Chapter 2: The Reckoning
The silence after Colin’s sobs was absolute, broken only by the ragged sound of their breathing. The room felt too bright, too real, every detail harshly outlined by the afternoon sun. The pooled silk of Penelope’s wrap on the floor looked like a slain ghost.
Lord Abernathy cleared his throat softly. He had righted his clothing with swift, efficient movements. He didn’t look at the couple by the bed. His focus was on the door, on an exit. The gravity in the room was no longer about seduction; it was about grief, and he was an intruder in it.
“I believe my role here is concluded,” he said, his voice low and stripped of all its usual performative charm. He sounded like a man who had just walked through a fire and regretted the smell of smoke.
Penelope didn’t respond. She remained curled on her side, her back to both men, her body rigid with the effort of holding itself together.
Colin lifted his head from the coverlet. His face was ravaged, tear-streaked, his eyes red-rimmed and hollow. He looked at Abernathy, and there was no jealousy left, only a shame so profound it was indistinguishable from sickness. “Get out,” he whispered, the words lacking all force, just a statement of fact.
Abernathy nodded once, a sharp, businesslike motion. He paused at the door, his hand on the knob. He didn’t look back. “For what it’s worth,” he said, his voice barely carrying, “it was never about pleasure. It was about power. She has all of it.” Then he was gone, the soft click of the latch echoing like a gunshot in the quiet.
The sound seemed to release Penelope from her paralysis. A violent tremor ran through her. She pushed herself up, scrambling away from Colin until her back hit the carved headboard, pulling the dishevelled covers up to her chin. Her eyes, when she finally looked at him, were wide, shattered pools of blue. The calculated ice from the alcove, from the stairs, was gone. In its place was raw, unvarnished horror.
“Don’t,” she choked out as he made a slight movement toward her. “Don’t you touch me.”
He froze, his hand hanging in the air between them. He lowered it slowly, as if it weighed a hundred pounds. “Pen…”
“What did you see?” The question ripped from her, sharp and broken. “When you watched, what did you see?”
He swallowed, his throat clicking. “I saw you leave.”
“What?”
“I saw you… disappear. Your body was there, but you were gone. You were so far away.” His voice broke. “And then I saw you come back, and it was… it was worse.”
She let out a sound that was half a sob, half a laugh, void of all humor. “You were supposed to watch. You agreed.”
“I know what I agreed to!” The words burst from him, laced with self-loathing. “I am a coward and a fool and I agreed to the most monstrous thing one person can ask of another because I was so terrified of losing you that I thought that was better than letting you go.” He dragged a hand through his hair, pulling at it. “But I couldn’t. I saw that tear, Pen. And I finally saw you. Not my wife, not my possession. You. Trapped in a nightmare of my making. And I realized… I was the one putting you there. I was the nightmare.”
The dam holding Penelope’s composure cracked. A harsh, dry sob escaped her, followed by another. She pressed the heel of her hand hard against her mouth, trying to stifle them. She was shaking so badly the bed frame softly rattled.
Colin watched, his own pain reflected and magnified in her breakdown. He wanted to gather her up, to absorb the shakes into his own body, to whisper apologies into her hair until they became a new language. But he had forfeited that right the moment he’d knelt and agreed to her terms. His hands stayed on his own knees, gripping the fabric of his trousers until his knuckles were white.
“I hate you,” she whispered, the words muffled behind her hand. “I hate you for making me do that. For making me become that person.”
“I know.”
“I hate that I had to break us to see if we could be fixed.”
“I know that, too.”
“And I hate…” She lowered her hand, tears streaming freely now, cutting paths through the faint, unnatural flush still on her skin. “I hate that a part of me wanted you to stop it. A part of me was still waiting for you to be my husband. To save me from myself.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, making herself small. “What does that make me?”
“Human,” he said, the word thick with emotion. “It makes you human. And it makes me the monster who drove you to it.”
She shook her head, the motion frantic. “No. No, that’s too easy. That lets you be the tragic villain and me the pitiful victim. It’s not that clean.” She took a gulping, unsteady breath. “I chose this. I planned it. I used Abernathy. I walked up those stairs. I did it to hurt you. To make you feel as caged as I felt.” Her gaze met his, blazing through the tears. “I wanted you to hurt. And I enjoyed wanting that.”
The confession hung between them, ugly and true. It was the other side of the coin of his jealousy, just as dark, just as destructive.
Colin nodded slowly, absorbing the blow. It felt like justice. “Then we’re both monsters. Maybe we deserve each other.”
A weak, watery sound escaped her—not quite a laugh. “Maybe we do.”
The silence that followed was different. The terrible, screaming tension had been burned away, leaving only ashes and exhaustion. The reality of what they had done, what they had almost done, settled over them like a shroud.
Colin slowly, carefully, stood up. His legs were unsteady. He walked to the dresser and poured a glass of water from the pitcher there. He brought it back to the bed, holding it out to her without a word.
Penelope stared at the glass, then at his offered hand. After a long moment, she uncurled one arm and took it. Her fingers brushed his, and they both flinched at the contact. She drank greedily, water spilling down her chin. When she was done, she held the empty glass in her lap, staring into it.
“I don’t know what happens now,” Colin said quietly. He sank to the floor, leaning his back against the side of the bed, next to her but not touching. He couldn’t bear to be on the bed itself. The space felt contaminated. “I don’t know how you come back from this.”
Penelope let her head fall back against the headboard with a soft thud. “I don’t either.”
“Do you want to?”
The question was so simple, so terrifyingly direct, it stole the air from the room again. Penelope closed her eyes. Did she? The image of his face, shattered and weeping on the coverlet, superimposed itself over the memory of his suspicious glares across ballrooms. The feel of Abernathy’s rehearsed touch warred with the memory of Colin’s genuine, joyful embrace the day he’d returned from Greece. It was all a tangled, bloody knot.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, her voice raw. “The thought of you leaving this room, of this being the last time I see you… it feels like dying. But the thought of you staying, of pretending this didn’t happen, of going back to how we were… that feels like a slower, worse death.”
Colin nodded, resting his head back against the mattress beside her hip. He stared up at the canopy. “Then we don’t do either.”
“What’s left?”
“We sit in the ruin.” He turned his head just enough to look at her profile. She was still looking straight ahead, her jaw set, tears drying on her cheeks. “We don’t pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t try to fix it today. We just… acknowledge that it’s a ruin. And we see what grows out of it. If anything can.”
It was the least romantic thing he had ever said. No grand promises, no passionate declarations. Just a quiet, desperate proposal to inhabit the devastation together, without tools or a map.
Penelope’s breath hitched. She slowly turned to look down at him. The afternoon sun caught the gold in his dishevelled hair, the tracks of dried tears on his stubbled cheeks. He looked like a shipwreck survivor washed up on a strange shore.
“And your jealousy?” she asked, no edge left in her voice, only a deep, weary curiosity. “What do we do with that? It’s still there. I saw it in the alcove. I felt it in the air.”
“I give it to you,” he said simply.
“What?”
“I have no right to it. Not anymore. It’s a poison. So I… I lay it down. At your feet. It’s yours to do with what you will. Step on it. Throw it out the window. I can’t control the feeling, maybe. But I can choose not to let it control me. And if I fail, you have every right to walk away. No more tests. No more games. Just a consequence.”
He meant it. She could see it in the utter absence of guile in his eyes. He was spent, hollowed out, with no energy left for anything but the bleak, painful truth.
Penelope looked away, out the window where the sun was beginning to lower, painting the London rooftops in tones of orange and grey. The world was still turning. Life was moving on, outside this room of broken things.
She shifted, the sheets whispering. Slowly, she slid down from the headboard until she was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her bare feet just inches from where he sat on the floor. She placed the empty glass on the carpet beside her.
“I’m tired, Colin,” she said, her voice small.
“I know.”
“I want to sleep for a year.”
He didn’t reply. Just waited.
She drew her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them. The simple silk of her chemise felt flimsy, inadequate. “I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered, the admission costing her something. “But I can’t have you in this bed. Not tonight.”
“I’ll stay here,” he said, gesturing to the floor beside the bed. “Or in the dressing room. Or downstairs. Whatever you need.”
She looked at the space on the rug where he indicated. It felt both cruel and necessary. A moat. A boundary. A start.
“Here,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Stay here.”
He didn’t smile, didn’t show relief. He just nodded, the weight of the compromise settling on his shoulders. “Alright.”
She lay back down, turning on her side to face away from him, pulling the covers up over her shoulders. The space where Abernathy had lain was cold. She shut her eyes tightly against the memory.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their breathing, out of sync, strained. The light in the room deepened to gold, then to dusk. Shadows stretched long across the floor.
Colin didn’t move from his spot on the rug. He listened to the gradual slowing of her breath, the tiny hitches as sleep reluctantly took her. He watched the curve of her shoulder under the blanket, rising and falling.
The ruin was quiet. And for now, that was all they had.