Chapter Text
There was a certain amount of freedom in loathing, she supposed. The benefits of her forced marriage to Viscount Anthony Bridgerton far outweighed the negatives, especially now that the public scrutiny around the circumstances of their union had died down.
They’d been the talk of the Ton when the Queen commanded them to get married the day Edwina Sharma fled the altar. But once it was clear that neither she nor Anthony would feed the gossip mill, they moved on to other more intriguing scandals.
Whenever they were forced to appear together in public, they comported themselves like any other couple whose marriage had been arranged for convenience She and Anthony were friendly and polite but did not dote upon each other. They danced once, maybe twice, before he retired to the card room or left altogether and she focused on chaperoning his sisters. First, Eloise and then both Eloise and Francesca.
Their arrangement suited her well. It meant she was once again on the wall and free to gather gossip for Whistledown.
In private, however, she and Anthony barely spoke. He was angry at the way the Queen had manipulated him into doing her bidding and frustrated that Penelope had gone along with it. But what else could she have done? Her family was in a precarious enough situation as it was. She couldn’t afford to refuse and bring even more shame and scandal down around them.
So, they settled into a routine where they lived their lives together but apart and kept his entire family under their roof as their buffer. He wasn’t blatantly rude to her, but he never went out of his way to seek her out, not even to beget an heir. The one time she inquired about it, by making an appointment to see him and no less, he barely looked up from his ledger to say, “I have three brothers, Penelope,” and shooed her away like a bothersome child.
~z~
Delivering her column took longer than she expected. She purposely claimed a headache to be able to leave the ball before Violet and the girls for the sheer purpose of finishing it in the carriage. But an unexpected carriage accident sent her driver on a detour, her printer decided tonight was the perfect night to chat, and the rain had made returning to Mayfair cumbersome. So, by the time she had managed to sneak back into Bridgerton House, she was soaked to the bone, in a terribly foul mood, and had a headache from hell. So, of course, he would choose tonight of all nights to suddenly care about her well-being and whereabouts.
“Where have you been?!” her husband barked from the door that connected her chambers to his through a shared dressing and bathing room.
“Out,” she answered shortly.
“Out where?” he demanded, voice low and controlled.
Penelope set about the task of unbuttoning her cloak and threw it on the settee by the foot of her bed, pointedly ignoring his question while she thought of something to say. What could she even say? She had no excuse for being out late alone that was remotely plausible or acceptable besides the obvious.
Figuring that allowing him to assume he was being cuckolded was better than admitting her alternate identity, Pen held her silence. She walked over to her vanity and took the pins out of her hair while he looked at her with a mix of horror, shock, and curiosity.
“Who is he?” Anthony demanded in his Viscount Voice.
Penelope glanced at him through the mirror and shrugged. “No one you know.”
Dressed in only his shirtsleeves, trousers, and suspenders, he stalked over to her until he was directly behind her. Anthony pinned her with his stare through the glass and leaned down to whisper, “Do you think that matters to me?” He ran a hand up her bare, damp arm, eliciting goosebumps along the way, and stated. “You are mine, Penelope Ann Bridgerton. If anyone is going to fuck you, it will be me and me alone.”
Penelope scoffed. “Oh, I’m yours, am I? Now that someone else wants me?” She shook her head in exasperation. “Typical. Men are all alike, aren’t they? Only wanting what others have.”
“I will not be cuckolded, wife.” Anthony declared. “You will end your affair and you will do it now. Or else.”
“Or else, what?” she challenged. “What will you do? Ignore me some more? Send me to rusticate away in Aubrey Hall?” Penelope side-stepped him and walked over to where her night clothes were laid out on her bed. “Personally, I fail to see how either of those things constitutes a punishment.” Facing him, she pointed to the connecting door he came from and waved him away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired and wish to go to bed.”
Instead of leaving, her husband stayed where he was. “You know what?” he said, reaching up to shift one suspender off his shoulder and then the other. “That is a marvelous idea.”
Penelope barely bit back a gasp at his words. She masked her surprise with a bored, “You cannot be serious.”
Anthony prowled toward her and untucked his shirt, stopping only when he was in front of her. “Have you ever known me to not be serious, my dear?” Anthony asked rhetorically, pulling off said shirt in the process and dropping it next to him on the floor. Anthony sat on the bed, right on top of her nightrail, and pulled off his boots and socks. When he stood up, he brought her nightclothes with him and tossed them onto the floor before smiling wickedly and reaching for the falls of his trousers. “It is high time we consummated our marriage, don’t you think?”
This time Penelope did gasp. She deliberately turned away and rushed to the connecting door. “I do not,” she hissed as she passed over the threshold and slammed it closed behind her, locking it in place. She paused and took a breath, hand on her heaving chest. Penelope rested her head against the closed door, scrunched her eyes shut, and shook her head in an attempt to dislodge the image of her half-naked husband from her mind.
In the year they’d been married, the most informal she’d ever seen him was a waistcoat and shirtsleeves. Penelope was wholly unprepared for the sight of him bare and it was doing strange things to her mind and body. Why couldn’t she breathe? Why was her heart racing? Why did she feel like her skin was on fire?
Penelope was pulled from her thoughts by the click of a door lock and opened her eyes to find him standing on his side of the dressing room completely naked. She gasped and closed her eyes again and turned around to fumble with the doorknob. She’d managed to unlock it despite her nerves, but didn’t get a chance to open it before he closed the distance between them and held it against the frame. “I didn’t peg you for a runner, Lady Bridgerton. You disappoint me.”
She growled and banged her head against the door. “If anyone’s a runner in this marriage, Lord Bridgerton, it’s you.” Feeling a renewed burst of energy at the chance to prove him wrong, Pen lifted her head and turned around. Keeping her eyes firmly on his face, she replied, “So do not lay blame for the state of our affairs at my feet.”
He was close, so close that she could smell him. He smelled like smoke, liquor, and parchment. God, why did he have to smell like parchment?
He leaned in and smiled wryly. “Affairs, heh? Interesting choice of words, considering you’re the one having an affair.”
“Well, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, is it not?” She drew in a breath and glared at him to let him know she knew exactly what he’d been up to the past few months.
Her accusation seemed to make him angry. “No. It is not.”
Penelope pushed him away, deliberately ignoring the feel of his bare skin against her hands, and argued. “You do not desire an heir, my lord. What other recourse do I have to find pleasure in my marital bed?” Penelope crossed her arms defiantly, satisfied she’d bested him. “Surely you do not expect me to remain celibate for the rest of my life while you tup every whore in London.” Take that, Lord Pain-in-Her-Ass she thought, smiling smugly.
“You’re not in your marital bed,” he retorted.
“Semantics,” she replied.
“Semantics?” he echoed.
~z~
“I’ll show you semantics,” Anthony mumbled just before he trapped her against the door and pressed his lips to hers in a bruising kiss. At first she was too shocked to move, but when his tongue roughly invaded her mouth, she fought back, dueling him for dominance.
Penelope stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his as she did so. Anthony moaned into her mouth and slipped his free hand around her waist to pull her into him. She felt something hard against her belly, but paid it no mind despite the fact that it caused her to clench her thighs together so that the wetness building between her legs didn’t drip out.
She fought him until she couldn’t breathe and then fought him some more until he pulled away panting. Thinking she’d won, Penelope let go of him and dropped to her normal height. She was about to side-step him and flee the room when he reached out and pinned her to the door by grasping her throat . His grip wasn’t painful, but it held her immobile as his eyes bored into hers. “You are mine, Penelope,” he declared. Anthony’s eyes raked up and down her body. “Every goddamn square inch of you belongs to me and I will kill any man who touches my property. Do you understand me?”
Penelope blinked and nodded, wary of her husband for the first time. “Good.”
Abruptly, he let go of her neck and dropped his hand. He leaned in with the hand he had in the door and nuzzled her ear. “Now get some rest, wife. Because I assure you that you will need it.”
Damn and blast. What was she supposed to do now?