Chapter Text
1848
"She's happy, you know," Hyacinth said as she walked up next to Anthony.
She had been watching him from across the ballroom, his face solemn as he focused on his Mary, dancing with the man who would soon become her husband.
"I know." Anthony's words were wistful.
Hyacinth hummed. "Clearly." Her tendency towards sarcasm had only grown over the years.
His lip twitched, but still he didn't smile.
"Back when I got engaged," Hyacinth reminsced, "you were so thrilled I thought you might go directly to apply for a special license yourself, before Gareth could change his mind about the whole thing."
Kate laughed from where she stood next to Anthony. "Oh, Hy. He cried like a baby the night before your wedding. He might have been excited, but in the quiet moments, he was a lost bundle of emotion."
Anthony scowled at that.
Hyacinth looked at him appraisingly and took his hand. "Come dance with me," she said, pulling him towards the center of the room.
"You really cried?" she ventured, when they were gliding across the floor together.
“When you - my baby sister, the sister I had watched over and cherished every day since you were born, who gave me meaning through the hardest years of my life - when you found another man to trust with your heart?” Anthony paused. "Of course I did." He smiled then.
They had been adult siblings for over 20 years now, and their relationship had evolved over the years. They had raised families with daughters only a year apart in age, had supported their siblings through nieces’ and nephews’ illnesses, had lived full, complicated lives. They were far more like brother and sister now than they ever had been when she was growing up. But they were still tethered together by the same unique bond they had formed so long ago.
Yet in all these years, Hyacinth realized, she hadn’t thought too much about it. She had always known what Anthony meant to her, the way he had been her foundation, her most treasured person, her fiercest encourager . She had learned to fly because he had been her safe place to land. She had known who she was simply because he was.
But she had never stopped to consider that the reverse could be true. That she had anchored Anthony as much as he had anchored her, that his identity was just as inextricably tied up in who she was, as hers was in him.
“In some ways you were the last sister that I gave away and believe me, I had never felt such relief as the day Gareth asked for your hand. There were many things I wanted in life for you, but a man like Gareth, who would be worthy of you, who could match your wit and intellect, who would treasure you and love you, and watch you shine - I dreamed of that for so long.
But you were also the first of my children that I gave away and over that fact, I sobbed."
She pulled back a bit in his hold, so that she could see him clearly, his face weathered and hair grayed now by years of loving and leading their chaotic clan. How lucky she felt to be the sister of this man, who cared so deeply, sacrificed so much, for his family.
She recognized the emotion in his eyes, and prodded quietly, "And now you give your last child away."
Anthony nodded. “She - well, she is not you. And she is not me or Kate. Mary is everything that is delightful and earnest and calm. I always knew her match would be easy. I worry about her in different ways than I worried about you. There isn’t that same sense of relief that I had back then.”
Hyacinth held his eyes. “She is not you or Kate, but she is every bit of your goodness and your strength and your love.”
They kept an amiable silence for a moment, present with each other as they swept across the floor. As the music started to slow to the end of the song, Hyacinth rested her head on Anthony’s shoulder.
His words were quiet when he spoke. “I am so happy for her, Hy. But forty five years ago, mother placed you in my arms for the first time. Everything I knew about who I was changed. I’ve spent every day since raising my children, trying to be who you and the others, and Ned and Miles and Charlotte and Mary have needed me to be. I’ve never been anyone else. I don’t know how to be anyone else. Sometimes I wonder," he took a deep breath, "who I will be after this. When my youngest child is finally off and married.”
She wrapped both arms around him and held him tightly. “A father, Anthony. You’ll be a father. Always.”