Chapter Text
Penelope awoke, not by inches, but all at once. One minute she was asleep, the next she was awake. And as reality came back to her in bits and pieces, she soon wished she was asleep again, that this could have all been one terrible dream.
The party. Colin and Marina. Anthony.
With that thought, she suddenly became very aware of the weight around her waist.
With equal parts curiosity and trepidation, she looked down. In the gray, early-morning light, she could make out the outline of an arm–a strong, muscular arm with a very large hand attached.
Her breath caught. She remembered that arm as it had held her while she cried. The hand that had caressed her so gently and brought her to the edge of madness so many times the night before that she’d lost count.
Anthony Bridgerton was in bed with her, holding her as if he wanted to keep her close, even in sleep.
Very carefully, she craned her neck to look over her shoulder, and what she saw took her breath away.
Anthony had always been an incredibly attractive man. That wasn’t new. But like this, peacefully sleeping, there was a quiet about him that wasn’t there in the day. All the harsh lines that furrowed his brow and drew his mouth into its infamous frown faded away. In sleep, he looked unburdened by the demands of his family and billion-dollar empire. He looked…free.
But if he awoke with her still in his bed, he would feel obligated to do something, say something, be something else. He would feel the need to make her feel better, to soften the blow before he delicately and politely informed her that last night had been a mistake.
Of course it had been a mistake. From the minute she’d walked in to Bridgerton House, the night had been nothing but mistakes.
In an effort to spare one more, she slowly shifted his arm off of her waist as she slid herself off the opposite side of the bed.
Glancing at the digital clock beside the bed–who still kept an actual clock?--she noted it was barely 5am. Six hours since her life had imploded.
And then she did something she’d never done in her life: she went on a mad hunt to find her clothes. Penelope had never been an “undress madly in the heat of the moment” person. Sex, in her world, had always been an orderly affair. Clothes laid neatly on the chair or tossed in the hamper, shoes removed by the front door.
As she tracked down her bra and panties, she realized with mortification that they didn't even match. Her black lace bra did not remotely match her pink cotton panties covered in heart-shaped polka dots.
No wonder Colin had chosen Marina. Marina probably always matched her underwear. She probably had a closet full of perfectly coordinated lingerie deliberately chosen for maximum impact.
As she was still searching for her shirt, she heard a loud buzzing nearby, and quickly tracked it down to her phone, hidden beneath the wrinkled husk of her blush-pink slip dress. She leapt for the phone out of fear it would wake Anthony, and checked the display.
Fifteen texts from Colin, ranging in desperation from, “Hey, where’d you go?” To “I’m getting worried, Babe,” to “I swear to God, it’s not what you think. Can we talk?”
“Fuck you, dickhead,” she whispered into the air as she pulled the dress over her head. The very last thing she wanted to do at the moment was have a conversation with Colin. The wound was still raw. Unfortunately, so were her feelings, and she wasn’t completely sure she wouldn’t somehow let him talk his way into her good graces again if she gave him the chance.
She was just shrugging into her denim jacket when Anthony began to stir in the bed.
The last thing she wanted was an awkward conversation right now, so she quickly grabbed her purse off the table inside the door and slipped out as quietly as possible.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Anthony registered the sound of a door closing. It was the first thing he registered as he slowly came to consciousness.
The second was the quiet.
He stretched out his arm and found nothing but empty space and warm sheets.
Opening his eyes, he confirmed the other side of his bed was vacant, but the wrinkle pattern in the sheets said that someone had been there.
Anthony sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face as all the broken pieces of the last twelve hours began to fall into place.
First the text from Kate: “We want different things. Why keep pretending we don’t?”
Then Eloise’s party.
And the Scotch.
And then…Penelope, crying in the library.
Fuck Colin.
If Colin hadn’t been following his dick instead of using his brain, he wouldn’t have chased after Penelope’s cousin, and Penelope wouldn’t have found them, and Anthony wouldn’t have been dragged into the aftermath.
Though, if he was honest with himself, he didn’t need much persuasion.
Something about the sight of Penelope, looking ethereal in that slinky pink dress with her red curls loose and wild around her, had touched something inside him that had been dormant for way too long.
“Penelope?” he called out softly, just in case she was around the corner or in the bathroom, though he already knew no one would answer him.
She was gone.
There was a part of him that was relieved he could put off the “what the hell was that?” conversation just a little bit longer. But the rest of him…
Why did she run? Did she regret it? Did she think he did?
Anthony was a man who insisted on order in all things. He ran his life like a well-oiled machine, despite the best efforts of his mother and siblings. And he read people well, which meant he rarely got taken by surprise.
But Penelope had definitely taken him by surprise.
“Just for tonight,” she’d said to him in the library. “Can you not be Anthony and I not be Penelope? Can we just be…two people who need to feel something good?”
That had been the end of his resolve, right then and there.
And now here he was, in his bed in his family home, alone and unable to stop looking at the empty side of the mattress.
Before he could dwell on that reaction for too long, there was a soft knock on his door.
For one brief moment he thought it might be Penelope coming back for something. But then he heard his sister’s voice.
“Ant?” Eloise whispered through the door. “You in there?”
Anthony groaned and rolled out of bed, grabbing a pair of sweatpants on his way to answer the door.
“What?” he snapped as he opened it. He then immediately felt guilty because Eloise’s face was red and her eyes were puffy. It was obvious she’d been crying.
“What happened?” he asked again, softer.
“I can’t get a hold of Pen,” she said, sniffling in the middle. “She—Colin–there was—”
Her words collapsed in a hiccuping sob. Anthony put an arm around her and pulled d ter inside.
“Take a breath, El,” he told her. “Try to calm down.”
“I can’t calm down!” she shrieked. “My best friend is missing, and she’s upset. What if she tried to drive home and got in an accident? What if she fell in the pool and was too drunk to get out–I’m terrified to even look.”
Anthony guided her to the little sitting area in the far corner of his room and sat her down, all while scanning the area to make sure there were no obvious signs of Pen laying around. He was equal parts relieved and disappointed to realize that, no, she’d taken everything of hers when she snuck out.
“Calm down, El,” he said again, crouching next to her chair to rub her back. “Start over again. What’s all this about Penelope?”
El took a slow, shuddering breath. “Colin was a fucking dumbass last night and cheated on Pen with her cousin–her fucking cousin!”
Anthony flinched at the sudden increase in volume. “And?”
“And Pen saw them together, and it broke her heart, and then she just…disappeared. She won’t answer my texts and when I tried to track her phone it kept showing up here. But if she were here, I’d have found her by now.”
Her face began to crumple again. “Unless she’s at the bottom of the pool or something.”
Anthony quickly scrambled to think of a way he could reassure his sister without confessing to exactly how he knew Pen was alive and well.
“If Colin did what you say, Pen is probably not in the mood to talk,” he reasoned. “Try again in a few hours.”
“She would never ignore a text from me!” Eloise insisted.
“Extenuating circumstances,” Anthony supplied. “You may be her best friend, but you’re also Colin’s sister. She may be afraid of making you feel like you have to choose sides.”
Eloise contemplated this for a moment. “That would be a Pen thing to do. Back out of a fight because she assumes she’ll lose–which she wouldn't. Colin is an absolute fucking scumbag for what he did and I’m never taking his side in anything ever again.”
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear that, after she’s had a few hours to lick her wounds.”
Though he rarely opened up about his personal life to his siblings, he felt this situation warranted it–if for no other reason than to throw Eloise off the scent of his night with Pen.
“Kate ended things with me last night, officially, and if your party hadn’t been about to start, I’d be holed up in my apartment in the city right now.”
Eloise blinked at him. “Wait. Kate broke up with you?”
He shrugged. “It’s been coming a long time. She just finally cut the final thread.”
“But…why? You guys are so perfect for each other.” Eloise’s interest in his relationship would normally be irritating, but it served to get her out of her guilt spiral over Penelope, so it was a price worth paying.
“Turns out, we aren’t,” he replied. “Kate wants to start a family. Soon. Meanwhile Hyacinth and Gregory haven’t even finished high school yet. I’d like to finish raising one set of children before I start having more.”
El nodded in understanding. “That makes sense. I’m sorry, though.”
“Thank you.” Anthony stood up fully. “Now, go back to sleep. Try not to worry about Penelope; I’m sure she’ll respond when she’s ready. If you haven’t heard by tonight, I’ll start making calls.”
She stood up, much calmer than when she’d come in. “Okay. Yeah. You’re probably right.”
Just as she was about to leave the room, she paused in the doorway. “How do you know Pen’s thought process so well? I thought you never paid attention.”
“I’ve picked up a few things in the last decade of you two being joined at the hip,” he answered, hoping it sounded reasonable enough.
Thankfully Eloise accepted his response and didn’t press further.
After she left to return to her room, he walked back over to his bed. He sat on the side of his bed where Penelope had been less than an hour ago. Maybe it was his mind playing tricks, but he thought he could still smell the floral and vanilla scent of her hair when he breathed deeply.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something on the rug and bent to retrieve it. It was a thick, black hair-tie. Penelope’s.
As he stared at it, he wondered how long he should wait before reaching out to her, and what the hell he was going to say when he did.