Happiness Begins // polin A.U.

Chapter 8: Only Human

Yall, I am so sorry this took me fucking long to finish. Like...it's been a year aowiqofbqwef anyways, I hope this wraps things up in a satisfying way. Can't wait to know what you think!! Thanks for coming along on this journey with me.

***CHAPTER WARNINGS: mentions of negative body image, angst, daddy kink, use of sex toys, slight choking...thinks that's all the major smut ones lmao

WORDS: 18.7K

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You got all my love to spend, oh

Let's find a place where happiness begins

Christmas morning is wild. Eloise announced her very serious relationship to her family, and her mother was both ecstatic and aggravated. All of the kids loved their presents, and the family in general was just happy to be all under the same roof again. Violet practically begs Colin and Penelope to stay, but he explains that they both have a lot to do over winter break to prepare for the spring semester and that preparation can't be done with dozens of kids and babies around.

During the ride back, Penelope fell asleep instead of writing her post. She was pretty tired from last night. Colin falls asleep as well, his head landing in Penelope's lap. When they arrive at Colin's place, the driver taps on the window and they both wake up.

"Did you want to just come home with me, or did you want to go back to your place?" He asks her, stretching his arms out.

"Well, I packed plenty of clothes, so I don't need to go to my flat straight away. I'd like to go home with you."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

Colin grabs both of their bags after giving a generous tip to the driver. They each use the bathroom and freshen up before heading into the living room to have some separate-together time on their computers.

Forty-five minutes in, Penelope takes a deep breath and closes her laptop.

"I posted it." She tells Colin, and he looks up at her. "I revealed I'm Lady W."

"Alright, let me go pull it up."

**

The Lady W Papers

My dear readers, last night was one of the best Bridgerton Balls I've been to in a long time. Normally, I would get into all of the juicy gossip I overheard, but I honestly didn't have my ear out for very long. I was very busy dancing with my boyfriend after Cressida not only accosted me, but him as well. She will never learn how to be a proper lady of society.

Although, I am also not all the way proper. I am not the first society paper to enter the world of debutants and gentlemen, but I was the first at naming names. And for a while, I went unnoticed because I was nothing more to anyone than a pudgy, wallflower who was never looked at twice. I started this when I was fourteen. The second biggest mystery about me is not knowing what the 'W' stands for, next to my identity. Some people have thought that maybe it's Lady Writer, but I am much cleverer than that, even at the age of fourteen I was cleverer than that. The 'W' stands for Winnifred, which is my middle name. That's not exactly common knowledge.

I could give the sob story about being bullied as a child and being too afraid to stand up for myself, which resulted in me just blogging anonymously about it. I wanted other people to feel humiliated as I was meant to feel humiliated. But I'm not going to do that because these society papers were more than just humiliating gossip. There were some positives that came from them. Marriage and baby announcements, for example. And to tell you the truth, a lot of what I wrote and published didn't have malicious intent, I just wanted other people to know what was going on behind the scenes.