Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,28

Cyprus instead of Greece. She had no idea that he kept a journal.

She lifted a foot to take a step back, but her body didn’t budge. She shouldn’t read this, she told herself. This was Colin’s private journal. She really ought to move away.

“Away,” she muttered, looking down at her recalcitrant feet. “Away.”

Her feet didn’t move.

But maybe she wasn’t quite so in the wrong. After all, was she really invading his privacy if she read only what she could see without turning a page? He had left it lying open on the table, for all the world to see.

But then again, Colin had every reason to think that no one would stumble across his journal if he dashed out for a few moments. Presumably, he was aware that his mother and sisters had departed for the morning. Most guests were shown to the formal drawing room on the ground floor; as far as Penelope knew, she and Felicity were the only non-Bridgertons who were taken straight up to the informal drawing room. And since Colin wasn’t expecting her (or, more likely, hadn’t thought of her one way or another), he wouldn’t have thought there was any danger in leaving his journal behind while he ran an errand.

On the other hand, he had left it lying open.

Open, for heaven’s sake! If there were any valuable secrets in that journal, surely Colin would have taken greater care to secret it when he left the room. He wasn’t stupid, after all.

Penelope leaned forward.

Oh, bother. She couldn’t read the writing from that distance. The heading had been legible since it was surrounded by so much white space, but the rest was a bit too close together to make out from far away.

Somehow she’d thought she wouldn’t feel so guilty if she didn’t have to step any closer to the book to read it. Never mind, of course, that she’d already crossed the room to get to where she was at that moment.

She tapped her finger against the side of her jaw, right near her ear. That was a good point. She had crossed the room some time ago, which surely meant that she’d already committed the biggest sin she was likely to that day. One little step was nothing compared to the length of the room.

She inched forward, decided that only counted as half a step, then inched forward again and looked down, beginning her reading right in the middle of a sentence.

in England. Here the sand ripples between tan and white, and the consistency is so fine that it slides over a bare foot like a whisper of silk. The water is a blue unimaginable in England, aquamarine with the glint of the sun, deep cobalt when the clouds take the sky. And it is warm—surprisingly, astoundingly warm, like a bath that was heated perhaps a half an hour earlier. The waves are gentle, and they lap up on the shore with a soft rush of foam, tickling the skin and turning the perfect sand into a squishy delight that slips and slides along the toes until another wave arrives to clean up the mess.

It is easy to see why this is said to be the birthplace of Aphrodite. With every step I almost expect to see her as in Botticelli’s painting, rising from the ocean, perfectly balanced on a giant shell, her long titian hair streaming around her.

If ever a perfect woman was born, surely this would be the place. I am in paradise. And yet . . .

And yet with every warm breeze and cloudless sky I am reminded that this is not my home, that I was born to live my life elsewhere. This does not quell the desire—no, the compulsion!—to travel, to see, to meet. But it does feed a strange longing to touch a dew-dampened lawn, or feel a cool mist on one’s face, or even to remember the joy of a perfect day after a week of rain.

The people here can’t know that joy. Their days are always perfect. Can one appreciate perfection when it is a constant in one’s life?

22 February 1824

Troodos Mountains, Cyprus

It is remarkable that I am cold. It is, of course, February, and as an Englishman I’m quite used to a February chill (as well as that of any month with an R in its name), but I am not in England. I am in Cyprus, in the heart of the Mediterranean, and just two days ago I was in Paphos, on the