July, 1814

Colin frowned as he entered the grand dining room, noting that there were entirely too many people and entirely too few platters.

He'd slept a bit later than he'd meant to, but had he truly missed breakfast? Usually, after a late night, his mother didn't serve breakfast before ten at the latest. He approached his mother, who was directing the footmen this way and that.

"Mother, are there no eggs this morning? Or sausages?"

"Oh, Colin! Have you finally graced us with your presence?" She looked a bit put out. "After you neglected to attend the ball—"

"Mother, I told you, my visit kept me later than expected."

"You mean your visit to Miss Thompson? The one from the night before? That doesn't explain last night."

"Lady Crane," he sighed. "And last night, I found myself unequal to—"

"To join the party I plan but once a year? Of course, surely that is too much to ask of my children."

"Please don't make me feel worse. I already feel like an absolute idiot. I... I simply wanted to assure myself she was happy, that I hadn't been an absolute villain in the whole business and..."

"Colin..." She sighed and pulled him to a corner. "I know you feel as if you were in the wrong, but you, my darling, were the wronged party. If you wanted to be assured of her happiness, then you could have written—"

"I just didn't think a letter was enough." He'd never written an apology letter. He'd never done anything to warrant one. Guilt was an entirely new sensation and, whether his mother thought he should feel it or not, it was there and he didn't like it. "But I am glad to say that she — and the children — are well, as is Sir Phillip."

"Children?"

"Twins," he said.

She nodded. "I don't know the family intimately, but I hear twins are common among the Cranes. And it is best that they are with their relations. From what I understand, he is their uncle."

"Yes... Yes, I suppose so. He is a very... kind man."

"And do you think yourself unkind in comparison? I wish you didn't." She glanced around, looking conflicted. "Colin, there are a great many guests here now. But why don't we ride back to London together. We can discuss this at length and—"

"No, Mother. There is no need. I am at peace with it. I promise."

She touched his cheek. "If you are not, I am willing to entertain all of your silly notions of guilt, if only to correct you on them. Now, have you seen to your trunks?"

"No, I'd hoped to eat first, some eggs or—"

"Oh, I am sorry. But the hot dishes have come and gone."

"So soon?"

"We are feeding and sending off half the people we know this morning, Colin. There's no time for a leisurely meal. But they're putting out the pastries and fruit now, so I'm afraid you must content yourself with that until..." She gasped, staring out the window, before sailing off. "Mrs. Wilson? Can we find someone to tend to Lady Bastanchury's dog if she will not? I see it's wandered into my roses again and I will not have them..."

Colin took himself to the table nearest the door, spotting Eloise gesturing Penelope to the chair next to her. He supposed Penelope had missed breakfast as well. He'd only spoken to her on the stairs moments ago. He couldn't help feeling he might have been a bit abrupt with her as, when he approached, her eyes darted away. He'd been a bit hungry — he still was — so he supposed he hadn't been at his best.

"Sorry to say it, Pen," he began as he took a seat across from her, "but all the good food is gone." He tossed a teasing glare at his sister. "Thanks a lot, El."

"Yes. I ate every bit of it and thought of you the whole time," Eloise droned. "You're the one who's late... and to a meal. Whatever could be wrong with him, Pen?"

"I'm sure I've no idea," Pen said, still not quite meeting his eyes.

"Did your visit with Lady Crane go so badly? It can't have gone as badly as my night." Eloise ducked her head as a very tall man entered the dining room.

Lord Morrison, Colin believed, and a pompous windbag, if he recalled correctly. "Was he here? Glad I missed it."

She nudged Penelope. "See? See? I told you he was insufferable."

"I never claimed he wasn't," Pen protested.

"If even Colin sees it—"

Colin scoffed. "I beg your pardon!"

"Oh, you know I mean no ill," Eloise said dismissively. "You get on with simply everyone. So someone must be awful to run afoul of you."

"I don't think I deserve such..." Was that praise or an insult? He could never tell, coming from Eloise. "At any rate, I do not get along with everyone."

"But you do," Penelope said, busying herself with her tea as the footmen started putting out fresh pots. "You are the most amiable person I've ever met."

He shook his head. "Perhaps you don't meet enough people." He still felt so... wretched. It was that same sinking feeling that drove him to visit Lady Crane, wondering if his treatment of her had been callous.

"Colin, I think I've observed enough people to know who is amiable and who is not." Penelope met his eyes, looking quite serious. "You'd never be hurtful to someone, not truly."

He'd never thought it was something he was capable of. Yet he'd wondered, on that long drive to Romney Hall, if a truly good, truly gallant gentleman -- the kind he always wanted to be -- would have married Marina regardless, claimed the child as his to lessen the damage to her reputation? Yes, she lied, but had she loved him beneath all of it? Had he broken her heart?

Yet he couldn't help thinking — not just after the way the night ended, with Marina telling him their romance had been naught but a fantasy — that with all that led up to it, she hadn't loved him at all.

Even without the fact that Marina seemed content in her situation — not happy, really, but content — the same sort of jokes that would have had her laughing in delight during their courtship got nothing more than a bored, even annoyed, look now.

Really, had she truly been delighted even then? There'd been a hesitance, sometimes, before she laughed. An impatient look before she smiled. And seeing her again, it seemed so plain that she had not loved him.

"Perhaps seeing her was what you needed, to leave the past behind, to no longer feel the need to... foreswear women," Penelope had said.

As his experience with women was not so vast in the first place, he supposed that had been a silly thing to declare. What was he even foreswearing? Anthony was correct, in that he'd perhaps been so taken by the first girl to indicate she might like to kiss him precisely because of said lack of experience. Had he even loved her? Or had it just been... He didn't even want to call it lust. What he'd felt for her hadn't been so base as that. There was something about her that made him feel... needed.

On the carriage ride home, he thought he ought to be angry about it, about Marina's dismissal of him, her callous words, yet he could not summon anything like anger. She had not loved him. He had not broken her heart. Her heart had been broken before she met him. Perhaps that was what had called to him in the first place.

"Perhaps sometimes it's hard to see someone hurting, even if you weren't the one to hurt them." He glanced up, meeting Pen's always-sympathetic eyes. Was that all this was for him, too? Sympathy for Marina?

Her eyes moved away. "All I know for sure is that you are not to blame, Colin. Other people... they might have blame to share."

He chuckled. "Lady Whistledown, perhaps?"

"Yes... her. And others," she said, her eyes sort of... pained. "But I hope you see that you are not among them. You really are very good. You must know that."

"Didn't I once say those same words to you?"

"I think you did, but they more readily apply to you."

He caught himself smiling, wondering how she always did it?

"If you would simply open your eyes to what is in front of you, then you might see there are those in your life you already make happy," Marina had said, talking of Penelope in particular. At the time, he'd wondered why, but in moments like this he could see why Marina remarked upon her, how rare it was to have someone like Penelope, who always made him feel bigger than he was, kinder, cleverer, more interesting. She answered his letters, she listened to him, she consoled him at his worst and buoyed him at his best.

He was certain he didn't do half as much for her, whatever Marina said. It would have been more accurate for her to say Pen made him happy, rather than the other way around. Though he did like to cheer Pen up where he could, he was sure he didn't pay her nearly as many compliments as she did him. And he ought to. She was kind and witty and, he'd not remarked upon it yet, but he had noticed that she looked... rather fetching lately.

She'd looked a bit different all season, a bit less tightly curled and ruffled. Not that he knew very much about girls' dresses and hair and all that nonsense, but he did know enough to note that Penelope's dresses had often put him more in mind of a little girl's pinafore than a grown-up sort of gown and it was nice to see her wearing something simpler — still with far too many bows running along her puffed sleeves, but then she wouldn't be a Featherington without excess frippery, he thought fondly.

He should say something nice, about how he liked her... softer look. Not that she hadn't been soft before. Penelope always had a softness about her — in her manners, her eyes, her skin... not just smooth to the touch, but with a give to it that was sort of pleasant under his hands when they danced or when he touched her.

Not that he touched her skin very much. Just the occasional pat or squeeze or slight caress when he greeted her, or talked to her alone, or... Really, his family was just like that. They were always touching. It wasn't odd or anything.

He knew he didn't touch her to excess, so he wasn't sure why he was feeling so bothered about it right now.

Except... did he?

He must or he wouldn't be thinking about it so much now.

Why couldn't he stop thinking about Penelope's skin?

"Colin?"

He tore his eyes from her skin to her lips, since they were talking to him. They were also soft... at least they looked like they must be, and plump, generous. "Hmm?"

"You seem so upset." She leaned over the table. "I truly hope you aren't still blaming yourself."

It took him a moment to realize what she was speaking of, since her leaning forward had revealed yet more skin... of the bodice variety, which was also plump and generous. But he did finally catch on. "Oh, the... No. You are very good to... to reassure me, Pen."

"What are you two talking of?" Eloise demanded, happily taking his mind away from such prurient pursuits. "You both look entirely too serious for a Saturday morning and I won't have it, not when they're serving cakes and pastries. It'll ruin my appetite. Come, Pen. Our cook makes the best scones in—"

"No, thank you." Penelope sat up straighter in her chair. "I'll just have some fruit."

"Fruit again?" Eloise rolled her eyes as she filled her plate with tarts and scones.

"Fruit?" Colin scoffed, watching as Pen did indeed fill her plate with... fruit... and nothing else. "Pen, El's right," he said with sudden concern. "Our cook's scones are truly—"

"I've had them before," Pen broke in abruptly. "But I'm really not in the mood for... baked things."

"What?" Colin felt almost offended, especially now that he could see pear tarts among the trays. Not sampling them was surely a sort of crime.

"Don't bother arguing with her," Eloise said around a bite. "She's on this ridiculous reducing diet idea and I've learned that, the more I protest it, the more she digs in about it, so we shall just have to wait for her to come to her senses."

"I have not taken leave of my senses. I like fruit." Penelope plucked a strawberry up.

"Over scones? Ridiculous. I've nev—" Colin, in that moment, ceased to speak. Really, he couldn't remember what he'd been poised to say because Penelope Featherington's lips - plump and generous, as he'd recently noted - wrapped around a strawberry and she moaned.

And even as he realized she was just doing it to tease El -- who was claiming, quite rudely and with her mouth full, that her scone was the best one ever -- he barely saw that as Penelope bit down, her upper lip dragging over the skin of the fruit before she released it, licking her lips.

Then she laughed, as if this was somehow funny, her eyes meeting his. Yes, she was likely laughing at El, but he felt almost personally attacked by it.

He did tell himself to look away, but he couldn't seem to actually do it.

See, while she was laughing, parts of her seemed to... shake — parts above the bodice, to be specific and, though her dresses usually did a very admirable job of hiding her bosom, he had sometimes noticed it.

Not that he wanted to!

Really, he tried his best to avoid it, but there were times when he was, perhaps, dancing with her or standing directly next to her and one of them, perhaps, said something witty and she laughed and suddenly he forgot she was El's little friend who he liked very much — sometimes more than El — and he, perhaps, couldn't help where his eyes landed.

But he always made certain they didn't land there for long.

He glanced away now, resolutely. He was a gentleman. He did not leer at young women.

He wasn't even leering now. He was simply having a hard time looking elsewhere. He tried to focus on the tray of pastries. It was usually a very easy thing to do. They were pastries, after all. But then he spied her fingers plucking up a plum and he couldn't help following it up, up, up... and halfway into her mouth, watching as she bit into it, as the juice nearly dripped from her lips before her tongue seemed to catch it at the corner of her mouth, stopping its descent.

He glanced heavenward, determined not to witness her consuming the rest of it, feeling almost angry now. Did she know what she was doing? She must. The way she'd gone from talking about her softness to this lusty display was...

Wait. No.

To his utter embarrassment, he realized that hadn't happened at all.

In fact, she'd been talking about his goodness, something that didn't seem to be in sight at the moment, and then he'd started thinking about her goodness and what Marina had said and trying to find a proper compliment to pay her and he actually still hadn't done it because he'd gone on to woolgather until he'd ended up thinking about her softness and now he was — he glanced down to be certain — apparently afflicted with an arousal in the middle of his mother's formal dining room, God help him!

He stood quite abruptly, the scrape of his chair jarring, even among the chatter. Several people stopped their conversations.

"I'm actually not hungry," he announced loudly, not sure why he was doing it, only knowing that he needed to say something.

"What's the matter with him?" his sister asked as he rushed away.

"I don't know," he heard Penelope answer behind him. "I'd usually say he's just hungry, but apparently not."

If she only knew... which she wouldn't. He was sure she'd be horrified. What kind of awful, disrespectful lech was he?

Maybe Anthony was right about him needing a visit to the brothels. The idea had always embarrassed him, but wasn't it more embarrassing to be reduced to such a state as this by Penelope Featherington eating a plum?

Even thinking it, he knew he wouldn't. But he also wouldn't be looking at Penelope in such a way again... not if he could help it.

TBC

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Oh, if only Penelope knew. She'd never leave the house without some fruit, just in case. ;)

Updated with a little cover finally! Hope you like!