A Matter of Priority

Chapter Four: Forbidden Fruit (part 2)

Note: There's a bit of book canon here and a bit of theorized show canon. Basically, it starts off with one little line from the book's kiss, but takes a slightly different argumentative (and horny) turn. ;)

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June, 1815

Colin tilted his head, slanting his mouth over hers, breathing in Penelope's shocked gasp.

She had no right to be shocked. This was all her doing! He certainly hadn't come here with the intention of kissing her. But she'd gone and practically forced him into it and now he couldn't stop if his life depended upon it. And it had all come out of practically nowhere. 

He'd simply visited to discuss the possibility of Eloise's secret life as Lady Whistledown and made a silly offhanded comment about rumors and how they took on a life of their own. And yes, he might have mentioned kissing first, but it was only to illustrate that he and Penelope hadn't kissed, not that they should.

"Suppose I told everyone that I had seduced you," he'd said, and not with seductive intentions, though he had been kneeling before her sofa, gripping her shoulders and staring deeply into her eyes. But that was for emphasis only. "You would be ruined forever. It wouldn't even matter that we had never even kissed. That, my dear Penelope, is the power of the word."

There. Nothing about that should have led to kissing. He might have glanced at her lips a time or two — or six — in the awkward silence that followed, but that didn't mean he would have done it. He'd taken great pains, all season so far and through the end of the last, to ensure that Penelope Featherington remained unkissed on the whole, and especially by him. He'd sacrificed a lot for her!

He'd avoided sitting across from her at meals they both happened to be attending. At Anthony's wedding to the wrong Miss Sharma, he'd been armed with a flask, which he indulged in frequently rather than indulging in other ways, such as feasting his eyes on certain parts of her. And that was really for the best as his study of her necklace, studiously avoiding parts below it, had led to his definitive investigation into her cousin's schemes... which he had exposed, saving her family from ruin. After that, he'd very emphatically stopped Fife from making leering comments about their friendship — something he still insisted was for her own good, no matter how she'd misconstrued it. When she insisted on putting herself on the marriage mart in earnest, he'd been there to counsel her and be sure nothing untoward happened.

And when he'd locked her and Eloise in a closet for three hours last week — which led to their renewed friendship, all thanks to him — he'd simply shook Pen's hand in congratulations rather than embrace her as he'd started to. And he could have done with a hug. Eloise had punched him right in the gut twice when he released them. On the whole, he'd stopped touching her so damned much. 

Outside of dancing, he'd barely touched her in a year until now!

Really, Benedict had been the one to put a stop to that when Colin had, in a fit of guilt and gallantry, asked his brother if it was possible that his very innocent touches involving Penelope had been possibly misconstrued by people who certainly didn't understand their friendship and the... well, the generally demonstrative nature of the Bridgerton family. Surely, it was all very innocent and Fife was mad in his assessment that Colin was "always touching" Pen when Colin had taken him aside at Mondrich's and asked where he got such a notion. Colin very pointedly told Fife that he had the wrong idea, that he and Penelope were just very close friends.

"If you say so," Fife had said with a wink. He always tried to skew things in that way, lech that he was, but he was sure no one else saw anything untoward about it.