Chapter Text
"He was no fool; he knew that love existed. But he also believed in
the power of the mind, and perhaps even more importantly, the power of the will.
Frankly, he saw no reason why love should be an involuntary thing.
If he didn’t want to fall in love, then by damn, he wasn’t going to." - Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me
On more than one occasion over the years, Lady Danbury had privately concluded that Anthony Bridgerton could be a bit of a nuisance.
Master Anthony, eight years old, who, when his family was in London for the season, would regularly sneak onto the Danbury estate to climb the massive English oak on the property, Benedict following him like a lost puppy as they tromped all over the grounds, often leaving a distinctive trail of crushed peonies and lavender right through the center of her flower garden.
“Anthony,” Violet Bridgerton chided her eldest as they arrived at Danbury House for afternoon tea. He was waist-high to Violet, with ears he hadn’t fully grown into yet and giant brown eyes that, today, were full of contrition. “Set an example for your brother.”
He and Benedict wore crisply starched shirts, their cravats perfectly tied, their shoes shined to a sparkle–a striking contrast from the grass-stained breeches Lady Danbury had found them in just yesterday.
It had been her tulips this time, the prize ones whose bulbs she had specially ordered from Holland–their red petals flattened over a bed of wilted green stems, like a salad abandoned hours after dinner. And nearby, some suspiciously Bridgerton-boy-shaped footprints.
Anthony bowed his head and spoke in the gravest voice Lady Danbury had ever heard from an eight-year-old. “Our sincerest apologies, Lady Danbury. Our actions yesterday were unbecoming of gentlemen.”
Next to him, Benedict reached up and handed her a bouquet of red tulips wrapped in paper. “From our garden,” he supplied. “To replace the ones we ruined.”
A smile pulled at the corner of Lady Danbury’s lips at the sight of the two boys before her, their eyes on the floor, the faint flush of shame on their cheeks. “I accept your apology, gentlemen.”
Two hours and several cups of tea later, the boys, likely bored of the ton gossip, had grown restless and fidgety despite their best efforts, each shooting occasional longing glances at the windowed doors on the side of the room that led to the expansive lawn and that oak tree they loved so much.
Lady Danbury’s eyes locked with Anthony’s for a moment, and he fixed her with a silent, serious, pleading stare, his lips caught somewhere between a firm line and a pout.
Nuisance.
But then, Lady Danbury had always been fond of the Bridgerton boys.
“Oh, go on, then,” she urged with a rap of her cane and a nod of her head toward the doors. “Just stay out of my flowers.”
Anthony Bridgerton, sixteen years old, in that gangly body stuck somewhere between child and man, whom Lady Danbury once caught in the stables, sharing one of his father’s finest whiskey bottles with her stablehands.
He answered her harsh reprimand with both an eloquent apology and a roguish grin, and Lady Danbury had the fleeting thought that, when the time came, the future viscount’s charm, combined with the handsome features he was growing into, was inevitably going to sweep more than one young lady off her feet.
In that regard, Viscount Anthony Bridgerton became an entirely different kind of nuisance. Lady Danbury lost count of the times Violet had come to her, wringing her hands because of the latest morsel of gossip Lady Whistledown had printed about her son, the whispers about his dalliances that somehow always managed to reach her ears.
Over and over, she reassured Violet that, despite his well-earned rakish reputation, it was clear that Anthony’s first priority was his family, and that he would never do anything to tarnish the Bridgerton name.
It had taken everything in her to not drag him out to the garden and box his ears when, just days after one of those conversations with his mother, he’d made no secret of openly staring at that soprano mistress of his in front of the entire ton at the Trowbridge Ball.
Thus, Lady Danbury had been relieved when Anthony declared his intentions to find a wife. His settling down would finally give Violet, and, in turn, Lady Danbury herself, some peace. She encouraged his courtship of Edwina Sharma. As she explained to Kate Sharma, so intent on a love match for her sister, most marriages of the ton were matters of business, and a match between the season’s most eligible bachelor and the season’s diamond was indeed an ideal transaction.
Lady Danbury had gotten caught up in the excitement of the marriage mart, the idea of the match between Anthony and Edwina being another feather in her cap after the season prior, the tittering between her and Violet as they eavesdropped on that night at Aubrey Hall. She even tried to encourage Anthony to propose by calling for a toast at dinner, thinking that he, like many other men, just needed a little push to get over his cold feet.
That was the first time she noticed it. The way Anthony immediately looked at Kate as everyone raised their glasses at the toast that was so dramatically different from the one they expected, the subtle slackening of his shoulders, the relief on his face. The way that, beneath her exasperated sigh, Kate looked relieved, too.
Perhaps it was nothing.
But Lady Danbury had not earned her reputation as one of the ton’s most formidable women by ignoring her suspicions, no matter how slight.
Over the next few days, as guests began to arrive at Aubrey Hall, she listened for anything that would give any more credence to what she had witnessed. She tried to observe any interactions between Anthony and Kate, but it was almost as if they were purposely avoiding each other–Anthony excusing himself from dinner to work in his study; Kate failing to break her fast with the rest of them, later citing a headache that had kept her in bed all morning.
When she saw them individually, they each appeared to be lost in thought. Distracted. Kate, staring down at the book in her hands, but not turning a single page. Anthony, barely responsive to any of his siblings’ jabs about his loss at pall mall.
And then she saw them dance.
Lady Danbury had lived the greater part of her life around London’s social season. She had witnessed countless couples’ courtships – moments a young lady’s wrist trembled as a handsome suitor scribbled his name on her dance card or a young man swallowed the nervous lump in his throat before making his way across the room to speak to an imposing father. She had seen gasping breaths and warm gazes, love, scandal, and everything in between.
But she had never seen a couple dance the way Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma did that night at Aubrey Hall.
When Anthony danced with Edwina, he was the picture of a perfect gentleman. Polite. Practiced. Polished. He would bow his head to meet her much shorter frame with a gracious smile as they twirled and spun in unison.
When Anthony danced with Kate, the controlled, proper viscount disappeared, replaced with a man who could not tear his eyes from the woman whose hands tangled with his. The woman who, Lady Danbury noted for the first time, matched him both in stature and in nature. Their gazes locked together as if in a private challenge, just daring the other to look away. Kate, pressed to Anthony’s side, her eyes immediately flicking down to his lips before darting back upwards. Anthony, his mouth parted slightly in awed disbelief as he spun her closer, the emotions behind the expression on his face made plain.
Admiration. Attraction. Desire.
Anthony Bridgerton desired Kate Sharma.
And, if the look on her face was any indication, Kate Sharma desired Anthony Bridgerton much the same.
A stab of guilt hit Lady Danbury at the role she had played in encouraging Anthony’s courtship of Edwina, at how blind she’d been to what was now so clearly in front of her.
Fools, the both of them , she thought, setting her mouth in a thin line. More than guilty, she was angry. Angry at their stubbornness, at how neither seemed willing to be honest with each other or with anyone else. Angry at how close they were to making the biggest mistake of their lives.
But there was still time. She would see to this.
She found Kate first.
Her words were harsher than she intended them to be, frustrated as she was that neither of them appeared to understand the urgency of the matter.
But they would have been harsher for Anthony.
She had intended to give Anthony the same lecture she had given Kate about being honest about his feelings, but he had made himself scarce both that evening and the following morning, right up until the foolish boy had gone and proposed to Miss Edwina after all.
There was nothing for it, then. The wedding would happen because it had to.
Of course, it didn’t.
It was not as if Anthony did not try to mitigate the scandal after that day at the church. A thick, palpable aura of shame emanated from him for the consequences his failed wedding had wrought upon his family and the Sharmas. He promenaded with his family under the ton’s judgmental stares to present the image that nothing was amiss. He went along with Lady Danbury and Violet’s story about how everything had been a mutual decision between him and Miss Edwina and that they harbored no ill feelings toward each other.
There was just one complication.
God bless him, he tried to stay away from Kate, playing the fool when Lady Danbury warned them not to do anything untoward that would bring any more gossip to them or their families.
But then, young Anthony also tried to stay away from Lady Danbury’s gardens, tried not to impulsively rush through them and trample her flowers because he just had to get to her oak tree. He’d have a guilty look on his face every time she caught him, but it never stopped him.
This was the boy she saw again, standing outside the art gallery, the one who shamelessly inhaled Kate’s scent as she passed, his lips curved into a small, satisfied smile, the one who had the gall to look just barely ashamed at Lady Danbury’s cleared throat and chastising look.
This was the boy she saw again, inside the art gallery, the one who made a beeline for Kate as soon as he thought no one was looking. Lady Danbury couldn’t hear their conversation, but she knew the look on his face. It transported her back to her own drawing room, years ago, looking at Anthony Bridgerton torn between obligation and desire, his face caught somewhere between a serious mask and an impish pout.
Nuisance.
“Lady Danbury!” a familiar voice called, and she turned to see Viscountess Bridgerton, her hand resting on her husband’s arm as they approached. “What a lovely ball to open the season. You have truly outdone yourself this year.”
The year prior, Kate had always been polite but guarded. Much like Anthony. She still carried herself with the same confident air, was still sharp-tongued and quick-witted, but now she had a warmth and openness about her that Lady Danbury never ceased to marvel at.
“Why thank you, Lady Bridgerton.” She couldn’t resist the temptation for a small jab. “I trust you and the viscount are enjoying yourselves more than you did last year? From what I recall, Lord Bridgerton, you excused yourself halfway through a dance with a young lady? And you, Lady Bridgerton, you rather unceremoniously left in the middle of an introduction?”
“Quite, Lady Danbury,” Anthony replied, unfazed, looking fondly at his wife’s embarrassed expression. Kate was usually unflappable, but the reminder of how she’d summarily dismissed the woman who was now her mother-in-law appeared to render her off balance.
The soft strings of a waltz began to play in the background, and Anthony tipped his head to Lady Danbury. “If you’ll excuse us,” he murmured. “I believe I owe Lady Bridgerton a dance.”
It was magic every time they danced. The same searing touches Lady Danbury had first noticed at the Hearts and Flowers Ball at Aubrey Hall, the same unabashed adoration shining from their eyes that had drawn the room to a hush at the Featherington Ball. Since their wedding, the magic had grown tenfold, the heat of their shared gaze interspersed with private, knowing smiles, tender hands resting on the edge of impropriety, and whispered words that always resulted in a laugh or a blush.
Anthony Bridgerton had indeed come a long way from his steadfast rejection of a love match.
Some hours later, Lady Danbury turned a corner in the hallway and nearly crashed headlong into a young, out-of-breath footman, his eyes wide and terrified underneath a shock of red hair. “My apologies, Lady Danbury,” he gasped. “I was opening one of the linen closets, and I…I…well…I saw…”
“You saw?"
The young man’s cheeks burned almost as bright as his hair, and, right as he opened his mouth to speak again, the Viscount and the Viscountess Bridgerton appeared from around the same corner the footman had.
Ah.
“I am terribly sorry, young man,” came Anthony’s viscount voice, the one that oozed confidence and brooked no argument. “My wife felt faint on the dance floor, and she needed a quiet place to collect herself.”
Lady Danbury’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. Kate Bridgerton would sooner relegate her beloved Newton to life in the stables than admit to a fainting fit. But there she was, smiling and nodding along with her husband. “We meant nothing untoward.”
The footman looked up at them. “O-of course, my Lord,” he stuttered. “To your health, my Lady.” He then gave an awkward, hasty bow before retreating down the hall.
Lady Danbury’s eyes flicked from their shared, smug grin to Anthony’s slightly mussed hair to the telltale wrinkles in Kate’s dress.
“Lady Bridgerton!” she said sharply, rapping her cane for emphasis and startling them both. “Are you well?”
Kate recovered quickly, schooling her features into those of the perfect viscountess. “Quite, Lady Danbury. I feel much better now. Thank you for your concern.”
“And Lord Bridgerton?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve a bit of rouge on your collar.”
Lady Danbury turned on her heel and could only think one thing as she left the two sputtering behind her.
Nuisances.