Chapter Text
Penelope Featherington woke up to the unmistakable sound of a frying pan and a moan that did not come from the frying pan.
She stared at the ceiling for a long, resigned moment, listening to the sizzle of butter meeting heat, the low rumble of Colin's voice doing what it did best—making ordinary words sound like foreplay—and the high, breathy giggle of Some Woman. There was always a Some Woman. Penelope had stopped bothering to remember names around the time she turned twenty-five and realized her mental capacity was much better spent on plot outlines and fictional murders than cataloguing Colin Bridgerton's love life.
Her phone told her it was 8:12 a.m. on a Saturday. Too early for joy. Far too early for whatever was happening in the kitchen.
Penelope rolled onto her side and briefly considered pretending that she was dead. Dead people did not have to listen to their flatmate seduce women using eggs. Dead people did not have to wonder if the giggles were about scrambled or poached. Dead people got to lie still and silent, unbothered by the relentless performance of Colin Bridgerton's charm, which somehow operated at full capacity before nine a.m. on minimal sleep and maximum audacity.
Unfortunately, dead people also did not get coffee.
With a dramatic groan that no one appreciated but herself, she pushed the duvet back—heavy, cream-colored, the one luxury item she'd bought after her second book advance—and padded to her wardrobe. She pulled on the first oversized jumper she could find. It was bright orange with a fading print that said BOOKS ARE MY LOVE LANGUAGE, which felt aggressively on brand and mildly confrontational before caffeine. She twisted her hair into a bun that was 60% hair and 40% defiance, slipped on fuzzy socks that had cartoon cats printed on them (a gift from Eloise with the card that said "For when you're being a grumpy little hermit"), and braced herself for impact.
The hallway smelled like coffee, garlic, and sin. Possibly butter. Definitely regret—hers, not his.
She stepped into the open-plan living room and kitchen and was hit with the full Colin Bridgerton Experience: sunlight streaming through the massive warehouse windows that made the flat look like it belonged in an interiors magazine, gleaming copper pans hanging above the island like they were auditioning for a cooking show (which, to be fair, they frequently did), and Colin himself standing at the stove in a worn navy T-shirt that clung to his shoulders in a way that should be illegal before breakfast, grey joggers riding low on his hips, barefoot, hair mussed in that specific just-fucked way that he somehow also achieved naturally every morning, focused entirely on a pan of something that looked illegal.
Or possibly just very French.
Penelope's gaze caught on the exposed slice of skin above his waistband where his shirt had ridden up slightly, the flex of muscle in his forearm as he reached for the pepper grinder, and she looked away quickly, aggressively, like she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't. Which was ridiculous. She'd seen him shirtless at least a thousand times. They lived together. Bodies were just bodies. His T-shirt situation was not her concern.
She forced her attention to the woman perched on one of the barstools—sparkly dress, too short for the temperature, paired with a cardigan Penelope was fairly sure belonged to Eloise. The woman swung her legs, watching Colin cook with the dazed, delighted expression of someone who had both discovered he was famous and confirmed he could cook.
Of course he could cook. It was literally his job. He had a show on Channel 4 where he traveled to places with beautiful architecture and better food, ate things on camera while making sounds that would get other people arrested for public indecency, and then taught people how to recreate it at home while flirting with the camera like it was a person he genuinely fancied. Kitchen Abroad was in its third season. There were billboards.
"Morning," Penelope said, heading straight for the kettle like a woman on a mission from God.
Colin looked over his shoulder, grin automatic and warm, the kind that had probably caused at least six breakups and one minor diplomatic incident. His eyes found hers immediately, something in his expression softening in a way it hadn't been a moment before. "Morning, Pen. You're up early."
"I'm up because I live here," she replied pleasantly, reaching for her favorite mug. It said, in tasteful black script: I'd Rather Be Reading About Murder. Hyacinth had given it to her last Christmas with a card that said "Because you're weirdly bloodthirsty for someone so small."
The woman turned, blinking like she hadn't realized there were other people in the world. Penelope recognized the look. It was the same expression people got when they stepped out of a particularly immersive film. "Oh! Hi. I'm—"
Penelope held up a hand, polite but firm. "You don't have to tell me. It's honestly fine. I'm Penelope. I'm one of the long-term residents of the Bridgerton Transitional Housing Program."
Colin snorted, a puff of laughter that made his shoulders shake. "You make it sound like I'm running a halfway house for my dates."
"If the shoe fits," came a voice from behind them, dry as unbuttered toast.
Eloise shuffled into the kitchen in an ancient T-shirt that said NO COMMENT and plaid pajama bottoms, her curls sticking out in several directions as if they'd tried to make a run for it during the night and hadn't quite succeeded. She made a beeline for the coffee like Penelope wasn't even there and shoved her gently out of the way with her hip.
"It's fucking fascinating," Eloise continued, pouring coffee with unnecessary aggression. The mug she'd chosen said MALE TEARS in cheerful pink letters. "I come home from the office at odd hours and never know who'll be here. It's like a game show. Guess Who's Sleeping With My Brother. The prize is existential dread."
The woman's eyes widened. "Oh. You're his sister. Wow. You look… alike."
Eloise turned her head slowly, like a predator who'd just noticed movement in the underbrush. "We do not," she said flatly. "I have better eyebrows and fewer shit life choices. Also, my moral compass actually points north instead of just spinning wildly toward whatever smells good and has nice hair."
Colin shook the pan with a practiced flick of his wrist, sending whatever was inside it into an elegant flip that made the woman at the barstool emit a tiny squeal. Penelope watched, unimpressed. She'd seen him do that flip at least four hundred times. Once, memorably, while drunk and wearing oven mitts shaped like lobster claws.
She absolutely had not noticed that his hands were particularly elegant when he cooked. That the precision of his movements did something unfortunate to her breathing. That was years ago. She didn't notice things like that anymore.
"You two are very charming this morning," Colin said. "I make you food, and in return I'm slandered in my own home."
"You are not being slandered," Penelope said mildly, stirring sugar into her tea with a spoon that had a tiny hedgehog on the handle. "Slander would imply we're saying untrue things. We're just documenting observable reality. If anything, we're being reporters. Journalists. Chroniclers of your—" She waved the hedgehog spoon vaguely. "—choices."
Eloise clinked her mug against Pen's in solidarity, nearly sloshing coffee onto the counter. "Cheers to accuracy. To observable, documented, fully verifiable truth."
Colin pointed a spatula at both of them. "You're lucky I love you."
"We are," Penelope agreed, taking a careful sip of tea. It was too hot, burned the tip of her tongue, but she didn't flinch. "We're also lucky the walls are thick. Unfortunately, they're not thick enough."
The woman on the stool flushed scarlet, a blotchy red that started at her collarbone and crawled up her neck. Penelope almost felt bad. Almost.
Colin shot Penelope a narrow look that was only half annoyed, the other half something that looked vaguely like admiration for the sheer audacity. "It's not my fault you're a light sleeper."
"It's not my fault you narrate seduction like it's a live episode of your show," Penelope replied. "Last week you actually said, 'Let me show you what I can do with a whisk.' Out loud. To another human being. Who presumably has a functioning sense of dignity."
The woman giggled again, clearly remembering, her embarrassment shifting into something closer to pride. "He's very talented," she offered, like she was writing a Yelp review.
"Oh, I'm aware," Penelope said, and her voice came out slightly too tight, slightly too invested for someone who supposedly didn't care. She cleared her throat. "Believe me, the entire city is aware. There are billboards. His face was on the side of a bus I was standing behind in traffic yesterday. It was very distressing. I can't shout obscenities at my flatmate's face in public without people assuming I'm deranged."
Eloise made a face like she'd bitten into a lemon. "His face was on a bus I was standing behind yesterday too. In Shoreditch. Holding a massive fork. It was very distressing. I can't shout obscenities at my brother's oversized face in public. Well, I can, but people stare. One woman asked for my autograph because she thought I was a performance artist making a statement about celebrity culture."
Colin plated something onto two dishes—perfectly folded omelettes, golden and fluffy and obscenely photogenic, topped with chives snipped with surgical precision. He slid a plate toward the woman with a smile that should come with a warning label and one for himself, then reached for another pan without breaking stride.
"Sit," he said to Penelope without looking, already cracking eggs into the hot pan with one hand. Show-off. "You haven't eaten."
"I can make my own breakfast," she protested out of habit, even though he'd been cooking for her since he discovered at twenty-one that she would happily subsist on toast and anxiety until three p.m. if left unattended.
"Yeah," he said, "and it would be cereal. Which is not food, it's a cry for help masquerading as breakfast. You had Frosties for dinner on Tuesday."
"They were honey-nut Cheerios," Penelope corrected. "Completely different. Almost health food. Says so on the box."
Eloise leaned back against the counter, cradling her mug. "He says this about cereal not being real food, but he did in fact once eat half a box of Frosted Flakes over the sink at two a.m. while watching his own show on his laptop."
"That was research," Colin said.
"For what," Penelope asked, taking a stool, "a documentary on regression? A thesis on narcissism?"
"For understanding my audience," he replied. "People like watching food while eating inferior food. It's aspirational. Also, I was testing whether the Frosted Flakes soggy-to-crunchy ratio held up under pressure, and spoiler alert: it doesn't. By minute four of the Italy episode, it's basically cereal soup."
Penelope rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her mouth despite her best efforts. It was impossible not to be charmed by him when he moved around a kitchen, all confidence and ease, like the space bent slightly toward him.
She used to find that devastating. The casual brilliance of him. The way he could flip an omelette and break a heart with equal ease.
Now it was just… familiar. Comforting, even. Mostly comforting. Comforting except for the odd moment when he glanced at her a certain way or his voice did that thing where it dropped half an octave and she had to remind herself, firmly, that this was not for her. Had never been for her. Would never be for her.
He slid a plate in front of her with a soft clink of ceramic on marble, and his fingers brushed her wrist as he adjusted the placement—brief, casual, the kind of touch that didn't mean anything. She pulled her hand back perhaps slightly too quickly.
"Eat, writer. You have that deadline, don't you? The one you were glaring at your laptop about at one in the morning?"
Penelope blinked. "How did you—I didn't tell you about the deadline."
"You didn't have to." He turned back to the stove, flipped something with unnecessary flair. "You've been muttering at your screen for three days. Also, you reorganized your desk twice yesterday, which you only do when you're procrastinating on something big. And you ate standing up in the kitchen Thursday night. Dead giveaway."
"That's—" She stopped. Unsettling. That was unsettling. The fact that he'd noticed. The fact that he'd catalogued her stress patterns like they were worth remembering. "—weirdly observant for someone whose brain is mostly butter and hubris."
"I pay attention," he said simply, like it was nothing. Like it didn't mean anything.
Eloise, still leaning against the counter, raised one eyebrow at Penelope over the rim of her mug. The look was pointed. Significant. Penelope pretended not to see it.
"I was not glaring," Penelope said primly, picking up her fork. "I was… contemplating narrative structure. Character motivation. The complexities of third-act emotional arcs."
"You had your forehead pressed against the keyboard," Eloise said, not looking up from her phone but clearly having looked up from her phone at some point during Penelope's alleged contemplation. "I could hear the keys clicking from my room. It wrote four lines of 'kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk' in a row."
"That was a creative decision," Penelope said. "Avant-garde. Experimental fiction."
"It was a cry for help," Colin said, and his voice was softer now, edged with genuine concern. He glanced at her again, a quick flicker of attention that felt far too much like being seen.
The woman on the stool watched them with a kind of fascinated confusion, her gaze moving from Colin to Penelope and back again. There was something in her expression—a dawning realization, maybe, or just the slow comprehension of someone who'd walked into a room and found herself unexpectedly superfluous. She smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes, and she looked down at her omelette with a little too much focus.
Penelope felt a brief, distant pang—not of jealousy exactly, but of recognition. Familiarity. She used to read too much into the way he took care of people, confusing his basic decency with something more, mistaking kindness for intimacy, attention for affection. She understood the difference now. She'd spent her twenties learning it the hard way, one unreturned glance at a time.
Except he didn't ask what the other women ate for dinner on Tuesday. He didn't notice when they reorganized their desks. He didn't touch their wrists when he set down plates.
Penelope shoved that thought down so hard it rattled.
Colin slid his phone toward the woman, the gesture smooth and practiced. "Do you want me to call a car for you after breakfast?" His tone was kind, efficient, the verbal equivalent of a polite handshake. Professional. Warm but not invested.
The woman nodded, smiling at him in a way Penelope had once practiced in bathroom mirrors. "That would be great. I have brunch in Chelsea at eleven. Mimosas with the girls. Very important."
"Of course you do," Eloise muttered into her coffee, then added in a louder voice, "I hope you like your omelette. He charges other people twenty-eight quid for that exact dish on television. You're getting the girlfriend experience for free. Lucky you."
"No….not-girlfriend experience," Colin corrected. "We're not—"
"We know," Penelope and Eloise said in unison.
Penelope took a bite of her own omelette and closed her eyes briefly. It was annoying how good it was—soft, melty cheese that stretched when she pulled the fork away, herbs that tasted green and alive, a subtle heat she hadn't expected. She hated that she could taste his mood in his cooking; this one was easy, light, self-satisfied. Pleased with himself. Content.
When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her. Not at the woman in the sparkly dress. At her. Waiting for her verdict with an expression that was far too attentive for someone who supposedly didn't care whether she liked her breakfast.
"It's good," she said, and his whole face brightened like she'd given him something valuable.
"Yeah?" he asked, and he sounded genuinely pleased. Relieved, even.
"Don't let it go to your head," she added quickly. "Your head is already at capacity. Structurally unsound. One more compliment and the whole thing might collapse."
Eloise made a noise into her coffee that sounded like agreement, but when Penelope glanced at her, she was looking between them with an expression that could only be described as long-suffering. She mouthed something that looked suspiciously like "you're both idiots" and returned to her phone.
"So," Colin said, turning to lean against the counter, plate in hand, "what are you doing today, Pen? Hiding in your cave and writing about emotionally unavailable men again?"
She opened her eyes and lifted her fork like a tiny sword. "It's called literary fiction, Colin. And at least my emotionally unavailable men have character arcs. They grow. They learn. They achieve some semblance of self-awareness by page three hundred."
Eloise snorted into her mug. "Imagine. Personal growth. What a concept."
Colin pressed a hand to his chest in mock injury, eyes wide and wounded. "I have an arc. I am constantly evolving. Last month I learned how to make perfect puff pastry. That's growth."
"Into what?" Penelope asked sweetly. "A cautionary tale? A warning to future generations?"
The woman at the barstool laughed, clearly torn between enjoying the Mysterious Celebrity Chef Experience and being slightly terrified of his sister and flatmate. She'd also started watching Colin and Penelope with increasing focus, like she was trying to work out a puzzle. When Colin moved closer to Penelope to refill her tea without asking—automatic, unthinking—the woman's expression shifted into something resigned. Accepting.
She knew. Penelope could see it. This woman, whoever she was, had clocked something that Penelope herself refused to acknowledge.
There was nothing to clock. They were friends. Flatmates. Family, practically.
"I'm meeting Francesca for coffee later," Pen added when the laughter died down. "She texted yesterday. Apparently she has 'news.'"
Colin's expression softened immediately, the teasing falling away. This was the other side of him—the part that loved his siblings with a fierce, uncomplicated devotion that he protected carefully behind all the charm. He moved closer without seeming to realize it, hip leaning against the counter near her stool, close enough that she could smell his soap—something clean and faintly cedar. "Good news or bad news?"
She did not notice the way the kitchen suddenly felt smaller. She did not notice the warmth of him, solid and near. She was extremely not noticing any of that.
"She used a full stop," Penelope said thoughtfully. "No emoji. No exclamation point. Very formal. I'm bracing for either emotional devastation or a new houseplant."
"Those are basically the same thing," Eloise said, finally looking up from her phone. "You nurture them intensely and then they die. Slowly. While you watch. Powerless to help."
Penelope patted her shoulder. "And yet you keep buying them. Hope springs eternal. Unlike your succulents."
"I believe in second chances," Eloise said firmly. "Plants disappoint me. Men disappoint me. The legal system disappoints me. Parliament disappoints me. The fucking Tube schedule disappoints me. But I persist. I endure. I am a monument to optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary."
Colin kissed the top of Eloise’s head as he moved past to top up her coffee. "You're very dramatic before nine a.m."
"You're very charming before nine a.m.," she retorted. "Some of us are delicate. Sensitive. Easily traumatized by unsolicited displays of flirting."
Penelope's phone buzzed on the counter, vibrating against the marble with an angry little rattle. She glanced down and saw Francesca's name.
Fran: Running ten minutes late. Sorry! Michael being overprotective. As usual.
Penelope smiled at the screen and typed back a reply.
Pen: Tell him he's adorable but you're not made of glass. See you soon. xx
She finished her tea in three long swallows and stood, carrying her empty plate to the sink. Colin was already there, rinsing his dish, and they did that awkward little dance where they both reached for the tap at the same time. His hand closed over hers on the faucet handle.
"Sorry," they said simultaneously.
He didn't move his hand immediately. Neither did she. They stood there for a beat too long, fingers overlapping on cold metal, and Penelope's brain screamed at her to move, step back, laugh it off. She did, eventually. Pulled her hand away and busied herself with her plate like it required intense concentration.
"Right," she said, too brightly. "I'm going to shower and transform from Goblin Pen into Acceptable Public Pen before I go meet your sister."
"She likes Goblin Pen," Colin said, rinsing his dish under the tap. His voice was quieter now, softer. "We all do. Goblin Pen is honest. Goblin Pen doesn't pretend to have her life together."
The words landed somewhere dangerous in her chest, warm and weighty. Penelope felt it like a ghost ache, distant but real. Once upon a time, she'd been twenty-two and full of stupid hope. Once upon a time, she'd watched him flirt with a bartender and realized, finally and completely, that whatever softness she felt for him was not reciprocated and never would be. That she was background noise in his life. Comfortable furniture. She'd gone home and cried into a pillow so that Eloise wouldn't hear.
That felt like another life.
Mostly.
She caught her own reflection in the window as she turned to leave: messy bun, orange jumper with faded lettering, sleep-creased face, one sock slightly higher than the other. Not glamorous. Not a billboard or a magazine cover or anyone's idea of aspirational. But solid. Real. Herself.
That was enough.
Most days.
She didn't look back at Colin as she left the kitchen, but she felt his attention follow her like a physical weight. When she glanced back from the hallway—just for a second, just to grab her phone charger from the side table—she caught him still watching her, expression unreadable.
He looked away first.
By the time she made it to the café, the morning had settled into that soft grey London did so well—cloudy but not raining, cool but not quite cold. The café Francesca had chosen was tucked on a side street near Bloomsbury, all dark wood and brass fixtures and an astonishing number of couples who looked like they read poetry to each other unironically and probably had opinions about oat milk.
Penelope slid into a small corner table, the kind with a wobble that made you paranoid about your coffee, and shrugged out of her coat—navy wool, good quality, the kind of investment piece her mother had insisted she buy after her first book sold. She tugged at the sleeves of the navy blue dress she'd put on as a token effort toward looking like a functioning adult.
She ordered a flat white from a barista who had a moustache that seemed to be his main personality trait and possibly his only conversational topic, then pulled her notebook from her bag. With ten minutes to kill and caffeine inbound, she could at least pretend to be productive.
Chapter 12 – Does he have to be THIS emotionally constipated? Can I just kill him off? Would readers forgive me?
She'd just scribbled that when Francesca swept in, wrapped in a camel colored coat that probably cost more than Penelope's rent, cheeks flushed pink from the cold. Her dark hair was twisted into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, not a strand out of place, and she looked as she always did—composed, self-contained, like she'd been born already knowing how to handle everything with grace.
"Sorry," Francesca said as she slid into the chair opposite Penelope, dropping her leather handbag carefully to the floor. It made a soft, expensive thump. "Michael insisted on walking me to the Tube and then got distracted arguing with a man about parking regulations. For twenty minutes. The man wasn't even parked illegally. Michael just has opinions about civic responsibility."
"That sounds exactly right," Penelope said fondly. "If he ever stops being aggressively kind and mildly irritating, I'll worry. It'll mean he's been replaced by a robot. Or possessed."
A small smile tugged at the corner of Francesca's mouth, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. Pen noticed that immediately. Francesca Sterling did not do obvious displays of emotion; her feelings tended to appear in tiny shifts, subtle and controlled, like a language only people who knew her well could read. The fact that the smile was misaligned, slightly off-center, rang like a bell in Penelope's head.
Something was wrong.
The barista appeared with Penelope's coffee and Francesca's tea—Earl Grey, always Earl Grey—and they both murmured thanks. There was a moment of ordinary chit-chat: weather (grim), work (fine), Michael's latest attempt at cooking risotto (tragic), his fundamental misunderstanding of what 'al dente' meant (he'd somehow made it both crunchy and mushy, a culinary paradox).
Penelope let it roll for a few minutes, knowing better than to rush her. Francesca was like a cat—approach too quickly and she'd bolt. You had to let her come to you, settle into the conversation at her own pace.
Eventually, Francesca reached for her cup, wrapped her fingers around it like it was an anchor, and stared into the steam.
"Thank you for meeting me," she said quietly.
"Of course," Penelope replied, setting her own cup down. "You sounded… not quite like yourself. Which, given that yourself is usually 'calm and in control,' was slightly alarming. I briefly considered bringing emergency chocolate."
Francesca huffed a small laugh. "You make me sound very dull. Very boring. Like I'm a tax document."
"You're not dull," Pen said. "You're terrifyingly competent. It's different. You're the person everyone calls in a crisis because they know you won't panic. You're the Bridgerton equivalent of structural engineering. Essential. Reliable. Occasionally underappreciated."
Francesca's gaze lifted, and for a second Pen saw it there—something raw and frightened beneath the smooth surface, a crack in the foundation.
"I went to see the consultant again yesterday," Francesca said, the words careful, deliberate, like she'd rehearsed them. "About… about trying for a baby."
Penelope's chest tightened. "You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."
"I do," Francesca said, almost sharply, then softened. "That is… I asked you here because I wanted to tell someone who isn't already inside it, if that makes sense. Michael is… wonderful. He's everything. And my mother means well. God, does she mean well. But it feels like they're both watching me all the time, waiting to see if I break. Waiting to catch the pieces. And I can't—I can't breathe under that kind of attention."
Penelope nodded slowly. "Okay. Then I'm here, and I am not going to watch you break. I'm just going to sit here and drink overpriced coffee and make mildly inappropriate comments at strategic intervals. That's my job."
One corner of Francesca's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "I would appreciate that. Deeply."
She took a breath, steady and deliberate.
"The tests confirmed what they suspected," she said. "There's too much damage. From the accident. From… everything that happened."
She paused, and Penelope saw her throat work as she swallowed.
"You know the drunk driver hit us head-on. John died on impact—they said he wouldn't have felt anything, wouldn't have known. And I—" Her voice caught. "I was in surgery for hours. They had to repair so much. Internal bleeding, ruptured organs, shattered pelvis. The surgeon said I was lucky to survive. Lucky." The word came out bitter. "And for a long time, that felt like enough. Just being alive felt like a fucking miracle after watching them zip John into a body bag while I was trapped in the wreckage waiting for the fire brigade to cut me out."
Penelope's fingers tightened around her cup hard enough that her knuckles went white. She'd remembered the accident, of course—everyone did. But Francesca rarely talked about the details. Rarely let anyone see past the composed exterior she'd rebuilt in the aftermath.
"The doctors told me then that pregnancy might be complicated," Francesca continued, her voice flat now, clinical. "But 'complicated' sounded manageable. Difficult but possible. What they told me yesterday was different. They're quite sure—" Her voice caught slightly. "They're quite sure that I can't carry a pregnancy to term. They said I might conceive, theoretically, but it would be—" Her throat tightened visibly. "Dangerous. For the baby and for me. High risk of miscarriage. High risk of uterine rupture. High risk of—" She stopped, looked away for a moment, blinked hard. "Basically, high risk of everything."
Penelope wanted, absurdly, to go fight someone in a lab coat. To argue with medical reality. To demand a recount, a second opinion, a different universe where this woman, who had already lost a husband and rebuilt a life from grief and pain, didn't have to be handed this as well.
"I'm so sorry," Penelope said softly, the words inadequate. "Fran, I'm—"
"Don't," Francesca interrupted, shaking her head slightly, her eyes still fixed on her tea. "Please. If you say you're sorry, I might actually cry, and that would be very inconvenient for my mascara. And my dignity. And possibly this café's reputation."
Penelope smiled sadly. "Your mascara is waterproof. Violet made sure of it after Eloise's graduation party. She panic-bought twelve tubes and distributed them like she was preparing for emotional warfare."
Francesca let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "True. That woman plans for every contingency. She probably has a flowchart for familial crying jags."
They sat quietly for a moment, the clink of crockery and the murmur of other conversations forming a soft cocoon around them. Penelope watched Francesca's hands; they were steady on the cup, but her knuckles were white.
"Have they talked about options?" Penelope asked gently. "Alternatives. Surrogacy. Adoption. Other paths."
"Yes," Francesca said, her voice flat. "The consultant was very thorough. Very professional. He had pamphlets. Glossy ones. He talked about medical surrogacy, about agencies and matching processes and legal frameworks, all very efficient and clinical, as if we were discussing a business arrangement. A transaction. And I know—" She swallowed. "I know that's how it works. It's professional. It's organized. People do it. It's wonderful. It's a gift. It's—"
She broke off, breath hitching.
"But when he said 'the surrogate,' I kept thinking—there will be this… stranger. This person we don't know. Carrying our child. And that should be fine. It should be enough. People do it all the time and it works and it's beautiful. But I—" Her voice cracked. "I know it's selfish to want it to be someone who loves us. Someone who loves the baby before it even exists. Before it's real. Before there's anything to love except the idea of it."
"That's not selfish," Penelope said firmly, leaning forward slightly. "That's… human. That's wanting someone to care. To be invested. To treat your child like it matters before it's even born. That's not selfish. That's just—" She searched for the right word. "Love. Wanting love for your baby."
Francesca swallowed hard, blinked once, twice. Her eyes were wet but the tears didn't fall. "Michael is already researching. Of course he is. He has spreadsheets. There are bullet points. Color-coding. I watched him last night, sitting on the sofa with his laptop, looking at agencies, reading testimonials, making notes. And I thought—I should be grateful we have options. That we have money and access and support. And I am. I am. I'm so fucking grateful it makes me feel guilty for wanting more."
She paused, fingers trembling slightly against the cup.
"But I also feel… cheated," she continued, voice barely above a whisper. "Again. Like my body failed at the one thing everyone assumes it will just do. Automatically. Without thought. And I know—I know—that's not true. I know fertility is complicated and bodies are complicated and I'm lucky to be alive after the accident. After everything. But it still feels like failure. Like I'm broken in a way I can't fix."
Penelope's heart ached. She reached across the table and laid her hand over Francesca's, not squeezing, just grounding, present.
"Your body kept you alive through that accident and through grief and surgery and rebuilding," she said quietly, fiercely. "That's not failure. That's survival. That's strength. And any baby you and Michael have—however you have them, whoever carries them—will be the luckiest child on earth to have you as a mother. Because you'll teach them that love isn't about perfection. It's about showing up. About trying. About building something beautiful even when the world breaks your heart."
Francesca's eyes shimmered, and for a moment Pen thought she might actually cry. But she just nodded, lips pressed together hard, and looked down at their joined hands.
"I didn't mean to make this so heavy," Francesca said after a moment, with a small, wry smile that didn't quite work. "I promise I didn't invite you out just to ruin your Saturday. I had other plans. We were going to gossip about Colin's love life and mock Eloise's houseplants and be superficial and delightful."
"Too late," Penelope said lightly, squeezing her hand once before pulling back. "My Saturday was already ruined by living with Colin. This morning's entertainment featured a sparkly dress and what I can only describe as weaponized breakfast. He made an omelette flip that caused audible swooning."
That earned an actual laugh, small but genuine. "Is he still bringing home women who look like they stepped out of an advert for perfume and poor decisions?"
"Yes," Penelope said, and something in her chest tightened at the memory of the woman's face, the way she'd looked at Colin and then at Penelope and understood something Penelope herself refused to name. "Today's model wore sequins at eight a.m. and borrowed Eloise's cardigan without asking. Eloise was torn between fury and admiration for the sheer audacity."
Francesca shook her head, amused despite everything. "He's impossible."
"He's predictable," Pen corrected, taking a sip of her coffee. It had gone lukewarm. "Which is almost worse. At least chaos would be surprising."
"And you?" Francesca asked, looking at her more closely now, her therapist face coming out—calm, attentive, seeing more than she said. "Are you… alright with it? Still living with him, I mean. After… everything."
There it was. The old wound, acknowledged without being pressed.
Penelope felt it like a ghost ache, distant but real. Once upon a time, she'd been twenty-two and full of stupid hope. Once upon a time, she'd watched him flirt with a bartender and realized, finally and completely, that whatever softness she felt for him was not reciprocated and never would be. That she was background noise in his life. Comfortable furniture. She'd gone home and cried into a pillow so that Eloise wouldn't hear.
That felt like another life.
"I'm fine," she said, and most of her believed it. "It's been years. Literal years. I know exactly what he is and what he isn't. He's… family. Annoying, beautiful, emotionally underdeveloped family who makes really good eggs and occasionally remembers my birthday."
Except he remembered her deadline without being told. He noticed when she reorganized her desk. He touched her wrist when he set down her plate and it had felt like something, even though it wasn't. Even though it couldn't be.
Francesca studied her for a long moment, then nodded slowly, apparently satisfied. "I'm glad. Truly. I'd hate to have to kill one of my brothers. It would upset Mother. She'd make me apologize to his corpse. There would be a whole thing."
"It would," Penelope agreed solemnly. "Anthony would turn it into a family council meeting about loyalty and trust. There would be a PowerPoint. Gregory would film it for TikTok and monetize the grief. Benedict would write a terrible poem about it that he'd insist on reading aloud at the funeral."
They both smiled, and some of the heaviness lifted.
They talked a little longer—about work, about the show Francesca and Michael were currently binge-watching (The Crown, which Michael had opinions about), about Hyacinth's latest scheme to monetize her social media and Daphne's children and the endless, ridiculous fascination the public had with the Bridgerton clan.
But underneath it all, Penelope's mind kept circling the same idea, unformed and persistent, like a tune she couldn't quite place.
Someone who loves us.
Someone who loves the baby before it even exists.
It lodged itself somewhere in her chest and sat there, quietly humming, like it was waiting for her to notice it properly.
When Penelope let herself back into the flat a couple of hours later, the smell of whatever Colin had cooked earlier had faded, replaced by the clean scent of fabric softener and the faint ghost of Eloise's perfume—something woody and expensive that she claimed made her smell like power.
Eloise was curled up on the sofa in leggings and a sweatshirt that said NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED surrounded by a sea of legal documents and highlighters in at least six different colors, laptop balanced precariously on the armrest. The television was on, muted, playing an episode of Kitchen Abroad. Colin's face filled the screen as he stood in a market somewhere hot and dusty, gesturing at a pile of chilies with evangelical enthusiasm.
Colin himself was stretched out on the opposite sofa, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other hand reaching blindly toward the coffee table for a bowl of popcorn. He wore a different T-shirt now—grey, soft, well-worn—and jeans, hair damp from a shower, bare feet propped on the cushion.
Penelope dropped her keys into the bowl by the door with a soft clatter and toed off her boots. "Wow," she said. "You're both watching his show without sound. Is this some kind of modern art installation about narcissism? A commentary on fame? Should I be taking notes?"
Eloise didn't look up from her document, yellow highlighter poised. "I need background movement but not words," she said. "He gestures a lot and it's soothing. Like watching a decorative plant. A very loud, very opinionated decorative plant that won't shut up about the perfect doneness of lamb."
Colin moved his arm enough to peer at Penelope, eyes half-lidded. "How was Fran?"
His attention focused on her completely, the lazy sprawl of his body shifting slightly, tensing, like he was preparing to move if needed. To do something. To fix whatever was wrong.
Pen hesitated for a fraction of a second, weighing her words. Francesca's privacy was sacred. But Colin's concern was genuine, uncomplicated by gossip or drama. He loved his sister the way he loved all of them—messily, completely, without conditions.
She crossed the room and sank into the armchair opposite them.
"She's… alright," Penelope said carefully. "She'll be alright. She and Michael are figuring things out."
His eyes sharpened, the lazy contentment evaporating. He sat up slightly, arm falling away from his face, and swung his legs to the floor. The movement brought him closer, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing that's your business to worry about right now," she said gently but firmly. "If she wants to tell you, she will. On her timeline. Not mine."
He frowned, clearly unhappy with that answer, jaw tight. "Pen—"
"Colin," she said, matching his tone. "Trust me. And trust her. She's okay. She just needs space to process. Not everyone handles things by cooking aggressively and seducing strangers."
He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded slowly, reluctantly. "Okay. I'm still going to give her a ring."
"Don't be too annoying," Pen threatened.
She watched him for a moment—watched the way concern sat easily on his face, not theatrical but genuine, carved into the furrow of his brow. He loved hard when he let himself; that had never been the problem. The problem was that he scattered that love across the world like confetti and never seemed to notice who was left sweeping it up, collecting the pieces, wondering if any of it was meant for them specifically.
Except he'd made her breakfast without asking. He'd noticed her deadline and her stress and her reorganized desk. He'd touched her wrist and watched her leave and looked away first when she caught him staring.
That didn't mean anything. It couldn't mean anything.
Eloise finally looked up, eyes narrowing as she studied Pen's face. "You're making a Thinking Face. That face means trouble. Should I be afraid? Should I alert the authorities? Should I start drafting a legal defense?"
Penelope leaned her head back against the chair and exhaled slowly. "No. Not yet. Maybe never. Probably nothing."
"Comforting," Eloise muttered, returning to her document. "Very reassuring. I feel so calm now."
Colin was still watching her, hadn't looked away. His gaze felt heavy, weighted, like he was trying to read something in her expression that she wasn't saying. "If you need anything—"
"I know," she interrupted, softer now. "I know where you are."
"Right here," he said, and his voice did that thing again, dropped half an octave, turned into something that felt too much like a promise.
She looked away first this time.
Pen stared at the muted screen where Colin laughed at something off-camera, hands flying as he explained a dish she couldn't hear. Francesca's words echoed in her mind.
Someone who loves us.
Someone who loves the baby before it even exists.
The idea that had been humming in her chest all afternoon settled a little deeper now. It felt heavier than before. More real. Impossible and perfect and absolutely terrifying.
She didn't say anything. Not yet. It was too big, too wild, too utterly unlike anything she'd ever seriously considered for herself. Her life was words and deadlines and fictional people who did braver things than she ever would.
But that night, when she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hush of the city outside—sirens in the distance, someone shouting something incomprehensible, the occasional creak of the old warehouse beams settling—Penelope let herself imagine, just for a few brief, terrifying seconds, what it might mean to offer her body as a place for someone else's future to grow.
For Francesca. For Michael. For a baby that did not yet exist and already felt important.
She turned onto her side, pulled the duvet up to her chin, and whispered into the dark, "You're ridiculous." The words felt small and inadequate in the silence.
But the thought didn't go away.
It just settled in more firmly, put down roots, and waited patiently for its moment.