But lately Portia had been peppering her conversations with references to her old age and how lucky she was that Penelope could care for her. Never mind that both Prudence and Philippa had married well-heeled men and possessed ample funds to see to their mother’s every comfort. Or that Portia was moderately wealthy in her own right; when her family had settled money on her as a dowry, one-fourth had been set aside for her own personal account.
No, when Portia talked about being “cared for,” she wasn’t referring to money. What Portia wanted was a slave.
Penelope sighed. She was being overly harsh with her mother, if only in her own mind. She did that too often. Her mother loved her. She knew her mother loved her. And she loved her mother back.
It was just that sometimes she didn’t much like her mother.
She hoped that didn’t make her a bad person. But truly, her mother could try the patience of even the kindest, gentlest of daughters, and as Penelope was the first to admit, she could be a wee bit sarcastic at times.
“Why don’t you think Colin would marry Felicity?” Portia asked.
Penelope looked up, startled. She’d thought they were done with that subject. She should have known better. Her mother was nothing if not tenacious. “Well,” she said slowly, “to begin with, she’s twelve years younger than he is.”
“Pfft,” Portia said, waving her hand dismissively. “That’s nothing, and you know it.”
Penelope frowned, then yelped as she accidentally stabbed her finger with her needle.
“Besides,” Portia continued blithely, “he’s”—she looked back down at Whistledown and scanned it for his exact age—“three-and-thirty! How is he meant to avoid a twelve-year difference between him and his wife? Surely you don’t expect him to marry someone your age.”
Penelope sucked on her abused finger even though she knew it was hopelessly uncouth to do so. But she needed to put something in her mouth to keep her from saying something horrible and horribly spiteful.
Everything her mother said was true. Many ton weddings—maybe even most of them—saw men marrying girls a dozen or more years their junior. But somehow the age gap between Colin and Felicity seemed even larger, perhaps because . . .
Penelope was unable to keep the disgust off her face. “She’s like a sister to him. A little sister.”
“Really, Penelope. I hardly think—”
“It’s almost incestuous,” Penelope muttered.
“What did you say?”
Penelope snatched up her needlework again. “Nothing.”
“I’m sure you said something.”
Penelope shook her head. “I did clear my throat. Perhaps you heard—”
“I heard you saying something. I’m sure of it!”
Penelope groaned. Her life loomed long and tedious ahead of her. “Mother,” she said, with the patience of, if not a saint, at least a very devout nun, “Felicity is practically engaged to Mr. Albansdale.”
Portia actually began rubbing her hands together. “She won’t be engaged to him if she can catch Colin Bridgerton.”
“Felicity would die before chasing after Colin.”
“Of course not. She’s a smart girl. Anyone can see that Colin Bridgerton is a better catch.”
“But Felicity loves Mr. Albansdale!”
Portia deflated into her perfectly upholstered chair. “There is that.”
“And,” Penelope added with great feeling, “Mr. Albansdale is in possession of a perfectly respectable fortune.”
Portia tapped her index finger against her cheek. “True. Not,” she said sharply, “as respectable as a Bridgerton portion, but it’s nothing to sneeze at, I suppose.”
Penelope knew it was time to let it go, but she couldn’t stop her mouth from opening one last time. “In all truth, Mother, he’s a wonderful match for Felicity. We should be delighted for her.”
“I know, I know,” Portia grumbled. “It’s just that I so wanted one of my daughters to marry a Bridgerton. What a coup! I would be the talk of London for weeks. Years, maybe.”
Penelope stabbed her needle into the cushion beside her. It was a rather foolish way to vent her anger, but the alternative was to jump to her feet and yell, What about me? Portia seemed to think that once Felicity was wed, her hopes for a Bridgerton union were forever dashed. But Penelope was still unmarried—didn’t that count for anything?
Was it so much to wish that her mother thought of her with the same pride she felt for her other three daughters? Penelope knew that Colin wasn’t going to choose her as his bride, but shouldn’t a mother be at least a little bit blind to her children’s faults? It was obvious to Penelope that neither Prudence, Philippa, nor even Felicity had ever had a chance with a Bridgerton. Why did her mother seem to think their charms so exceeded Penelope’s?
Very well, Penelope had to admit that Felicity enjoyed a popularity that exceeded that of her three older sisters combined. But Prudence and Philippa had never been Incomparables. They’d hovered on the perimeters of ballrooms just as much as Penelope had.
Except, of course, that they were married now. Penelope wouldn’t have wanted to cleave herself unto either of their husbands, but at least they were wives.
Thankfully, however, Portia’s mind had already moved on to greener pastures. “I must pay a call upon Violet,” she was saying. “She’ll be so relieved that Colin is back.”
“I’m sure Lady Bridgerton will be delighted to see you,” Penelope said.
“That poor woman,” Portia said, her sigh dramatic. “She worries about him, you know—”
“I know.”
“Truly, I think it is more than a mother should be expected to bear. He goes gallivanting about, the good Lord only knows where, to countries that are positively unheathen—”
“I believe they practice Christianity in Greece,” Penelope murmured, her eyes back down on her needlework.
“Don’t be impertinent, Penelope Anne Featherington, and they’re Catholics!” Portia shuddered on the word.
“They’re not Catholics at all,” Penelope replied, giving up on the needlework and setting it aside. “They’re Greek Orthodox.”
“Well, they’re not Church of England,” Portia said with a sniff.
“Seeing as how they’re Greek, I don’t think they’re terribly worried about that.”
Portia’s eyes narrowed disapprovingly. “And how do you know about this Greek religion, anyway? No, don’t tell me,” she said with a dramatic flourish. “You read it somewhere.”
Penelope just blinked as she tried to think of a suitable reply.
“I wish you wouldn’t read so much,” Portia sighed. “I probably could have married you off years ago if you had concentrated more on the social graces and less on . . . less on . . .”
Penelope had to ask. “Less on what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is you do that has you staring into space and daydreaming so often.”
“I’m just thinking,” Penelope said quietly. “Sometimes I just like to stop and think.”
“Stop what?” Portia wanted to know.
Penelope couldn’t help but smile. Portia’s query seemed to sum up all that was different between mother and daughter. “It’s nothing, Mother,” Penelope said. “Really.”
Portia looked as if she wanted to say more, then thought the better of it. Or maybe she was just hungry. She did pluck a biscuit off the tea tray and pop it into her mouth.
Penelope started to reach out to take the last biscuit for herself, then decided to let her mother have it. She might as well keep her mother’s mouth full. The last thing she wanted was to find herself in another conversation about Colin Bridgerton.
“Colin’s back!”
Penelope looked up from her book—A Brief History of Greece—to see Eloise Bridgerton bursting into her room. As usual, Eloise had not been announced. The Featherington butler was so used to seeing her there that he treated her like a member of the family.
“Is he?” Penelope asked, managing to feign (in her opinion) rather realistic indifference. Of course, she did set A Brief History of Greece down behind Mathilda, the novel by S. R. Fielding that had been all the rage a year earlier. Everyone had a copy of Mathilda on their bedstand. And it was thick enough to hide A Brief History of Greece.
Eloise sat down in Penelope’s desk chair. “Indeed, and he’s very tanned. All that time in the sun, I suppose.”
“He went to Greece, didn’t he?”
Eloise shook her head. “He said the war there has worsened, and it was too dangerous. So he went to Cyprus instead.”
“My, my,” Penelope said with a smile. “Lady Whistledown got something wrong.”
Eloise smiled that cheeky Bridgerton smile, and once again Penelope realized how lucky she was to have her as her closest friend. She and Eloise had been inseparable since the age of seventeen. They’d had their London seasons together, reached adulthood together, and, much to their mothers’ dismay, had become spinsters together.
Eloise claimed that she hadn’t met the right person.
Penelope, of course, hadn’t been asked.
“Did he enjoy Cyprus?” Penelope inquired.
Eloise sighed. “He said it was brilliant. How I should love to travel. It seems everyone has been somewhere but me.”
“And me,” Penelope reminded her.
“And you,” Eloise agreed. “Thank goodness for you.”
“Eloise!” Penelope exclaimed, throwing a pillow at her. But she thanked goodness for Eloise, too. Every day. Many women went through their entire lives without a close female friend, and here she had someone to whom she could tell anything. Well, almost anything. Penelope had never told her of her feelings for Colin, although she rather thought Eloise suspected the truth. Eloise was far too tactful to mention it, though, which only validated Penelope’s certainty that Colin would never love her. If Eloise had thought, for even one moment, that Penelope actually had a chance at snaring Colin as a husband, she would have been plotting her matchmaking strategies with a ruthlessness that would have impressed any army general.
When it came right down to it, Eloise was a rather managing sort of person.
“. . . and then he said that the water was so choppy that he actually cast up his accounts over the side of the boat, and—” Eloise scowled. “You’re not listening to me.”
“No,” Penelope admitted. “Well, yes, actually, parts of it. I cannot believe Colin actually told you he vomited.”
“Well, I am his sister.”
“He’d be furious with you if he knew you’d told me.”
Eloise waved off her protest. “He won’t mind. You’re like another sister to him.”
Penelope smiled, but she sighed at the same time.
“Mother asked him—of course—whether he was planning to remain in town for the season,” Eloise continued, “and—of course—he was terribly evasive, but then I decided to interrogate him myself—”
“Terribly smart of you,” Penelope murmured.
Eloise threw the pillow back at her. “And I finally got him to admit to me that yes, he thinks he will stay for at least a few months. But he made me promise not to tell Mother.”
“Now, that’s not”—Penelope cleared her throat—“terribly intelligent of him. If your mother thinks his time here is limited, she will redouble her efforts to see him married. I should think that was what he wanted most to avoid.”
“It does seem his usual aim in life,” Eloise concurred.
“If he lulled her into thinking that there was no rush, perhaps she might not badger him quite so much.”
“An interesting idea,” Eloise said, “but probably more true in theory than in practice. My mother is so determined to see him wed that it matters not if she increases her efforts. Her regular efforts are enough to drive him mad as it is.”
“Can one go doubly mad?” Penelope mused.
Eloise cocked her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I should want to find out.”
They both fell silent for a moment (a rare occurrence, indeed) and then Eloise quite suddenly jumped to her feet and said, “I must go.”
Penelope smiled. People who didn’t know Eloise very well thought she had a habit of changing the subject frequently (and abruptly), but Penelope knew that the truth was something else altogether. When Eloise had her mind set on something, she was completely unable to let it go. Which meant that if Eloise suddenly wanted to leave, it probably had to do with something they’d been talking about earlier in the afternoon, and—
“Colin is expected for tea,” Eloise explained.
Penelope smiled. She loved being right.
“You should come,” Eloise said.
Penelope shook her head. “He’ll want it to be just family.”
“You’re probably right,” Eloise said, nodding slightly. “Very well, then, I must be off. Terribly sorry to cut my visit so short, but I wanted to be sure that you knew Colin was home.”
“Whistledown,”Penelope reminded her.