by Julia Quinn
“What are you laughing about?” It was Benedict, wandering into the room, his fingers stained with paint. “Ah, biscuits. Excellent. I’m famished. Forgot to eat this morning.” He took the last one and frowned. “You might have left more for me.”
“It’s Posy,” Sophie said, grinning. “And Mr. Woodson. I predict a very short engagement.”
Benedict’s eyes widened. He turned to the door, then to the window. “Where are they?”
“In the back. We can’t see them from here.”
He chewed thoughtfully. “But we could from my studio.”
For about two seconds neither moved. But only two seconds.
They ran for the door, pushing and shoving their way down the hall to Benedict’s studio, which jutted out of the back of the house, giving it light from three directions. Sophie got there first, although not by entirely fair means, and let out a shocked gasp.
“What is it?” Benedict said from the doorway.
“They’re kissing!”
He strode forward. “They are not.”
“Oh, they are.”
He drew up beside her, and his mouth fell open. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
And Sophie, who never cursed, responded, “I know. I know.”
“And they only just met? Really?”
“You kissed me the first night we met,” she pointed out.
“That was different.”
Sophie managed to pull her attention from the kissing couple on the lawn for just long enough to demand, “How?”
He thought about that for a moment, then answered, “It was a masquerade.”
“Oh, so it’s all right to kiss someone if you don’t know who they are?”
“Not fair, Sophie,” he said, clucking as he shook his head. “I asked you, and you wouldn’t tell me.”
That was true enough to put an end to that particular branch of the conversation, and they stood there for another moment, shamelessly watching Posy and the vicar. They’d stopped kissing and were now talking—from the looks of it, a mile a minute. Posy would speak, and then Mr. Woodson would nod vigorously and interrupt her, and then she would interrupt him, and then he looked like he was giggling, of all things, and then Posy began to speak with such animation that her arms waved all about her head.
“What on earth could they be saying?” Sophie wondered.
“Probably everything they should have said before he kissed her.” Benedict frowned, crossing his arms. “How long have they been at this, anyway?”
“You’ve been watching just as long as I have.”
“No, I meant, when did he arrive? Did they even speak before . . .” He waved his hand toward the window, gesturing to the couple, who looked about ready to kiss again.
“Yes, of course, but . . .” Sophie paused, thinking. Both Posy and Mr. Woodson had been rather tongue-tied at their meeting. In fact, she couldn’t recall a single substantive word that was spoken. “Well, not very much, I’m afraid.”
Benedict nodded slowly. “Do you think I should go out there?”
Sophie looked at him, then at the window, and then back. “Are you mad?”
He shrugged. “She is my sister now, and it is my house . . .”
“Don’t you dare!”
“So I’m not supposed to protect her honor?”
“It’s her first kiss!”
He quirked a brow. “And here we are, spying on it.”
“It’s my right,” Sophie said indignantly. “I arranged the whole thing.”
“Oh you did, did you? I seem to recall that I was the one to suggest Mr. Woodson.”
“But you didn’t do anything about it.”
“That’s your job, darling.”
Sophie considered a retort, because his tone was rather annoying, but he did have a point. She did rather enjoy trying to find a match for Posy, and she was definitely enjoying her obvious success.
“You know,” Benedict said thoughtfully, “we might have a daughter someday.”
Sophie turned to him. He wasn’t normally one for such non sequiturs. “I beg your pardon?”
He gestured to the lovebirds on the lawn. “Just that this could be excellent practice for me. I’m quite certain I wish to be an overbearingly protective father. I could storm out and tear him apart from limb to limb.”
Sophie winced. Poor Mr. Woodson wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Challenge him to a duel?”
She shook her head.
“Very well, but if he lowers her to the ground, I am interceding.”
“He won’t— Oh dear heavens!” Sophie leaned forward, her face nearly to the glass. “Oh my God.”
And she didn’t even cover her mouth in horror at having blasphemed.
Benedict sighed, then flexed his fingers. “I really don’t want to injure my hands. I’m halfway through your portrait, and it’s going so well.”
Sophie had one hand on his arm, holding him back even though he wasn’t really moving anywhere. “No,” she said, “don’t—” She gasped. “Oh, my. Maybe we should do something.”
“They’re not on the ground yet.”
“Benedict!”
“Normally I’d say to call the priest,” he remarked, “except that seems to be what got us into this mess in the first place.”
Sophie swallowed. “Perhaps you can procure a special license for them? As a wedding gift?”
He grinned. “Consider it done.”
It was a splendid wedding. And that kiss at the end . . .
No one was surprised when Posy produced a baby nine months later, and then at yearly intervals after that. She took great care in the naming of her brood, and Mr. Woodson, who was as beloved a vicar as he’d been in every other stage of his life, adored her too much to argue with any of her choices.
First there was Sophia, for obvious reasons, and then Benedict. The next would have been Violet, except that Sophie begged her not to. She’d always wanted the name for her daughter, and it would be far too confusing with the families living so close. So Posy went with Georgette, after Hugh’s mother, whom she thought had just the nicest smile.
After that was John, after Hugh’s father. For quite some time it appeared that he would remain the baby of the family. After giving birth every June for four years in a row, Posy stopped getting pregnant. She wasn’t doing anything differently, she confided in Sophie; she and Hugh were still very much in love. It just seemed that her body had decided it was through with childbearing.
Which was just as well. With two girls and two boys, all in the single digits, she had her hands full.
But then, when John was five, Posy rose from bed one morning and threw up on the floor. It could only mean one thing, and the following autumn, she delivered a girl.
Sophie was present at the birth, as she always was. “What shall you name her?” she asked.
Posy looked down at the perfect little creature in her arms. It was sleeping quite soundly, and even though she knew that newborns did not smile, the baby really did look as if it were rather pleased about something.
Maybe about being born. Maybe this one was going to attack life with a smile. Good humor would be her weapon of choice.
What a splendid human being she would be.
“Araminta,” Posy said suddenly.
Sophie nearly fell over from the shock of it. “What?”
“I want to name her Araminta. I’m quite certain.” Posy stroked the baby’s cheek, then touched her gently under the chin.
Sophie could not seem to stop shaking her head. “But your mother . . . I can’t believe you would—”
“I’m not naming her for my mother,” Posy cut in gently. “I’m naming her because of my mother. It’s different.”
Sophie looked dubious, but she leaned over to get a closer peek at the baby. “She’s really quite sweet,” she murmured.
Posy smiled, never once taking her eyes off the baby’s face. “I know.”
“I suppose I could grow accustomed to
it,” Sophie said, her head bobbing from side to side in acquiescence. She wiggled her finger between the baby’s hand and body, giving the palm a little tickle until the tiny fingers wrapped instinctively around her own. “Good evening, Araminta,” she said. “Very nice to meet you.”
“Minty,” Posy said.
Sophie looked up. “What?”
“I’m calling her Minty. Araminta will do well in the family Bible, but I do believe she’s a Minty.”
Sophie pressed her lips together in an effort not to smile. “Your mother would hate that.”
“Yes,” Posy murmured, “she would, wouldn’t she?”
“Minty,” Sophie said, testing the sound on her tongue. “I like it. No, I think I love it. It suits her.”
Posy kissed the top of Minty’s head. “What kind of girl will you be?” she whispered. “Sweet and docile?”
Sophie chuckled at that. She had been present at twelve birthings—four of her own, five of Posy’s, and three of Benedict’s sister Eloise. Never had she heard a baby enter this world with as loud a cry as little Minty. “This one,” she said firmly, “is going to lead you a merry chase.”
And she did. But that, dear reader, is another story . . .
Romancing Mister Bridgerton
To say that a big secret was revealed in Romancing Mister Bridgerton would be a major understatement. But Eloise Bridgerton—one of the book’s most important secondary characters—left town before all of London learned the truth about Lady Whistledown. Many of my readers expected a scene in the next book (To Sir Phillip, With Love) that showed Eloise “finding out,” but there was no way to fit such a scene in the book. Eventually, however, Eloise would have to know, and that’s where the 2nd epilogue comes in . . .
Romancing Mister Bridgerton:
The 2nd Epilogue
“You didn’t tell her?”
Penelope Bridgerton would have said more, and in fact would have liked to say more, but words were difficult, what with her mouth hanging slack. Her husband had just returned from a mad dash across the south of England with his three brothers, in pursuit of his sister Eloise, who had, by all accounts, run off to elope with—
Oh, dear God.
“Is she married?” Penelope asked frantically.
Colin tossed his hat on a chair with a clever little twist of his wrist, one corner of his mouth lifting in a satisfied smile as it spun through the air on a perfect horizontal axis. “Not yet,” he replied.
So she hadn’t eloped. But she had run away. And she’d done it in secret. Eloise, who was Penelope’s closest friend. Eloise, who told Penelope everything. Eloise, who apparently didn’t tell Penelope everything, had run off to the home of a man none of them knew, leaving a note assuring her family that all would be well and not to worry.
Not to worry????
Good heavens, one would think Eloise Bridgerton knew her family better than that. They had been frantic, every last one of them. Penelope had stayed with her new mother-in-law while the men were searching for Eloise. Violet Bridgerton had put up a good front, but her skin was positively ashen, and Penelope could not help but notice the way her hands shook with every movement.
And now Colin was back, acting as if nothing was amiss, answering none of her questions to her satisfaction, and beyond all that—
“How could you not have told her?” she said again, dogging his heels.
He sprawled into a chair and shrugged. “There really wasn’t an appropriate time.”
“You were gone five days!”
“Yes, well, not all of them were with Eloise. A day’s travel on either end, after all.”
“But—but—”
Colin summoned just enough energy to glance about the room. “Don’t suppose you ordered tea?”
“Yes, of course,” Penelope said reflexively, since it had not taken more than a week of marriage to learn that when it came to her new husband, it was best to always have food at the ready. “But Colin—”
“I did hurry back, you know.”
“I can see that,” she said, taking in his dampened, windblown hair. “Did you ride?”
He nodded.
“From Gloucestershire?”
“Wiltshire, actually. We retired to Benedict’s.”
“But—”
He smiled disarmingly. “I missed you.”
And Penelope was not so accustomed to his affection that she did not blush. “I missed you, too, but—”
“Come sit with me.”
Where? Penelope almost demanded. Because the only flat surface was his lap.
His smile, which had been charm personified, grew more heated. “I’m missing you right now,” he murmured.
Much to her extreme embarrassment, her gaze moved instantly to the front of his breeches. Colin let out a bark of laughter, and Penelope crossed her arms. “Don’t, Colin,” she warned.
“Don’t what?” he asked, all innocence.
“Even if we weren’t in the sitting room, and even if the draperies weren’t open—”
“An easily remedied nuisance,” he commented with a glance to the windows.
“And even,” she ground out, her voice growing in depth, if not quite in volume, “were we not expecting a maid to enter at any moment, the poor thing staggering under the weight of your tea tray, the fact of the matter is—”
Colin let out a sigh.
“—you have not answered my question!”
He blinked. “I’ve quite forgotten what it was.”
A full ten seconds elapsed before she spoke. And then: “I’m going to kill you.”
“Of that, I’m certain,” he said offhandedly. “Truly, the only question is when.”
“Colin!”
“Might be sooner rather than later,” he murmured. “But in truth, I thought I’d go in an apoplexy, brought on by bad behavior.”
She stared at him.
“Your bad behavior,” he clarified.
“I didn’t have bad behavior before I met you,” she retorted.
“Oh, ho, ho,” he chortled. “Now that is rich.”
And Penelope was forced to shut her mouth. Because, blast it all, he was right. And that was what all of this was about, as it happened. Her husband, after entering the hall, shrugging off his coat, and kissing her rather soundly on the lips (in front of the butler!), had blithely informed her, “Oh, and by the by, I never did tell her you were Whistledown.”
And if there was anything that might count as bad behavior, it had to be ten years as the author of the now infamous Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers. Over the past decade, Penelope had, in her pseudonymous guise, managed to insult just about everyone in society, even herself. (Surely, the ton would have grown suspicious if she had never poked fun at herself, and besides, she really did look like an overripe citrus fruit in the dreadful yellows and oranges her mother had always forced her to wear.)
Penelope had “retired” just before her marriage, but a blackmail attempt had convinced Colin that the best course of action was to reveal her secret in a grand gesture, and so he had announced her identity at his sister Daphne’s ball. It had all been very romantic and very, well, grand, but by the end of the night it had become apparent that Eloise had disappeared.
Eloise had been Penelope’s closest friend for years, but even she had not known Penelope’s big secret. And now she still didn’t. She’d left the party before Colin had announced it, and he apparently had not seen fit to say anything once he’d found her.
“Frankly,” Colin said, his voice holding an uncharacteristic strain of irritability, “it’s less than she deserved, after what she put us through.”
“Well, yes,” Penelope murmured, feeling rather disloyal even as she said it. But the entire Bridgerton clan had been mad with worry. Eloise had left a note, it was true, but it had somehow got mixed into her mother’s correspondence, and an entire day had passed before the family was reassured that Eloise had not been abducted. And even then, no one’s mind was set at
ease; Eloise may have left of her own accord, but it had taken another day of tearing her bedchamber to bits before they found a letter from Sir Phillip Crane that indicated where she might have run off to.
Considering all that, Colin did have something of a point.
“We have to go back in a few days for the wedding,” he said. “We’ll tell her then.”
“Oh, but we can’t!”
He paused. Then he smiled. “And why is that?” he asked, his eyes resting on her with great appreciation.
“It will be her wedding day,” Penelope explained, aware that he’d been hoping for a far more diabolical reason. “She must be the center of all attention. I cannot tell her something such as this.”
“A bit more altruistic than I’d like,” he mused, “but the end result is the same, so you have my approval—”
“I don’t need your approval,” Penelope cut in.
“But nonetheless, you have it,” he said smoothly. “We shall keep Eloise in the dark.” He tapped his fingertips together and sighed with audible pleasure. “It will be a most excellent wedding.”
The maid arrived just then, carrying a heavily laden tea tray. Penelope tried not to notice that she let out a little grunt when she was finally able to set it down.
“You may close the door behind you,” Colin said, once the maid had straightened.
Penelope’s eyes darted to the door, then to her husband, who had risen and was shutting the draperies.
“Colin!” she yelped, because his arms had stolen around her, and his lips were on her neck, and she could feel herself going quite liquid in his embrace. “I thought you wanted food,” she gasped.
“I do,” he murmured, tugging on the bodice of her dress. “But I want you more.”
And as Penelope sank to the cushions that had somehow found their way to the plush carpet below, she felt very loved indeed.
Several days later, Penelope was seated in a carriage, gazing out the window and scolding herself.
Colin was asleep.
She was a widgeon for feeling so nervous about seeing Eloise again. Eloise, for heaven’s sake. They had been as close as sisters for over a decade. Closer. Except, maybe . . . not quite as close as either had thought. They had kept secrets, both of them. Penelope wanted to wring Eloise’s neck for not telling her about her suitor, but really, she hadn’t a leg to stand on. When Eloise found out that Penelope was Lady Whistledown . . .
