Even now, seven years later, she still referred to it as that day.
She’d gone to the Bridgerton household, as she frequently did, to take tea with Eloise and her mother and sisters. It was right before Eloise’s brother Benedict had married Sophie, only he didn’t know who she really was, and—well, that didn’t signify, except that it may have been the one truly great secret in the last decade that Lady Whistledown had never managed to unearth.
Anyway, she was walking through the front hall, listening to her feet tap along the marble tile as she saw herself out. She was adjusting her pelisse and preparing to walk the short distance to her own home (just around the corner, really) when she heard voices. Male voices. Male Bridgerton voices.
It was the three elder Bridgerton brothers: Anthony, Benedict, and Colin. They were having one of those conversations that men have, the kind in which they grumble a lot and poke fun at each other. Penelope had always liked to watch the Bridgertons interact in this manner; they were such a family.
Penelope could see them through the open front door, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying until she’d reached the threshold. And in a testament to the bad timing that had plagued her throughout her life, the first voice she heard was Colin’s, and the words were not kind.
“. . . and I am certainly not going to marry Penelope Featherington!”
“Oh!” The word slipped over her lips before she could even think, the squeal of it piercing the air like an off-key whistle.