At the ripe age of sixteen, Penelope Featherington fell in love for the first time ever. The phrase, "she fell first, but he fell harder" could perfectly describe the day in question. Both literally and figuratively, as Penelope's runaway scarf caused a twenty-one-year-old Colin Bridgerton to land face down into a pile of mud in front of her. It was not at all gracious and looked almost painful. Penelope rushed to apologize and prepared herself for the scolding of her life. The spectacle could be easily explained as the accident it was, of course, but that did nothing to ease her worry.
I could start by saying that it was her best friend, Eloise's fault---she also happened to be the sister of the muddy young man. Penelope and Eloise were laughing and talking outside of Bridgerton house as they usually did since Penelope moved onto the street a month before. But then Eloise had to go and ask about Penelope's family. She would learn eventually, of course, to never bring up the topic with Penelope again. This particular incident solidified that.
It happened when Penelope found herself in the heat of a discussion about how absolutely awful her sisters were, Prudence especially. She was so worked up, she hadn't even realized her scarf had blown from her body and into Colin's face. Blissfully unaware himself, Colin flew over the handlebars of his bike and met the ground with a loud splat.
Penelope. Was. Mortified. If it weren't enough that she was shy, Penelope Featherington was also the new girl, which meant she wasn't terribly good at meeting people. Eloise was the first friend she had made, and here she had gone and injured the girl's poor older brother. There goes her social life, she thought.
But Colin Bridgerton surprised her, as he so often would. Rather than get angry, as Penelope was well used to, Colin laughed. He laughed and smiled at her, as if she had not just completely embarrassed him and herself in the process. It was at that precise moment, she fell for him. It was ironic and decidedly unromantic. But that was fitting, she thought, for the unrequited love they shared.
How did she know it was unrequited? Simply put, because he was a Bridgerton. Colin Bridgerton was handsome, kind, funny, perhaps not the brightest, but he certainly made up for it for with endless charm. She was a Featherington. The most forgettable one of the bunch at that, even looked over and outright insulted by her own mother and sisters.
It also didn't help that after a year of pining after him, she at seventeen and he at twenty-two, he said the one sentence she had always expected him to believe, and yet never expected to hear. Colin had loudly declared to the entire dinner table---including all Bridgertons, Bassets, Sharmas, and Featheringtons within earshot, as well as Mrs. Danbury---that he would never date Penelope. That certainly nipped her schoolgirl crush in the bud. Not that she held it against him. He had every right to his feelings, and she honestly never ever expected anything from him. Still, it took away none of the burn that came with one's first heartbreak.
Another year came and went while she and Colin remained friends, mostly through Eloise. And Penelope accepted that friends was all they would ever be. She watched from afar as the man she still secretly loved galavanted across the world, following his dreams and finding his purpose.
Meanwhile, Penelope set out to find a purpose of her own. It started with her school's newspaper. A thoughtful column on trends and status quos. Some would refer to it as gossip, but Penelope stuck to it that nothing she said was deliberately cruel or at all untrue. It helped that she could hide behind her "pen" name, Whistledown. Penelope felt a swell of pride whenever she heard her peers whispering the name in the hallways. The column gained such popularity that several colleges took note of it and asked to meet with her. This earned Penelope a spot in the Cambridge University newspaper.
However, this time around, she decided to no longer hide behind a disguise. She would show the world who she really was. There was a mix of reactions when she revealed herself, but Penelope no longer cared what others thought. Damn did it feel good to say that. To realize that she had grown from the shy, awkward girl she once was. She had made a few good friends, like Edwina and Genevieve, in addition to the Bridgertons who had become more like family than her own blood. Approaching adulthood meant freedom from her mother's cold clutches.
