Chapter Text
Grief has a way of shaping people. Like a cancer, it takes hold of you and changes you from the inside. Eventually, the person you once were seems like a faint memory, just another thing stolen from you.
And the only way to know grief… is to know it. No matter the books you read or stories you hear, you cannot understand. It is the most exclusive of clubs that no one wants to join.
The irony unknown to our protagonists is that grief is what brought them together. If Kate Sheffield hadn’t lost her father and gained an unrelenting sense of responsibility over her sister and her mother’s early death had not stripped the world of the rosy glow that other young girls seemed to live with then she would not have been so weary of the Viscount. If Anthony Bridgerton had not lost his father and taken on the burden of family provider so young or felt the impending doom of his own death so resoundly, he would not have been so guarded and resigned to an unfeeling, but comfortable life with Edwina. They would not have understood each other so acutely and seen so clearly through the walls and cracks that others ignored. They would not fight so passionately or feel so deeply.
In fact, without these experiences, the couple would have met without much incident at all. They would have smiled, mingled, and moved on without a second thought. Completely and utterly unremarkable.
But as fate would have it, they had both been changed by grief. And against all odds and sometimes their own wishes, this led to them falling deeply and profoundly in love. Because dear reader, people shaped by grief always seem to find one another. What a club, indeed.