Chapter Text
You are Pen. You do not count. You are my friend.
You. Are. Pen.
You. Do. Not. Count.
You. Are. My. Friend.
Colin’s words reverberated through her mind on a loop as tears leaked from her eyes onto the down pillow beneath her head.
Penelope really should have known better. Known that men like him did not think of women like her. Not in that way. But, hope died hard and Pen had been determined to hang onto whatever shreds of it she could given the number of letters they had exchanged while he was on his tour.
It seemed like Marina and her family were right.
Colin Bridgerton did not see her as a woman and probably never would.
~z~
Penelope fought the wakefulness that was creeping up on her. She wanted to exist here, in a dreamland where Colin loved her and worshiped her body, for just a little while longer. A place where his lips ghosted kisses on her neck and shoulders, his voice whispered sweet nothings in her ear, and his hand caressed her breasts. The pressure of his kneading felt pleasurable and caused tingles throughout her body that settled in her center and made her writhe against him at her back. He chuckled at that and the featherlight kiss he’d been giving her neck turned into a nip that, when combined with a tweak of her nipple, had her moaning in ecstacy. When his hand released her breast and grazed her torso on its way to her core, Penelope’s breath hitched. She held it as his hand caressed her thigh and gripped it tight to pull it up and hook it over his own before sliding inward to touch her there. She hid her face in the crook of his elbow as his fingers gently traced her opening - once, twice, thrice - before delving into her most private place. Penelope’s hips jerked of their own volition from shock and awe at the feeling and she bit her lip to stop from crying out. The sweet nothings he was whispering turned less sweet and more risque as his fingers pumped in and out and his thumb circled the bundle of nerves, first with no pressure and then with pressure so intense Penelope thought she would burst just from the feel of it. He whispered how much he loved her, encouraged her to chase it (whatever it was), and continued to lather her neck and shoulder with sloppy kisses as she bucked against his hand. He played her center like a musician plays a violin and, just like music crescendos, so did she. With a strum of his talented fingers, the tension that had been building inside her burst with powerful force and she cried out his name in ecstasy.
When the body behind her stiffened at the sound and the hand that had given her such pleasure pulled away, Pen groaned at her stupidity because, even in her dreams, he didn’t want her. Not really. The high she’d been on immediately plummeted and Pen opened her eyes to face the day only to be met with unfamiliar surroundings. Her heart rate ratcheted up and confusion gave way to fear as she wondered how she got here and where here even was. The bedchamber she was in was the complete opposite of hers, but also was decidedly not Colin’s (which she’d been in once with Eloise a few years ago as she accompanied her to retrieve a book he’d “stolen”). The question was answered when the arm that she’d been using as a pillow pulled away and her body instinctively shifted positions to compensate for the loss.
Pen barely had time to adjust to laying on her back before she was confronted with an angry Viscount Anthony Bridgerton staring down at her.
Xxx
Lord Bridgerton had barely gotten out a stony, “I thought we were past this…,” when Penelope’s survival instincts kicked in and she launched herself out of the bed and plastered her body against the nearest wall. In the recesses of her mind, she knew she was naked, but she was honestly too shocked to be in bed with him to care. Of all of Eloise’s siblings, Anthony was the one she knew the least, so she couldn’t understand what on Earth was happening.
The viscount must have taken notice of her distress because his stony expression quickly turned into a worried one as he inched across the bed toward her. Eloise’s brother held up a hand at her the same way one does as one approaches a skittish animal. When he was sitting upright at the edge a few feet from her, he dropped his hand, said her name softly, and asked what was wrong.
Pen studied the hair on his chest and his rippling abdominal muscles instead of looking him in the eye as she tried to figure out what was indeed wrong besides every blasted thing. “I… do not know where I am,” she managed through gritted teeth. “Last night I went to sleep in my own bed and this morning I woke up here… with you… like… this.” Pen punctuated the last word with an arm waving frantically between them to indicate their lack of dress.
“What?” he asked, clearly confused now, too. “That’s not possible, baby. We went to bed last night together, just as we do every night.”
Pen stood tall and covered her body the best she could with her hands now that the shock was wearing off and being replaced with wariness. “We do not,” she assured him. “If you go to bed with anyone, it is certainly not me.”
Eloise’s brother raised a brow in a clear indication that his patience was running thin. “This is not funny, Penelope.”
“I agree, my lord,” Pen replied as she reached out toward the window next to her and used the curtain to cover her body.
~z~
Penelope sat on the bed wrapped in a gray silk dressing gown of Lord Bridgerton’s that he had tossed her after he leapt up from the bed and knotted the crisp white bed sheet around his waist. He paced back and forth by the foot as he tried to wrap his mind around what she was saying.
“So, you are not my wife?”
She shook her head. “No, my lord. You and I have barely spoken since Eloise and I became friends. You are unmarried as well, though you recently announced your intention to marry this season.”
He paused in his pacing. “And what season are we in?”
“It is spring of 1815.”
Lord Bridgerton brought his hands to his temples and rubbed them in frustration. He then growled low in his throat before dropping his hands and facing her. “It is spring of 1815 here, too. But we have been married for months. Ever since Colin eloped with Marina.”
Penelope gasped. “Colin’s married?”
“Yes,” Lord Bridgerton confirmed. “Why?”
“As of last night, Colin was not married. And certainly not to my cousin.” Pen couldn’t help the venomous tone that came out when she mentioned Marina. As ashamed of herself as she was about betraying her cousin’s trust, she was still fairly angry at her for attempting to deceive her beloved.
“So you managed to print your edition of Whistledown in time to stop them, then?”
This time Pen raised an eyebrow. “You know?”
“Of course I know. I figured it out when you printed the column. Only family or Featherington staff could have known about Marina’s condition. It wasn’t hard to deduce it was you through the process of elimination.”
“Ahh,” Penelope responded as understanding of the situation dawned. “So that’s how we married then? You blackmailed me?”
“We came to an eminently sensible arrangement based upon terms that were mutually agreeable,” the viscount explained as he crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
Pen huffed and mimicked him by doing the same and countered with, “Blackmail by any other name is still blackmail, my lord.”
~z~
Penelope was surprised by how easily Lord Bridgerton managed to dress her. He did not want to risk arousing suspicion by calling for her maid, so he helped her into a pale blue day dress that flattered her figure rather nicely and managed to assist her in brushing and pulling back her hair into a serviceable braid. She thought it was sweet when he apologized for being more talented at messing up her hair than fixing it.
Anthony, as he insisted she call him, rang for a tray to be sent to their room (which was apparently such a regular occurrence that no one batted an eyelash when it happened) and then went to dress himself (which Penelope noticed he did quite deftly, too). They were sitting in silence breaking their fast when he asked. “Do you think she is where you came from?”
Penelope pondered his question a moment before answering. “I do not profess to know much about time travel or whatever is happening here, but, yes, I believe that if I am here in her body then she is there in mine.”
He blew out a sigh of relief at that and Pen couldn’t help but smile. “It is likely to be far less alarming for her to wake up in her old bedroom than it was for me to wake up here.”
The corners of his mouth turned up in a half smile at her words, but he also seemed subdued by her response. “What troubles you, Anthony?”
“Colin isn’t married there.”
“But your Penelope is in love with you, is she not?”
Anthony fidgeted with the empty teacup on his saucer. “I do not know,” he admitted reluctantly. “We have not discussed it.”
“But you love her?”
He worked his throat and nodded once.
“Then I would not worry. If she lies with you of her own free will for reasons other than producing an heir, she has to be at least halfway there already.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because she is me and I would not do what we did this morning with anyone I don’t care for deeply.”
~z~
“I’m sorry,” he said a few minutes later.
“For what?”
“For taking advantage of you. I obviously did not know…”
“That I wasn’t your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
~z~
Thankfully, Penelope switched places with herself on a day where there were no balls or society outings her counterpart had agreed to attend, so she got to spend the day with Anthony, who put aside his duties to stay by her side attentively.
After breaking their fast, they loitered in their room talking for another hour. He explained everything that had happened since their marriage and she shared what had happened in her world up to the same point. Anthony frowned when she told him about Colin’s comment about her not counting as a woman and they deduced that it must have been the trigger for the switch. They both grew melancholy for a moment, but quickly recovered with Anthony’s offer to take her for a promenade on Rotten Row and ices at Gunther’s.
On their way home from ices, Anthony asked, “Do you want to see him?”
“Perhaps I should.”
~z~
She had to give it to Colin. He knew something was off the moment she walked through the door of his and Marina’s home in Bloomsbury. Anthony did his best to play it down, but Colin wouldn’t have it and immediately began fussing over her the way he did his other brothers and sisters. As a very pregnant Marina watched on warily, Penelope basked in his attention even as her heart was breaking.
Their visit lasted only a quarter of an hour, but it was enough time for Penelope to realize that Colin did love her deeply.
He just was not in love with her.
~z~
Pen begged off dinner with the Bridgerton family after they returned back to the house, but encouraged Anthony to attend. He was reluctant to do so, but acquiesced when she asked for time to process the day’s events.
Pen used her time alone to think about everything she witnessed and experienced during her day as Viscountess Bridgerton. As much as seeing Colin and Marina completely enamored with each other stung, it was a much needed wake-up call for Penelope. Her Colin could have been just as happy as this Colin was if she had not interfered in his plans. Had she truly done so for him? Or for herself? Pen had a feeling it was the latter and that was not sitting well with her. The column had been meant to give her a voice, not be used as a means to achieve her own personal ends. Pen had justified the column as a last-ditch effort to save Colin from himself after he ignored her warnings. But was that really her place? Would she have written that issue if Marina had trapped someone else in a farce of a marriage? Probably not.
And then there was Anthony. Before waking up in his bed, Pen could have counted on one hand the number of times she’d thought about him beyond his role as head of the Bridgerton family or Eloise’s older brother. But today showed her that he is an amazing man and a loving and attentive husband to her counterpart. While he never crossed a line romantically after the incident in bed that morning, he was still openly affectionate with her at every opportunity with small touches, easy smiles, and looks of adoration. Even though she wasn’t his wife, he said he loved her because she was Penelope and he loved everything about Penelope. She had been able to be herself today with him in a way she had never been herself with anyone, not even the two people she loved the most. This Colin and Eloise were unaware of her secret identity, too, and Penelope couldn’t help but wonder why the other her hadn’t told them. Was it because this world’s Penelope was as afraid of losing them as she was? This world’s Marina knew or at least suspected, but she hadn’t told her husband. Why? Was it because she truly did not see Penelope as a threat to her marriage or because she wanted the leverage? Pen supposed that was a problem for this world’s her to figure out, as she had enough of her own. The top of the list being how to get her world’s Anthony to acknowledge her existence, let alone consider marrying her. Because Penelope Ann Featherington did not think she could go back to living in a world where she was not loved by Viscount Anthony Bridgerton.
~z~
As the day drew to a close, Penelope felt her time here did, too, and she shared as much with Anthony when he returned from dinner.
He was clearly relieved by the prospect of getting his wife back, but also seemed sad to see her go.
Before she left, Penelope asked him two things: 1) to kiss her like he loved her and 2) to tell her how to convince her world’s Anthony to give her the time of day.
~z~
When Penelope woke up the next morning, she was in her own bed. She was glad to be home, but was already missing the man she’d fallen asleep with the night before.
Resolved to let as few nights go by as possible outside the comfort of his embrace, Penelope rose and got to work.
~z~
One week later, Penelope had successfully captured Viscount Anthony Bridgerton’s attention.
All she had to do to win it was beat him at his own game.
With the Mallet of Death.