Chapter Text
The annual Bridgerton Pall-Mall Game was well underway.
To clarify, there were several games of Pall-Mall held every summer when the extended Bridgerton clan retired to their country estates and eventually made their pilgrimage to Aubrey Hall. However, there was really only one game that could be classified as an annual event: the one reserved exclusively for the elder Bridgertons and their spouses. This was the one with lax rules which required rather… rigorous participation.
It was also not open to any of the Bridgerton children, as their parents collectively feared for their safety.
And so on the sunny Sunday when the 1826 Pall-Mall Game was to be held, Miss Selina Bridgerton found herself huddled around the large window in the upstairs hall along with several of her cousins so they could see the expansive lawns of Aubrey where the game was being played.
Lady Belinda Basset, who was deeply jealous of all the adults allowed to participate in a game the children weren’t (I mean really, weren’t games meant for them and not the old people?), had suggested that they spectate. And as the coterie of tutors and governesses charged with looking after the them were off on Sundays, they had nothing better to do so they’d collectively acquiesced.
The Crane twins were particularly enraptured by this version of the game and soon became deeply invested as Lady Belinda kept up a running commentary.
“My mama will trounce all of yours!” Amanda Crane declared before the first round had concluded. This was probably true- despite being heavily pregnant, Lady Crane seemed to be celebrating a particularly violent hit while her husband looked on proudly.
Such a partisan comment was only met with several others.
“I’d say Papa has a sporting chance,” Lady Amelia said, eying her father the Duke of Hastings as he hit the ball skillfully, although not very strategically in the context of the larger game.
“I think so too,” Charles Bridgerton agreed, “for Uncle Anthony is on his team.”
Selina craned her neck a little. Ah yes, there was her father, perhaps the most viciously competitive of the lot (which Mama would have called unseemly- the man was well over forty), aiming his shot.
"How come your mama isn't here?" Oliver Crane asked Selina all of a sudden, perhaps noticing that Lord Bridgerton had no natural partner, and was instead partnered with the Hastings’.
Little Lady Caroline Basset immediately elbowed him in the ribs and hissed, "You can't ask that, Oliver!"
Selina flushed. Her Hastings cousins and Charles already had some inkling of her and Gee’s living arrangements, in that it was not… normal , to them, at least. But Oliver and Amanda Crane were newcomers, their Aunt Crane’s stepchildren after she married Sir Phillip last year, and they had obviously never been told why the Viscount Bridgerton was unmarried and instead lived with a woman most of the family had never met.
"No," Oliver insisted rather bullishly. "What's wrong with wanting to know? I want to know." He addressed the last bit not at Caroline, but at Selina once more.
She had not quite grasped the complexities of her parents' living situation, but she'd gathered after prior visits with her cousins that most parents ventured out in public together, attended parties and balls and the sort. Selina had only ever seen her parents together at their home in Hampstead Heath. Her mama had certainly never been to Bridgerton House or Aubrey Hall.
"She's singing," Selina offered, somewhat tongue-tied at being addressed directly.
This did not satisfy Oliver’s curiosity.
"Mama's in Australia!" Selina’s older sister Georgiana chirruped, eager to say something interesting.
Selina sighed. It was called Austria , not Australia, wherever that was. But Gee’s statement caught the children’s attention immediately.
Lady Caroline frowned. “Papa told me Australia is where the convicts go.”
This, Oliver found fascinating. “Coo-er,” he said in wonderment, “is your mama a convict?”
“No!” Gee cried. “My mama sings opera- she said she’s met the king!”
“Of Australia?” Amanda pressed.
It was Charles, the youngest of them at eight years-old, who corrected Amanda. “Our king is their king,” he attempted not very coherently, but spoke with enough authority on the matter for the others to listen.
Lady Belinda appeared to have understood Charles and arrived at his conclusion for him: “So she’s met the King of England?” she asked Gee.
Gee nodded cheerfully. “Mama told us he was enormously fat and ate an entire roast pig while she performed for him.”
Amelia, at twelve, was becoming quite the little lady and apparently, Gee’s statement offended her burgeoning sense of propriety. “You can’t say things like that about the king!” she said in scandalized tones.
Selina thought she sounded rather like her mother, the eminently proper Duchess of Hastings, who was currently in whoops over her brother Lord Bridgerton’s recent shot.
This behavior was, obviously, an outlier.
Gee shrugged it off. “And now our Mama,” she said very proudly, looking pointedly at Selina, “is in Australia to sing in their operas.”
“I should like to know where Australia is,” Lady Caroline said, having already lost interest in the Pall-Mall game. Selina was too- there was only so many rounds of hitting a ball one could watch before it started to get rather tedious.
Charles proposed they go down to the library so they could find Australia on the large globe the viscount kept in there. From there, it was a mad rush to the library, with Lady Amelia attempting (and failing) to lead the rest of them in an orderly fashion.