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Assistant: Title: Into Your Ocean Eyes
        Author: alcopop_beetle alcopop_beetle 
        Chapter: 9/13 
        Summary: Months of letters unreturned, Colin Bridgerton suddenly hears that Penelope Featherington is to be wed, he is completely anguished and desolate—only to learn that it's a cover for something even more sinister: Penelope has been in a severe accident. Desperate to see her and protect her, Colin sets off for Ireland and arrives to find her unconscious in an infirmary, where he vows to never leave her again. As he fulfills his vow to take care of her, Colin realizes that he has been in love with her all along, but just as he begins to hope for a future together, he finds her room empty one day—Penelope has mysteriously vanished.Five long years of desperate searching, Colin unexpectedly meets a transformed Penelope, far from his Pen, now a resilient tradeswoman with no memory of their past. Determined to rekindle their lost connection, Colin faces the ultimate challenge of helping her remember the love she once held for him—a love he had squandered and taken for granted. Colin must confront his past mistakes and fight to win back the heart of the woman he now knows is his past, his present and his future.*****A Polin amnesia fic nobody asked for but I wrote anyway
            
            Colin grapples on figuring out Penelope's silence for months. He desperately looks for answers from thousands of miles away, and receives the most distressing news he'd hear for a while.
        Contents: Chapter 9: Falling faster, barely breathing
    

    


      
        
          Hi there again, y’all!! WOW WOW the reception from the previous chapter holyshittt i was truly blown away. thank you again for being here and reading this story! I did not expect the intensity you guys felt with the five-year time jump, I’m with you all, it WAS sad, yes, but also, necessary. The growth for our babies is necessary for this story. Also, to be really clear (this also garnered a bit of a reaction from the readers), Pen and Theo are business partners, nothing more. There will be a bit of miscomm with Colin regarding Theo and Charles for sure (who doesn’t love a bit of unnecessary drama, amirite :D) but that’s about it. Polin HEA all the way. :) and Charles is Sophie’s kid yall, haha. I have very delicious plans for a Benophie spin off later soooo yeahh lmfaoo.I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing this. I think it’s one of the saddest and most emotional I have written so far, please check the tags first before reading in.TW: Depression, Alcoholism, Grief, (and a very light mention of recreational drugs)
            
            (See the end of the chapter for  more notes.)
            
      
  

  
  
    
    
    

  CHAPTER 9 — Falling faster, barely breathing
 
  Falling faster, barely breathing

  Give me something to believe in

  Tell me it’s not all in my head

  Take what’s left of this man

  Make me whole once again
   
  TW: Depression, Alcoholism, Grief
  
   APRIL 1821 
  Benedict Bridgerton was a painter. An artist, although he still feel a bit of being an imposter to fully call himself one. He would always find a different kind of appreciation on something so mundane, see them a little bit differently on how they were normally perceived. And when he does put that unique reverence to the canvas, it leaves him satiated not only in a physical and emotional way, but also in a more profound, poetically-fulfilled way.  Like the artist inside him expands and glows a bit more as his canvas fills up, as his room piles up with emptied paint tubes, as his sketch pad thickens with coal-heavy parchments. It was not just all joy and glee of course. Benedict had seen pieces that moved him, creations that had stoked his inner emotions, some left him hot and aroused even, he was not ashamed of it, some left him in tears in more than one occasion. But it would also leave him thrilled and elated later on, just having to be in audience of such masterpieces. He had never encountered an art, or created a piece of art where he was left with extreme emptiness and anguish, bereft of warmth or anything exuberant for a long time. Until he started painting Penelope Featherington. It all begun five years ago, when his dear brother implored him so desperately to sketch the young woman from memory. Colin had sent them a letter from Ireland a month shortly after he had left to search for Miss Penelope. Benedict had seen his younger brother plaster a placating and mechanical smile in appearances, but weep in silence of his own bed chambers when their father had passed so many, many years ago. After that, Colin had become the affable, charming, ever delightful and attentive of all their siblings.  What he had never seen, however, was the complete and utter devastation, torment and misery, not even when their father had died, or not even when he was revealed to be almost tricked into marriage by the woman he claimed he fancied himself in love with before.  No, this was the real ‘in love Colin’. The Colin that was so deeply and ardently in love.  Penelope Featherington’s mysterious disappearance carved a dark and gaping abyss in his brother’s heart that might never be filled again.  Benedict knew Colin had always held a tendre with their sweet, redheaded neighbor. She had been there in their lives ever since the Bridgertons had moved across them in Grosvenor Square, more importantly, in his brother and sister’s lives. Benedict can only chuckle in awe and incredulity every time he saw Penelope look at Colin like he hung the stars in the sky, and his brother would smile back fondly at her and looked somewhere else in seconds. A cosmic fool, this dear brother of mine. He would always thought so, but Ben would also think that his brother would come around and see what’s in front of him all this time. So when Colin announced he and Miss Marina Thompson were to be married, he was genuinely, genuinely stumped. He knew he was young and a fool because who wouldn’t be in that age, but not to this extent that he would even tangle himself with Penelope’s cousin. His mother had warned him and Anthony to not rile up Colin lest they inadvertently push him to do even more preposterous things, Anthony, however, did not heed their mother’s warning and they later learned Colin was actually about to run to the Scottish borders to elope, if it wasn’t revealed that the young lady was with child even before she had arrived in town. He felt bad for Miss Thompson, for sure, but he would lie if he said he wasn’t relieved that that engagement got botched. He didn’t want his brother to ultimately regret being trapped as a cuckold into a loveless marriage, only to realize that it was the wrong cousin he really had genuine feelings for. And Benedict was right, but he hated to be proven right through what would turn out to be the most distressing of circumstances. Penelope Featherington had to be in an accident and eventually be gone missing for Colin Bridgerton to finally face the music.  He remembered arriving to the little town of Galway in Ireland to Colin’s lodgings that Anthony had helped him procure, his possessions scattered in the room, papers and papers strewn about in his desk, and the man in question sitting at the edge of his bed, shoulders slumped by an invisible weight he carried, elbows in his knees, and hands caging his head. God, had he not taken a bath? Changed into a new set of clothes? Or even had them cleaned? Despite being in a foreign country, Colin had a modest home and staff, did he just…gave up? When he thought it couldn’t get any worse, Benedict remembered Colin raising his head and looking at him with genuine gladness, but with eyes were red-rimmed and sunken, and only then he took a whiff of the air that surrounded his brother, it was a fusion of every liquor he had ever known. There might have been some in the mix that even he had never even drank before. Benedict did not know back then that that was the picture he would be looking at for the next year. After looking for Miss Featherington for weeks and weeks in that little town and the surrounding ones, they had not caught any lead at all that would resemble her whereabouts. There was a nurse, Colin had said in gritted teeth, that attended to Penelope who was also gone the day she went missing. And his brother was sure that the woman had taken Penelope, so it wasn’t just her that they resolved to find. They went to the local constabulary and runners to ask for help in catching the abductor, but to his and his brother’s disappointment they could not do anything, as Penelope was actually ‘bought’ as a dead body by the same nurse into that infirmary. She was legally her guardian, if that law was how it was interpreted back then. It was utterly ridiculous, and it was even more sickening to know that it was a widely accepted practice in that place. He remembered seeing Colin die a hundred deaths that day. And that was when his brother begged him to draw Penelope from memory, thinking it would help in finding her if they had something to show for her likeness. For the next months, Benedict had accompanied his brother in traveling across the whole country to look for her, he would see him glance and whip his head around he thought he would break a tendon too many times, only to see that a short, plump and red-headed woman was not his lost love.  Benedict felt his own heart constrict every night that time, as he hear his brother silently weep in his own bed, he would see him stare at that same piece of parchment containing Penelope’s likeness that he had painted while he poured his heart out to her. He saw Colin grew weaker, and weaker by the minute as they ran from city to city, completely forgone shaving his face and sported an unkept beard, his once full cheeks hollowed out as he refuse to eat sometimes, and he would hold his brother’s neck, look at him directly in the eyes and say, you will not be near finding Penelope if you would drop dead this instant. The threat of not finding his love, no matter how it pained Benedict to yield that weapon against him, was enough for Colin to get back a little to his senses, gather himself to eat, take a bath, and just genuinely take a little breather for himself. After almost half a year of running around Ireland, even Scotland, and the English countrysides, there was still no Penelope Featherington in his brother’s arms as they returned to London. Colin thanked him still for being there for him and going as far as half a year of his life to look with him, or if it was still his brother thanking him he was not sure. Benedict knew the person who had not returned to London was not just Penelope, but his brother as well. The person who had returned was not Colin anymore, it was just a shell of himself, his brother had left his heart and anything that made him human and a creature of feeling in Galway, waiting for Miss Featherington to resurface. Their mother was visibly distraught as they pulled up Number 5 Bruton Street, him holding his brother upright, as he staggered his weak knees and just generally thinning body upstairs to their mother’s home. His sister Eloise was no better, he remembered seeing her look just like Colin, hollowed out and desolate, except for the beard, dust on the road and the damp air of different places that clung to him, her color fading in her already pale skin and equally weak frame.  Benedict knew Penelope Featherington for a good part of his young life, but it was only then he knew how she had impacted their lives so profoundly, especially his brother, who was desperately in love with her too late, and his sister who had basically shared a soul with her and regretted the row they had too late. The next few months Colin was well into his way of becoming a mere vessel of himself, his body had finally listened to the pain and distress he had so effectively stave off for six months. Colin was sick for weeks, holed up in his bedroom, drapes shut to the rest of the world, sleeping for the better part of the day, awake and staring at a distance at night. He was able to eat, talk and maintain a conversation, that much was enough for Violet Bridgerton to not fall apart on herself to the wrecked vision she was seeing of her dearest third son. Anthony had continued Colin’s search for Miss Featherington through a network of private investigators under their employ, even retracing the path they had paved, just to make sure there was no nook and cranny in the country unturned. But much to their distress, Penelope was still not found. 
  She might not be using her real name. Her abductor might not be using her real name.
 And even with the parchment of congruity Benedict had replicated for several runners Anthony had hired, it bore no fruition. Not one soul had seen the redhead, not in Ireland, not in Scotland, and definitely not even in England. Penelope Featherington was good as a ghost. Even the woman, Colin had named Sophie Baek, was a phantom herself. Colin had directed him to find the woman alongside him finding Penelope, so they would be working to save time. They thought they finally held a lead when they uncovered a record of her working in a cruise ship traveling from Wales to Dublin for a brief period before she had worked in the infirmary in Galway. But after that, she had basically vanished in the face of the earth, tagging Penelope along. As months and years had passed, the investigators had slowed down, not entirely stopping but the lack of clues were leading them nowhere and in a turtle’s pace. Colin had regained strength after weeks of sickness, but even then, he was no longer the same Colin they loved and adored. He would plaster the same amiable and cordial smile he did, limited to his lips and not reaching his eyes. He had taken his own bachelor lodgings in Bloomsbury, an act their Mother had tried to counter and prevent, as she believed it was not the best course of action to leave Colin in this state and in his own devices, something that they all vehemently agreed with but also believed that restricting him of movement on his own would only lead him into further depths of depression.  They thought it was good for him to experience the outside world again, only that they had underestimated the degree of internal distress and pain he was still reeling in and masking on. Benedict had visited him one time in his home, only for the door to be opened by a panicking footman Dunwoody who lead him directly to his brother’s bed chamber, Colin Bridgerton lying very still, face down in his bed, several empty bottles of spirits strewn about in the floor. The physician had pumped out so much liquor from him it was astounding, Ben had honestly not thought a human male can intake that much in one night, much more his sweet younger brother Colin, who had nothing to give to the world but the most delightful smile and the most kind personality.  It was a terrible ordeal, their mother was weeping endlessly, looking at him and Anthony with bloodshot eyes herself, he would never forget it as it was engrained in his head ever since, looking at them desperately, asking for help. They did not know what to do, they had hit a wall. Colin had been completely hollowed out, the vessel of himself was crumbling, and they were at a loss on how to bring him back. The next months and into the second year of the disappearance of Penelope Featherington, the family had strongly resolved to bringing in Colin to the country side, their mother keeping him company, away from the bustling movement of Mayfair, and away from any kind of alcohol and vice he could easily get a hold to for himself. Benedict was not sure if it was a good move that time, but he once again painted a likeness of Penelope for Colin to bring for himself in what would be his days of isolation and healing at Aubrey Hall. It turned out to be a good decision, Benedict had felt an immense sense of relief, as Colin had slowly returned to a semblance of his old self as months and months passed by in his seclusion. Colin had been writing, their mother would inform them later through letters, there had been stacks of journals in the study he had been occupying. He was still staring at the window at a distance from time to time, but it was a progress still, to get him to sleep in a proper time and wake up in an appropriate and healthy time as well. They would later on learn Colin had slowly regained his appetite, the appetite he had been known for in their household. Benedict felt a knife being pulled out from his chest upon hearing this. He had been walking the grounds on afternoons too, sometimes would even join their mother in tending the gardens. But for the most part, Colin had been slowly taking his original shape.  Benedict would never forget how he got a glimpse of his dear brother after a year in solitude in Aubrey Hall. A far stretch on how he had last seen him in his lodgings: shrunk from his usual burly and sturdy form, dark patch of skin under his eyes that had sunken back to their sockets, hair mussed and too long, a haphazard smattering of stubble in his chin and jaw a testament that he had not let his valet in for the past weeks, a shadow lurking around him instead of the sweet charming third son. He had cried in his own bachelor lodgings that night after they had safely transported Colin to Aubrey Hall. Benedict saw Colin again after a year. The brother that he dearly loved was back, not entirely to the way he originally was but far more better the last time he had seen him. He basically flee the scene to the nearest private drawing room and poured his heart out. He had cried when he last saw Colin, and he had cried when he saw him again.  A year in between but the change was drastic. It was disconcerting, terrifying even, to have witnessed what love, true and unyielding love can do to a person. Benedict saw love had given and taken, he saw love manifest the greatest of the emotions, and even the worst of it. Benedict had been in the sidelines of it all for five long years, perhaps even way before that. He saw how it was so beautiful and tragic for his mother and father, how steadfast and enduring it was for her alone even after all these years of his absence. He saw how uncertain it seemed to be and how over powering it could be with Anthony who was so certain Siena Rosso was the one despite the differences in their stations, how he pushed himself to liking Edwina for the sake of pragmatism and how it all turned around for him when he finally admitted his true feelings for Kate. He had seen how sweet, young love can turn into all-encompassing and life-altering grief swiftly as he caressed Francesca’s back while they lowered John down to the ground forever. Benedict had seen Colin deny and avert his eyes to the love that was right in front of him, only to die a million times over for that same love he had not the chance to acknowledge and experience fully. “Benedict?” A soft voice pierced through his own rumination. He was brought back to the present, as Francesca’s form immersed from the door of the private parlor of Number 5. “Are you ready? Mama’s already there.” “You go ahead to the carriage, I will be right over.” His sister smiled sweetly then she was off to the hallway. Benedict turned to the finished canvas in front of him. He sighed then as he pulled it down and started to pluck it out of the wooden hold, his eyes caught another canvas peeping out beneath it. His hand stilled and his breath had paused. It was like he was seeing it for the first time ever again. It had always felt like that for Ben as he grace yet again his eyes for probably a thousandth time to the likeness that he had painted years ago. 
  "What do you see?”
 
  He asked softly, almost a whisper, as he looked at her, really woven himself lost to her hazelnut eyes.
 
  “My soul, I see my very soul.”
 And just like that, he was transported back again to that magical night almost four years ago. The night that he was so sure, so certain that it might have been a dream, a figment of his imagination. For he never saw her again, the enigmatic nymph that had given all of herself to him, and to whom he had given all of him back, body and soul, for the first time in his life.  Perhaps that was why he was doing everything he can to help Colin find Penelope.  They were one of the same, his brother and him. Looking for the love they had lost before they could truly even have it.  ———  Colin Bridgerton was an author. And a traveler. A travel author, as his publishers would brand him. It was the new wave in the literary world, as they would excitedly tell him time and time again nobody wants to be simply informed anymore, after the wars had dusked all of Europe in the recent years, people don’t want to be by the sidelines anymore, they want to live vicariously through travel books instead. Colin did not plan to be a writer, originally. Now he had been one for almost three years.  But at this moment, as he ran through his eyes at the contract his publishers had sent him that he now held in his hands, he did not know if him being a book author had really served its purpose, the real and core purpose why he had actually started it.  
  
    Book Publishing Contract, Division of Voyage and Exploration
  
  
    WHEREAS, The Author is hereby directed for sojourn and cultural immersion of a minimum of Two (2) years to the following countries indicated; Malaya, Philippines, Siam, Annam, and Kampuchea…..
  
  
    WHEREAS, The Author is hereby directed to write One (1) new travel book series containing Three (3) books resulting from this exploration…….
  
 They wanted him to explore the farthest he could go, the Southeast Asia. And it gripped and loosened him inside, a swirl of varying emotions. If he was a young man just out of leading strings at the age of ten and eight, the prospect to traveling this far, where you don’t speak the language even, would sound so very enticing indeed. But he was eight and twenty now. He was no longer in the dawn of youth as he once was, and he was tired. The recent years of voyage for Colin Bridgerton had become more of a work, a chore, something he HAD to do to be able to do his other work, the travel books. Everything had become a job, work he needed to do to keep his mind occupied. To keep his mind from straying. To keep his sanity in tact. Also, to pay for the professional runners under his employ. Private investigators. After his brother Anthony had told him that he was slowing down the search three years ago due to lack of veritable leads, Colin took it upon himself to rehire them, and added more men to the chase. The chase to find Penelope Featherington. His best friend, the love of his life, was still out there, somewhere, Colin just knew of it. His heart knew of it. And five long years searching for her tooth and nail with very little clues that would often lead to nowhere, did nothing to try to even tamper a bit of his hope, the burning longing inside him to see her again.  Even when people around him were making him feel like it was time to stop. It had been five dark, grueling, tormenting years ever since he had last seen his dearest friend….and the woman that had owned his heart from the very beginning he had met her, only that he did not knew it back then.  For months and months of looking for her, he felt like he was outside of his weakening body looking in. Looking in the frayed, dented and hollowed vessel of the man he once was. Colin saw himself wither away, and he had no will to climb out of the well he had found himself in. And through it all, she lived through the corners of his tired eyes, a perpetual red and yellow that haunted him every night. Penelope was everywhere, and nowhere. But her disappearance did nothing to quell his feelings for her. If anything, it just grew. Grander, more elaborate, more intense. She had made her way to the very fibers of his being, she had engraved her way into his very bones, everything in him ached and tendered for her. Absence really did made the heart grew fonder. And more.  Colin never thought there was an even lower level where he was at that time, but there actually was. The next thing he knew back then was him replicating the drowning feeling into actually drowning himself with countless bottles of intoxicants and alcohol he could get his hands to, so much that he dropped motionless and bereft of any feeling, numb all over, face down in his bed. So on the second year of her mysterious disappearance, and the solitude Aubrey Hall brought him that seem to ease a bit of the longing, guilt and depression that had devoured him, Colin begun to write. 
  It is a shame, Colin, that only your family and I get to read about the places you had explored, the food you had tasted, the people you had met, and the culture you had experienced. You are a wonderful writer, and I feel like I am experiencing life’s adventures that I will possibly never experience myself, all through your eyes. Have you thought about publishing your travel journals?
 Penelope wrote to him once, back when he was in the mediterranean in his first ever tour. And it had resonated to him since.  He had read all of her letters to him over and over again for the last five years, he had them practically memorized by this point. He knew everything about her life that summer, he had it engraved in him, in every part of him. Those letters were the only connection he had with her, after all.  And now, here he was. An author. A writer.  Writing to her in the form of his books, keeping her memory alive when he was filled with so much uncertainty for the future, so much uncertainty of ever finding her again. If someone were to ask him how did he arrived to this point, he could never give them a clear, coherent sentence of how. But if he could try to string along a couple of it, it would be years of mindless traveling, years of rereading and rereading her words, reassuring him of the past where they had actually been in each other’s presence and she was not just a depressed and drunken-induced illusion he made in his head, working his back to find her, both physically and financially, and just.....trying to keep his head above water all those times. “Before I go, I have to know. Have you thought about the proposition?” Thomas Dorset, his publishing agent asked as the man walked towards the door of his study.  For a moment Colin had forgotten that he was in fact, with company, after his mind had gone wandered again so far. He looked over once more at the parchment in his hand, like he did for probably a hundredth time the last month. The proposal was such a big deal, a lucrative one, if he was being honest. It was promising, and the publishing house believed that he could pull it off successfully after the excellent reception his first three works garnered. He could save up a fortune, too, as they proposed to funding the whole trip, delegate his funds to the search efforts. But going away for two long years to the far corners of the world….he could not do it. It was too long and too far away from home. He didn’t want to be that great a distance away if something, hopefully, anything comes up. “Allow me more time, Dorset.” Colin slipped the document back to its Manila folder, not really meaning it but just saying something to get them off his back for the mean time until he could come up with a good excuse to decline the offer, and shoved the thing back to his desk’s drawer. “I am not even done with the fourth one yet.” The young man hummed in acquiescence, tipped his hat to him and proceeded his way out of this study. “We will be waiting. Good day, Mr. Bridgerton.” “Don’t hold your breath.” The publishing house sent his agent to deliver his royalties and sales for the quarter, along with an intention to figuring out where his head was at for the new proposition they were offering him. After his agent left, Colin pulled out the envelope again only to see a glimpse of a stack of blue envelopes beneath it.  He sighed. His book contract was not the only document that arrived that day. He pulled out the blue-colored folders and laid them, sprawled across in his desk.  Dossiers. From his private investigators. When he first knew that it was the attendant Sophie Beckett that had actually took his Penelope from her relatives in Cladaggh, ‘bought her body in the name of medical research’, an absolute inferno broke inside of him. And the worse thing was the constabulary could not help him look for her because she was technically ‘owned’ by Sophie Beckett. It was….he was so, so sure he could actually kill someone with the amount of rage he had felt that time, the fury ate him for months and turned him into ashes and embers of his past self. But the trail on Sophie Beckett had gone cold, and after hitting a wall with her, Colin resolved to going after the trail on the man, the printer’s apprentice, that visited Penelope for a month in the infirmary. How come he did not think of that before? It was a lead, and angle he did not deigned to focus on. So he directed his men to every printshop in London, one who had a man dared to leave work for a whole month. But it came to be even more outstretched than he could imagine, as the wars were brewing and men, especially thousands of working class men all over the country had been summoned to the frontlines, and hundreds of them working as printshop apprentices and delivery boys. It took months, years, up to now even to narrow down what could or could not be the scoundrel that dared to touch his Penelope, even breathe the air around her. And these dossiers right here, posed to be the culmination of years of his investigators’ effort. He could not bare to read them just yet. And if he opened it to nothing of significance, years of painstakingly running around Europe just for it to come down to nothing, what then would come of him? “Colin Christopher Bridgerton!” He snapped his head up to see his mother by the door of his study, a panting Dunwoody trailing after her. “D-Dowager Viscountess Bridgerton for you, Sir.”  Colin nodded to his faithful footman and dismissed him promptly, he thought about awarding his staff a bonus for having to keep up with the shenanigans of his family whenever they visit him in his home. “Have a seat, mother.” He casually gestured for his mother to do so, but she did not, she instead stepped forward into where he was, opposite his desk. “Have you been here all along? I have been looking all over there for you!” Colin could hear a tinge of exhasperation and irritation in his mother’s voice, something that was so not Violet, just further implicating her waning patience on her third born son. Alas, the infamous Violet Bridgerton ‘crusade to push Colin Bridgerton back to the London ballrooms and marriage mart itself after years and years of evading it’. He really thought she was done with him by now. It was the furthest thing in his mind. Dash it, it was not in his mind all in all. He will never marry. Not to anyone who was not Penelope Featherington. “Colin, dearest, please.” His mother implored in a gentle voice, the one that would always, almost work. But Colin tried so hard to not give in with this inane request of hers. Any other else, he would, no questions asked. “Mother, you still have Benedict, Eloise, Francesca even?” He flipped through his documents once again, busying himself to not look his mother in the eyes, lest he would really give in. “Perhaps Gregory? Just out of Eton now. Not yet Hyacinth, of course.” “How is it so hard for you to just, just go to this one? Lord Hartigan had just arrived and his daughters are such lovely, young ladies. You would really like Miss Henrietta and Miss Harriet. You are good acquaintances with the Earl, are you not?” Colin tried so, so hard to not roll his eyes. He was, but not so much as to wanting to wed any of his daughters. “I am certain they are wonderful ladies, mother.” He said in an almost robotic tone.  “Then you should at least…” Thank goodness they were interrupted by Dunwoody again, with yet another announcement. “Dowager Countess Stirling and Mr. Benedict Bridgerton for you, Mr. Bridgerton.” “Oh, I didn’t know Francesca would arrive early!” His mother had now changed courses, thanks to his wonderful sister. His two siblings materialized in his study, Francesca and Benedict beelining to their mother, then him as they exchanged banter-pleasantries. “Darling! How was Kilmartin? I thought you wouldn't arrive till next week.” “Well, Michael wanted to come early, saying he might not get to Colin sooner before he’s on the next ship to god knows where.” Colin was briefly amused how his lovely sister could shift from her gentle disposition to subtle blasphemies in seconds. “Francesca!” Violet widened her admonishing eyes. “My apologies mother. That was his words, not mine.” “Where is Michael, by the way?” She looked around, scanning the hallway just outside of his study. “He’s off to the soiree the Hartigan’s are hosting in Camden, said he will come visit later.” Francesca answered. “How come I did not see him! I was just there.” Just like that, their mother and her sister fell into their free flowing conversation like they always do as they head out of his office and into the drawing room just next door. Benedict grinned at him when he saw him heave out a sigh, his shoulders positively relaxed. He loved his mother very much, but he could really do a reprieve or two from her match-making endeavors, especially when it was him she was dedicatedly advocating for. “Colin, dearest, this conversation is not yet over.” “Ben, have you got something for me?”  He said at the same time as his mother, earning him a death glare before walking out the door with Frannie. “I told her she has you and whole lot of our other siblings to direct her efforts to.” He said to his brother as the latter sat in the wooden chair just beside his desk. “You are here all of the time, how come it is I she solely focuses her efforts on.” When he did not hear Benedict respond to his rambling, he looked up at him from his dossiers. He saw how his brother stared at a distance and heavily sighed after. It was not actually the first he had seen Benedict cast a longing gaze at nothing, seemingly lost in his thoughts.  But before he could poke more on his brother’s out-of-character reservation at random times, he handed him the art cylinder Colin did not notice his brother had been holding. He threw him a confused glance. “I figure it has been a long time since the last one. And I figured I’d paint something a bit different this time.” Ben said with a soft smile and nudged for him to open it. Colin’s chest throbbed painfully as he pulled out the content of the cylinder, he knew what it was before he could even see it fully. But the tugging in his heart felt all new and fresh this time.  It was a water painting of Penelope….and him.  All these years Benedict had painted her a couple of times in his fervent request, but never once did he painted her…with him beside her. It was the two of them, her in her yellow frock that he had always adored in her, beautiful red tendrils framing her face, him behind her as as she smiles sweetly up at him from over her shoulder and him looking down on her with a smile to match her own. He had never seen himself like that, he had never seen himself smiling at Penelope from another person’s point of view before. It was…it felt like a whole new revelation altogether. She was beautiful, so, so beautiful. And he could almost feel her presence in front of him as he held the canvas. “Ben, it’s…” Colin could not find the words that would match the overwhelming awe he felt inside. “I do not want you to forget what her smile looks like. And I want you to see what you looked like when you were with her.” Colin laid the parchment down his desk and moved it away as he ducked down, hot tears had erupted from his eyes without preamble.  It was as if all the longing, despair and guilt that had been simmering inside him for a long, long time had come boiling back to the surface in full force, bubbling and spilling out the pot and now were overflowing, hot from his eyes. He propped his arms to the desk as he felt his brother hold him from his side, patting his back with gentle taps that was just so Benedict, and a gesture of comfort that felt a bit like his mother, too.   And for a moment there his brother let him silently pour his heart out, not aware of his mother just by the door of his study, as she looked at them with silent tears of her own.    The ‘welcome home and going away’ dinner at Number 5, as his lovely mother had so begrudgingly put it, had been quite pleasant, Colin would admit.  It had been a while since all of his siblings, and him, in particular, had sat down for a meal, or just all in a room together. Mostly because he was always not around. Many years ago, Colin would return for every opening of the season, but after Francesca had debuted five years ago, which he was not mentally and emotionally around, and after going back to his sojourns after a year of isolation, he had just stopped coming home altogether. He would come home for Christmas and his mother’s birthdays, and he would not stay even a week for those times. He was boarding a ship to somewhere after five days at the most. Colin would reason it was his work that prevented him from staying. Of course it was not the entire truth, and he knew his family knew that, too. Everyone of the Bridgertons were there except for Daphne and her husband the Duke, almost as if his mother had threatened every single one of his siblings to attend for him, as he was so hard to pin down. His niece and nephews had grown so much, he would admit he had barely a time to really spend with them, Daphne and Simon now had four children in their roster, Anthony and Kate had two. There was Benedict of course, not with a wife yet but the way he had been sullen and reserved the past few years had Colin thinking there were much to uncover, there was Francesca who had busied herself lately in preparing to enter the London society herself two and a half years since her husband John’s passing, then there’s his little brother Gregory, who had implored him to omit the ‘little’ now as he had been fresh out of Eton himself, and Hyacinth who was preparing for her presentation to the Queen for the first time. And there’s…. Eloise. Colin would not deny that they had grown apart over the years, ever since the heated argument that broke out between them years ago. Eloise had admitted to him that it must have been her the reason why Penelope was out that night, they had argued and Pen might have been looking for her outside when she couldn’t find her around the Featherington ball, when she met the horrifying accident. He had so many questions that time, but the fact that if it weren’t for that instance, Penelope would not have gone out in the first place, resonated with him, and would eventually cast a dark cloud around him and his sister. Colin didn’t want to fight with Eloise anymore, and to blame her for setting afoot everything that had happened later was something he tried to push down inside him, not when he had seen how Penelope’s loss had affected his sister so much, too. He did not want to fight with Eloise, for he knew he would just say things he would positively regret later. So he avoided her as much as he can. For her part, Eloise had avoided him too. By then, it was all cordial greetings and mechanical, obligatory smiles exchanged between them. He missed Eloise terribly, but he no longer knew how to act around his sister with all the knowledge he had and the blame that was simmering in the surface, just waiting for an escape. Colin knew he was just as equally to be blamed for everything that had happened, god he was, he really was and that was why it was even harder for him to be in his sister's presence. He took away her best friend, her kindred spirit, a person so very important to her, too. He loved his family dearly, and the rowdy and merry atmosphere would always be appreciated and cherished by him, nevertheless. And it saddened him that he was the reason why they only had little moments like this, where they are all together and reveled in each other’s company, all of them complete, everyone accounted for. He wished his family were enough reason for him to stay home for longer than they deserved from him, but he knew they were not, not entirely. So Colin sought solitude in the balcony of the main study of his mother’s house, brandy on hand, while his siblings and his mother enjoyed some games and idle time in the private parlor.  He lifted his face up and let the cold evening air sweep his face, and took a swig of his decanter, when he almost choked in the amber liquid when a loud voice erupts from the nearby door. “Where is it this time?” “F@ck and d@mn it, Stirling!” Colin puts down his tumbler in the balcony’s ledge and wiped the liquor that trickled from the side of his mouth with his arm. The unrepentant chump guffawed, much to his irritation. He just gave his friend a neutral but annoyed look. Like he still needed to ask. He already knew what the answer would be. “Forget I asked.” Michael relented like clock work. After a beat though, he followed through. “Still doing that, huh?” Colin just gave him a tight smile, hoping the exhaustion and resignation did not seep through what he hoped he delivered as neutral a smile as he could. He lifted the decanter back to his mouth and sipped his drink. “I am.” His friend hummed in acknowledgement, then pulled out a cigar from his pockets and lit it. Colin and Michael fell into an amiable silence, him drinking his dues and his friend dragging a smoke. This was what made Michael Stirling a preferable companion over the years that he had traveled. The two of them were one of the same, they shared a similar interest in touring foreign cities and countries, they had ventured in business investments when they both felt traveling posed a waning sparkle in the future, and they put importance to comfortable silence when they saw it fit with each other, not prodding for more when silence was preferred. They would even be mistaken as brothers a few times abroad in the past. Perhaps it was their height, build, and the chestnut hair they both sported. He also saw how he took care of his sister Francesca when her husband, John Stirling, also his cousin, passed two and a half years ago in an illness that took him so suddenly and devastatingly. Frannie was unconsolable, his family did everything they could to be there for her, but Michael had braved his way through the walls her grief and pain had erected. For that, he had earned Colin’s utmost respect. “What are you doing tomorrow, Bridgerton?” His friend brought him back from his short reverie. “Hartigan invited me and the chumps back there in his estate for a game of poker, he said to reach out to you, too, considering it had been a feat to catch you around town recently, as they have said.” Colin chuckled, glass in his lips, and downed a few of the ambers to his throat. “How is he, by the way.” He asked as he put down the tumbler back in the balcony. He never really cared, to be honest. It just seemed to be the most polite thing to ask. It had been a really long time since he last cared about anyone other than his family, and… “He hosted a shindig earlier. He is a proper father, Colin, he has four children, an entire blasted family. Could you believe that?” Michael chortled in equal parts disbelief and amusement. Nathaniel Hartigan was a senior in Eton by a decade but he taught for a while so Colin and his mates had become acquainted with him despite the age gap. “No, he is practically a grandfather by this point, sending daughters to the marriage mill and all that.” The word family rung painfully in his chest like he was a diapason being hit. Deep in his heart, he knew why it did.  Once upon a time, Colin Bridgerton had dreamt of having a family of his own.  Hell, he didn’t even needed all the fanfare that came with it if he was being truly honest. He just needed her.  It was a cruel jest from the universe, truly. Because just as soon as the dream made itself aware in his heart and his mind, as he was just beginning to envision a wonderful future with the woman that had always been the only resident of his heart before he could even had the chance to acknowledge it, the universe took it all away from him, morphed that dream into fine sand and trickled its way out his grasp, leaving him empty and frayed in all edges, a mere ghost of his past self. He had lost his chance for an everlasting happiness, a happiness that transcends all fleeting emotions. A happiness that would have completed him truly.  He had lost the person that embodied it all. And now he had to sit in the remorse and pain and the endless torture. He did this all to himself, there was no-one else to blame. “He is 10 years older than us.” Colin found himself saying in the end. He didn’t know why he said it, perhaps so they could divert to a different topic instead. Michael merely chuckled at a distance and took a long drag from his cigar. “I meant to come get you earlier, Stanton and Wielding were looking for you. Apparently, apart from not catching even a whiff of the air around you in town recently, you have not been seen in London b@lls and soirees for almost half a decade now.”  Colin smiled bitterly. He did received an invitation from the Earl of Aberdeen earlier that week, he just did not have any reason to go. It did not appeal to him anymore, but his mother had apparently not yet given up on him. The general idea of courting burns at the back of his throat and head just like glasses of intoxicants would render him in the morning as a cosmic punishment. He stared at a distance as he said his next words, careful to not sound anything at all lest he gave his companion an opening. “I am not in need of a wife.” He could feel Michael staring at him from the other side of the balcony, his cigar suspended in between his fingers mid-air. Apparently, he was not successful in feigning neutral. “What?” Michael shrugged and brought his cigar back in from having been suspended seconds ago. “Nothing. You just have that look again. It reminded me of someone.” “Ah, it is you that is need of a wife. Are we hearing wedding bells soon, Stirling? Tell me more about this unfortunate woman.” Colin grinned and all the brandy gave him the nudge to take this opportunity to revert the seat to his friend, a thought popped up in his head. “Though, I have always thought you and Fran—” “Put a sock in it, Bridgerton.” Ah, there it was. He remembered it was a sore spot with his friend. A tinge of contriteness flashed through him. He knew of course that Michael held a tendre for his younger sister, that he had kept it at bay since she was married to his cousin, Colin just didn’t thought that it had actually took root and grew itself as the years passed, judging by the longing and somber note in his countenance right now. “Francesca and I….it does not matter.” When he met his companion’s wistful eyes, Colin made sure his own expressed the most apologies he could display in it. He sighed in relief a bit as he saw his friend’s expression turn back into its usual sunny and easy disposition. “What was I talking about before I was rudely interrupted?” Stirling flicked the embers of his cigar to Colin’s side of the balcony, some of the ashes landing successfully in his coat. What a pr@ck. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile his  man-child of a friend to an actual twenty eight year-old Earl with vast estates and wealth that date back even further than his own lineage. “This someone. Your soon-to-be wife.” Colin cleared, a playful impatience dripping in his tone.  “Not even the slightest, you dolt.” His friend then recounted his observations on this mystery lady. “Although I must confess, she is a sight for sore eyes. A little bookish, and quite adorable. I do not think she is of genteel breeding, however, which is a shame, really, as I have found myself quite endeared to her red—” “Oh, a mistress then, Stirling?” Colin didn’t hear the last parts of his statement, what he said about the lady not being genteel was all he had heard that stayed with him. He knew Michael Stirling enjoyed a lot of casual dalliances abroad, he was the merry rake, after all. While he mostly stewed himself in the confines of his bed chamber and poured his heart out in his manuscripts, his friend did more than just gallivant, a typical night for Michael Stirling was his boots at the doorsteps of the finest brothels of whichever country they would find themselves into. As for Colin, he….. He shook the thoughts in his head like a dog shaking off rain and stirred himself back to a now gaping Stirling, giving him an incredulous look as if saying are you kidding me right now?  but then paused and stilled, like remembering something else profound from that encounter worth mentioning. “I don’t think it is I who she might want, though.” Now that made Colin cackle in disbelief.  “Come now, who could not want you, my Lord.” He faked a sympathetic hand in his chest and the most faux saccharine tone he dramatically laced in his voice. “You are practically the most coveted eligible gentleman of the season. The mamas have you in frames above their mantles with candles lined in front. The ladies are awaiting for your arrival just to swoon.” But instead of a usual retort, his friend just looked at him with an even expression on his face. “I think she might want you.” Colin’s mischievous smile faded slowly.  “She is an admirer of your works.” Stirling proceeded when he had effectively rendered the third Bridgerton son speechless. “Fully engrossed in your most recent one in solitude when I saw her, in fact.” Colin was not blind, nor daft. He knew he was once a coveted gentleman himself. That was mainly because of his family name. Though he dared to admit that he might be charming and congenial in general, the most affable of his siblings in fact. The gentle ladies before would show tactile interest in his clothed arms and back, and he reveled in it, he won’t lie. He was ashamed of it though looking back, but in his first tour, his ego was trampled so greatly from all the Marina debacle, as he would now refer to it, that he wanted to build the bruised manhood back with ephemeral attentions from bar maidens and sometimes, ladies of the night. He did not went further than some coquettish touches and a few kisses that time though, it didn’t felt right. The attentions did feel a bit good, in the surface at least, if he had to admit.  But never as good as the attentions she used to give him. The way she made him feel. It might not have been touches and kisses, but it was far more than mere tactility, something that exceeds the blushes in his cheeks, the ego he sports, it was more….sacred, ethereal. Like he was cogs and gears inside, rattling and clattering because of that debauchery of an engagement, and her letters fixed him back in all of his axes, fitting back all parts of him so he was smooth operating all through out later on. Colin walked those foreign streets with every part of him dangling on his joints, and Penelope had made him whole, without him knowing. And he had squandered it all. Now Colin just feels the absolute worst than ever. Not that he wasn’t already feeling the absolute worst in all these years. On a very few nights the past three years he might have….indulged with some dalliances himself. Dalliance was a generous term, no. More likely, a night of carnal mortification, he would think with gritted teeth. He felt like an absolute cad now thinking about it, there have been three nights in three years. Hell, it wasn’t even a whole night, technically. Not that it somehow made the situation better. When he found himself dreaming about her at lonely nights more intensely than any other nights, as he would always do because she never left his mind, and the want and need for her just consumed and ached every part of him, and taking himself by hand to the thoughts of her could not quell the building ache like they would usually almost do, he fell into bouts of baser weakness.  He didn’t went to spill his seed to any of the three courtesans he had laid with, god, no. He would pull out immediately even before the deplorable tension was building, shame and guilt would replace the throbbing ache for her momentarily and he would pay them more money than necessary to counter the abhorrence he had for himself, though it never really, fully did. And he’d just leave the damned brothels feeling emptier and more pathetic than ever, handling himself to completion back in his own bedchamber's lonely privacy. And what makes it all worse was they had been all lovely women for sure, only caught in the crossfires of a society that favored titles, money and breeding, and all of them he sought in those places, had the specific features engraved in every fiber of his being, every crevice in his head. If it was not a red, permed-haired maiden, adoringly short in stature and had voluptuous curves, it was not happening. 
  God, what have I become.
 “Told her I’d get her copy signed.” For a moment, Colin was confused as to what he was talking about, or where he was and who was this person talking to him, even. “Didn’t know you’d want to work as my agent now, Earl of Kilmartin.” All Colin could say, the initially air of jest he tried to build earlier rolling off his tongue. “You wish.” Michael put out his cigar and walked briefly back inside, and coming back out with a decanter filled with amber liquid himself. “She wanted to meet you, I can tell by how much she bit her tongue when she refused to my proposal of you meeting her.” The sly tone laced in his voice and the suggestive wriggling of his brows irritated Colin a bit. God, the last thing he would do was invite scandal and take in a young woman for himself just because she had showed an admiration of his work. The thought had really made him physically disgusted and he shut his eyes tightly. “I am not taking a mistress, Michael. I am not taking anyone, for that matter.” He had heard praises of his work of course, testament to that was a very good reception and sales he got from neighboring countries like Scotland, Germany and Netherlands. His family weren’t shy in pouring him adoration and reverences, as well. But a part of Colin knew they were just mollifying him, perhaps even a bit afraid that he might revert back to the state of him those many years ago after he came back home from Ireland. The darkest times of his life, afraid that he may fall back in that same pitch black dark if he was not greatly supported. That was just ridiculous, Colin thought now.  He loved his family but they didn’t even bothered with him that much when he was writing to them in his first tour. Only one person truly appreciated him in that manner.  Though he couldn’t fathom if women were particularly inclined in his works. Mostly it was young men freshly out from their studies and men alike that had wanted to travel themselves and looking for a comprehensive guide for the countries he visited that they would like to visit themselves too, without sounding authoritative, stiff or telling them what to do.  Not when Colin wrote those books as a love letter for her.  The lines and the manner he wrote on the books were the gentlest he could ever write, the deepest parts of his heart practically moving the quill in his hand every time, they were basically from his letters to her those many years ago, and entries from the journal he kept when it was just too painful to write the letters. Letters that he had tried to continue to write for her after, as if there was still a Penelope Featherington on the other side, except that he didn’t knew where to send them.  “Did my mother put you up to this? Frannie?” “Your mother is rightful to be concerned.” Of course. Colin had visited Clyvedon Estate earlier last week before he arrived back home and his sister Daphne had this similar talk with him, minus the drink and the smoke of course. Something about putting him back to the steps of the ballrooms and parties.  Then just this morning, his mother had come herself in his bachelor lodgings, with yet another talk. Then Benedict. Although he had preferred him more among this unsolicited string of ‘interventions’, his brother had given him yet another wonderful gift he was sure to cherish and bring with him everywhere he’d go. He thought about what he could purchase for Ben on his next travels. Maybe some intricate pottery and ancient paintings from Siam or Kampuchea?  “She is just looking out for you.” Colin loved his mother dearly, but he hoped she was done with it with him by now, which she was obviously not. “God, this, I have no time for.”  He moved to stand straight from leaning back in the balcony and gathered his decanter. He should get back in his home lest another one of Violet Bridgerton’s apostles corner him in some other room with yet another intervention. “She asked me to pass you a message, your admirer, that is.” Michael briefly paused and gauged if he got his attention. Colin was midway to the giant arc door when he stopped. “She hopes you find whoever it is you were looking for.” Huh. He was….he felt his world stand still a bit. Probably the effects of brandy? It was not quite it. Nobody had said that before. Or to be accurate, nobody had noticed it.   People who read them generally have not seen through the words of affections woven intricately, albeit subtly, on his works. Colin was not subtle with the dedications he wrote at the beginnings. He hoped and prayed for her to see.  Colin was an anonymous author, but the publishing house received a lot of letters addressed to C.B., mostly praises on his detailed observations and suggestions, and excitement on where he was off to next. But none about the deeper meaning behind his words. Or the message he had wanted for only her to decipher. Though now, he was not sure. Apparently one person had seen through the sheer veil he hung subtly for his Penelope. “She talked about looking for someone, while speaking to someone. A lot of ‘someone’s, I don’t know.” Michael rambled on with a grin he was trying to stifle against his mouth on the tumbler. Then he chortled, some of the fluid splattering out of his nose, fits of cough breaking out of him. Colin grimaced and laughed amusedly. What an uncouth person this man was, Colin thought, everything he was saying going over his head because of the comedic relief. “Honestly, I was quite hazed with the special….grass in my smoke I couldn’t make clearly of anything more she said.”  Colin could only laugh in defeat. Whatever thoughts in his head made itself aware just now completely got overpowered with the hilarity that was his boor friend. He suddenly remembered the special tea he gave him many seasons ago. Maybe Francesca could find a better, far more sophisticated gentleman than this one. One who was not getting high as a kite in front of delicate ladies in broad daylight. “Apologies, that was very unbecoming of me.” “Perhaps you should seek her out yourself, you look quite taken with her.” Colin jested, but hoping Michael could gather himself first before talking to the, what could probably be a wonderful woman, again. He looked down on the empty decanter in his hand and decided to turn in on for the night now. “She might be the best match for you since she got you snorting your drink out of your nostrils like that.” His friend softly chuckled under his glass. “Perhaps I should.” Colin started to walk back into the study when he heard Stirling talk again behind him. “And I do share the same sentiment, Colin.” His friend said with a solemn and somber note in his voice this time. “I do hope you find her.” Colin only nodded, not looking back. Michael Stirling might be a boisterously merry, deeply unserious and borderline degenerate fellow but he was truly a good man inside, he knew that for the many years in his companion’s presence. 
   
“Hit the hay, Stirling.” He was out the study and back to the main house in seconds. In a way, he was glad for his friend, now that he had found someone that he potentially might like, especially when his and Frannie’s position might still be a bit delicate and complicated to navigate. Perhaps Colin should have gone to the soiree to meet this woman who had seen through his work, and who Michael Stirling, his merry rake friend, found himself drawn to. ———  Francesca Bridgerton-Stirling was a pianist. She was also a Countess. And she used to be a wife. But for tonight, she chose to hang her other hats and revert back to the first form she was before she had become all of those other things, a seasoned lover of the piano forte. She lumbered down her mother’s house’s staircase from the lodgings into the piano room in hushed steps, and hoped everyone had gone to sleep, it was past midnight after all. At her first night back in town, she chose to stay in Number 5. The Stirling estate in Mayfair was a grand and comfortable one for sure, but somehow it was still…difficult for her to be truly alone in there. When all she could feel was her husband’s warm embrace as she laid in their bedchamber, even years after he was gone. Francesca was flipping through the music sheets resting in the rack in front of her when a presence made itself known in the entryway of the piano room. “It is rather late, sister. But I guess I should know better than pose a hindrance between an artist and her craft.” Her older brother Colin materialized in the room and sat in the wingback chair a few paces from the piano forte. She smiled and went back to scanning the sheets. “I thought you had gone back to your lodgings, brother?”  When she did not hear a response, she raised her head to look at him, he had poured the Ratafia in the nearby tea table to two Georgian long stem glasses. Colin then brought the one glass to her. She hesitated for a moment, eyeing the glass and her brother curiously and suspiciously. “It is alright, Frannie, I only do this once in a year.” Francesca smiled in playful defeat and took the glass he offered. Her brother had since been well, she knew that. Somehow she still felt…uncertain. Scared that he would slip back into the version of himself that brought so much pain to their mother, and to the family as a whole years back. But of course it would not. Colin had been well for a long time now.  And she could totally down one drink before playing a piece and going to sleep after. “Are you celebrating something, Brother? The book sales doing good?” She could not help but tease him. But Colin truly was a great author, she knew it had not been a breeze, the past few years had not been kind to her brother but she was glad that he started to paddle his way through, and he was making something for himself in the process.  “Hmm.” Colin responded as he sat back to the wingback. She couldn’t help but hear a resignation in his hum. A dash of worry reverberated inside her. Perhaps it was not a celebration, and there could only be another one if it wasn’t. “It is, but this isn’t about that.” Francesca dared to guess. Colin’s eyes flickered with somber and a hint of despair, but it had gone really quickly before he changed it into a strained smile. Oh. 
  Oh.
 “Brother, I apologize.” She immediately said, hoped that she had not said anything that could offend him, or bring forth any emotions that he would rather not unearth. “Frannie, it is not like that. You are alright.” Colin chuckled and she relaxed her shoulders as he gestured for her to go on. Somehow she was not convinced, but she did not poked around anymore. “Is there something you would like me to play?” It was all she could do. Francesca do not know much in comforting people physically, she was not wired that way, but she knew her family liked it when she plays. And she wanted to take care of her brother through the way she knew perfectly how. “Musician’s choice.” Colin smiled softly. She smiled in return and relief was washing through her. 'Appassionata', Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23. She knew Colin liked this one as much as she did. The gentle music engulfed the entire room as she began playing, then she had lost herself in it for a while. When the music sheet was nearing the end, she heard Colin again, his voice almost a whisper. “How do you do it, Fran?” She looked at him with confusion. Colin had his sights on the window, his expression distant and void of any emotion. “John…” He said softly and in a nearly hushed voice as he turned back to her, melancholy flickering in his tired eyes. Oh. She plucked out her fingers from the keyboard and brought them to her lap, entwining them cautiously. It had been almost three years yet it still felt like it happened a week ago, every time someone asks her how she was faring. “Is it…I apologize, Frannie, I should not have…” Her brother might have sensed the hesitance in her silence and backtracked immediately. But it was not. She was not hesitating to talk about John. If there was someone that she could talk to about it, maybe someone that had wanted help navigating the terrain of losing the person they had held so much reverence and affection for, it was Colin.  His brother had lost the love of his life. Perhaps not the way she had but she knew the pain all the same. The uncertainty, the losing battle of maintaining hope…she wanted to be there for Colin, and if knowing how she navigated the agony of her own loss could help him walk his own, she would gladly do it. Even if it hurts to bring up John, even it makes it real all over again when she does. Francesca had been meaning to, anyway. Even before their mother’s behest that they speak to Colin about coming back to the London society and the marriage mart altogether. She felt it was not quite right to nudge Colin into doing something he might not yet be ready for, but she knew her mother just wanted her brother to be fully happy and settled. Part of her thought that their mother had grown tired of Colin running around under the sun. Violet Bridgerton was an open book about it, in fact, the sadness and worry in her expression evident and cannot be ignored every time Colin leaves for yet another expedition. “No, brother, it is alright.” Francesca turned herself to the side of the bench, now fully facing her brother. “I have actually been meaning to talk to you, about it.” Her brother’s face lights up a bit into what she identified to be a realization. Somehow he knew it already. “Oh, Violet Bridgerton.” Francesca chuckled and stood, gesturing for him to stand up, too. “Not entirely. Come here, brother.”  She enveloped him into a warm embrace, patted his back, she hoped he knew through the gesture that she was just here if he needed to talk to someone. Colin slouched into her embrace and she could hear him exhale. She could feel the tiredness and resignation emanating from him as he weakened into her arms. After a moment, she felt his brother let go, and she let him, patting his back one more time and patted the space under his neck in equal measure just like how their mother does as a comfort, before he could fully sit back in the chair. Francesca felt a small rigid but hallow mass against his manubrium. She looked up at him with curiosity before she dug under his loose cravat, only to find a necklace hanging around his neck. Her brother did not wear necklaces. She pulled the chain up and out, and it revealed a ring as its pendant.   It was….it was a Bridgerton heirloom ring.  It had five small pearls surrounded an aquamarine gem in the middle, a beautiful, beautiful engagement piece. A sad realization hit Francesca all of a sudden and she felt her chest constrict for her brother. “Oh, Colin…” Her brother looked down in a defeated guise, his eyes glassy and tired. He blinked, a singular stray tear had escaped his eyes. “I know.” She guided him into the settee nearby where they could sit together, holding his hands in her lap as she saw him further shrink into himself, the sight just broke her heart. Colin had wanted to marry Penelope.  Her heart went out for her brother. She felt all of the sadness effervesce in her in the knowledge that her brother’s suffering was even more severe than what they all had thought. They had thought he was doing better all these recent years, when he was actually not. Not entirely, at least. “I wanted to, Fran. The moment I knew, I was already running towards her. When I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, I wanted the rest of our lives to start right away.” Colin pulled away and sat back in his seat, resting dejectedly to the back rest, his head lifting up facing the ceiling. His hands found their way to his face and covered it, palms digging into his eyes. It did not prevent the tears that lined their way down his cheeks, however. Francesca felt her own eyes pooling and tearing up just the same. “I believed she would eventually wake up, or even if she didn’t. I would still be right there.”   She heard his breath hitched, as if repressing the sobs from breaking out.  “But you never got to see her again.” She said softly. Colin nodded slowly as he still buried his face into his hands. “Oh, brother.” Francesca caressed his arm briefly and stood, moving towards her glass of Ratafia from the piano forte and towards his too in the wingback chair. She sat down beside him again and pried his arms apart, placing his glass in his now free hands.  She downed the entire drink and willed her brother to the same. Francesca thought briefly if she could down more Ratafia, as she felt like she needed it tonight. They fell back into a solemn silence. She glanced on her brother after a moment, who was now leaning his elbows into his knees and staring again at a distance again. She reached out and stroke his back, she hoped the action helped ease him a bit, but she also knew it would not. Not with the amount of insurmountable despair he was going through now, and had since been going through. She did not know what to do. Colin, her good-natured, ever-delightful, walks in the sunny side of the street, pocket-full-of-happiness brother….now bereft of everything that made him who he was. Her brother had been in pain still for five years now, and he had masked it effectively. It was…..she did not know what to do. She was at a loss, she could feel the tears warming up her eyes again.  She was cut through her thoughts by Colin’s voice. “How do you do it, Fran?” Francesca looked down on him, his gaze still fixated far away, not on anything in the room. Somehow then, she just knew what he was asking for. “I am not doing anything different, Colin.” She started, and it was true for her. “I just…I learned to live with it.” Her brother leaned back up and turned his attention to her, his eyes exhausted and welling of emotions, but eager for her to continue. “Everyday, it still hurts. Every night, it still hurts. There is not a time that it does not hurt, brother. But I, I just learn to live with the pain. And everyday, I am still learning. It is a part of who I am now.” It was all true and Francesca found that she had actually never talked about it freely and openly to anyone since. Not even their mother, who had been there by her side when she lost John, an enduring presence that she had held into greatly. Somehow her mother understood she needed the silence and peace at that time, and she was so grateful for her for allowing her those little moments so she could process her grief in solitude. But she knew now, Colin needed her to tell him how she had managed to walk through the darkest phase of her own life. “I think about all the times that we had, the memory of him, of us, then the pain becomes a feeling of warmth, of love. I refuse to honor his memory by only the pain that I am going through, not mostly anyway, but when I remember John, I remember his love, his kindness, the good feelings we had for each other.”  She saw him give a small smile and it warmed her heart. “So while it does still feel like torture everyday, the pain comes with happiness, and love, and a beautiful kind of longing. A longing that transcends the physical and emotional pain. And then I am filled with gratitude, that it might have ended as soon as it began, I am thankful that we had the time. That in this universe, in the millions of years that this planet have been around, John and I happened to meet at the same time, in the same period, in the same place. I am constantly reminded that I am so incredibly blessed to have met him and had the chance to be with him even if our time together was fleeting.” She looked at her brother and saw him silently weep, tears in his eyes were flowing freely and it glistened by the moonlight that came from the windows. And she felt her eyes had already been welling of tears, too. Colin pulled her into him and wrapped his arms around her, Francesca finding her arms on his back as well. “Oh, Fran.” They silently let their tears flow in each other’s embrace. She found that it had been a long time since she had fully let this all out from inside her. After her husband had died, Francesca only had a brief time to mourn before she was called into the many matters of her husband’s estate. Michael, his husband’s cousin had been there to assist her as the Dowager Countess. She would always be eternally grateful for Michael, it had not been easy but he did not left her, not when she had repeatedly fell apart on her own privacy the first year of her husband’s loss. But it had been quite long since she had let herself fell apart again. Until now. Francesca thought her brother needed this, it turned out that she needed this just as much. After a while of embracing in each other’s grief, Colin let her go. And she took his hands to hold again in front of them. “But, brother,” She started, she knew she had to let him know that it was not yet over for him, that her and his situation vastly differed. “John, he’s….This, this is the reality that I have to live with now. Penelope she’s…”  Her brother looked at her again on the mentioned of his love’s name. She found herself briefly touched at the sparkle that flickered still in his brother’s eyes in the midst of the pain, regret and yearning swirling around in them. His brother loved deeply and greatly. “Colin, you don’t have to live like me.” He nodded and let out a breath, his shoulders slumped. “I know.” For a moment, she waited for him to let it out, all the remaining things he needed to say. “I just, I am running out of places to go look for, Fran. I don’t know where else to go.” The utter defeat lacing his tone broke her heart once more. “I miss her so greatly. Everything in me aches everyday. I thought it would get better in time. I am doing all these things to not think about her, but at the same time I don’t want to stop thinking about her. I am going to all these places and looking for her, but the pain…the pain that I feel right now is just as big and wretched as how it had felt the very first time. It’s as if the five years has been one long, long day, and it’s not even done yet. I looked at that empty room like it was just this morning. It has no end in sight. This nightmare is nowhere near ending, Fran.” Her grip in his hands tightened. Colin’s suffering was so great that she internally berated herself for not seeing it sooner and not seeing through the congenial façade he had donned all this time.  “Colin, even if it doesn’t turn out how you have hoped and wished for it to be,” She reached out to his brother and landed her one hand in his chest, right against where his heart was. “She is still right here.” He nodded, a small smile leaving his face as his own hand landed on top of hers in his chest. “She will always be right here.” “Do not lose hope, brother. She will always be right here.” Francesca did not know if she had even helped Colin. But she was glad that he had let some of the emotions he had been bottling up for years go and out of his system even for a brief time, and she was glad that he had trusted her for it. Her brother had loved so greatly and painfully, and it broke her heart that he did not even had the chance to experience that love in all of its glory, that Penelope had not even known Colin had loved her so much like this. She knew Penelope had always loved her brother, everyone knew except for him, and she did not even got the chance to know her love was finally requited.  She was sad to see her brother leave again later that week, but she also felt glad that she could see a gentle ease in his eyes and a soft expression of content in his face as they bid him goodbye.  It was that time of the year again, even the interventions their mother had subtly set this past week had not stopped Colin from embarking on his tradition of going to Ireland every year on this day, and this month, 8th of April.  Francesca fervently hoped that this year would finally be different for Colin. And she did not know why, but she immensely feels like it will finally be. ——— 
  You once said that there was so much more than what one puts to paper.

  You have listened to me, to everything I have said, read everything that I have written. You have made me feel seen, made me feel that I was a hundred feet tall, made me feel like I could be someone, someone important, someone better.

  You were so good, and so kind. I wished I had seen your love sooner. Maybe I would not have lost you, if I had just stopped looking at everything else.

  And just looked at you.
 
   Chasing the Sun in Portugal, Vol. 3 

   -C.B.- 
 
  
  

    
      
        
        
          So I actually did a bit of research for the SEAsian countries I mentioned in here in Colin’s book contract, they were actually old names the countries had from 1800s to mid-1900s:Malaya (Malaysia), Annam (Vietnam), Siam (Thailand), Kampuchea (Cambodia). The Philippines is called just that ever since 1543, when it was occupied by the Spanish regime for more than 300 years until the 1900s.I really went full-research mode on the places name history because I do not take regency travel-writer!Colin lightly. haha I apologize for the inaccuracies if there are. :)ALSO, I included my rendition of a very famous line from a very famous friends-to-lovers trope staple movie in here, can yall identify what it is and what’s the film? hahaColin x Michael jolly banter was so much fun to write! Should I include a bit more Michael shenanigans later? hmm…As for Ben's painting, I posted in X what I referenced it to be, if yall wanna look 👀I really enjoyed writing this chapter, I wanted to see Colin in the eyes of his family in the last 5 years. Andddddd…..the reunion is SOOOO so near in the horizon. nearer than yall would expect ahahaThank you again yall for being here and reading this story!Kudos and comments are always appreciated. <3Till the next one,xx C---Listen to What's left of me - Nick Lachey to really feeeeel this chapter :('
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