily remedied nuisance,” he commented with a glance to the windows.

“And even,” she ground out, her voice growing in depth, if not quite in volume, “were we not expecting a maid to enter at any moment, the poor thing staggering under the weight of your tea tray, the fact of the matter is—”

Colin let out a sigh.

“—you have not answered my question!”

He blinked. “I’ve quite forgotten what it was.”

A full ten seconds elapsed before she spoke. And then: “I’m going to kill you.”

“Of that, I’m certain,” he said offhandedly. “Truly, the only question is when.”

“Colin!”

“Might be sooner rather than later,” he murmured. “But in truth, I thought I’d go in an apoplexy, brought on by bad behavior.”

She stared at him.

“Your bad behavior,” he clarified.

“I didn’t have bad behavior before I met you,” she retorted.

“Oh, ho, ho,” he chortled. “Now that is rich.”

And Penelope was forced to shut her mouth. Because, blast it all, he was right. And that was what all of this was about, as it happened. Her husband, after entering the hall, shrugging off his coat, and kissing her rather soundly on the lips (in front of the butler!), had blithely informed her, “Oh, and by the by, I never did tell her you were Whistledown.”

And if there was anything that might count as bad behavior, it had to be ten years as the author of the now infamous Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers. Over the past decade, Penelope had, in her pseudonymous guise, managed to insult just about everyone in society, even herself. (Surely, the ton would have grown suspicious if she had never poked fun at herself, and besides, she really did look like an overripe citrus fruit in the dreadful yellows and oranges her mother had always forced her to wear.)

Penelope had “retired” just before her marriage, but a blackmail attempt had convinced Colin that the best course of action was to reveal her secret in a grand gesture, and so he had announced her identity at his sister Daphne’s ball. It had all