What are you doing out here? - I was... - No. In fact, do not answer that. It is clear I found you in the midst of some... secret dealings. I do not wish to know. And what "secret dealings" have I found you in the midst of, all alone the night before our wedding? What right do you have to ask me that?
"He tried to picture a life without Penelope. It was impossible.
Just weeks ago she'd been ... He stopped, thought. What had she been? A friend? An acquaintance? Someone he saw and never really noticed?
And now she was his fiancee, soon to be his bride. And maybe... maybe she was something more than that. Something deeper. Something even more precious.
"What I want to know," he asked, deliberately forcing the conversation back on topic so his mind wouldn't wander down such dangerous roads, "is why you're not jumping on the pet-fect alibi if the point is to remain anonymous."
"Because remaining anonymous isn't the point!" she fairy yelled.
"You want to be found out?" he asked, gaping at her in the candlelight.
"No, of course not," she replied. "But this is my work.
This is my life's work. This is all I have to show for my life, and if I can't take the credit for it, I'll be damned if someone else will."
Colin opened his mouth to offer a retort, but to his surprise, he had nothing to say. Life's work. Penelope had a life's work.
She might not be able to put her name on her work, but when she was alone in her room, she could look at her back issues, and point to them, and say to herself, This is it. This is what my life has been about.
"Colin?" she whispered, clearly startled by his silence.
She was amazing. He didn't know how he hadn't realized it before, when he'd already known that she was smart and lovely and witty and resourceful. But all those adjectives, and a whole host more he hadn't yet thought of, did not add up to the true measure of her.
And he was.... Dear God above, he was jealous of her.
"I'll go," she said softly, turning and walking towards the door.
For a moment he didn't react. His mind was still frozen, reeling with revelations. But when. When he saw her hand on the doorknob, he knew he could not let her go. Not this night, not ever.
"No," he said hoarsely, closing the distance between them in three long strides. "No," he said again, "I want you to stay."
She looked up at him, her eyes two pools of confusion. "but you said---"
He cupped her face tenderly with his hands. "Forget what I said."
And that was when he realized that Daphne had been right. His love hadn't been a thunderbolt from the sky. It had started with a smile, a word, a teasing glance. Every second he had spent in her presence it had grown, until he'd reached this moment, and he suddenly knew.
He was still furious with her for publishing that last column, and he was bloody ashamed of himself that he was actually jealous of her for having found a life's work and purpose, but even with all that, he loved her.
And if let her walk out that door right now, he would never forgive himself.
Maybe this, then, was the definition of love. When you wanted someone, needed her, adored her, even when you were utterly furious and quite ready to tie her to the bed just to keep her from going out and making more trouble. This was the night. This was the moment. He was brimming with emotion, and he had to tell her. He had to show her.
"Stay," we whispered, and he pulled her to him, roughly, hungrily, without apology or explanation.
"Stay," he said again, leading her to his bed.
And when she didn't do anything, he said it for a third time.
He took her into his arms.
This was Penelope, and this was love."
Romancing Mister Bridgerton, Chapter 17
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