Archive of Our Own

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1.

At just nineteen, Anthony Bridgerton knows precious little of life, really.

But he knows death.

He knows the smell of it, that sickly sort of sweetness that seems to linger, even now, a ghost of a scent in the corner of all his old favourite rooms. He knows the numbness of it, knows all its strict, pointless rituals — closed drapes for a week, black armbands for a month, crepe dresses for so long his baby sisters are growing out of them in front of his eyes.

Death is a list of letters to be sent, and the absurd mundanity of actually sitting down and writing them, the worst news in the world copied out like a schoolroom punishment, over and over again. It is the bill for a casket, mixed in among the household expenses. Death is cheaper than Benedict’s school fees. Costlier than Daphne’s piano-forte instructor.

Death is final. Finite.

And yet it never, ever seems to end.

“And this one?” he says idly, picking up the nearest sketch from the selection scattered across the desk.

“Ah, now this could be most apt,” the stonemason supplies, leaning his whole body forward to look at the design. “The broken column, my lord. It signifies a life cut short and given the circumstances surrounding your—”

“Yes,” Anthony interrupts, the edge of the paper slicing into his finger as he drops the design back down among the others. “I see.”

“Of course, you may also want to discuss the option of an seraphim before—”

“I thought we already had?”

“Pardon me, my lord. We spoke of the weeping angel but not—”

“Is one angel not the same as any other?”

“Oh, certainly not!” The mason scrambles to the very edge of his seat, reaching for another design. “Take, for instance, the angel with wings outstretched. This symbolises the flight of the immortal soul to its heavenly rest whereas…”

Anthony sits back in his father’s chair, poking idly at the cut on his finger as he tunes out the rest of the lecture. It’s childish, perhaps, to be so irritated by the man’s obvious enthusiasm for his work, but the very small part of him that is still a child can’t seem to help it.

He lets his gaze wander from the designs the mason is sifting through — a dozen different angels, weeping, wailing, taking flight — and over to the window, where ice is creeping in at the corners of the frame, a stark white border for the pink skies outside.

He wonders, idly, if it will snow tonight.

Daff has always wanted a white Christmas.

Abruptly, he realises he is near tears.

“Enough,” he says softly. And then, louder, “I have heard enough.”

He holds out his hand, taking the designs from the mason and collecting them into a tidy pile in the centre of the desk. Then he stands, so that the man will have absolutely no doubt that the meeting is over.

“Thank you for your insights, Mr Nash. I will speak with my mother and write to you with our decision on the design in the new year.”

“Very good, my lord,” the mason says, scrambling to stand. “Very wise. I am sure you will have more luck than I in ascertaining her wishes.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I-I meant no offence, sir.”

“None was taken. Now tell me what you meant.”

“Only that… this is not my first visit to Aubrey Hall.”

“It is not?”

“No, my lord.” Nash shifts his feet, looking longingly towards the door. “In truth I have had two previous appointments to discuss the design since the main plinth was installed. But alas, the viscountess could not— that is, she was … indisposed.”

“On both occasions?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I see.” Absently, Anthony realises he’s been pressing his thumb too hard into the cut on his finger, making it well with blood. “You will include the cost of these visits in your final bill, of course.”

“Oh, that … that is most generous, your lordship. I certainly did not mean to imply that—”

“You implied nothing. You were inconvenienced. And you will be compensated accordingly.”

“Very good, my lord. Very kind. If you insist.”

“I do.” Anthony grits his teeth, unnerved by the man’s deferential manner. He was always accorded considerable respect, even as a boy, but this — men three times his age bowing and scraping, falling over themselves to please him — it feels indecent. Unearned.

The thought floats idly across his mind. I must remember to ask Father how long it took him to get used to it.

And then, of course, he remembers.

He drops his gaze back to the neat pile of memorial designs sitting innocently on the desk beside the inkwell. For a brief, childish moment, he thinks about throwing every last one of them into the fire.

“I’ll see you out,” he says instead, gesturing for the mason to follow him.

He hands the man off to a footman in the entrance hall, thinking vaguely of going upstairs to lie down for a little while before supper. It worries him, sometimes, how very tired he feels these days. How sleep never seems to touch the feeling.

He’s just turning towards the stairs when something catches his eye. Or rather, the absence of something. It was late when he returned from Oxford last night, late enough that he didn’t pay a great deal of attention to anything in Aubrey Hall besides the sleeping faces in the nursery and the bottom of the crystal decanters in his father’s office. But standing here now in the fading afternoon light, he can’t help but notice how very dismal the house looks. How bare.

“Nelson?” he calls, waving over the footman who just escorted the mason out. “Where is the evergreen?”

“The … ah … the evergreen, my lord?”

“Is there not usually some over the bannisters by now?” He frowns up at the main staircase, polished to a shine as always, but utterly devoid of any decoration. “When are you putting it up?”

“Ah…”

That awkward huff of breath is all the answer he needs.

“I see,” he says slowly, dipping his head in a faintly mocking sort of nod. “I presume this was my mother’s decision?”

“Yes, my lord. Lady Bridgerton felt that—”

“Lady Bridgerton,” Anthony interrupts sharply, “has seven children.”

“But with the house still in mourning—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He pinches hard at the bridge of his nose, mastering his annoyance with some considerable effort. “Most of my siblings are too young to even know what mourning is. But they know what yuletide is. My father made sure of that. Except for—”

He chokes off Hyacinth’s name, screwing his eyes shut. And when he opens them again, the halls are still bare, the hour is still late, and his father is still dead. And it’s Hyacinth’s first Christmas.

So he says it, because no-one else is going to.

“The children will have a proper Christmas. Even if I have to cut down the fucking holly myself.”

The profanity draws a small, barely audible gasp from somewhere behind him.

He spins on his heel to find Daphne peeking out from behind a half-closed door, her green eyes huge in her small face.

Somewhere in his periphery, he realises Nelson has melted away into the shadows. Lucky bastard.

“Daphne…” He plants his hands on his hips as he surveys her, hovering there nervously in the tiny gap of the half-open door.

It seems to have become a habit of hers lately, this penchant for lurking in doorways. He caught her at it just last night, the only one of his siblings not asleep in their beds when he tip-toed quietly along the nursery corridor. It seemed rather endearing then, making him wonder if perhaps she was waiting up for him. If perhaps she missed him.

Today, like everything else, it only seems to irk him.

When she makes to shut the door, he catches at the edge of it. “Come out of there please.”

She sidles out slowly, chewing on her chapped lower lip. “I’m sorry, Brother,” she says in a rush, addressing her apology to his boots. “I know I should not have been listening. I know it is rude to drop eaves.”

A soft, unexpected huff of laughter escapes his lips. “To eavesdrop.”

Daphne chances a look up at him, her eyes peeking out under her heavy fringe. “That is what I said.”

“No.” He laughs again, the sound unfamiliar, like a language he’s not practised in a while. “You cannot move it around like that. A person eavesdrops. They do not drop eaves.”

“Why not?”

“I … I do not know, actually. I believe it has something to do with windows.”

“But I was at the door.”

“Never mind,” he says fondly, shaking his head. “I—”

“Are we really going to have a Christmas? A proper one?”

The interruption is sudden, seeming to startle even Daphne herself. She clamps her lips shut, like she can’t quite believe she just asked the question. Like it’s absurd.

And of course it is, in a way. They’ll never have a proper Christmas again. How could they?

And yet—

“Of course we are,” Anthony lies. He forces a smile onto his face, lowering his voice to a whisper. “But only if you promise not to tell Mother you heard me curse just now. Otherwise I shall end up with nothing but a lump of coal.”

Daphne giggles at that, the sound loosening a little of the tightness in Anthony’s chest. “My lips are sealed, Brother.”

He hums a note of approval, tousling her hair until she laughs again, squirming out from under his touch.

“Where is Mother anyway?” he asks, peering beyond Daphne into the room she was hiding in. “I need to speak with her.”

“She has gone out for a walk.”

“In this weather?”

Daphne nods. “I think she is having one of her quiet days.”

The chill that sweeps over Anthony is so sudden, so absolute, that he finds himself looking towards the front doors, expecting to see that someone has just opened them. But of course they’re closed. It’s him that’s wide open, bleeding his heart out all over the scrubbed wooden floors.

And worst of all, Daphne seems entirely unaffected. Entirely used to it.

“Does…” He can hardly get the words out. “Does she have a lot of quiet days, Daff?”

Daphne shrugs. “Some. Not as many as she used to.”

Anthony nods tightly at that, not trusting himself to speak. But it’s a mistake, that silence. Daphne seems to find something accusing in the tight line of his jaw, the thin press of his lips.

“I help,” she rushes to say, her eyes wide and earnest, and hurt.

It takes him a moment to realise what’s happening — that she’s taken his distress as disapproval. He’s too appalled to find the words to contradict her.

“I always keep the others busy,” she goes on indignantly, drawing herself up taller. It’s not much, not when she’s still barely a slip of a girl, but the proud tilt of her chin seems to add an inch or two.

In the face of it, he feels utterly, miserably, small.

“I make up games, quiet ones. I am always careful so that the little ones do not make too much noise and hurt Mama’s head, I—”

“I know,” he says, jumping in as soon as she pauses for breath. He settles his hands on her shoulders, giving them a gentle squeeze. “I know, Daff.”

“I help,” she says again, giving one tiny, pathetic little sniff.

It’s a surprise, after all these months, to discover that his heart retains the capacity to break. He didn’t think there were any pieces left intact to snap.

“Come here,” he says gruffly, pulling her into his arms.

And it’s odd, because this was for her sake, but as he feels her small hands come up and settle on his back, he realises he can’t remember the last time someone embraced him.

There have been women, of course, plenty of them. Barmaids and actresses up at Oxford and down in London, all of them eager to welcome a handsome, rich, lonely man into their beds. They opened their legs for his smile, or for a pretty trinket, or a coin on the bedside table. But they never opened their arms. And he never asked them to.

Most probably, he never will.

“I am not cross with you, Sister,” he says quietly, running a soothing hand over her hair. “You mustn’t think that.”

“You are not?”

“Not a bit.” He eases her away from him, gently chucking her under the chin until she lifts her gaze to his. “I may not like you dropping eaves…”

The irreverence earns him a small, teary little giggle.

“But other than that, no. Indeed, I am …” He clears his throat, searching for the right word. “Grateful. And sorry.”

“Sorry?” Daphne cocks her head, confused. “What for?”

How could he possibly answer that? And if he did, how could he ever stop? The list is endless.

“I am just sorry.”

For a moment, Daphne looks like she wants to ask for more of an explanation. It’d be rather like her to insist on it; she’s always liked poking and prodding at things, untangling the threads of her embroidery silks to get down to the very thinnest one, before twining them all back together again, before starting any project. But she seems to change her mind at the last second, something slightly troubled crossing her face as she looks up at him.

“I am sorry too, Brother,” she says quietly, patting his arm gently, like he’s the child in this conversation.

And for one heart-stopping second, he feels like one again.

Pressing his lips together, he plants his hands on her shoulders and spins her quickly in the direction of the servant’s staircase, hoping he moved fast enough to hide the tears in his eyes.

“Now then,” he chokes out, forcing a cheer he doesn’t feel, hasn’t felt for months, “since it is nearly Christmas, I want you to go down to the kitchen and tell Cook that I said you may all have a cup of chocolate. All right?”

She fidgets under his hold, trying to turn back. “But—”

“I will see to Mother.”

“But Anthony, don’t you want—”

“Go on now. Run along.”

He doesn’t wait to see if she does as he asks, turning on his heel and striding out of the front doors and straight into the bitter afternoon.

The second the cold hits him, he sucks in a sharp breath, wrapping his arms around himself against the chill. “Shit.”

The sensible thing to do would be to go back inside for a coat — it’s mid-December after all, and the afternoon sunlight is already fading, the sun just dipping beyond the treeline in the distance, taking its meagre warmth with it.

He glances back at the house, considering it.

And then he tucks his chin down to his chest against the wind, and heads off into the rapidly darkening grounds.

He finds his mother in the first place he looks — sitting on the brand new bench beside his father’s half-finished memorial. The long grass at her feet has been blown over her boots by the force of the wind, making her look like something grown up out of the ground. He wonders how long she’s been sitting there, for that to have happened.

“Mother.”

Violet hardly seems to hear his greeting, her eyes fixed unseeingly on some point in the middle distance. She’s slightly more suitably dressed than he is, at least, in a heavy woollen walking dress and a matching pelisse, her hands tucked inside the shawl she’s got wrapped around her shoulders.

He sits down beside her, wincing slightly at the chill of the bench against the back of his thighs. Though he tries not to look, he can’t stop his eyes from drifting to the monument just to their right, sitting there beside the tree his father taught him to climb as a boy. It’s an aberration on the familiar landscape, the clean unmarked stone shining white in the fading daylight.

It’ll blend in, he supposes, with time. The flattened ground where it was moved into place will come alive again, turning green in the spring. The ivy growing nearby might even spread this way, inching closer to the sun. The seasons will weather the stone, softening the inscription that hasn’t even been placed yet.

One day, someone will read those fading words and not even know who Edmund Bridgerton was.

“You should not be out here,” Anthony says quietly, tearing his eyes from the gleaming stone. “It is cold.”

“You are out here.” Violet’s voice is thin, as if she hasn’t spoken for hours.

“I was looking for you,” he says, examining the blanched tips of his fingers, the tiny sliver of his papercut the only colour left.

“Has he gone?”

He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “Yes.”

“Did you decide? On—” She gestures vaguely at the memorial.

“I told him I needed to speak with you. See what you would prefer.”

“What I would prefer…” Violet’s laughter is mocking, cold as the wind swirling around them both. “I would prefer that this thing was not here at all.”

Anthony opens his mouth, about to remind her that this was her idea, that she was the one who insisted she needed something on the grounds to honour Edmund, that the family crypt was too cold, too far away, too dead.

But then—

“I would prefer that Edmund was alive,” she goes on dully, silencing Anthony’s protest before he ever makes it.

“Of course,” he murmurs, closing his eyes against the awful, selfish surge of irritation he can feel building within him. “I—”

“I would prefer that he was here.”

“Yes.”

“With his family. With me.”

“Mother, I—”

“I would prefer that you did not have to ask me to find the words to put on that stone.”

“Then I shan’t.”

He stands up — because he has to, he has to do something, has to find some way to shake out the horrible, building sense of anger that seems to colour their every conversation lately.

“I will select the design. I will write the dedication.” He forces himself still, clasping his hands behind his back as he looks down at her. “You will not have to do a thing.”

His mother lifts her face to meet his gaze, her expression as blank as the unmarked stone beside her. And then, quietly, “Do you expect me to thank you?”

He closes his eyes, letting out a single, slow breath.

“You should go back inside. It is cold. And it is growing dark. The children will be worried.”

She flinches a little at the last, but makes no move to stand.

So he leaves her there.

“Where are you going?” she calls as he begins to walk away — not in the direction of the house but towards the trees, and the darkness. “Anthony?”

He pauses, but doesn't look back.

“I am looking for evergreen, Mother.”

The cold bites into his hands, his ears, so much so that it feels almost warm, a perverse, horrible sort of sting. The same feeling settles right at the centre of his chest, something so cold it burns.

“The house needs some life.”

He walks away then, telling himself the ache in his eyes is from the wind.

But much later, when he’s back inside his office, warm and dry beside the roaring fire, the feeling still won’t go away.

He takes a sip from the now-cold cup of chocolate that he found waiting on top of the gravestones on his desk, and lets the misery overtake him, just for a moment.

--

2.

He doesn’t mean to put it on his list of tasks.

But it’s late and he’s had too much brandy and not enough dinner, and suddenly he’s looking down at the list he just made of the work still to be done before he leaves for London, and there it is. In black and white, sandwiched between one mundane task and another—

Visit Father’s memorial.

He drops the list onto his desk like it’s on fire.

And then he drains his glass and thinks, why not? It’s a duty, like all the rest. Why shouldn’t he write it out with the rest of his obligations? Perhaps he’ll even feel some modicum of accomplishment when he checks it off.

It’d be a change, to feel anything at all.

He looks at the decanter in the corner of the room, thinking vaguely of refilling his glass. It’s three steps away, perhaps four, and yet the distance feels insurmountable. His exhaustion suddenly hits him like a punch, making him sway in his seat, clutching at the armrests to steady himself.

He squints up at the clock on the mantel, wondering just when it got so late. As if to punctuate the point, one of the candles on his desk suddenly spits and then sputters out entirely, plunging yet more of the room into darkness.

“All right,” he grumbles to the universe at large, “all right.”

He douses the rest of the lights, taking one night-light with him to light the way to his chambers. It’s a habit, more than anything else. He hardly needs a light to guide the path he’s walked a thousand nights before. There’s never anything out of place in Aubrey Hall. Nothing to trip him up. Nothing to scare him. There might be portraits of his father on every floor, but Anthony is the only ghost.

Despite the appallingly late hour, he doesn’t go straight to bed. A strange, inexplicable urge turns his feet to the other bedroom just off the small sitting room that his bedchamber also connects to.

He props himself up in the doorway, examining the viscountess’ room in the pale moonlight spilling through its window. There’s not much to see really, just dust-sheets and an unmade bed, and a wooden floor kept scrupulously clean even though no-one but the servants have walked across its boards for years.

The room is bigger than his — the only tell that this wasn’t always the viscountess’ room. He was the one who made the change, swapping the chambers around after he finished up at Oxford, when his mother insisted he finally move into this suite of rooms.

It felt necessary then, that tiny little rebellion. He had to take his father’s title and his house and his land and his burdens, but this — the place where he would lay down his aching head every night — this he could control.

Now, he wonders if it wasn’t a mistake.

He tries to picture the room with someone in it — a nameless, faceless woman, filling it with all her fripperies. She’ll expect him to visit her here. To fuck her in the same bed where they laid out his father.

He presses his fist over his mouth, swallowing down the rising bile.

No. No, it won’t come to that, he decides, restraining the urge to slam the door shut. He slips it closed quietly instead, telling himself she’ll simply have to come to him instead. He won’t need to explain it. She won’t ask.

And he certainly won’t tell.

He shuffles into his own room and pours himself one last drink before bed. Then another. And then somehow it’s morning, and his head is pounding, and his valet doesn’t seem to give a damn, carelessly shaking him awake with the reminder that he promised Hyacinth a game of pall mall today.

“Christ,” he mutters, throwing up a hand to shield his eyes from the morning light. “Would it kill you to wake a man gently?”

The abrupt wake up call sets the tone for his morning mood, which only sours further when he heads outside to find Simon Basset loitering around the pall mall set with Daphne and the others.

“What is he doing here?” he demands, snatching up the black mallet. “He’s not a Bridgerton.”

Daphne merely shrugs, passing her husband a mallet. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Brother, but nor am I anymore.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I said he could play.”

“To be clear,” Simon puts in, his evident disgruntlement going some way to bolstering Anthony’s mood, “I did not actually ask to play.”

“Then why—”

“Because— if Daphne insists on tramping around the grounds in her condition, then the least I can do is keep an eye on her.”

“Did you not think us capable of doing so?”

“I am right here you know,” Daphne suddenly puts in, looking rather dangerous. “And I do not need either of you to look after me. I only need you to lose.”

And with that she takes the first shot, smashing her ball a good twenty feet, right towards the first wicket.

“That was your fault,” Simon mutters as she stomps off after it. “And yet somehow I know I shall be the one paying for it later.”

Despite himself, Anthony laughs.

“Come on,” he says, clapping Simon on the shoulder. “Your play, your grace.”

He can’t help but feel his mood lift as the game goes on. It’s a beautiful morning, one of those last gasp late summer sort of days, when everything suddenly seems more alive for the fact that it’s all going to die, soon. The fresh air blows away most of his headache, banishing the effects of last night’s excesses to little more than a faint twinge at his temples, aching only when Hyacinth’s laughter reaches a truly appalling pitch.

His little sister, it has to be said, is not a natural at the game. She’s far too excited at finally being allowed to play, and far too focused on beating Gregory to do anything but make a hash of every turn, all in the hopes of ruining his game. But her enthusiasm is infectious and soon any hope of a sensible game — always an unlikely prospect where his siblings are involved — is long gone, with every player committed to sabotage above all else.

Every player, that is, except Simon.

“This game is absurd,” he says, when he’s been forced to retrieve his ball from the long grass beside the orangery for the third time. “And it can’t be good for the babe.”

“Don’t be such a stick in the mud, darling,” Daphne says cheerfully, curving a protective hand around her growing belly just before she summarily whacks Benedict’s ball in the opposite direction of the next wicket. “And don’t you dare use the baby against me. He’s having a marvellous time.”

Simon, wisely, chooses not to comment any further.

“You see, this is precisely why we do not let non-Bridgertons play, Daff,” Anthony can’t help but say when Simon eventually cuts out, several wickets later. “They are simply not cut out for it.”

“I know,” Daphne says, watching her husband’s retreating form with exasperated affection. “But I thought, since today’s isn’t an official game—”

“Isn’t it? Why not?”

“Well, Colin isn’t here, for one.”

“Oh.” Anthony stops dead, almost causing Daphne to run into him. “You are right. I forgot.” He flicks her a sly look, knocking his mallet into hers. “Does that mean if you win it does not truly count as two in a row?”

“No! How dare you suggest that…”

And she’s off, listing out half a dozen reasons why victory is still victory, even if this isn’t one of their proper annual games. Anthony lets her nonsense wash over him, his gaze drifting over to Hyacinth and Gregory several wickets back, their game seemingly having devolved in nothing resembling pall mall at all. Eloise and Benedict aren’t faring much better, currently engaged in an argument that even Francesca, famed peacemaker that she is, doesn’t seem to be having much luck refereeing.

And Colin—

Colin isn’t even here.

A strange, sudden pang of nostalgia hits him square in the chest. It takes him a moment to recognise the odd, wistful feeling, and even longer to understand it. But when he does, his tentative good mood begins to drift away with the wind, leaving him oddly exposed, like a dandelion blown bare.

There’s no sense to it, no reason why he should feel this way — like his childhood is ending right in front of his eyes, when in truth he hasn’t known innocence for years. But with Daphne married, with Colin travelling … that’s exactly how it feels. Like he’s homesick for the very place he’s standing. And for the boy who used to stand here, holding this mallet, playing this game.

“Promise me you will come back,” he blurts, closing his hand around Daphne’s elbow as she makes to walk past him. “Next year. For Mother’s ball. For the game. All of it.”

Daphne blinks at him, startled by his urgency. “I do not know whether—”

“Please, Daff.” He knows he sounds strange. Pathetic, even. Begging his little sister to come back and play with him, like some sort of spoiled child. But he doesn’t care; he cannot have missed the last time all of Edmund Bridgerton’s children were in the same place at the same time. It cannot be over. “Promise me?”

“All right,” she says, half confusion, half concern. “If you want me to.”

He clears his throat, relief warring with embarrassment. “Of course I do.”

“Anthony, are you—”

“Only so I can beat you in an official game, you understand,” he cuts across her, forcing a smile. “With Colin as my witness.”

He takes his shot before she can answer that, making sure to hit his ball long and hard, and far from hers.

Still, her eyes — and the weight of her worry — seem to follow him across the course, settling like the sweat on the back of his neck. That sad, homesick sort of feeling follows him too, sneaking up on him at the oddest moments. When Eloise laughs at a wayward shot, or when Benedict trips himself up with his own mallet, and goes tumbling down the slope of the lawn.

Strangely, Anthony finds himself imagining his wife among the players. Laughing at the grass stains on Benedict’s knees. Giggling with Eloise. Prompting him for stories of his childhood, until those years — and that boy — don’t feel so far out of reach after all.

The picture doesn’t fit, of course. His viscountess likely won’t play the game. She’ll sit beneath the awning out of the sun, sipping tea and clapping politely, and thinking the whole thing a silly waste of an afternoon.

And it’ll be safer that she never cares to hear his stories.

In the end, it’s Francesca who wins the game. The vague, faceless ghost of the woman he’ll never marry cheers her enthusiastically, lingering even when he wills her away. She stays beside him even when the others drift away, tempting him with a life where he’s not alone in staying out on the course with Hyacinth and Gregory while they insist on trying to hit their balls through the tall semi-circle of the final wicket.

And when the fun is over, and his feet begin to carry him towards the woods, she falls into step at his side. He can almost hear the whisper of her skirts across the forest floor. She doesn’t mind the dirt.

He shakes his head, forcibly banishing the idea of her.

Still, when he emerges from the trees and sees the pale grey stone of his father’s monument, it’s her hand he reaches for. His fingers flex and then fall, catching only air.

“Anthony!”

He snaps out of his reverie to find Daphne sitting beside their father’s memorial, her slight frame perched on the very edge of the bench, like a nervous bird. She smiles at him in greeting, the gentle curve of her lips an immediate, unwelcome irritation.

“Forgive me,” he says immediately, pulling up short. “I thought you had gone back inside with the others. I shall come back later.”

“Oh, you needn’t run off—”

“I do not wish to disturb—”

“You are not,” she says promptly, comfortable in a way he never is here. “Stay, please.” She shuffles up a little, patting the empty space beside her. “I should probably be heading back inside soon anyway. Simon will be starting to wonder where I am.”

Anthony lowers himself onto the bench opposite hers, ignoring the flicker of hurt that crosses her face. “I am surprised he has not sent out a search party.”

“Yet,” Daphne says ominously, humming a quiet laugh that he forces himself to match.

They drift into silence then, their strained laughter melting away until all he can hear is the rustle of the trees, the call of the birds in their branches.

It’s a peaceful spot, this. Quiet, but never silent.

Anthony hates it.

“I came to tell him about Simon,” Daphne suddenly says, her voice a soft, wistful thing.

He lifts his gaze to hers, finding her eyes fixed on the monument beside them. She drags her fingers across the bench, her hand lifting to cover the gentle curve of her stomach.

“And about the baby,” she adds, a tiny, half smile pulling at her lips. “His first grandchild...”

Anthony closes his eyes, fighting the urge to screw them up tight. To block his ears and stamp his feet and tell her to stop. Stop talking. Stop changing.

When he opens his eyes again, Daphne isn’t looking at the memorial. She’s looking at him.

“What did you come to tell him, Anthony?”

A hundred things tumble through his mind, disordered and senseless. The list he made last night. The dust sheets over the mirror on the viscountess’ dressing table. The duelling pistols in his safe, and the single bullet missing from one chamber. The roses rotting in the gutter outside Siena Rosso’s apartments. Hyacinth’s face when she hit her ball through the last wicket on her twentieth attempt.

The way he almost looked around, in that moment, chasing the smile of the phantom of a woman that he will never let himself seek.

“Nothing,” he tells her quietly. “He cannot hear me.”

Daphne nods, letting out a soft, wounded sort of sigh. She stands up then, fanning her skirts out neatly as she walks away from him, her head held high. Like a duchess. But when she pauses beside the bench he is sitting on, her hand covering his on the armrest, she is his little sister again.

“I miss you, you know,” she says softly.

He scoffs a disbelieving sort of noise. “I am right here, Daff.”

“Are you?”

She pats his hand once before she walks away.

It’s the last time anyone touches him for weeks.

--

3.

In the five minutes after proposing to Miss Edwina, Anthony discovers two new things about his intended—

One, her finger is too small for the ring.

Two, her laughter sets his teeth on edge.

The ring is an easy enough fix. They will simply resize it, the way he will resize himself, cutting out all the parts he can’t keep.

The problem of her laughter feels more significant. More telling. He’s fairly certain he never paid it much mind before today, but now that he knows he’ll be hearing it for the rest of his life — at dinners and dances and a hundred other obligations — he can’t seem to abide the sound.

It’s not fair to the girl, he knows. There’s nothing objectively wrong about the sound of her joy. She sounds a little childish, perhaps, a little too giddy, but that’s hardly a crime. He’d never be so cruel as to wish her silent, but he does wish her … away. Back in the carriage and heading off to London, taking that too-loud sound and that too-large ring away with her.

But she insists on lingering, showing every last one of his siblings the ring, and giggling every time it slips loose from her finger. He smiles politely and restrains the urge to tell her they’ve all seen it before. On his Mother’s finger, long ago.

He restrains other urges too. The urge to go back inside and pour himself a drink. To look at Daphne and see if she’s as furious as he suspects. To pull out his watch and see if he can somehow wind back time, and take back the last five minutes. To find out if that ring fits Kate’s finger instead.

The urge to look at her is the most overwhelming of all. And the easiest to resist.

Edwina doesn’t know it, but she’s marrying a coward.

While she giggles away with his family, he makes small talk with her mother and leaves Kate exactly where she’s been since he ran down those steps, a lingering presence in the corner of his eye.

He suspects she’ll always be there, now.

It was supposed to be a kindness, not meeting her eye. He dressed up his weakness in that excuse and convinced himself of it. But now it’s a torment, the not knowing. Was she angry when he dropped to his knee and asked the right question of the wrong woman? Or was it some other feeling that made her hand shake as she clutched her sister’s glove in her fist?

He knows he’ll dream of that tiny glimpse of her tonight, just her fingers curled tight around that scrap of fabric, with the barest hint of a tremble. He’ll dream that she drops that glove right to the floor before him, calling out his dishonour.

For the first time he thinks he might understand a little of how Simon felt, that morning on the duelling field, all those months ago.

If Kate levelled a gun at his heart, he’d let her shoot.

And he’d love her through the bleeding.

Damn Daphne for telling him. For making it clear. And damn him for hating Edwina’s laughter, all because it isn’t Kate’s.

His sister doesn’t linger long through the celebrations, calling for her own carriage before the Sharmas even get back into theirs. She covers it well enough, blaming the long journey back to Clyvedon for her hasty departure, but he doesn’t miss the look she gives him before she goes — anger laced with disbelief. And so much disappointment that he thinks, dimly, that it might hurt less if he laid down on the gravel and let her fine team of horses trample right over his chest.

Her departure is good for one thing, at least. It seems to shake the Sharmas into action and soon enough they’re climbing back into Lady Danbury’s carriage, shouting out promises to meet up back in London, and start the wedding plans.

He finally risks a glance at Kate when he’s sure her back is turned. He watches her climb into the carriage, the tight line of her shoulders stiffening slightly as his eyes land on her, as if she can feel the weight of his gaze somehow.

And it’s odd, considering all the other things he’s given up, but it hits him then that he’ll never kiss the skin at the back of her neck, now. He’ll never dig his thumb into the space there, and feel her shoulders relax. He’ll never know if it makes her sigh. If it makes her moan.

That’s all he’ll ever have of her now. All the things he doesn't know.

When the last of the carriages clear the drive, he doesn’t return inside with the rest of his family. Almost without thought, his feet carry him out across the lawn and down towards the woods.

It’s darker beneath the trees, and quieter, the sun barely breaching the heavy canopy overhead. He skirts a wide berth around the muddy patch of land where the pall mall balls landed that day, but it’s no use. Kate’s still there in the corner of his eye, in a pink dress now, with mud up to her ankles and laughter in her eyes.

The empty ring box weighs down his pocket like a stone.

He takes it out as he sits down beside his father’s memorial, examining the empty fabric, the faint indent that’s been worn there by all the years the ring sat nestled there, waiting for this day.

He snaps it shut, shoving it back into his pocket.

And for the first time since this stone was laid, Anthony says something to his father.

He grips the edge of the bench and says, quietly, “Forgive me, Father.”

--

4.

He hears her before he sees her.

A rustle of footsteps in the distance. A few branches disturbed by something other than the wind. The whoosh of a bird leaving its perch.

It could be anyone, of course.

And at the same time, it could not possibly be anyone else.

He turns towards the trees and says, quietly, “Kate.”

His manners have him standing up as she comes into view. His love for her has him smiling. He doesn’t think he’s ever done that here. She is, as ever, an exception.

She is, as ever, exceptional.

Of all the things he’ll remember from today — the impatience that roared through him all morning, and the way it went suddenly, perfectly quiet when she floated down the aisle on her mother’s arm, smiling at him like he was the best thing she’d ever seen — he thinks this moment might be his favourite, the one he’ll return to on quiet, lazy afternoons in his office, when his mind wanders from his work.

He’ll miss deadlines, blot ink all over his papers, all for this memory — his wife emerging from the woods like she’s a part of them, the reds and golds of her wedding dress glinting in the late September sun, a perfect match to the burned gold of the falling leaves behind her.

“There you are,” she says softly, her skirts whispering over the grass as she picks her way around his father’s monument towards him.

There’s no censure in her tone but he hears it anyway, too practised in the expectation of it to notice it’s absence.

“I am sorry if I worried you,” he murmurs. “I did not mean to—”

“I was not worried,” she says serenely, sitting down beside him in a rustle of skirts, her thigh warm against his even through the layers of fabric. “I thought I might find you here.”

He nods faintly in agreement, though he’s not sure why. He didn’t even think to find himself here, not really. When he slipped outside to the terrace earlier, he really only intended to get some fresh air. But then suddenly he was halfway across the lawn, heading for the treeline.

“Even so,” he says, absently rubbing his thumb over the centre of his palm, “I apologise.”

She was happily occupied when he left the party, chatting away to her mother and sister, the careless tumble of her laughter ringing out over the musicians playing in the corner of the room.

“I intended to be back long before you missed me.”

“Anthony…” She sighs out his name like a scold, the sound softened by the way she gently laces their fingers together, pulling their joined hands into her lap. “I notice when your mind wanders. Did you really think I would not notice you leave a room?”

He hums a rough, pleased note in the back of his throat at that, softening slightly in his seat until his weight slumps a little against hers, pressing their shoulders together.

Kate sighs out a breath, leaning her head down on his shoulder.

For a long time, neither of them speak.

He stares down at their joined hands, trying to memorise the intricate patterns swirled across the back of her hand, curving up along the thumb she’s rubbing gently over his knuckles, a slow, comforting brush of skin on skin.

Her mother’s bangle jingles a little with the motion of her fingers, catching slightly against her skirts. He lifts his free hand to trace over the gemstones, lifting the bangle aside slightly and turning her hand to bare the inside of her wrist, where his initials are traced into the patterns there — AEB — right where her pulse beats beneath her skin.

He found them earlier, when he pulled her away from the wedding breakfast and into the quiet of his office, where the only sound was the old, creaking floorboards and the hushed whisper of her laughter, catching in her throat when he kissed her. She cupped his face beneath her hands and he turned his head, intending to press a kiss into her wrist, when his eyes suddenly landed on the careful curl of his own initials, marked right onto her skin.

They did not leave that office for a long, long time.

“I am sorry he was not here today,” Kate says quietly, circling a fingertip over the E in his initials. “Your father.”

He traces his finger along the shape of the bangle at her wrist, sighing softly. “His was not the only empty seat today.”

“It is strange…” Kate lets out a quiet huff of laughter, no amusement in the sound. “I keep thinking that I wish you could have known them — my parents.”

“There is nothing strange in that.” He lets his gaze wander to the familiar shape of the memorial, the inscription too hard to make out in the fading light. “I would give anything for my father to have met you.”

“Yes, but … it isn’t real, is it? That idea.”

He looks back at her, frowning. “It does not have to be real for you to want it, Kate.”

She smiles at that, but not like she believes him. Just like she loves him.

“Perhaps. But if they had lived, who knows the people we would have been?”

“I would have loved you. I know that.”

“You cannot know it,” she says, gently shaking her head. “If my mother was alive, then Edwina would not be. And if my father had lived, we may never have left India. You and I may never have met at all.”

“Don’t say that.” Something in his chest pulls tight, a piano wire tuned all wrong. “I do not believe there is a world where we do not find each other.”

“That is a pretty thought, but I am not sure I agree.” She drops her head back down onto his shoulder, lifting their joined hands to press a slow, careful kiss to the back of his hand. “I think perhaps there is only this world where we find each other. The one where you take that exact route through the woods. And I get lost on my way home.”

“So you admit it now, you were lost that day?”

She hums a quiet laugh. “Found, really.”

He presses his lips together at that, looking out to the memorial again, fading grey in the green.

“Well,” he says quietly, “if that is true, then I am glad to live in this world with you.”

Kate whimpers a soft sound of agreement, the quiver of it going right to his heart.

He turns his head to look down at her, finding her face tilted up towards his. She looks a little tired up close, a little rumpled. There are more loose curls around her face than there were this morning, and some creases in her skirts. There’s a spot of sugar at the corner of her lip, a remnant from some treat she must have taken from the dessert table earlier. He reaches up to swipe it away, sucking the sweetness off the end of his thumb.

Her eyes go dark at the motion, but there’s no urgency in the way she’s looking at him. There’s something decadently patient in the slow, heavy blink of her eyes, a confidence in the lazy way she leans her weight against his.

He tucks his hand beneath her chin, and kisses her beside his father’s grave.

He doesn’t think Edmund would mind.

--

5.

It takes Anthony five minutes to calm down and regret this behaviour.

Kate gives him ten.

By the time she emerges into the clearing beside his father’s memorial, he is utterly appalled at himself, consumed with the sort of self-disgust he’d half forgotten he could feel.

“I’m sorry,” he says, when she’s still too far away to hear.

Then again, when she rounds the stone and approaches the bench where he’s sitting, “I’m sorry.”

When she sits down beside him without a word, “I’m so sorry, Kate.”

Her silence doesn’t feel like censure, though God knows he deserves it. It feels like kindness, like patience. And before he knows it, the truth is tumbling out of him.

“I should not have snapped at you the way I did. It was unconscionable. Please forgive me. My mind was stuck on another matters entirely and—”

“You mean you did not really bite my head off simply because I forgot to tell you your Aunt Billie is coming for dinner this evening? You do surprise me.”

Despite himself, he laughs.

Kate seems to relax a little at the sound, her own shoulders dropping slightly in the corner of his eye. He glances over at her, his eyes tracing slowly over her familiar profile, touching all his favourite places — the tiny upturn of her nose, the proud lift of her chin — and then dropping lower, down to the soft swell of her breasts and the even softer swell of her stomach, the growing shape barely noticeable beneath the cut of her gown.

“It is about the baby isn’t it?” she says quietly. There’s no accusation in her voice, just a question. “You have been quiet ever since this morning. When I brought up the name.”

For a split second, he thinks about lying. It’s an old habit, this urge to brush aside the way he feels for the comfort of another. But Kate won’t thank him for it, never has.

“You’ll…” He tugs awkwardly at his collar, trying to find a deep breath. “You’ll think me foolish.”

She bumps her shoulder into his, humming a laugh. “Don’t I always?”

He sighs out half a laugh, the sound melting away as his eyes fall to the memorial beside them. The ivy growing up its sides has spread since the last time he was here but it’s been guided, somehow, the vines carefully trimmed so they won’t obscure the inscription. One of the gardeners must have done that, he supposes.

That little careful little detail makes him want to weep.

“It was only a thought,” Kate says gently, taking pity on the hitch in his breathing, the tremble in his hands. “We do not have to name him Edmund if you do not want to.”

“It is not that.” Until the words leave his lips, he doesn’t know they’re true. “I want to, I do. It is only…” He grits out a frustrated noise, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I do not know what it is.”

“I think you do know,” she murmurs, rubbing slow, gentle circles on his back, just as he did for her last night, when she could not sleep. “Just try. For me.”

He shoots her a look, half amused, half annoyed.

She knows he cannot refuse such a request.

“It … surprised me, I suppose.” He blows out a breath that’s almost a laugh, shaking his head softly as he realises the truth in his words. “Until you mentioned it, I had honestly not given a moment’s thought to what we would name the child.”

Kate’s hand falters slightly on his back, then lifts away. “You had not?”

The hint of something wounded in her question jolts him upright.

“Do not mistake me,” he rushes to say, turning his whole body in his seat so he can look at her. He takes her hand, moving to lay it gently over the swell of her stomach, covered with his. “I have thought of little else but our child since the moment you put my hand here and called me Appa.”

Kate’s lips tremble dangerously at that, the glisten of tears rising to her eyes.

“I have thought about almost everything,” he goes on. “Cribs. Colours for the nursery. Treehouses and birthday parties and how much I love you, like this, with something of me inside you, all the time.”

Kate chokes out a vague note of agreement, the sound caught somewhere between a whimper and a moan. There’s a hint of desire warming her eyes now, but set aside, parcelled up for later like a treat wrapped up in a doily and taken home from tea.

“I thought of everything,” he says again, lifting her hand to his mouth to brush a fierce kiss across her knuckles. “I just—” He shrugs helplessly. “I forgot to think of names.”

She hums a quiet laugh at that, exasperation warmed by affection.

“When you suggested it could be Edmund for a boy, it just … it knocked the wind out of me. And that felt stupid. Because of course, of course people will expect—”

“I do not care what people expect, Anthony,” she cuts in, so fiercely that his chest aches for the way that she loves him — entirely without manners. “I suggested it because I thought you might want to—”

He cuts her off with a kiss.

How can he not? When she looks so furious, and so beautiful, and so ready to spite the world and all their expectations, if they do not match his.

It’s an awkward, clumsy sort of kiss, sitting side by side as they are. She falls into him, letting out a soft breath of surprise that he catches with another kiss, anchoring her against his body. Her hair is mostly loose today, falling in soft waves all around her face, and he catches up a handful of it, sifting through the soft strands to scratch at her scalp, the way she does for him sometimes.

“I do want to,” he murmurs against her lips, feeling them curve into a smile.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.” He kisses his certainty into her lips, pressing the truth of it onto her tongue. “Yes. I want our son to bear my father’s name and none of his burdens.”

When she pulls back, there are tears in her eyes. But she’s still smiling.

He tucks a stray curl behind her ear, placing one more slow, lingering kiss on her lips.

She sighs into it, trying to tuck herself into his side and grumbling an adorably petulant noise when the growing swell of her stomach gets in the way. He starts to laugh, the sound abruptly choking away when she twists around instead, lifting her feet up onto the bench and manoeuvring herself to lie down, her head settling in his lap.

“Is this all right?” she asks, blinking wide, guileless, beautiful eyes up at him.

“Yes, love.” He reaches for her hand, tangling their fingers together. “This is perfect.”

They don’t say anything more for a while. She looks at the sky, and he looks at her. The shape of the clouds reflect in her eyes and he thinks, fancifully, that he could sit out here for hours, until her eyes are full of starlight.

After a while, he hears himself say. “Did you know that Hyacinth was going to be named Edmund, if she were a boy?”

Kate’s eyes drift from the sky to his face, her nose scrunching in confusion. “Your mother was going to abandon the alphabet?”

He nods, smoothing his free hand over her hair until her expression smooths out too. “I hated the idea. It was … so soon. So soon after my father. I could not bear the idea of hearing that name everyday. Writing it in letters. Shouting it up the stairs...”

“Did you tell her?”

“Of course not. But when they told me Hyacinth was a girl, I was so relieved.”

“Is that what troubled you this morning? The thought of hearing that name … for someone else.”

“I suppose.” He blows out a breath, smiling faintly at the way it ruffles the curls at her temple. “I think I was more surprised to find that I could imagine it. That I wanted to.”

She nods, the motion brushing her head against his thighs. “So … Edmund then. For a boy.”

“Yes.” He looks over at the memorial, surprised to find himself smiling at that old, familiar text. The ivy growing just around the words, never over them. “Edmund.”

“Edmund Anthony.”

He snaps his gaze back down to her. “What—”

“Edmund, Anthony,” she repeats gently, her left hand lifting to rest on her growing belly. “For the man you adored. And the man I adore.”

For a moment, he thinks about hiding his tears. But this is Kate.

He lets them fall, right onto her cheeks.

“But wait,” he says after a moment, dashing under his eye. “What about your father? Do you not want—”

“There will be other babies.” She shrugs. “Other boys.”

“You sound awfully sure of that, Lady Bridgerton…”

She raises one perfect eyebrow, looking imperious even as she lolls there in his lap, her dress rumpled, her curls spilling over his thighs. “Anthony … I want you more now than I did when I thought I would never, ever have you.” She nods slightly, arrogant and beautiful. “Yes. There will be other babies.”

He hums a quiet laugh, looking down at where her hand rests on her belly, the ring his father chose all those years ago shining on her finger.

It is, he thinks, a more fitting memorial than any monument.

--

+1.

On the day his father would have turned sixty, Anthony wakes to kisses.

On his forehead. His jaw. The curve of his bicep.

He wakes to a whisper, hot against the shell of his ear. “Anthony…”

He wakes to a threat. “Nelson gave me three minutes to rouse you pleasantly, before he takes over with a saucepan and a wooden spoon.”

He wakes with laughter on his lips.

He often does, now.

“All right, all right…” He stretches, letting out a quiet, sleep-rough rumble of amusement. “Call off the pots and pans. I am awake.”

“Good boy,” Kate murmurs, giving him another of those featherlight kisses — her lips brushing his collarbone this time, her hair tickling his nose as she tucks herself into his side.

He stretches again, hearing the click and crack of his joints, the sound as familiar to his mornings as the birdsong outside their window. The birdsong which, come to think of it, sounds a lot quieter than the usual dawn chorus today. He glances down at Kate, frowning at the strength of the daylight glinting off her sleep-mussed hair.

“What time is it?”

He can see his watch out of the corner of his eye, discarded on the night-stand with his reading glasses, but he’d have to let go of Kate to reach it so that’s out of the question.

“Late,” she supplies, imprecise as always.

She’s a terrible timekeeper, his wife. It used to bother him, when they were first wed. Now he finds it charming.

“I told Clara not to wake me before ten.”

“Ten?” He shoots upright, ignoring her grumble of protest at being dislodged from her spot against his side. “Christ, I am behind my time. I—”

“That was the general idea,” she says through a yawn, digging the heel of her palm into his shoulder, encouraging him to lie back down.

He obeys the pressure of her touch without really thinking about it. And then, trying to sit up again, “Hold on, what—”

“Well, tardiness was not really the general idea,” she continues as if he hasn’t even spoken, hooking one leg high across his thigh, pinning him in place. “Sleep was.”

“Sleep was what?”

“The general idea,” she says, like it’s obvious.

He rolls his eyes at the cornice of their bedroom ceiling. “You are talking nonsense.”

She hums a laugh at that, quite unbothered by his grumbling. “I am talking sense, dearest. You were up half the night with Charu.”

“We both were,” he corrects her, groaning as he remembers those long, draining hours in the nursery. Their little girl was fretful all evening, the lingering remnants of a nasty cold leaving her nose red, her throat raw. When she asked them to stay, her usually loud voice was a weak, plaintive little thing, impossible to deny.

As if she is ever anything but.

“And that is precisely my point,” Kate says, her words stretching around another yawn. She burrows a little closer to him, the weight of her seeming to grow heavier, softer, warmer. More tempting. “I thought we needed a few more hours of sleep, after all that.”

He can’t fault her logic. And he does feel better for the rest.

Still, it won’t do to give in so easily.

“Even so,” he grumbles quietly, “you could have warned me. I have … places to be, you know.” He makes absolutely no move to get out of bed and go to such places, but still. The sentiment is there. “Things to do. People to see.”

“Yes, yes,” she mumbles, in a quiet, sleep-softened version of that deliciously patronising tone she uses sometimes, the one that always makes him want to bend her over the nearest flat surface and see if he can fuck the arrogance right out of her.

He can’t, usually.

Doesn’t want to, really.

She reaches up a hand, patting him in the vague area of his head. “You are terribly important. I know.”

“I am,” he mutters half-heartedly, trying to discreetly adjust himself beneath the sheets.

Not discreetly enough, apparently. Kate closes her hand over his wrist, looking up at him with a knowing smile.

“You’ll be wanting to get up right away then,” she says innocently. She releases her hold on his wrist, humming a quiet, tuneless sound as her hand drifts to his chest, tracing mindless patterns through the dusting of hair on his chest. “Since you are so important…”

“Kate.” He catches her hand, not sure if he’s trying to stop her movement or direct it.

“Although…” She flexes her hand in his grip, her nails just barely grazing his skin. “I suppose if you are already tardy, what is a few more minutes, really?”

He groans, knocking his head back into his pillow. “I should go and check on Charu first.”

Kate’s answer is deliciously prompt. “Done. Before I even woke you.”

“And?”

“Sitting up and feeding her breakfast to one of her dolls. Right as rain.”

He huffs out a quiet, relieved little laugh, the sound whimpering away into a strangled sigh as Kate slips her hand free of his hold, continuing her gentle exploration.

“Well, Lady Bridgerton,” he says, his voice a soft slur, lazy with sleep and desire, “it seems you have thought of everything…”

She nods, her lip caught between her teeth, smiling through the bite as she slowly traces the shape of his collarbones. The curl of his bicep. The line of his hip.

He sighs out his pleasure, his toes curling against the mattress.

The moment stretches lazily, sweet as honey dropped from a spoon, like in the remedy he watched her make for their daughter last night, humming quietly in their candlelit kitchen as she worked.

She licked the spoon clean after, and he kissed her against the kitchen table, stealing a taste.

“What are you thinking about?” she says now, smiling down at him.

“How sweet you taste.”

She hums a laugh at that, the tips of her hair brushing his chest as she shakes her head. “Not this early in the morning, I’d wager.”

He laughs in reply, shrugging. “Always. Though there are other places I can taste you, if you would prefer…”

She hums out an interested sound, her eyes darkening.

“Kiss me first,” he says, tangling his hand in her hair, pulling her closer. “Please.”

It’s not a word he employs all that often, except here — in the dark and in the daylight, whispered into her skin, her hair, against her lips.

It’s not a word she refuses, not here.

She lifts up slowly, moving to hover the top half of her body over him, her nightgown pulling tight over her chest in a way that has him swallowing hard, his gaze dropping to stare at the swell of soft, smooth skin peeking out from the low, scooped neckline.

Her lips descend slowly, her hair falling in a thick, dark curtain around them, blocking out the daylight until he can see nothing but her — soft smile and tired eyes, and pillow creases on her cheeks. There’s something desperately comforting about it all, the creases in her nightgown, the tangles in her hair, even the hint of morning sourness on her breath that he’ll never mention.

He loves her in ball-gowns of course, her shining hair elaborately coiffed, his family’s diamonds nestled in the hollow of her throat.

But he loves her better like this. Soft cotton and bare feet, warm from sleeping beside him.

He is a heartbeat away from kissing her, her eyes closing on a smile, when a knock suddenly sounds on the door to their bedchamber, the handle rattling ominously.

“Out!” he calls at once, turning his head at the last moment to avoid bellowing the order directly into Kate’s face. “Go and rattle your saucepan at the boys, Nelson. I am awake. And I am not to be disturbed!”

Kate collapses against him, her laughter a hot rush of breath against his neck.

He looks down at her shaking shoulders, smiling ruefully.

By rights, the moment should probably be ruined.

But Kate’s weight is heavy and warm on top of him, and when she lifts her head and meets his gaze there’s nothing but delight in her eyes.

And he wants her all the more.

He shifts suddenly, moving her so she’s lying beneath him, his weight pinning her to the mattress for a moment, just long enough to knock the breath out of her, her laughter gasping away into a moan.

He lifts up onto his elbows, drinking in the sight of her, panting and perfect, her curls spreading like spilled ink across the pillows. She holds his gaze, looking up at him with a heavy-lidded stare, the kind he knows by heart after all these years. The kind that says, now, please.

He smiles, and obliges her.

It’s a slow, easy sort of coming together. As the sunlight streams into their bedroom, he takes her apart in all the ways she likes best, with lips and tongue and quiet murmurs of praise, whispered against her ear, her open mouth, her open legs.

“So fucking sweet…”

She sinks her hands in his hair and guides him with the flex of her fingers, a silent instruction in every scratch across his scalp, every shift of her thighs around his ears. Yes. Just there. Just like that.

When she’s lying boneless and sated, dragging lazily at his shoulders to pull him up her body, he suddenly remembers that it is his father’s birthday.

He falters for a split second, waiting for the reminder to sour the moment, to douse the desire roaring in his veins.

But it only makes him desperate.

For more of this. More of her. More of their life — the long nights in the nursery and the busy afternoons in his study, the balls and the dances and their children and their families and this, the smell of sweat and sex in their bedroom in the morning, their nightstands littered with the contents of their pockets. His watch. The keys to her jewellery box. A handkerchief she gave him years ago, embroidered with her maiden name.

He kicks away the sheets that are tangled at his feet, growling an impatient noise as he crawls up her body. If Kate notices the sudden change in him, she doesn’t comment on it. She lets him set the pace, gasping her approval when he shoves her nightgown down without a word, baring her breasts to the daylight streaming in through the window. He watches her nipples tighten in the morning air, watches her strain up towards him as he blows a quick stream of air across them. And then he catches one in his mouth, rolling his teeth in a gentle, barely there sort of bite, and an inhuman noise leaves her lips, her back bowing right off the bed, arching up.

He catches her against him, banding an arm around her back and pulling her on top of him. When she sits back slightly, looking down on him with a question in her eyes, he kisses it off her lips.

“Please, Kate.”

She studies him for a moment, her brows knitting together.

“I need this,” he murmurs, shoving up her nightgown, his hands landing heavy on her thighs. “I need you. I need—”

“All right,” she says soothingly, cutting off his desperate mutterings. “All right.” She runs her hands slowly over his chest, pressing her palm to his racing heart. “You have me. You have me.”

His heartbeat gentles, eases, slows. He smiles.

And only then does she move.

There’s no preamble. No attempt to tease him. She just rolls her hips — once, twice, coating his straining length with her arousal — and then she slips her hand between them, guiding him carefully as she lifts up and sinks down with a quiet, breathy little gasp.

It’s his favourite sound in the world — that first awestruck breath she takes when he’s inside her.

He closes his eyes to savour it, but she only allows it for a second. Her fingers grasp his chin, tight enough to hurt, almost. “No,” she says firmly, smiling her approval when his eyes fly open again.

She looks utterly debauched above him, her nightgown slipping off one shoulder, her breasts bared to the sunlight, shaded with the burn of his early morning stubble. Her curls are tumbling wildly around her shoulders, cascading down her back as she circles her hips, setting a slow, easy pace.

He matches her movements, rocking up in shallow thrusts, his hands settling on her hips under her bunched-up nightgown. Sunshine streams over their bed as they rock together, the building sheen of her sweat catching the light, painting a decadent glow over her skin. He gathers her down to him, tasting the salt beneath her jaw, his face buried in her neck, where she smells like sleep and sex and lilies, always lilies.

He told her, once, that he thought he could come from just the scent of her alone.

He tells her again now, murmuring the words into her ear before he bites down on the lobe, feeling her shiver around him.

It’s her tell, that little shiver. It says she’s close.

He tightens his hold on her, changing nothing — same rhythm, same pace, everything she likes — fucking up into her as she rolls her hips restlessly, her breath escaping in fragments, hot against his skin where she’s pressed against him.

She laughs when she comes.

Like loving him is the most fun she’s ever had.

She’s still laughing when he turns them over, pressing her down into the pillows as he chases his own release with restless, desperate thrusts, mindless murmurs. It breaks over him slowly, like the tide coming in, or the gentle warming of a room after a fire is lit on a cold day. He shudders and shakes against her as she wraps every limb around him tight, her arms at his back, her legs locked around his hips.

When he collapses onto his back, panting up at the ceiling, she laughs again and says, simply, “Good morning, my lord.”

He throws his head into the pillow, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “Good morning, wife.”

“What are your plans for today?” she asks later, when they’ve mustered enough energy to throw on their robes and ring for some breakfast.

She’s lolling on the bed beside him, all loose limbs and toast crumbs, the picked apart breakfast tray lying haphazardly between them, and he thinks about saying something silly— something like licking jam off your collarbones. But then she tells him what she has planned for herself and it’s so sensible and lovely — letters to her mother and his, a ride out to the village to see the baker’s wife’s new baby, a doll’s tea party with Charu and then a real one with his cousin Alexandra — that he can’t bring himself to be fanciful.

“I promised the boys we’d take their ponies out for a ride this morning,” he says, helping himself to a handful of grapes. “And then I’ve a few meetings this afternoon, some visits with the tenants … oh, and a mountain of correspondence to answer. I definitely owe Daff a letter, and probably Mother too.”

“And don’t forget you promised Charu—”

“Right, yes, seventeen bedtime stories,” he says, shaking his head at the memory of the desperate bargain he made last night just to coax the little girl back into bed. “I did not even know she could count that high.”

“Are you going to go out to your father’s monument at some point?” she asks, watching him over the rim of her teacup. “Today is his birthday, is it not?”

He huffs out a laugh, shaking his head faintly. Of course. Of course she already knew.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says, taking the cup out of her hands so he can kiss her.

She tastes like chai and strawberry jam, and he loves her. So he tells her so, pressing one more quick kiss against her lips before leaning back against the headboard, his eyes drifting to the window. He can just about make out the tops of the distant treeline, the ones that mark out the edge of the woods by his father’s monument.

It’s as close as he intends to get to it today.

“To answer your question,” he says quietly, “I am not sure I will have time to go out to the memorial today.”

He looks back at Kate just in time to see her face fall. “Because of me? Because I made us sleep late? I—”

“No, no,” he says quickly, “not because of that. Not at all.” He snatches up her hand, pressing a kiss to the centre of her palm. “I could make time, if I thought it was necessary.”

“And you don’t?” There’s no judgement in the question. Just curiosity.

He loves her for that.

“Not today,” he says, waiting for the guilt to wash over him.

But all he feels is sunlight.

He smiles into the morning light, feeling an old, familiar weight dissolve in his chest, like honey in the hot water of Kate’s remedy last night. Sweetness soothing an ache.

The memorial will still be there tomorrow. Or the next day. It will be waiting, whenever he wants a quiet moment with the trees and the wind, and the inscription he penned on a lonely Christmas Eve.

But not today. He doesn’t want that today.

“I could make time,” he says again, turning his smile towards her, so she knows that it’s her smile really, that all his happiness traces back to her, in the end. “I could rearrange my day, find a gap somewhere. Cancel my visit to the tenants who are expecting me. Break a promise to our children. I could wait a day to write back to my sister. But I do not think my father would thank me for it. I think…”

He trails off, his throat suddenly tight.

Kate reaches out for him, lacing their hands together. The touch grounds him, clearing a little of the thickness in his throat.

“I think it would honour him more if I stayed in bed with you a little longer,” he tells her quietly, rubbing his thumb over her wedding ring. “If I took the boys out for the longest ride we’ve been on for weeks. Told Charu every last one of those stories tonight. I think he’d like it if we served birthday cake at supper tonight, and toasted his memory inside, where it’s warm.”

When he finishes, there are tears in Kate’s eyes. But not sad ones.

“I think,” she says quietly, still holding his hand, “that your father raised an exceptional man.”

He leans over and kisses her, almost upsetting the breakfast tray. The rattle of the china makes her laugh, the joyful sound filling their sun-soaked bedroom, and he thinks, yes, this is honouring him indeed.

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