Her chin lifted and her eyes, clear, warm, and brown, met his. "I know you value their opinions."
"That is true," he acceded, "but I value yours more."
He watched her face closely, as emotions played across her features. "But you don't like my writing," she said, her voice hesitant and hopeful at the same time.
He moved his hand to the curve of her cheek, holding it there gently, making sure that she was looking at him as he spoke. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he said, a burning intensity firing his words. "I think you are a marvelous writer. You cut right into the essence of a person with a simplicity and wit that is matchless. For ten years, you have made people laugh. You've made them wince. You've made them think, Penelope. You have made people think. I don't know what could be a higher achievement.
"Not to mention," he continued, almost as if he couldn't quite stop now that he'd gotten started, "that you write about society, of all things. You write about society, and you make it fun and interesting and witty, when we all know that more often than not it's beyond dull."
For the longest time, Penelope couldn't say anything. She had been proud of her work for years, and had secretly smiled whenever she had heard someone reciting from one of her columns or laughing at one of her quips. But she'd had no one with whom to share her triumphs.
Being anonymous had been a lonely prospect.
But now she had Colin. And even though the world would never know that Lady Whistledown was actually plain,
overlooked, spinster-until-the-last-possible-moment Penelope Featherington, Colin knew. And Penelope was coming to realize that even if that wasn't all that mattered, it was what mattered most.
But she still didn't understand his actions.
"Why, then," she asked him, her words slow and carefully measured, "do you grow so distant and cold every time I bring it up?"
When he spoke, his words were close to a mumble. "It's difficult to explain."
"I'm a good listener," she said softly.
His hand, which had been cradling her face so lovingly, dropped to his lap. And he said the one thing she never would have expected.
"I'm jealous." He shrugged helplessly. "I'm so sorry."
"I don't know what you mean," she said, not intending to whisper, but lacking the voice to do anything else.
"Look at yourself, Penelope." He took both of her hands in his and twisted so that they were facing one another. "You're a huge success."
"An anonymous success," she reminded him.
"But you know, and I know, and besides, that's not what I'm talking about." He let go of one of her hands, raking his fingers through his hair as he searched for words. "You have done something. You have a body of work."
"But you have—"
"What do I have, Penelope?" he interrupted, his voice growing agitated as he rose to his feet and began to pace. "What
do I have?"
"Well, you have me," she said, but her words lacked force. She knew that wasn't what he meant.
He looked at her wearily. "I'm not talking about that, Penelope—"
"I know."
"—I need something I can point to," he said, right on top of her soft sentence. "I need a purpose. Anthony has one, and Benedict has one, but I'm at odds and ends."
"Colin, you're not. You're—"
"I'm tired of being thought of as nothing but an—" He stopped short.
"What, Colin?" she asked, a bit startled by the disgusted expression that suddenly crossed his face.
"Christ above," he swore, his voice low, the S hissing from his lips.
Her eyes widened. Colin was not one for frequent profanity.
"I can't believe it," he muttered, his head moving jerkily to the left, almost as if he was flinching.
"I complained to you," he said incredulously. "I complained to you about Lady Whistledown."
She grimaced. "A lot of people have done that, Colin. I'm used to it."
"I can't believe it. I complained to you about how Lady Whistledown called me charming."
"She called me an overripe citrus fruit," Penelope said, attempting levity.
He stopped his pacing for just long enough to shoot her an annoyed look. "Were you laughing at me the whole time I was moaning about how the only way I would be remembered by future generations was in Whistledown columns?"
"No!" she exclaimed. "I would hope you know me better than that."
He shook his head in a disbelieving manner. "I can't believe I sat there, complaining to you that I had no accomplishments, when you had all of Whistledown."
She got off the bed and stood. It was impossible just to sit there while he was pacing like a caged tiger. "Colin, you couldn't have known."
"Still." He let out a disgusted exhale. "The irony would be beautiful, if it weren't directed at me."
Penelope parted her lips to speak, but she didn't know how to say everything that was in her heart. Colin had so many achievements, she couldn't even begin to count them all. They weren't something you could pick up, like an edition of
Lady Whistledown's Society Papers, but they were just as special.
Perhaps even more so.
Penelope remembered all the moments he had made people smile, all the times he had walked past all of the popular girls at balls and asked a wallflower to dance. She thought of the strong, almost magical bond he shared with his siblings. If those weren't achievements, she didn't know what was.
But she knew that those weren't the sorts of milestones he was talking about. She knew what he needed: a purpose, a calling.
Something to show the world that he was more than they thought he was.
"Publish your travel memoirs," she said.
"I'm not—"
"Publish them," she said again. 'Take a chance and see if you soar."
His eyes met hers for a moment, then they slid back down to his journal, still clutched in her hands. "They need editing," he mumbled.
Penelope laughed, because she knew she had won. And he had won, too. He didn't know it yet, but he had.
"Everyone needs editing," she said, her smile broadening with each word. "Well, except me, I guess," she teased. "Or maybe I did need it," she added with a shrug. "We'll never know, because I had no one to edit me."
He looked up quite suddenly. "How did you do it?"
"How did I do what?"
His lips pursed impatiently. "You know what I mean. How did you do the column? There was more to it than the writing. You had to print and distribute. Someone had to have known who you were."
She let out a long breath. She'd held these secrets so long it felt strange to share them, even with her husband. "It's a long story," she told him. "Perhaps we should sit."
He led her back to the bed, and they both made themselves comfortable, propped up against the pillows, their legs stretched out before them.
"I was very young when it started," Penelope began. "Only seventeen. And it happened quite by accident."
He smiled. "How does something like that happen by accident?"
"I wrote it as a joke. I was so miserable that first season." She looked up at him earnestly. "I don't know if you recall, but I weighed over a stone more back then, and it's not as if I'm fashionably slender now."
"I think you're perfect," he said loyally.
Which was, Penelope thought, part of the reason she thought he was perfect as well.
"Anyway," she continued, "I wasn't terribly happy, and so I wrote a rather scathing report of the party I'd been to the night before. And then I did another, and another. I didn't sign them Lady Whistledown; I just wrote them for fun and hid them in my desk. Except one day, I forgot to hide them."
He leaned forward, utterly rapt. "What happened?"
"My family were all out, and I knew they'd be gone for some time, because that was when Mama still thought she could turn Prudence into a diamond of the first water, and their shopping trips took all day."
Colin rolled his hand through the air
, signaling that she should get to the point.
"Anyway," Penelope continued, "I decided to work in the drawing room because my room was damp and musty because someone—well, I suppose it was me—left the window open during a rainstorm. But then I had to ... well, you know."
"No," Colin said abruptly. "I don't know."
"Attend to my business," Penelope whispered, blushing.
"Oh. Right," he said dismissively, clearly not interested in that part of the story, either. "Go on."
"When I got back, my father's solicitor was there. And he was reading what I wrote. I was horrified!"
"What happened?"
"I couldn't even speak for the first minute. But then I realized he was laughing, and it wasn't because he thought I was foolish, it was because he thought I was good."