Chapter Text
Kate had not anticipated that sleep would become her most significant enemy when she came to be with child.
There were a great many things she had come to expect - things she had been warned about, mostly, from the friendly faces of her mothers and sisters -
“My stomach rarely ever settled with Edwina,” Mary said softly, one evening. She had seen the colour drain from Kate’s face very rapidly as Colin walked by, cake in hand - it had been all she could do to politely hide a guttural wretch behind her gloved hand, and she was not altogether successful. It was comforting to only have her mother as her companion in moments such as these.
“My nose was so keen, any new smell was enough to solicit a response.” She laughed, and patted her daughter’s hand. “Your poor father thought we might run out of chamber pots.”
Daphne had been the first to offer her advice, pre-emptive and thorough. She had come to call on Kate privately the day after she and Anthony had announced their happy news to the family, and was very eager to let her know she was available and willing to answer any questions Kate might have about the journey to motherhood.
It was an extremely alarming conversation that left Kate in as much confusion and horror as anything else, but she nonetheless felt comforted by its frankness. If the past few years had taught her anything, it was that beating around the bush did her no favours.
“Please do not be alarmed if you lose control of your...sensibilities,” Daphne warned, giving her a wide eyed, yet startlingly comforting look over the rim of her tea cup. “It is far more likely than you may think, and I think you ought to be aware of the possibility of repeated and unseemly incidents of mortification.”
Kate tried to smile. “I fear your brother has already borne witness to enough of my mortification over the years to be too concerned.”
Daphne flashed her a look.
“So you believe.”
Kate was not quite sure how to sit comfortably with that thought.
Even dear Eloise had some advice to offer.
“Mother often complained of her aching feet, I remember that much,” Eloise had said, as they promenaded together through the park. Kate had become her very favourite chaperone recently after an incident when an unmistakable ash singe on one of her frocks was discovered and Kate was able to expertly explain it away with a story about Newton and Benedict’s pipe. Since then Eloise, Penelope and Edwina had taken to asking her to join them on their walks, silently inviting her to once again reclaim the role as confidant that she had once enjoyed before she had been eternally bound to the man most likely to put an end to any of their fun.
“I don’t suppose you are struggling to walk just yet?”
“Not quite yet, Eloise,” Kate replied. “I think that will come a little later.”
“Still, I am sure it will come eventually,” she said, with an air akin to disgust. “Perhaps you ought to do as Mother did with Father and insist Anthony tend to your feet on an evening. He could use the humbling.”
And yet, despite all of this, the most laughable of all came from the Dowager Viscountess herself.
“The first months with every child it was a battle to keep my eyes open,” Violet had told her, with a far away smile. “I am almost surprised you have any memory of me from your childhood where I hadn’t disappeared to sleep.”
Sleep? Indeed, it would be a fine thing.
Yes, she was quite exhausted, that much was true. Fatigue had been a constant, lingering companion for many weeks now, but the sweet release of sleep continued to elude Lady Bridgerton. It was completely maddening, to be so tired and yet have to lay for hours on end every single night, staring up at the canopies and begging her body to allow her to drift into oblivion with no avail.
In a turn of events neither of them had quite expected, it had been the first time in their marriage that Anthony had slept more comfortably than she had.
The man, for all his apparent strengths, was quite simply one of the single worst sleepers Kate had ever known (not that she had known many - or any - at all, but she could not even conjure up in her wildest imagination anyone who could have slept worse than he). There was rarely a night that Anthony would fall asleep before her, and she never had known a morning that he would rise after her - not to mention that he could be awoken from his deepest slumber by the smallest, inconsequential movement or noise.
It was a blessing that Kate did not snore, as she was sure if she did it might mean the end of their marriage.
She had teased him of it, once - how Anthony it was, to be so high strung, even in sleep - but he had never had cause to question it.
“Sleep has always eluded me,” he had told her, unconcerned. “I cannot see how this surprises you, how often did you catch me wandering the halls after everyone was abed?”
She supposed until that point, she had not realised that there were likely many nights Anthony happened to be awake and roaming Aubrey Hall in the early hours that she had not been privy to. How easy it was to forget that in the years spent so entirely concerned with her own self, Anthony was close at hand, being just as he was.
In any case, it became much harder to tease him about it when she could observe his life, more intimately than she could have ever truly understood before she became his wife.
It was perhaps one thing, to know that he loved his family - it was quite another to see him dressing before dawn to ensure he had answered all his correspondence from the night previous, as he had promised Hyacinth that he and Kate would break fast with her that morning. Correspondence that, incidentally, he was only trailing behind in answering because he had spent the evening escorting his wife and her younger sister to a ball, and he knew that his wife did not wish to go alone - and all that, after an afternoon of treating Gregory to the outing on the horses he had been clamouring for, and a morning at Parliament he had been awake nearly the entire night previous in preparation for.
There was, of course, a privilege in knowing her husband as long as she had - she could sense when he was tiring. His shoulders began to creep upwards, tension collecting at the base of his neck as if it held all the effort of keeping him upright; he blinked rapidly, and often, to try and not let his lids settle and allow himself to succumb to his fatigue.
Most notably, though, his patience was often the first thing to go; most people, including herself at one point in time she was ashamed to admit, believed he was naturally thin-skinned. In her defense, she had spent most of her conscious life poking and prodding him into reaction, and was not to know any different. But she, as in most things, was the exception to Anthony’s rule. It was only with the benefit of a wife’s perspective, that she was able to truly realise that her husband, when rested and unchallenged by the woman sent to earth to test him (his words), could be a surprisingly tolerant man.
And as his wife, she was soon to realise that his level of exhaustion was often directly to blame for the apparent disappearance of this virtuous tolerance. That and the ungodly amount of pressures that presented themselves to him on any given day - it almost made her sorry to have ever been one of them.
And it so happened, given the ever-present challenges of his duties and responsibilities, his siblings and his mother, and his perpetual lack of sleep, Kate could not find herself to be surprised that Anthony garnered himself a reputation amongst the family of being a little too unreasonable and quick to judgement. If anything, given the circumstances, she was only shocked he was not more so.
And this was all, of course, compounded by his natural flair for the dramatic, though he could hardly be blamed for that - most members of his family were guilty of the same trait, and ought not be pointing fingers in this regard.
Still, she knew him to be a thoroughly decent man, even if deprived of sleep.
She knew all of this, and well. And yet it was only as she herself began to grasp at the whisper of sleep every night, and every day only attempting to complete about half the amount of things he achieved in a day, that she was truly able to appreciate how utterly brilliant her husband was.
Brilliant, and unbelievable.
She was convinced there was no possible or conceivable way he could live like this, on such few hours of uninterrupted sleep, and continue about the day as a healthy, respectable gentleman. It was inhuman, surely.
The hours awake were torturous.
Before then she could never have conceived of a world where she would be able to turn on her pillow to watch her peacefully slumbering husband and feel jealousy at the ease of his sleep. That in itself ought to have been enough to convince her that her life had become some sort of twisted, confused dream.
Oh but if it were a dream.
She had taken to keeping Anthony’s pocket-watch at her bedside. At first she had ventured out of bed to collect it and check the time at his own night-stand - the break in the monotony of lying there was extremely welcome, but her ever-alert husband’s eyes would flicker open as soon as she left the bed, concerned that something was the matter. Eventually this game became far too tiresome, even for him, and he took to leaving it at her bedside on an evening.
It was perhaps counterintuitive, but as the hours, seconds, minutes ticked by, she lost all sense of time - to be able to look and see, to remind herself that she had not become dizzy with confusion from her own fatigue became at least some small comfort to her, as useless information as it was to know. She had even tried counting with the tick of the watch's hands to distract herself from the torment, but by the time she reached the thousands, she lost the will.
When she did manage to fall asleep, her experience was not much better. It was never deep, nor true sleep, and every morning she awoke to the same aching tiredness in her bones with no reprieve, cursing the sunlight coming through the cracks in the drapes. This most likely because it was not only insomnia that plagued their bed, but other symptoms that ensured they would know no rest until this baby arrived.
Daphne had not done her the courtesy of warning her specifically about the nightly hot flushes that would have her beside herself in discomfort, but her comments about lack of control over bodily functions suddenly felt quite prophetic.
“Good Lord,” Anthony had muttered one night, after he had reached out in the dark to Kate’s body writhing under the sheets. She was almost wet to the touch, sweating so profusely that her hair, bedclothes and pillow were damp with it.
“I cannot continue like this,” Kate had groaned. She was breathless from how utterly scorching she felt, and could find no comfort from the warmth of his skin on hers. She kicked the sheets and him away from her, and let out a desperate, unbecoming whine as she pulled herself upright. “You must bring me a cool washcloth - something - “
So he did, fetching her water from the basin and bringing some small relief to her face as he laid the wet cloth across her forehead.
“What time is it?” Kate breathed, her head lolling back and eyes closed, too exhausted to attempt to control her body. She felt him gently push away the drenched strands of hair clinging to her face.
“Past three.”
“Hell,” Kate swore.
Just to add insult to injury, her gut chose that moment to churn in such an unholy manner that it was only a sharp deep breath that stopped her from wretching all over poor Anthony, who was still knelt in front of her and looking up at her with tired, concerned eyes. When she willed herself to open her own eyes and met his attentive gaze up at her, she felt a wave of such affection and guilt that she could almost forget it was he who was to blame for her condition in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered suddenly. He shook his head gently, and tended to her hair again, his touch a little more comforting now that she could focus on the cool strip of cloth. “I am sure this must appear very dramatic,” she continued, swallowing down another gasping breath. “You ought to go back to sleep.”
The next look he gave her reminded her so much of the little boy that used to wrinkle his nose at her in disdain, she almost laughed.
“Yes,” he said, “I ought to.”
“Yes, that was a silly thing of me to say,” Kate agreed. “I wish you would, though.”
“Oh, if you wish it, I suppose I will simply leave you here and sleep quite soundly ‘til morning.”
She kicked him, lightly slapping the underside of his thigh with her foot.
He gave her a sleepy smile. “I just wish that you were well.”
She was not sure how he had acquired such power as to dispel all of her worries, pain and anger, and transform her into a soft, girlish romantic with one remark. It would have alarmed her once - only now she just felt so utterly loved.
“I am quite an inconvenience, aren’t I?” she asked, tipping her head back again, and allowing herself a small, indulgent smile, in spite of it all.
“Incredibly inconvenient, yes.” He rested a tender hand across her belly. “But I have been well aware of that for some time now.”
So inconvenient, in fact, that she feared she was beginning to encroach on his carefully constructed routine. He had found, as unbelievable as it may seem to her, some sort of happy balance in his life that meant he was mostly able to get by on the least amount of sleep possible - until, of course, he was confronted with a wife in bed that gave him not one minute of uninterrupted peace.
He would never intimate to her that he was suffering because of her, but he had no need to - it was plain in the dark circles that were forming under his lovely eyes, and the tight hunch of shoulders that never seemed to leave him in recent days.
It was one thing, to be the Lady of the house and be able to retreat to their bedchamber at all hours of the day, to curl up in the library and the sitting room and grasp at little snippets of peace. It was quite another to be a Viscount, and have no chance of respite, even in his own bed.
Most upsetting at all, she could no longer blame his own appalling habits for bringing this situation on himself. When the night terrors began in earnest, even she could not find a way to see this as anyone’s fault but her own.
They were not always horrifying - in fact, most often they were not - but they were the most vivid dreams she could ever remember having, strange and bizarre, and sometimes upsetting; mundane, and yet so not quite right that it always left her feeling uneasy well after waking. So evocative and rich, she could barely even convince herself that she had been asleep when experiencing them. Only, they had to be dreams -
Her mother and father were with her nearly every single night - either one, or both of them, but their presence was a constant when she finally began to sleep, and it became a curse.
Kate could not remember her mother. She knew well what she looked like; her portrait was a likeness that would be burned into her memory for the rest of her mortal life, after the hours she had spent staring up at it in Sheffield Manor and begging her to move. And yet, finally, in these dreams she could see her - so detailed, striking and real that Kate could almost convince herself that that was her laugh, that was how she smiled just so -
And her father - there was no moment in these dreams, no matter how pleasant or haunting, that being in his presence did not make her ache. All of her senses felt alive in his presence, as if she was all at once talking to him, holding his hand, breathing in the smell of his pipe -
Sometimes it was as simple as a walk in the sun across the grounds of Sheffield Manor, the ghostly sound of children’s laughter echoing at every turn. Others she was on his death bed again, gripping at his cooling, stiff hand as some force she could not control tried to violently rip them apart. More than once she was cold - so cold - and wet from the rain and chasing the figure of her mother across the moors as wind whipped around her, never able to get close enough to save her.
When she came back to the land of the living, gasping or crying or shivering, she always felt a sickness, very unlike the unrelenting nausea she was used to by now. It was a relief from the torment, and yet a yearning to be back in that somewhere, that place it felt like she oughtn’t be allowed to see - a brilliant, unreachable in-between.
From what she could gather, this turmoil was just as present in her physical body as her mind, and she had found herself more than once fighting the hands that dragged her away from her father, only to find Anthony attempting to calm her as she cried. Concern and fear shone in his eyes even through the dark, and yet all she could do was sob and shake into his chest, unable to soothe herself.
She imagined most men would be unable to sleep through all of that - how indeed, could she expect Anthony?
“No.”
He had not even looked up from his letter, and she would have had a mind to be irked by it had she not foreseen that he would make this as arduous as possible.
“I am afraid you do not have much say in the matter,” Kate said. “I have already had the maids prepare my own chambers.”
“And I will have them disregard your order,” Anthony replied, short. He was sat behind the great desk in the middle of his study, still attempting to work despite the fact his wife had let herself in to try and commence a battle of wills. “This is my house.”
“Fine,” she said. “I will sleep in an unmade bed.”
His eyes finally shot up to meet her. “And I will carry you out of it.”
“Anthony,” she huffed.
“Kate,” he mimicked back.
He really was one of the most difficult men she had ever had the misfortune to meet. She told him as much and he just looked back down at his papers, unmoved.
“You agreed to marry me,” he pointed out.
This had become an unfortunate repeat remark that the two of them threw at the other when they felt particularly aggrieved, beginning when Anthony had been especially vexed by Newton stealing a favoured undershirt to nest in, and Kate, thoroughly unconcerned, reminded him that he had very much asked for this life: “You asked me to marry you!”
It was, as always, a far too effective method in reminding one or the both of them that they had indeed both come to this union, not without hardship, and certainly by their own choice. And that, of course, they were really rather fond of one another.
“Yes, I remember,” Kate said, with a sigh. She allowed herself to take a seat, finally, and perched herself on the edge of the desk. She was in no way encroaching on any of the many papers he had spread in front of him, but she felt Anthony’s gaze back upon her just the same. “We both took vows.”
“Before God,” Anthony added.
She ached to look upon him, staring up at her with those red-rimmed, stubborn eyes. It was always his eyes - the set of his jaw revealed nothing, and his posture was rigid and absolute - but eyes were far more expressive than he likely knew.
“My love,” she began again, soft. “You are miserable.”
“Because my wife,” he replied, his mouth forming into a delicious yet petulant pout, “does not wish me to comfort her when she is in distress.”
“Your dramatics rival my own.” She gathered her skirts and took herself around the table. “I happen to rather like your comfort, but for the moment it appears to be at the expense of your own health. It is that to which I am referring.”
“I am perfectly well,” Anthony said, as she settled in to his lap.
“You snapped at Hyacinth,” Kate countered gently. She would not have needed to have been as close as she was to recognise the flicker of guilt that interrupted his gaze when she reminded him of this. As she ran a sympathetic hand through his hair, his eyes fluttered closed.
“Yes,” he said, his voice quiet. “Yes, I am already paying the price for that.” Kate hummed as she leant in to lay a gentle kiss on the very corner of his face where his forehead met his hair, and he continued. “She swindled me into four stories before she went to bed yesterday. I felt so badly about it all I just kept letting her get away with it when she asked for another.”
“She is the one lady I forgive for appropriating your time,” Kate murmured, pressing three more kisses down his temple.
“She is a demanding little madam,” Anthony agreed with a sigh, “but I suppose I deserved it.”
Kate pulled away ever so, that their noses were a breath apart, and with a hand each side of her husband’s face, holding him to her.
“I do not want to sleep without you near,” he confessed in a hushed whisper, as he stared, unblinking, up into her eyes.
She bit back a small smile. “I will only be down the hall.”
“That is too far,” Anthony whispered, and she felt his hand resting atop her thigh grip at her. “How can I sleep, knowing you are suffering so close to me and I am leaving you to it alone?”
“Better than having me toss and turn next to you all night.”
“It is not.”
Kate pressed forward again, her kisses a little more desperate around his nose and teasing the corners of his mouth.
“And how can I live,” she whispered back, into his skin, “watching you struggle and know it is because of me?”
“Kate,” he breathed. “I am - well - “
Her hands gripped a little tighter into his hair. “You may well believe you are, but you forget that even if you can fool yourself, you cannot fool me.” She pulled back again, peering down at him. “This is not sustainable.”
“It will not be like this forever,” he said desperately, and she could only smile, knowing that she had won. “This will pass.”
“Yes,” she replied, bright. “Our sleeping apart will be quite temporary.”
Anthony’s Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, his jaw working to hold back the retort she was sure was threatening on his tongue, held in place only by the brief frustration in knowing that she had bested him. She pressed on, unwilling to lose her advantage.
“It may only be a few nights,” she explained. “Just so you can try and get some hours of uninterrupted rest. I would like you at your very best again, and I do not want to continue to carry the burden of knowing that I am acting as an obstacle to it.” She smiled, and let her nails scratch ever so lightly on his scalp. “In the meanwhile you are welcome to fuss over me during any spare daylight hour that you may have.”
“You are asking me to abandon you in your hour of need.”
He really could be desperately dramatic when he had the mind to be. It was already ridiculous enough that the only way to convince Anthony to put his own welfare first was to convince him that he was actually doing something for her, but must he look so wounded as she was doing it?
“Please, Anthony.” She tucked herself into the shell of his neck, her lips and teeth on the underside of his jaw. “Please - for me. Let me have this peace of mind.”
He was so silent that she could almost believe she heard the ticking of his mind as it warred between his instinct and his better judgement. That and she was sure a small, ancient part of him still resisted ever admitting she was right - an old habit that even she found difficult to quash in the reverse, on occasions such as these.
“...I will miss you.”
He made her heart ache with love of him far too often.
“And I you,” she confessed, warm. “May I understand this is your consent?”
“For one night,” he grumbled, his voice gruff with his displeasure. “And I reserve the right to be smug when I am even more miserable without you in our bed.”
Kate sat back up to face him. “So you admit to being miserable presently?”
Anthony scowled. “I will retract my consent if you continue to be clever -”
“Well, I certainly cannot help being clever,” Kate replied, her lips quirking up involuntarily. “Nor charming, or radiant - “
“Quite.” For all his disapproval, he appeared content enough to have her in his lap - indeed, the appearance of his vexation was very poorly maintained when his eyes looked so utterly enchanted. Unable to help herself, she leant in enthusiastically to capture that half-hearted scowl into a proper kiss.
“It is unfair of you,” he murmured into her mouth, some time later. “To use your lips so.”
“Hmm?”
He pulled back for the briefest of moments. “As a means of bending me to your will.”
Kate smiled widely into their embrace. “I believe it is my wifely prerogative.”
The arrangement lasted for longer than it pleased either of them. However, it was hard to deny the results: the Dowager Viscountess commented on the freshness of Anthony’s appearance the next morning and this begrudgingly offered him a little perspective beyond his own bias, and he thanked Kate for her foresight.
“I lay for far too many hours thinking of you,” he admitted as he took a bite from her toast. She had taken to breaking fast in bed, as this was when the worst of the nausea consumed her, and she had no desire to suffer the indignity in front of other members of their family. Anthony tried to keep her company as many mornings as he could manage, after his own breakfast.
“But you slept?” Kate asked.
“I did, eventually.” Another bite of her toast, this time with a dollop of the good marmalade he liked so much. She almost commented that he ought to be careful or she would begin to mistake him for his brother, but it was just as well, really - she was barely in the mood for eating this morning. “Perhaps for the best as I am due to meet with Mr Brigson today to discuss his yields. I would have been no use to him as I was this past week.”
Kate had suffered in the usual fashion, but this time without Anthony to complain incoherently to or cry on when she woke up from a dream about all of their loved ones swapping faces. Equally, despite the fact that the hot flushes continued, she found that she missed the comforting heat of his body near her - even though, yes, not a day earlier she had been cursing him and insisting he never touch her again because he was far too warm to share a bed with.
What a contrary mess child-bearing was turning her into.
And, ultimately, as wretched as her own evenings were, it did lighten the burden on her conscience when she saw Anthony’s energy renew. She could comfort herself that it was a very good deed, and that their family were greatly in debt to her for her selflessness.
Though, again, this was harder to tell herself when the singular night stretched to an entire week, and she found herself lying awake in the early hours of the morning, clutching Anthony’s pocket watch (which he still made the point to come and leave by her bedside in her new room, every night), as if it were any sort of replacement for the man himself, and wondering whether it was right that he ought to be miserable with her if she was the one labouring to carry his child.
All felt well once again, however, when a week into their new arrangement, Kate watched Anthony, lit by a single candle, let himself into her room well past midnight.
“Ah, you’re awake,” he said as he caught sight of her.
“When am I not?” Kate grumbled, in far too foul a mood to be pleasant. Still, she watched with interest as he approached the bed, setting down the candle on the opposite bedside (his side, even in a different room), and climbing under the sheets with her. “What are you - ?”
“I have informed the staff we are not to be disturbed tomorrow morning,” Anthony said, settling himself and curling towards her like he usually did. “And my day is now completely free of obligation. We have all the time in the world to catch up on any lost hours, so do not fret yourself over that. Where is Newton?”
Kate blinked. “He settled under the vanity,” she answered, faint. “Wait, how are you - ?”
“I know it vexes you when I stay up so late answering correspondence,” Anthony sighed, “but I was simply ensuring we could have a leisurely day together tomorrow. Perhaps I might take my breakfast in here with you, too. Does that suit?”
It took her a few moments to parse through what he had said to her, but as he looked up at her from where he was reclined on his pillow, she found that it very much did suit.
It suited so well, in fact, that she found herself bursting into a flurry of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, as he gathered her up into his arms with an alarmed look. “I do not know what’s the matter with me.”
“You silly thing.” His arms tightened around her and he breathed a long kiss into her hair.
“You are such a good husband,” she sobbed, hiccuping, and she found that somehow putting to words the source of her sudden rush of emotion did not help it dissipate. Rather, saying it out loud to him only served to realise quite how true it was, and the lump in her throat only lodged itself there more firmly. “I am sorry that I am such a mess of a wife. I love you ever so much.”
“Oh, Kate.”
He allowed her to cry in his embrace for as long as it took for her to gather some decorum, and for her breathing to somewhat return to normal - which, frankly, took far longer than was likely appropriate in relation to what she was crying about.
“Sorry,” she murmured again, her eyes drooping with exhaustion. He was holding her face in his hands, and thumbed away the remnants of the tear tracks that clung to her cheeks.
“You must not expect much of me if offering to spend time with you elicits such a response,” he said, and when she could bring herself to look him in the eye again, he was smiling at her.
If she had the energy, she would have thumped him.
“It was not just that,” she grumbled.
“I know,” he replied, gentle. “But I hope you realise, my motivation was mostly selfish. I simply could not bear another night alone in our bed.”
“I am allowing it,” Kate said, with a sniff. “In actuality, I am overruling my earlier self, as she did not know how wrong she was: you cannot leave me ever again. Even if I am a monster and you are miserable, you must stay with me.”
Though he had reserved the right to be smug, his answering warm smile was anything but.
“As Lady Bridgerton commands.”