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Assistant: Title: Beneath the Thorns
        Author: pussshhh pussshhh 
        Chapter: 1/9 
        Summary: When Penelope Featherington is exposed as Lady Whistledown, she’s cast out by the ton and abandoned by her family. With nowhere else to go, she’s sent to hide at Aubrey Hall—home to the reclusive and notoriously temperamental Anthony Bridgerton. He wants nothing to do with her. She refuses to be intimidated.A slow-burn, Beauty and the Beast–inspired Bridgerton retelling about two wounded souls trapped together by scandal, grief, and the possibility of something more.
        Contents: Chapter 1: A Place No One Would Follow
    

    


  

  
  
    
    
  Penelope's POV
 London had always whispered.It was a city of corners and creaking carriages, of perfume laced parlors and lamplit windows, of velvet gloves hiding sharp nails. But now it no longer whispered. Now it roared.The moment the words left Cressida Cowper’s mouth—calmly, carelessly, as if revealing a bit of gossip rather than gutting a life—the city changed. The music at the Bridgerton ball had not even stopped, not at first. The violins had gone on playing, and Penelope, standing near the potted palms in a gown borrowed from a cousin she hadn’t spoken to in years, had felt the floor shift beneath her feet. A low ripple of sound—gasps, then questions, then someone laughing far too loudly—rose around her like smoke, thick and cloying.“Lady Whistledown,” Cressida had said, “is none other than Penelope Featherington.”And Penelope hadn’t denied it.Not when the eyes turned on her. Not when her mother, her own mother, stepped back as if scorched. Not when Colin Bridgerton’s expression collapsed into something crueler than disbelief. Not when Eloise looked away.She had stood there, spine straight, heart breaking, and said nothing. Because what would she have said? That it wasn’t true? That it had been a joke? That she had done it to survive? To be seen?No one would have listened. And so, instead, she had run.By the time she reached the edge of Mayfair, her shoes were in tatters. Rain slicked the cobblestones, running in small rivers through the gutters, and her dress—already threadbare from too many reworn seasons, dragged heavy with water and grime. Her cloak was no match for the downpour; it clung to her frame like a second skin, and still the cold crept beneath, cruel and unrelenting. Her bonnet had been lost somewhere on Park Lane, torn from her head in a gust of wind or snagged by some reaching hand. She hadn’t looked back to see.Every street corner brought new eyes. Every corner echoed with snatches of her name, her real one and the other, sharper one, the one she had chosen for herself.Whistledown.That name had given her power, once. Mystery. Influence. It had been armor and agency and defiance wrapped in ink. But now it was poison.Now it was her.The glove-maker’s wife had thrown a bucket of dishwater at her as she passed. A shopboy had spit at her boots. Somewhere, she thought she heard the distant clanging of bells—not celebratory, but warning.She reached Lady Danbury’s townhouse with lungs burning and fingers bloodless from cold. The brass knocker slipped beneath her grasp the first time she tried it, and she had to brace her entire body against the door to keep from collapsing. Her vision swam. Her head ached. The rain did not stop.And then, light. A narrow slice through the dark as the door opened just enough to reveal a sliver of candle and cane.“Well,” said Lady Danbury. “Aren’t you a sight.”Penelope looked up. Her lips parted. But no words came out. Not denial. Not apology. Not even a plea.Lady Danbury took one long look—at the mud-streaked dress, the trembling mouth, the way Penelope stood as if afraid the ground would vanish beneath her—and opened the door the rest of the way.“I suppose I can’t leave you to die on my steps,” she said with a huff. “Though it would be rather dramatic. Come in, girl. Before you disgrace my tiles.”Penelope stepped inside.The door shut behind her, and the world—loud, savage, wet—faded like the end of a nightmare.Inside was stillness. Shadow. The hush of heavy drapes and flickering lamps. The scent of polished wood and orange peel. A fire crackled somewhere beyond the entry hall, and her frozen body turned instinctively toward the warmth.“Parlor’s that way,” Danbury said, already moving. “Don’t bleed on the carpets. And if you’ve any energy left in that ink-stained spine of yours, you’ll explain why you’ve come here instead of to your own mother.”Penelope swallowed hard. Her throat felt raw, her voice unfamiliar.“She… she threw me out.”Danbury paused mid-stride. Her head turned, the feather in her cap quivering slightly. “Of course she did,” she muttered. “Featheringtons never did have sense enough to look past their noses.”Penelope followed her into the drawing room like a ghost.She did not sit. She could not. She stood near the fire as it flared orange and gold, the light casting jagged shadows across her waterlogged skirts. Her hands shook. Her mind refused to slow.Danbury gestured to a footman, who appeared with a dry blanket and a pot of tea. Then she lowered herself into her armchair with a dramatic sigh and fixed Penelope with a stare like flint.“I should let you freeze,” she said. “Let you waste away and become the tragic heroine of your own next column. Lady Whistledown Dies of Irony. It would sell, no doubt.”Penelope said nothing.“But I won’t. Because I detest waste. And you, for all your foolishness, are far too sharp to discard like yesterday’s scandal sheet.”A blanket was placed around her shoulders. The heat of it nearly made her sob.“Sit,” Danbury snapped. “Drink something. You look like the devil chewed you up and changed his mind.”Penelope sat.And for the first time in two days, she cried.Morning came slow and grey, slipping in through the tall windows like a breath the house didn’t want to take. Outside, London still churned—drays creaked down the avenues, the first hatted gentlemen stalked toward their clubs, and a hundred fresh gossip sheets were already being inked and folded and flung into the wind. But inside Lady Danbury’s drawing room, the air hung heavy. As though the house, too, knew what had been broken the night before.Penelope hadn’t slept.She’d tried. Curled on a narrow chaise by the fire, blanket wrapped tight, a borrowed shift too loose on her frame, her eyes closed as if they might grant her mercy. But her mind would not settle. Even with the rain gone, its memory lingered, how it had run down the back of her neck, how the street lamps had blurred through soaked lashes, how her own name had rung in her ears like a curse.Whistledown.It had once sounded like power.Now it sounded like gallows.Footsteps came mid-morning. Not hurried—measured, deliberate, far too graceful to belong to a servant. Penelope rose automatically, though the effort cost her. Her legs ached. Her stomach was a hollow pit. The fire had long gone to embers, and the room, despite its elegance, felt too large to hold her grief.Lady Danbury entered first, cane tapping lightly on the hardwood. She made no announcement, no sly remark. But her expression was sharper than before—curious, perhaps. Wary.Then came Violet Bridgerton.She looked older.Not in truth—her face was as fine as ever, her figure still straight, her eyes still bright—but she carried herself with a kind of care Penelope had never seen before. As though the very act of entering the room demanded strength she hadn’t known she’d need. She was dressed in navy, her gloves impeccable, but her hands twisted in her lap as she sat across from Penelope with the air of a woman who had rehearsed what to say and now found the words brittle in her mouth.“Penelope,” she said at last.The sound of her name in that voice—gentle, trembling, maternal—was almost too much to bear.Penelope said nothing. She couldn’t. Her lips parted, then closed. Her throat burned.Violet inhaled slowly. “I should have come sooner.”Lady Danbury moved to the window and gave them the illusion of privacy, though Pen knew she missed nothing.“I wanted to,” Violet continued. “I did. But… everything happened so fast. And I—”She stopped herself. Her hands tightened.“I received your mother’s note,” she said instead. “She returned the items I had given you over the years. The shawls. The little book of poetry. Even the embroidery frame. She sent it all in a sack, Penelope. As if it were waste.”Pen lowered her gaze.“She said you had brought shame upon them. That your presence in their house would invite further ruin.”“I know.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “She told me herself.”Violet looked away, her jaw taut.“And Eloise?” Pen asked. She hated herself for asking. Hated how the question curled inside her like an exposed wound.Violet’s face cracked. Just a hair.“She refuses to speak of it. I don’t think she knew what she was doing when she told Miss Cowper. But I do think… she meant to hurt you.”Pen nodded slowly. The tears threatened again, but she swallowed them down.“And Colin?” she asked, and winced at how fragile the name sounded in her voice.A pause.“Colin is… disappointed,” Violet said delicately. “And angry. But I think he’s angrier at himself. He feels fooled, of course. Betrayed. But… I know my son. That anger will cool.”Pen didn’t say what she knew: that it wouldn’t matter. That the things he had said that day—the disgust, the bitterness, the how could it ever have been you—could not be unsaid. That whatever childhood hope she had once harbored was ash now, nothing more.“I’ve spoken to the Queen,” Violet said, voice softening. “Lady Danbury as well. We’ve tried to contain it. To speak for you. But the ton has turned rabid. They feel exposed. Mocked. They want a villain, and they’ve found one in you.”Pen gave a hollow laugh. “Well. I always was better at stories than people.”Violet reached out then, gloved fingers folding gently over hers. The touch was warm. Real.“I do not regret knowing you,” she said quietly. “And I do not believe you meant harm.”Penelope’s throat closed around the words that wanted to spill. Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m so, so tired.“I don’t know where to go,” she whispered instead. “I can’t walk the streets. The parks. I can’t even show my face at the bookshop I used to love. There’s nowhere.”“There is,” Violet said.Pen looked up.And Violet said it. The words like a drop of ink in milk—spreading slow, irrevocable, changing everything.“Aubrey Hall.”The name landed heavy in the space between them.Even Lady Danbury turned from the window, a sharp glance flickering through the silence.Pen’s breath caught. “I thought…”“He’s still there,” Violet said. “He never left.”Ten years. Penelope could count them like scars. Ten years since the Viscount had last set foot in London. Five years since he’d vanished after Edmund Bridgerton’s death and had become, in every whispered version of his name, something else. Something cold. Something cruel. Not a man, but a warning.“No one from the ton will follow you there,” Violet continued. “Not even Cressida. They fear him. And rightly so.”“And you think he’ll let me stay?” Pen asked, bitterly.“I think he’ll hate it,” Violet said honestly. “But I think he won’t stop it. He still answers my letters. Still provides. And Aubrey is vast. He’ll avoid you, if he can. He avoids everyone.”Pen looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were red. Her nails cracked. There was ink beneath one fingertip from some half-finished column, left behind like a ghost.“I don’t want charity.”“It isn’t charity.” Violet’s voice firmed. “It’s shelter. It’s time. And if nothing else, Anthony knows what it is to be hunted by grief.”That struck. Deep.And slowly, Pen nodded.“I’ll go,” she said, and her voice did not shake this time. “If only because I have nowhere else left.”The carriage came at dawn.It was not the Featherington coach. Of course it wasn’t. That name would never carry her again, not now that it had been scrubbed from her mother’s lips and burned from every letterhead in the house. It was an old Bridgerton vehicle, one not seen in London in years, drawn by a sturdy team of bays with dull harnesses and no crests on the doors. Unmarked. Quiet. Forgettable.Just as she had become.The footman didn’t speak. He only nodded at Lady Danbury, who had wrapped Penelope in a wool cloak and shoved a parcel of dry bread into her hands with the brusque efficiency of someone who saved lives by pretending not to care.“No letters. No stops. You don’t open the shutters unless you wish to be seen,” Danbury instructed. “You’ll arrive by nightfall, gods willing. And you’ll stay indoors when you get there. Aubrey is not a place for wandering girls with too many questions.”Penelope had nodded, though her hands trembled as she climbed into the carriage. She didn’t look back as the door shut. She wasn’t sure she could have borne it if she had seen pity on Lady Danbury’s face—or worse, affection.London faded behind her before the city had fully woken. The cobblestones gave way to dirt roads, the air turning damp and clean as they passed the final fringes of the townhouses. The fog lay low over the fields, curling like fingers through hedgerows and bending the light into something eerie, almost ghostly. The hum of morning traffic disappeared. Soon, there was only the creak of wheels, the rhythmic clop of hooves, and the long, lonesome stretch of road ahead.Pen sat with her arms around her parcel, watching the mist blur the trees. She had never travelled this far alone. Not without a destination she could name. Not like this—banished, bruised, unspoken for.She had wanted greatness. Had wanted to be more than just the silly girl in the lemon colored muslin. She had made herself into something sharp. Something untouchable. And now, stripped of her mask, she was neither beloved nor feared. She was loathed.And yet—beneath the shame, beneath the heartbreak—there was something else beginning to bloom in her chest. A raw, aching kind of freedom. No more pretense. No more lies. Nothing left to hide behind.Just ruin. And what came after.The hours passed in slow increments. Villages flickered by, sleepy and quiet, their shutters drawn tight. Once, they stopped to change horses at a posting inn near a muddy crossroads. The innkeeper squinted toward the carriage but didn’t approach. Perhaps he saw the Bridgerton blue on the trim. Perhaps he saw the shadows behind the glass. Either way, he turned away.By late afternoon, the road narrowed into lanes barely wide enough for the carriage. Branches scraped the roof. The sky, once overcast, darkened steadily into a sullen bruise of purple and steel. Rain began to fall again, not the torrent of the night before, but a slow, steady weeping that soaked the countryside and turned the path to sludge.Penelope pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Her fingers were stiff. She hadn’t eaten since morning. Her thoughts drifted to Eloise and stopped short. To Colin, and twisted. To her mother, and closed like a slammed door.She pressed her forehead to the glass and whispered the name once more. Aubrey Hall.It sounded like a spell.It felt like a sentence.The mist was thicker in Kent. By the time the carriage turned off the main road and onto a winding, unpaved drive, the world outside had shrunk to pale outlines and sudden black shapes—trees, hedgerows, a stone gate too narrow for grandeur but too tall for comfort. The gates opened without ceremony. She did not see who opened them.And then—there it was.
  Aubrey Hall.
It did not appear so much as emerge. One moment there was fog, the next—a silhouette, sprawling and dark, rising from the moor like a castle sunk in grief. It was vast. Not beautiful. Not anymore. The windows, those that were not shuttered, gaped open like wounds. Ivy clung to the east façade in twisted, choking ropes. The roofline was irregular, patched in places with mismatched slate. The gardens, once the pride of the estate, were overgrown and wild, their bones still visible beneath the tangle of thorns and vine.It was not ruinous. It was preserved.Preserved like a tomb.Penelope stared through the glass and tried to remember the last time she had seen it. She must have been eleven. Maybe twelve. It had been summer then. The lawns had been green and freshly cut. Anthony had been home from university, storming through the halls like a hurricane in polished boots, barking at his brothers and sulking by the lake. Violet had laughed more. Edmund had still been alive.Now, the very air around the house seemed to breathe differently. Slower. Colder. She could almost believe the stories, that Anthony had banished his soul with his father’s body, and something else lived here in his place.The carriage stopped before the front steps.No servants appeared.No lights greeted her.Just the iron knocker, rusted and severe, and the heavy silence of a house that had not welcomed anyone in years.The driver stepped down and opened the door, then busied himself with her trunk. Penelope didn’t move right away. She sat frozen, eyes fixed on the massive oak doors, heart pounding. Her hands had gone clammy.She had asked for exile. She had nowhere else to go. And now she was here.She stepped down.The ground squelched beneath her shoes. The air smelled of rain and rotting leaves. Somewhere nearby, a crow cawed once, low and guttural.She raised her hand to knock.The door creaked open before she could touch it.And standing behind it was a man in livery, aged and stiff with a face like weathered stone. He blinked at her.“Miss…?”“Featherington,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Lady Bridgerton sent word. I believe—I believe I’m expected.”A long pause.He stepped aside.The door opened wider.She entered.The door closed behind her with a sound like finality.Not a slam. Not even loud. Just that quiet, irrevocable thud of thick oak meeting stone, sealing her inside something too vast to see and too still to understand. The air of the entry hall was colder than the rain outside. Not merely unheated, unlived in. The scent of old stone and older smoke hung faint in the shadows, mingling with the faintest trace of beeswax polish and damp wood.Penelope stood on the threshold, her wet shoes soaking into a threadbare runner that had once been crimson but now looked the color of dried blood. The butler, if he was a butler; he wore no gloves and his cravat was crooked, offered no greeting beyond a nod. He gestured vaguely toward the stairs with one stiff hand.“Mrs. Hartford will show you to your room.”He vanished without another word, footsteps soundless despite the echoing floor.From somewhere deeper in the house came the low tick of a longcase clock. Nothing else.Penelope took a breath and stepped forward.She had expected coldness, perhaps. Neglect. But not this.Not a house so completely drained of warmth, as though its very walls had learned to flinch from affection.The drawing room doors were closed. The sconces were unlit. And though her footfalls echoed softly through the marble-floored foyer, there was no reply—no scurrying maid, no distant murmur of conversation, no hiss of coal on the hearth.Aubrey Hall had become a mausoleum.Mrs. Hartford, when she appeared, was a tall, dry woman with a mouth like a purse string and hands that looked built for wringing linen. Her cap was spotless. Her gown, faded brown serge. She looked Penelope up and down and pursed her lips.“You’ll be in the west wing,” she said without introduction. “Second floor, blue chamber. Sheets are fresh.”“I—thank you,” Penelope said, uncertain of the custom here. Should she curtsy? Shake hands? Flee?The housekeeper turned and began to walk without waiting.Penelope followed.The west wing was long and dimly lit, lined with portraits whose faces had faded into indistinct shadows of former grandeur. She did not look at them closely. Something about them—perhaps the way the eyes followed, or the way the dust hung in still air—unsettled her more than she cared to admit.“This wing is unused,” Hartford said as they walked. “You’ll find no staff this far from the kitchens. Meals are taken at six. In the east dining room. You may have yours here, if you prefer.”“Will I… will I see Lord Bridgerton?” Penelope asked, regretting it the moment the words escaped.Hartford’s pace did not slow. “His lordship keeps his own schedule.”Penelope didn’t ask again.The blue chamber was just that—walls once painted a soft powder hue, now dulled to ash by age. The curtains hung thick, the bed canopied and tall, the fire in the grate newly lit but reluctant to catch. A basin of lukewarm water stood on the washstand. Her trunk, somehow, had already arrived.“There is a bell,” Hartford said, pointing toward a cord in the corner. “It rings in the scullery. Do not pull it unless necessary.”Then she was gone.And Penelope was alone.She unpacked in silence, more from instinct than purpose. A few dresses, none in good repair. A small pouch of coins Violet had pressed into her hand. A battered volume of essays by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Her pen. Her journal. Nothing that mattered.She stood at the window for a long time, watching the gardens twist in the mist. The hedgerows had grown wild, climbing over the stone walls and iron gates like they meant to swallow the estate whole. What had once been rows of rose bushes and lemon trees were now spiny, skeletal things, blooming only in thorns.She wondered if he ever walked them anymore.She wondered if he ever left the house at all.She did not mean to explore. She truly didn’t. But the quiet pressed on her so heavily that by late afternoon, she found herself slipping from her room and padding barefoot down the hall, fingertips trailing the faded wainscoting as if it might answer her back.The house groaned in its bones. Not creaked—groaned. As though it resented being awake.She found the music room by accident. A double set of doors left just slightly ajar, revealing a room half in shadow, its ceiling domed, the plaster cracked in places. The pianoforte stood beneath the window like a relic, its keys dusty but whole. There was a cello in the corner, long unplayed, its bow resting beside it like an unsheathed blade.She didn’t go in. She only stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, watching the dust dance in the light.And then the door behind her slammed open with a sound like gunshot.She spun.He stood there.
  Anthony.
He looked wrong.Not in body—his shoulders were still broad, his frame still commanding, the cut of his coat severe and immaculate—but in the stillness of him. He had once moved like a thunderstorm, all restless energy and tightly wound force. But now he stood as if he’d become part of the house itself, something solid and ancient and utterly unyielding.His hair was longer. His jaw dark with stubble. His eyes—those same impossible Bridgerton brown eyes—were rimmed in sleepless shadow. He did not look surprised to see her. Only irritated. Deeply, profoundly irritated.“What are you doing?” he said, voice low, sharp, dangerous.Penelope straightened. “I was only—”“I don’t care what you were only,” he snapped. “This part of the house is closed.”“I didn’t know.”“You do now.”She met his gaze. She refused to look away.“Would you rather I wait in my room until the scandal dies down?” she asked evenly. “Until the world forgets I exist?”His mouth twisted. “Yes.”She laughed. One short, brittle breath. “Then I’m sorry to disappoint you, my lord.”His jaw tightened. “This house is not a refuge. It is not a sanctuary. You are here because my mother lacks the spine to say no.”“Your mother is the only reason I’m not sleeping in a churchyard,” she said coldly.He stared at her.And then—“You’ll keep to your wing. You’ll not speak to the staff. You’ll not touch anything that doesn’t belong to you. I don’t want your presence here. I don’t want your voice. I don’t want your godforsaken scribbling infecting my halls.”Penelope’s eyes burned.But still—still—she did not flinch.“Then throw me out.”The words hung between them.He didn’t move.She didn’t look away.At last, he turned.“Stay out of my sight,” he said, voice like gravel.And then he was gone.'
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