Chapter Text
1803
The nights were long and restless in the months after his father's death. Anthony slept very little. Grief had stolen this one relief from him, and so he would find himself late at night, half-heartedly working away at endless stacks of papers in his study, trying to make sense of any of it. He kept busy to avoid sensing the silence, to avoid feeling the crushing weight he bore. Spare those first tragic days, he had no tears to shed, no mental energy to give to his grief.
And then She had arrived, early one morning, leaving chaos in her wake. Tiny but feisty. And the ground under his feet, his whole heart, had shifted.
So now, when he had spent too long tossing and turning in bed, he found himself here, in the nursery.
He looked at her and thought of all that he couldn't be. All that he couldn't do. All that she deserved. And then, slowly at first, the words came. He knew them by heart, sung over him in his father's rich, tired voice late at night from the very day of his birth. The same words he had heard sung to every new brother and sister since.
This one gift, his father's lullaby, he could give to her.
So he bent down and picked up his sleeping baby sister. He danced slowly around the room, precious Hyacinth cradled in his arms, and poured all of the love that he had for his father into singing those words, over and over again, as at last the tears began to fall:
Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,
You must love me, dilly, dilly, 'cause I love you.
Who told you so, dilly dilly, who told you so?
'Twas mine own heart, dilly dilly, that told me so
And eventually he laid her down and sat in the rocking chair next to her and finally, mercifully, sleep came.