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Lucina Abernathy, or Lucy as she preferred to be called, had always been someone’s daughter.
She was the daughter of a prominent businessman, her father owned newspapers, he owned part of a football club, hell he probably owned half of the London skyline. She had been loved, she had been safe, and she had been happy until one day, a cruel twist of fate pulled the world from under her feet.
There was 5 years between her and her older brother, she had been 6 when her mother and father had been killed in a car crash and she had landed on the doorstep of her uncle. Robert Abernathy was a cold and cruel man; he was a lawyer but not the kind of lawyer that you wanted unless you were a criminal.
He got the bad guys off, usually, he was vile, he was calculating, and he hated children, or most children. He loved Richard, Lucy’s older brother but seemed to really hate Lucy.
Lucy looked like her mother, her blonde hair striking, her stature small and to hear her Uncle Robert talk of it, he was convinced her mother trapped his father. That Lucy was the product of a marriage that should never have happened, but where Richard was concerned, this wasn’t the case… Lucy could not and would never be able to understand her uncle’s logic, but the one thing Lucy knew, was she would never ever be good enough for her uncle. Nothing she would do would be good enough.
She got 11 A star GSCE results, top marks in all exam bar one which compared to her brother’s paltry C grades where remarkable but still she found herself being compared to her brother, she was berated for not getting top marks in that one exam.
She got A star A-Levels and had gotten into Oxford and Cambridge and passed their entry exams with top marks. She had gone to Cambridge to suit her uncle; she was sitting for Classics as per her uncle’s demand rather than her preferred History and Modern Languages.
She was second best in everything, her uncle even compared her to her best friend. Hermione had been with her since she had been 4 years of age, her uncle loved Hermione, or at least seemed to tolerate Hermione more than Lucy.
Even now, 14 years later, her Uncle compared them, she was always second best, she was always in society referred to as Abernathy’s daughter. He had been gone 14 years and she was still someone’s daughter.
“Why can’t you be more like Hermione!?” was always the question she was asked by her uncle and then her brother.
She tried, but Lucy wasn’t the pretty one, she liked neatness, she liked order, she had to have everything in a certain way.
Everything she did seemed to fall flat on its face, she would never be perfect, she would never be what her uncle wanted, what anyone wanted… or so she thought.
That was until she met Gregory Bridgerton. She had sort of stumbled into him on the way to a lecture, at 6” he towered her 5”6 frame and after she had knocked his entire bag all over and found bits of Lego falling out of his bag which made him blush, they had become friends.
Friends.
The one thing Lucy wanted more than anything, but at the same time, over the space of 5 months she fell in love with this man. This goofy idiot who loved Pop Culture, who turned her world upside, the whirlwind who came into her halls for 2am pop tarts and revision.
He saw her for who she was, she felt free to be herself around him. She felt for the first time ever she wasn’t someone’s daughter.
This incredible man who made her feel like she might be enough…that made her heart flutter and made her want him in a way she had no wanted something since the day her parents died when she begged and begged for them not to go, begged not to be took to her uncles…
The man who wanted her best friend.
It broke her heart the moment he asked if Hermione was single. Hermione wasn’t Hermione was never single. She hadn’t been since she was 14. Hermione went out with people who made her feel special and then she would get bored and break their hearts and she just knew the day was going to come, the day she would get her claws into Greg, sweet Greg who was convinced he loved her, who once he had his heart broken wouldn’t want to be friends with Lucy anymore and that terrified her.
She might love a man that would never love her in return but losing him from her life all together, it would be like another bereavement, she was sure her soul would not survive.
For weeks and months, she waited, waited with bated breath for the rug to pulled from under feet again, to lose him from her life and the day it seemed to happen, it had been in the worst possible way.
She and Greg had been to lunch and he came back to her shared flat with her as they were going to study but when they opened the door, they found something Lucy never wanted to see again in her life…
Her brother… with her best friend, naked on top of him, on her sofa.
The argument that raged between her and Greg at first, he accused her of never wanting to help her in the first place and he stormed out. The argument she had with her best friend and her brother afterwards was something she was sure she would never forget.
She told Hermione to get out. She didn’t pay rent in the flat, Lucy paid it all. She didn’t want to see either of them in her life ever again. She screamed, she cried, she slapped her brother when he said she was jealous. Jealous because she was just someone’s daughter and wasn’t like him, wasn’t like Hermione. She wasn’t free.
She was fit to be tied.
She crawled into bed and barely ate and slept for a week. Until she was summoned.
You did not disobey Robert Abernathy.
She had no idea what was going on, but at 20 years of age she had enough, she didn’t need him anymore, she had a year left at Uni, she had her trust fund. The fund he never could touch, she could cut all ties and live on the money she had.
But she found was even worse, Robert was sat there with a young man Lucy had known she was a child, Arthur Haselby, and his father. His father was about as nice as Robert, but he actually had some affection for his son.
Lucy was told she was to drop out of University, Robert was no longer going to pay for it, when he wasn’t even paying for it in the first place, her parents money was, she was to marry Arthur.
Arthur had blanched, he hadn’t known about this, he looked thunderous at his father and sheepish at Lucy.
Lucy knew that Arthur was gay, that he had a boyfriend. It wasn’t a secret. She had screamed, she had yelled, she had told her Uncle that she would not marry someone for a business deal, she was not a piece of meat, she wasn’t being sold like a common whore.
She apologised to Arthur that he had been pulled into this, she continued to scream and shout, and her Uncle had pushed her back into the chair and stood over her and belittled her, he had shouted and yelled at her, reducing her to nothing more than the same little girl who had stood there at 6 and being told she was good for nothing.
She sat silently, quietly having been brow beat into submission, her control she had felt, her convictions squished under her Uncle’s boot as had been the case. Her life as she knew was over, tears fell down her face, Arthur had tried to plead his case, their case, but his father had told him to get out and Lucy was left there listening to her wedding plans.
Tears falling down her face, desperately wondering how she was going to get out of this. She was struggling to see a way out that wasn’t a more permanent way out of everything, out of life and out of the world. What did she have left?
She had told her brother to get out and that she never wanted to see him again
She had told the same to her best friend.
Her parents had left her years ago...
The man she loved hated her, she was sure she would never see him again and oh how she wanted to see him again.
When the door had burst open and he was stood there, flushed in the face, breathing heavily as he declared his love for her. Openly, loudly, ignoring Lucy’s Uncle’s shouts and yells.
He told her Hermione and Arthur had called him and he realised that he wasn’t mad about Hermione, that he had never loved her, he had always loved her, and he was an idiot for not recognising it.
He begged her to come with him, to be with him, to marry him, to hell with it, they were 20, they were adults, and she didn’t need her Uncle.
Robert had yelled at Gregory and tried to hit him, but Gregory pointed out that if he hit him, he would be in more trouble than he was already going to be, for trying to sell his niece to forgive his debts with Mr Haselby, if he assaulted him and reminded him of who his family were.
Haselby had flustered and realising who talking to him, fled, not wanting to get in the way of a Bridgerton. Their connections and influence in London would have him ruined; it had been Abernathy’s idea.
Robert yelled more at Lucy, who despite the tears down her face, the state of confusion she felt, looked at her Uncle and told him he would have no more control over her. She was done being his puppet, she was done with him and it didn’t matter if he cut her off, her trust fund was ample that she would never need to work. She wasn’t going to be someone’s daughter anymore. She was going to be herself.
Gregory offered her hand, and they ran from the room. Tears streaking Lucy’s face as they ran into the street, the heavens pouring down as they ran. Tears and giggles of relief, at the silliness of everything as Gregory found a doorway and pulled her into it, taking refuge from the rain.
“I love you Lucy Loo” he said wiping her cheek.
“I love you too Greg” she replied as he leaned in, firstly kissing her cheek, brushing away the last of her tears, before he found her lips, his arms wrapped around her waist lifting her from her heels as he kissed her.
Lucy finally felt peace, she finally felt like she was home for the first time in 14 years.
Two weeks later she was Lucinda Abernathy- Bridgerton. Wife of a loving and devoted husband. Sister-in-law to a crazy family who loved her an accepted her as she was and over the next 9 years she became mother to 7 children
She never saw Robert Abernathy again, other than the day he watched him be jailed up for fraud, and 9 months to the day later, she became mother for the 8th and 9th time.
Her life was complete.
She had her home; she had her peace, and she had her family. She was no longer just someone’s daughter, she was a Bridgerton.