Colin and Penelope's first meeting was at his apartment, at his insistence, in which she met a few of his seven, yes seven siblings. She would have been annoyed, or even overwhelmed, but each of them were just as annoyingly charming and welcoming as he was. To put it simply, the Bridgertons were perfect. Five minutes into their interview questions and Penelope found herself longing to be apart of it all.
"So, you're the girl that's captured my poor brother's heart?" Benedict, one of Colin's older brothers teased, settling at the dining table across from them and throwing his arm around each of them.
Penelope giggled as Colin turned beet red and shoved him off. "Ben! Shut. Up," he growled.
Eloise, Colin's second sister snorted and rolled her eyes, likely used to their antics by now. "You sure you want to interview Colin? I'm a much more interesting Bridgerton," she boasted, and Penelope couldn't help but laugh. She could tell that she and Eloise could become good friends. The young woman was strong-willed and passionate, and best of all, she loved books almost as much as Penelope.
"What was Colin like growing up?" Penelope blurted, knowing she was opening up a can of worms as she steered them back to the subject of her article.
Colin glared at his siblings. Daphne, his other sister spoke first, a warm smile gracing her unfairly beautiful face. "Colin was an absolute sweetheart. He was always sticking up for me and our other siblings."
Penelope could tell that Daphne was too kind to say more and didn't want to embarrass her brother. Benedict and Eloise held no such concerns. Both of them let out loud cackles, practically wheezing at Daphne's words. "Colin was an absolute menace!" Benedict exclaimed. "Don't let her lie to you, Penelope. Our brother used to play the worst pranks on us growing up, and he never got in trouble because he was Mummy's favorite," he explained, pinching Colin's cheeks a little too hard. Colin batted him away.
"Don't even get us started on his insatiable appetite. Our brother has a black hole for a stomach. Always has. If you got between him and food, you'd be lucky to walk away with your life," Eloise added dramatically. Benedict chuckled in agreement and Penelope noticed even Daphne nodded along.
Colin gasped in offense. "Hey, I am not that bad!" Penelope scribbled the information down in her notes anyway. "Don't write any of that," he demanded. "I was an angel." Penelope shot him a disbelieving look and scoffed. "Alright fine, but they exaggerated some of it." Penelope couldn't help but laugh.
She turned to his siblings again, deciding that she wanted to get more of their opinion on Colin before she asked him the same questions. "When did Colin first start showing an interest in travel?" Before Colin could answer, she cut him off. "Uh uh. I want to hear their version first." Colin deflated and sank back into his seat.
Benedict looked mildly impressed at the way she shut Colin down so quickly. "Wow, Col, she knows how to keep you in line. We still have a hard time getting him to shut up, especially about his time studying abroad."
"So he started with study abroad programs?"
Benedict nodded. "Yeah, the first country he went to was...oh what was it?"
"Italy," Colin replied, his eyes flicking over to Penelope as if remembering their night in Rome, the same night she just wanted to forget.
"Italy," his brother repeated. "He called and texted us every day about every pasta dish he tried and every cool building he saw."
"I think at one point Anthony told him to just send a mass email every week because he was tired of the phone bills," Eloise recalled.
Penelope noticed Colin grow quiet at his siblings continued ribbing him about his enthusiasm for travel. He was smiling, but Penelope could tell that deep down it bothered him, and she wanted to get him alone so she could ask about it.
Finally, the siblings shifted to other topics, telling story after story about what Colin was like when he was younger. Annoyingly but not at all surprisingly, it just made Penelope like him more. As Eloise, Daphne, and Benedict left the apartment, she had to remind herself that this was strictly professional. Colin was just another story. A very, very attractive story that made her heart cease beating with just a smile. Oh, she was so screwed.
"Have they always teased you like that about your work?" Penelope asked when Colin took a seat across from her.
He shook it off. "That's just how siblings are. I know they love me. Don't your sisters ever do that?"
Penelope tensed. She didn't much like talking about her family. Aside from Felicity, she never really got along with any of them. "Not really. Prudence and Phillipa kind of ignored me for the most part, when they were joining forces and bullying me about my weight or how my nose was always stuck in a book. And Felicity has always been more like a daughter than a sister to me sometimes. It's complicated."
"I'm sorry," Colin whispered, reaching for her heard.
She let him for just a moment before pulling away and putting on a fake smile. "Don't be. Anyway, I'm supposed to be asking you questions, remember?"
"Ah, yes," he said with that same charming smile from before. She now wondered if it was just a facade, and if he really knew the difference. "What other secrets do you want to know that they haven't already spilled?" He asked.
"When did you know this was what you wanted to do?"
His eyes glazed over as if slipping back into a memory. He smiled softly, and she could tell this one was genuine. "I've always loved the idea of visiting far away lands, escaping reality, going someplace where no one knows who you are."
"So travel was an escape?" She clarified, opting not to write anything at the moment and just take it all in.
"At first. It was tough growing up one of eight, you know? My parents loved all of us, but sometimes it felt like I slipped into the background a bit. Like I wasn't my own person and I was merely the third Bridgerton. I wanted something that was just mine. Something I could look back on when I was eighty and say, 'I did that'." Penelope nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. It was like his words called out to her soul and said everything she never dared admit to anyone else. "When I heard about the study abroad program, I thought, this is my chance. This is how I can make something of myself and become something more."
"And when was the moment you fell in love with it?" She asked, because that was an entirely different matter she knew. Writing had always been her escape, but she hadn't truly fallen in love with it until she started the gossip column for her college newspaper, Whistledown Weekly. Those days were far behind her now.
Colin fiddled with the edge of the tablecloth, pondering her question. Finally, he answered, "It was during my second trip, Greece this time. I remember meeting this sweet old lady named Ophelia who let me stay with her for a couple months. She taught me how to speak a little bit of the language, showed me how to bake the best Baklava, even took me around the city a few times. I think she's why I fell in love with it. That's when it became more than just sightseeing, and it was about experiencing, building connections. Then I started the blog and it became about bringing the heart of those places to other people."
"That's beautiful," Penelope whispered, truly in awe of both his passion and his way with words. Colin blushed but didn't look away from her. They locked eyes for several moments before Penelope finally cleared her throat and turned back to her journal. "Do you have any future plans for the blog? Writing a novel perhaps, or starting a docuseries?"
Colin was still staring intently at her, like he was in a trance. Eventually, he snapped out of it. "Yeah, I've thought about taking some of my travel journals and turning them into a book. Not sure how I'd go about it though," he shrugged.
"I have some contacts I can give you," Penelope blurted without thinking. "I mean, if you're serious about publishing."
He grinned. "I'd like that." He leaned in, arms folded across the table. "So, what about you? Did you always dream of being a journalist?"
Penelope blushed this time, not used to all the attention. She'd been getting a lot of it lately. "No. When I was a kid, I wanted to write romance novels," she confessed, quickly realizing she had never told anyone that before, not even Felicity, Gen, or Edwina. Why was she telling Colin? She was supposed to be interviewing him. That was all.
"Really? You, romance?" He asked, as if he simply couldn't believe it. She glared at him. "Sorry, it's just, you don't seem like the romantic type."
She huffed. "I'll have you know, I used to be very romantic. I just learned later in life that love is not in the cards for everyone. Some people can't wait around for a fairy tale ending to be determined for them."
"So you don't believe in love?"
"I didn't say that. I've seen plenty of people in love to know it exists. Just not for me."
"Why not?"
"Because it just doesn't, okay?!" She burst out, startling both of them. How the hell that the conversation turned out like this? Maybe she could call it a night. So she did. "Goodnight, Colin," she mumbled. "I'll email you."
"Call me," he insisted, because both of them knew he was terrible at answering emails. She nodded, making her way out of his apartment building and into the street. "Goodnight, Pen," she heard him call out sadly as she walked away.
